The Gospel of Luke, chapter 10:37

Every now and then someone brings us to our senses, somebody, perhaps, comes along and tells you what you’ve always known to be true, but you didn’t want to face up to it. You know the person is as right as rain. Today’s Gospel story is just like that. It is as right as rain, and the lawyer in the story who didn’t want to face up to it, knew it too.

In today’s lesson, a smart lawyer pointedly addressed a loaded question to Jesus, pretending as he did so that he sought the road to eternal life. Jesus knew the man’s intentions, and he got him to quote the law which the lawyer correctly did. So far, so good. But, then the lawyer asked Jesus one question too many. “And who,” he asked, “is my neighbor?”

Jesus let him know that everybody qualified as neighbor and, to make the point clear, Jesus told him a story about the behavior of different neighbors. The shocking bit about the story is that the best neighbor was the ill-regarded Samaritan.

Everyone who heard this story that day knew how it went with Jews and Samaritans. As long as memory served, Jews and Samaritans were set against each other; no love was lost between them. A Samaritan to a Jew was worse than a communist to an American. A Samaritan is faithless.

Still, the supposedly faithless Samaritan who didn’t even possess a separate identity wins the day. Belonging to the right group and abiding by all the laws in the book did not add up to salvation. Standing in compassionate relationship to someone in real need added up to salvation.

Fr. Hugh Duffy

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