Fifteenth Sunday in ordinary time, Cycle C: Today’s readings: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37.
If today’s men and women are looking for something that will challenge the status quo and provoke their way of thinking and acting, few, if any, would turn to a parable for this effect. Yet the parable of the Good Samaritan serves this purpose even though we have become so accustomed to it that its edges seem to have become dull.
Whenever I have heard the story I’ve always been quick to judge (admittedly with a hint of self-righteousness) the priest and the Levite for not helping the victim lying on the streets of Jericho. Filling in with some background helps put it into perspective. The rigorous laws stipulated in the Book of Leviticus that forbade the Levite, and even more the priest, from touching a dead body, sound trivial for us who are brought up in a different culture.
Yet we must acknowledge that both men were torn between obeying two laws that come in conflict with each other in this particular situation, and then needing to decide on a course of action. One of them was the duty to preserve ritual purity to be able to offer sacrifices to God in the Temple. The other one was to love one’s neighbour, and therefore in this case, to tend to the needs of the man lying on the ground.
Through the parable, Jesus sheds light onto which criteria must be applied when faced with conflicting courses of action.
The key lies in the attitude of the Samaritan, who was, incidentally, not just some other foreigner. As a Samaritan he was the enemy par excellence. Some would recall the words that the Jews had used to offend Jesus in the Gospel of John: “We were right to say that you are a Samaritan and that you have a demon in you!” (Jn 8:48). It is hard to think of a worse offence that can be addressed to a Jew.
The Fathers of the Church are known to have seen in this gospel passage a powerful allegory of the story of our redemption in miniature. The man lying on the ground is Adam wounded by sin; the priests and the Levite represent the law and the prophets, which are unable to do anything for the man. The Samaritan is Jesus, who comes indeed from another land and tends to the man’s wounds, takes him to the inn, representing the Church, and pays with two denarii, the commandments of love, and promises to return (his second coming) to pay what is left and to take him into his kingdom.
In a reflection given in Malta four years ago, and eventually published in Melita Theologica as a paper entitled “Vulnerability and hierarchicalism”, moral theologian and Jesuit James Keenan notes that this parable “is not a moral story on how we are to treat others, but rather the central story of our redemption”.
In other words, this is not just another moralistic story urging us to perform our good deed of the day. It is the sine qua non experience for whoever wants to internalise the extent of God’s mercy towards the sinful self and fallen humanity in general.
This leads us to the final twist of the parable. Jesus turns the question of the expert of the law on its head. He is led not to understand who his neighbour is, but to whom he must be a neighbour.
This is why Pope Francis makes the parable of the Good Samaritan the fulcrum of his encyclical Fratelli tutti. Thinking in a more global vein, Francis insists that our structures and institutions in society have the obligation to take on the attitude of the Good Samaritan, by sharing in the vulnerability of those who are left victims of indifference and individualism.
Francis insists that our structures and institutions in society have the obligation to take on the attitude of the Good Samaritan
Failing to do so will turn us into robbers or passers-by. There is no middle way.