Can we be bothered? Today’s gospel is the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. But it provides a great challenge to us today. We must love God, sure, but we must also love our neighbor. All of them. Readings for Today.
Can we be bothered?
There’s a longing, I think, that comes to mind from time to time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have been alive during the time of Jesus? To actually see the human Jesus, to interact with him, maybe to witness a miracle. And there is something romantic about that whole thing. I think on some level that desire explains The Chosen, because it gives us kind of a human picture of Jesus, someone who is believable, someone who we would be willing to follow.
But of course, we know that not everyone who in fact was alive during the time of Jesus recognized him, believed in him. Some turned the other way because the teachings were too hard. Others didn’t like that their form or way of practicing religion was being upended. And there’s no guarantee that if we were in fact alive during the time that the human Jesus walked the earth, that we would be any different.
It’s easy to worship Christ when we know he’s the Christ. For example, who would not be moved with compassion when we look upon the crucifix, for example. But Jesus makes a very important point to us in more than one place. Today it’s Luke. He does something similar in the Gospel of Matthew. And he makes it clear that in fact we do have the ability in our age to see Jesus.
But sometimes we don’t want to look. We don’t want to see the Jesus that Jesus tells us we have to pay attention to. Take this story of the Good Samaritan. It’s familiar to us. We’ve heard it, I suspect, more than once.
Pope Francis used this story in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, which was really about relationship and how we should treat one another. It’s a very powerful encyclical, very beautiful. The challenge when we see Jesus is recognizing that he makes an unbelievably strong connection between our neighbor and himself. That we can’t just pretend that we follow Jesus if in fact we’re not really willing to love our neighbor.
And not just the neighbors we like or the neighbors that look like us or the neighbors that think like us. Because Jesus doesn’t make those distinctions. He wants us to love all of our neighbors. And I have to confess that’s where it gets difficult. Truth be told, I don’t want to love all my neighbors. Some neighbors are not easy to love. I think of it when someone comes to the priory, to the parish office where I work, and they’re mentally ill or maybe they don’t smell so great. Maybe they’re simply con artists.
It can be easy to love those who are like us, those we like. But it’s much harder to love every person that is our neighbor. Jesus makes this clear in the Gospel of Matthew at the Last Judgment when he rewards those who gave him a drink when he was thirsty, welcomed him as a stranger and so forth. And they don’t even know what he’s referring to. “Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, sick or in prison?”
And those that didn’t do those things are equally surprised. “Lord, when did we not attend to your needs?” But Jesus makes it clear that every time we ignore the need of a neighbor, that is, anybody else in the world, we’re ignoring him.
And that’s what today’s Gospel is really all about. Because it’s easy not to want to get involved. Two people who claimed to be religious did just that. The religious law about cleanliness became more important than meeting the needs of someone who was greatly suffering. They claimed to follow God, and as Jewish people, they would have known the two great commandments, but they chose to ignore them.
Moreover, as does Jesus so often, the hero of the story is a Samaritan. Now, we tend to think of a Samaritan today in the context of the title of this parable, “A Good Samaritan.” For Jews, there was no such thing as a good Samaritan. Samaritans were rivals, they believed in a different version of religion. The Jewish people and the Samaritan people did not get along. And they did not like each other.
So Jesus holds up the most unlikely of persons for his Jewish audience, the most unlikely of persons to be the hero, to be the one who did what was right, even more so than the priest and the Levite, the religious people who clearly should have known the law better.
Pope Francis in his encyclical says that there are many instances today where we are like the priest and the Levite. And he uses very concrete examples. Someone who’s driving a car hits a pedestrian and drives off. “I can’t get involved. I don’t want to be bothered. “I don’t want to get in trouble. I’m just going to move on.”
We can see it so often when we begin to decide in our heads, “Well, this person I will help, but not that person.” Jesus even uses in the Gospel of Matthew the example of people in prison. People who in fact were obviously in prison because they broke some law. And he says, “You have to visit them.”
Now, he isn’t saying they don’t need to pay consequences for their actions. He isn’t suggesting that we should just release everyone. No, prison serves a purpose. It helps us to see, if we commit crimes, the opportunity to reconcile again with God. So it isn’t even the perfect neighbor that we’re called to follow. But the imperfect neighbor.
We have to see in one another first the inherent dignity of one who was created in the image of God. Then, we have to be courageous. We have to put, so to speak, our money where our mouth is. We have to decide whether or not the words of faith we profess are going to be made manifest in our actions.
Now, this is a challenge. It’s not always easy. It’s not always the case that it is easy not to look the other way or to pass on the other side of the road. It’s not even always easy to treat people with mercy. Because we may be tired. We may, in fact, have been taken. And we don’t want that to happen again.
We, ourselves, may have been hurt. And so it’s harder for us to be merciful. But we learn in the first reading that we have unbelievable help to do this. Moses says that in giving us the commands, and I would say two, really, to love God and to love our neighbor, these are not mysterious commands. Nor do we have to make great effort to travel great distances to know what they are. Why? Because God’s love for us and God’s presence is close.
The law is something very near to you. God is something very near to you. The law is already in your mouths and in your hearts. You only have to carry it out. Because God has implanted in our very nature the desire to do what God wills. We, as in fact the book of Deuteronomy reminds us, and as Jesus challenges us, simply need to carry it out. to carry it out.
On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.