Today, a four-lane modern highway leads from Jericho to Jerusalem, partially following the route of the ancient road that connected the two cities at the time of Jesus. In that period, the road was known to be dangerous, with robbers often lying in wait to despoil vulnerable travelers. People often journeyed in caravans to minimize the risk, unlike the man in the parable in this Sunday's Gospel reading, who was braving the road by himself and was overcome by robbers.
The story has come to be known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. After two millennia of Christianity, the phrase "Good Samaritan" has a positive connotation for us. We even have Good Samaritan laws to protect people who help those in danger selflessly. However, the audience of Jesus would not have reacted positively to the idea of a Samaritan being the hero of the parable.
At the time of Jesus, the Samaritans were among the worst enemies of the Jews. The roots of the animosity go back hundreds of years earlier in Israelite history. Over the centuries, the Israelites experienced many different invaders, who devastated the people and the land in various ways. The people of Samaria, which is the land between Galilee in the north and Jerusalem in the south, intermingled with the invaders both ethnically and religiously. They started practicing a religion that was a corruption of the true worship enjoined upon the Israelites by the Mosaic Law. Furthermore, when the Israelites returned from their long exile in Babylon, the Samaritans tried to thwart them in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and of the Temple.
All this led to bitter feelings. The word Samaritan would not have evoked positive sentiments, unlike for us today. Think of categories of people our culture hates, such as the worst of criminals, and substitute that word for "Samaritan" in the Gospel passage. In turn, the Samaritans felt the same way about their Jewish contemporaries for their part.
Thus, the parable would have been extremely shocking for the original audience of Jesus. The traveler is hurt, left to die, but neither the priest nor the Levi is willing to help. The Levis were the priestly class, from whom the members of the Israelite priesthood were chosen. The priests ran the Temple in Jerusalem, the focal point of Jewish religious life. Their behavior in the parable is an indictment of the religious leadership of Jerusalem, many of whom at the time followed the Commandments on a surface level, but did not live them out fully. Ironically, the Samaritan, one of their worst enemies, is the one to show genuine love in the parable.
Jesus uses this story to emphasize that it is not enough to keep the letter of the Commandments, as if we were just checking boxes. We must live out the Commandments with our whole being. Jesus is showing us just how easy it is for us to fall into a holier-than-thou, superior attitude, rather than living our lives filled with genuine love. The Samaritan in the story goes out of his way to give of himself to the unfortunate traveler. His love is self-sacrificial, which is what makes it genuine.
In the First Reading we see that God's law is not a distant, esoteric set of principles, but is near to us. Our experience of God's law is rooted in his relationship with us. His law leads us away from things that would destroy us and leads us toward him, enabling us to experience the eternal life that we receive from him. We are able to live out God's law, we are able to love genuinely to the extent that we accept God's grace into our lives. When we do so, we learn to give of ourselves, and the more we do so, the more we experience God's infinite joy in our hearts.
The Old Testament law was a preparation for the fulness of Christ's presence in our lives. In the Second Reading for this Sunday, taken from the Letter to the Colossians, we see a beautiful description of Christ, who is God Himself. The goal of human life is to center our whole existence on Christ. When we do so, we can love fully, as Jesus instructs us through the parable.
||
The readings for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C, are:
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37
or Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: The Good Samaritan by Harold Copping, from Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}