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| Parable of the Good Samaritan by Jan Wijnants |
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36-37
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37
The familiar parable of the Good
Samaritan, which the Church calls to our minds this weekend, is one of the many
places where Our Lord stirs things up a bit for the Jewish community. If one
were to ask a good and faithful First-Century Jew “Who is your neighbor?” they
would likely have responded that any other Jewish person was their neighbor,
regardless of any familial connection. But when the scholar of the Law asks
this of Jesus, He gives a much more inclusive answer and expands the requirements
of love of neighbor to include all of humanity, not just one’s own self-defined
group. The radical call to love was revolutionary and many took offense at what
Jesus suggested to them. It was too difficult, too much to ask. And the reality
is that we still struggle with it today. Even for us Christians, it is still a
difficult task to love without boundaries. And yet the challenge remains.
When we hear this parable,
because of the radical call to love that we all still struggle with, we
naturally tend to look at the scene and try to discern which of the three
people we are. Are we the priest who was so caught up in rules and expectations
that he failed to help the dying man? Or are we the busy Levite who could have
helped, but didn’t want to take the risk? After all, this game of playing sick
or dead was a common trick to lure people in only to rob them and leave them
sick or dying. Or maybe we are the Samaritan who takes the risk to stop,
showing love to one in need and caring for them? Maybe we’ve been all three at
different times in our lives. But today I want to suggest to you that we are
none of them. Instead, each and every one of us is the man who has been beaten,
stripped, and left for dead. And that’s a scary place to be.
While we can and should spend
time reflecting on how well we live the call to love of neighbor, this story
also speaks to us of something much bigger – the story of salvation. We all
know the basic story – Adam and Eve were created but fell into sin and merited
death for all of humanity. In need of a savior to save us from that death, the
world anxiously awaited the Christ, Jesus. After taking up our flesh, offering
Himself on the Cross, and rising in Glory, He won for us eternal life. It’s us
to us to receive that life and strive for Heaven.
If you look closely, the story of
the Samaritan is much the same.
The anonymous man who has been
beaten, stripped, and left for dead is humanity as a whole, as well as each of
us as individuals. We are bound in sin and are unable to help ourselves up; we
cannot save ourselves from eternal death. As Psalm 49 bluntly puts it: no man can ransom himself, or give to God
the price of his life. And so all of humanity and we as individual must
await a savior, someone to rescue us. The world offers so many alternatives
that say they can help us become better people or can bring us true joy, but
they fail to satisfy. These are like the priest and Levite who pass by; they
cannot and will not help. But there
is one that can help – the Good Samaritan, the Savior, Jesus. To broken and
sinful humanity Our Lord comes to bring healing, strength and life. And how
does He do it? With oil and wine. The oil is symbolic of baptism and
confirmation, when we are sealed with the Sacred Chrism, marked for Christ, and
given strengthened to fight against sin. The wine is symbolic of the Eucharist
and Confession, where the ‘wine of salvation', the Precious Blood of Jesus, is poured over our wounded souls
and we and we are healed. Furthermore, the Samaritan, when
He goes away leaves two pence with the innkeeper to continue the care for the injured
man, for us. St. Augustine suggested that he innkeeper is the Church, who cares
for our souls while the Lord has gone to prepare our places in Heaven and the
two pence given to the innkeeper, the Church, are the Scriptures, the Old and
New Testaments wherein the Inspired Word of God continues to strengthen us and
provide us nourishment until the Lord comes again in His Glory.
My dear friends, fellow sinners
left for dead in our sins, if we want life we must come to the sacraments and
allow Christ to save us. In our humanity we like to think that we can fix
ourselves, that we can work out our own problems. But the fact is that we are
unable even to stand on our own two feet without the help of Jesus, much less
heal our wounds. The regular and worthy reception of the Eucharist and the
Sacrament of Confession are absolutely necessary if we want to live, as is our
immersion in the Divine Word in Sacred Scripture. To fail to make use of them
is to reject the charity of the Good Samaritan and willingly remain broken and
dying in the road that is this world. We were created for much more than that.
We were created for eternal life.
The call to radical love of
others in imitation of Jesus, manifested in this parable, is something each of
us must hear and heed. But, too, we must also recognize that before we can
really help to heal others, we ourselves must first become like that man left
for dead – aware of his brokenness and need, he let himself be cared for by the
Samaritan. To this also Jesus speaks to us and challenges us: “Go and do
likewise.”
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