Loving First, Loving Well

Loving First, Loving Well
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time,
Year C

[Dt 30:10-14. Ps 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37. Col 1:15-20. Lk 10:25-37.]

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The question that the scholar of the Law asks Jesus is one that the scholar thought would “test” Jesus.

Jesus asks him back, “What is written in the Law?” Remember, Jesus tells us that he has not come to abolish the Law. And so he looks to the Law. The scholar gives the correct answer according to the law of Moses: love God; love your neighbor.

But that love for God is a whole and first and immediate kind of love: whole heart, whole being, whole strength, whole mind.

It is a love that puts God first.

And in that kind of love for God, anyone can love anyone else better because he loves God first!

But then, the scholar drops what he thinks is the big bomb of the test. He asks, “Who is my neighbor?” What he means by that is, “Just who are God’s people?”

And Jesus turns the tables. Jesus answers a basic and elemental question for us about relationships. About who we are and how we are to be and act in the world.

And Jesus tells the man the story – the Parable – of the Good Samaritan.

Parables are stories that allow us to put things “side by side” so to speak. They help us to see a truth by way of example in the story.

So, we have a man going down the 23-mile long steep and dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. That’s no easy trip, and the road was notoriously dangerous. Robbers used to hide and attack unsuspecting travelers.

We know nothing at all about the man who gets beat up and left for dead.

He has no specific identity. He stripped and beaten, and “half dead.” He is no particular man – and so he can be any man.

The priest and the Levite who pass the victim and do nothing probably had their reasons to avoid him. Let’s not judge them – except to see that neither one of them was a "neighbor" to the beaten man. Maybe they are so concerned with their own observance of the laws of cleanliness that they simply pass the beaten man by.  Maybe they think he is already dead! 

But look who stops and helps: a Samaritan!

To most Jews, the Samaritans were outcasts, half-breeds, and heretics. And the ill feelings were mutual.
The Samaritan was probably the last person a Jew would we would expect to stop.

But he does stop. And he binds up the victim’s wounds and takes him to an inn, stays with him overnight, and even pays for the victim’s care and offers to go further into debt for him!

It is important that we go back to the Scholar’s question: “Who is my neighbor?”

Now the answer becomes clearer. Don’t look to see if the victim is a friend or an enemy, someone close  or a total unknown. See only that it is someone who is really one of us – a sister or brother in the image of God - who needs help.

And if we love God first and best, we know His love; His compassion, and we can extend that.

I have a friend who has it in her heart to go to minister to the poor in Uganda.

She made plans, got herself connected with an ecumenical medical mission, and took off from Philadelphia for Uganda a few weeks ago on what was her second trip to Africa.

She sent us a photo of her assisting at surgery in Uganda – standing in a makeshift operating room.

This week, a Philadelphia Police Detective heard the call for help in the wake of the Duck boat accident. He ran to the pier, tossed his gun and wallet aside, and jumped in to save four of the survivors. He said, “I was just doing the same thing that anybody would have done.”

My friend is home from Africa now, and back in the routine of being a wife and mom. The police detective was back on duty the day after the accident.

And back at the parable: After all of his good work, the Samaritan is still a Samaritan; still the same outcast to the Jews, the same object of scorn.

Everything, it seems, has returned to “normal” as the world looks at it.

Yet, somewhere in Judea, a man lived once, because the most unlikely person saw him as a neighbor.

Somewhere in Africa, one woman now lives because a nameless women from America loved her enough to visit her village and assist at her surgery.

And right across the river, four people live because a cop loved enough to put his life at risk for the good of others.

And somewhere, in God’s big storehouse, where all the good deeds of the world are stored, the store has gotten a bit more full.

The world is just a little bit better.

These people have shown us how to love well. Because they have loved God first!

There is an old saying that we all have to watch out for: It is inspired by the way of the world. It says:

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

Mother Teresa has answered that. Here is something from lines that are written on the wall of her home for children in Calcutta:

     People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
          Love them anyway.
     If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
          Be kind anyway.
     The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
          Do good anyway.
     Give the world the best you have, and it will never be enough.
          Give your best anyway.
     In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
     It was never between you and them anyway.

If we can do this, I think we will begin to see and to experience the love that God has for us. We might even see that God Himself in Jesus has become a good Samaritan: the stranger who took on human flesh and walked among us, and healed us, and gave us the promise of eternal life without asking first if we were friend or foe.

God bends down to us all with love.

The great lesson of today’s parable is that we can share God’s viewpoint in a love that looks beyond who people are, to see what they can become.

Moses tells us: this is not mysterious, not far away. It is “…already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”