5 Pentecost, Cp10, July 14, 2019
Deut. 30:9-14 Ps.25:3-9
Col. 10:25-37 Luke 10:25-37
Lectionary Link
The parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke has the sublime elements that one could call brilliant, wise genius, for those who really seek creative advancement in the best of recommended behaviors for persons who are on a path of seeking to surpass themselves in future states of excellence.
The set up for the parable has elements which could be compared with some of the Socratic dialogues penned by Plato.
What is the set up? A lawyer in the time of Jesus within the communities of Judaism would be practitioners of the laws which governed behaviors of observant Jews. It would have been a different legal practice to deal with interaction with the outsiders who lived under the laws of the Roman Empire.
A religious law expert asked the question regarding the link between one's life and one's afterlife. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" There is, of course, a basic contradiction in the question itself. People who inherit are called heirs. How do heirs inherit? By being born into a family as a child. A child is an automatic heir. So why does a child heir have to do something to receive the inheritance?
What this contradiction exposes was how the lawyer regarded the divine law. He regarded the Torah to be a collection of recommended behaviors that if one could follow, it would allow the inheritance of a continued personal life in the afterlife. Jesus asked the lawyer what the written law said about his question. The lawyer gave the summary of the law, "Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself."
But then the lawyer revealed his misunderstanding of the law of God. He understood human limitation and sought to allow such a limitation to be put on the law of love. In the Christian community, the law of love was said to be the fulfillment of the law.
The lawyer was thinking if I counted up all of the loving deeds that I did for my neighbor, would there be neighbors who I would not have to love. What about my natural enemies, like the Roman soldiers or what about the Samaritans whom we occasionally had to confront?
The parable of the Good Samaritan is penetrating in many ways.
First, it presents a Samaritan, the lawyer's natural enemy as the one who is the loving neighbor.
Second, it presents the obvious observers of the law, a priest and a Levite as those who did not want to get involved in the plight of the victim of the attack. Their laws of ritual purity prevented them from being good neighbors. How? If the victim was dead, then they would pollute themselves by coming in contact with a "dead" body. There lives would be inconvenienced by having to go through ritual purification to cleanse themselves of their unclean act of touching a dead person. If they didn't know the victim and if he might be dead, why bother?
Third, a Samaritan had their own version of Torah religion. They were not any less religious than observant Jews. But this Samaritan who would not be considered a candidate for eternal life for the lawyer, is presented as the one who fulfills the love of God. And being a loving person of all is what fulfills God's law of love and that loving behavior is what expresses eternal life, or that which truly lasts forever.
In short, Jesus taught that eternal life, is the love of God flowing through us as God's children who have inherited this privilege to be lovers of God and each other.
Who is my neighbor? Jesus said that is the wrong question. The question is when and where and to whom do I get the privilege to be neighborly.
Jesus affirmed the active definition of the word "neighbor." Neighbor is the subject, the verb and the object.
A neighbor, neighors other neighbors, and so neighbor as a verb is conjugated, "I neighbor other neighbors. You neighbor other neighbors. We all neighbor other neighers." And this is how we prove that the eternal life of God's Spirit is in and through us.
Let us go forth to be active neighbors today and so fulfill the eternal life of God.
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