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Often in the Gospels, when Christ associates Himself with the Father in such a way that He suggests that He, too, is divine, some scribe or Pharisee, that is, an expert on the Law and Prophets, get up in His face and interrogates Him. This is what happens in the Gospel reading from Luke 10:23-37 for this 12th Sunday after Pentecost.
After the return of the 70 whom the Lord had sent to the towns where He intended to travel, Christ rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and gave thanks to His Father. Just after His speech in v. 22, a “lawyer” “stood up” to put Christ to the test. The Greek for lawyer is nomikos, a scholar of the Law, Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. However, “Torah”, used more loosely, can also be all of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tanakh. Tanakh is an acronym from the first Hebrew letter of the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures: TNKh is Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).
The lawyer “tested” Christ. Greek peirazō is “to test” or “tempt” and ekpeirazō, in v. 25, is more intense yet. For example, in the dialogue of Christ with Satan during His temptation in the desert, Jesus told the Enemy, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test (ekpeirazō)” (Luke 4:12). The provocative ekpeirazō sounds to me like “goaded”.
What follows would have been familiar to 1st century Jews, an exchange between rabbis about the meaning of Scripture.
Lawyer: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
Christ: “What is written in the law? How do you read?”
Our Lord wasn’t dodging the question by responding with a question. Ancient Hebrew texts were strings of consonants without spaces, punctuation, or vowels. Make a different choice of vowels and you change the meaning. For example, the word מלך… M-L-CH, with vowels E-E inserted, you have “melech” which is “king”. With vowels O-E you have “Moloch”, the Canaanite/Phoenician demon-god associated with child sacrifice. When the Lord asked “How do you read?”, He sought to establish the text they will discuss.
The lawyer, a learned and pious Jew, answered the Lord with a combination of the first part of the famous “Shema… ” in Deuteronomy 6, God’s command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (v. 4-5) and the second part of God’s command in Leviticus 19:18, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Christ told the nomikos, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live” (v. 28).
The lawyer started by goading the Lord. Then he sensed something in the Lord’s response that was more than theoretical: “Do this and you will live.” If we turn the sock inside out, which the lawyer seems to have done, we get, “Don’t do this and you won’t live: ‘eternal death’ awaits.”
The nomikos wanted to show himself as righteous, “to justify” himself, dikaióō, which in this context means, “to be guiltless of reproach, be acquitted of a charge”. He riposted:
“Who is my neighbor?”
As if to say, “Of course I love my neighbor, but, after all, not everyone’s my neighbor, so don’t look at me! I quoted Leviticus! I take care of my own just as the command says!”
This is when Christ delivers the haymaker in the form of a parable.
The lawyer, in his original answer, quoted Leviticus 19:18b. There’s also 19:18a, the first part of the verse. There are also Lev 19:17 and other verses about how to treat and not treat one’s “neighbor” (רע “réa‘” as opposed to רע “ra” meaning “evil, wicked”, as in Genesis 13:13: “Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD.”)
The whole of Lev 19:18 reads:
You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Note well that “sons of your own people”, which seems to place a limit on “neighbor”. Christ had heard what vowels the lawyer chose. He knows the lawyer knows the text.
There follows the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan, so well-known that the image is used in common parlance by culturally crippled people who have not the slightest clue as to the its origin, Sacred Scripture and the teachings of Jesus.
A Jew went down the extremely steep and barren road from Jerusalem to Jericho in the valley of the Jordan River. He is seriously mugged, but not killed. Three people come along. The first two are men who performed their rounds of Temple service, as surely our nomikos had done, and are heading back to Jericho. One is a descendent of Aaron, a priest, and other a descent of Levi, a sort of deacon, a priest’s liturgical assistant. They go to the other side of the road to avoid the “half-dead” mugging victim.
By the way, it is often assumed that the priest and Levite – two guys like the nomikos who know the Law – go to the other side of the road because they were not to come within four cubits (roughly 1/10 of a Greek stadion or 6 Roman pedes) of a corpse or they would be ritually impure (cf. Leviticus 21:1-3) and would not be able to fulfill their Temple service.
The problem with that is the Lord’s own important details. The priest and Levite are going away, “down” from Jerusalem and the Temple. They are not restrained by the impurity issue that would prohibit service. Also, the man isn’t dead, he’s hēmithanēs … “half dead” (v. 30). There are signs of life. Moreover, it was the teaching of the rabbis in the Mishnah, which recorded traditions and interpretations of the Law going back to before the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry, that a priest would not become ritually impure by contact with the corpse of a relative, but they could be made ritually unclean by neglecting a corpse. The idea being that just leaving a corpse in a public place, like a roadway, put many at risk of being defiled, not a good thing on a road used to go up to the Temple for your round of service.
This would have been known to the nomikos, the lawyer. Hence, Christ lead this lawyer down a steep path into a mugging by truth, Truth incarnate.
The third man of our parable to come along is the one who provides the parable’s nimshal or unexpected twist. He is a Samaritan, considered by the Jews as both religiously and also ethnically impure. There was great hostility between the Israelites and the Samaritans, the ethnically mixed remnants of the 10 northern Tribes scattered and relocated by the Assyrians in the 8th c. BC. What sort of hatred was there between the Jews and Samaritans? The 1st century historian Josephus says that some Samaritans once slipped into the Temple in Jerusalem at Passover and put human bones around the place, thus rendering the place and all the people ritually unclean… at Passover.
The Samaritan is the one who takes care of the wounded man, decidedly not a “son of his own people”, as Leviticus said.
Breaking down what the Samaritan did, he didn’t just feel bad for the poor guy (“he had compassion” v. 33), he did something concrete, along the lines of “do this, and you will live” (v. 28). To use perhaps familiar categories, the Samaritan gave of his “time, talent, and treasure”. Though in a hurry – he has some place he had to be, because he had to “come back” at some point (v. 35) – he spent his time, which in that barren place where people got mugged. That road was well-known for highway men and ne’er-do-wells. He had some talent for first aid. He gave up treasure, his food and perhaps pieces of his own clothing when he “bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (v. 34). He paid at the inn for the victim’s care and promised to spend more money, as well as time, by coming back and checking on him.
Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The lawyer was guided to the conclusion that the hated Samaritan demonstrated what “love of neighbor” really looks like, in concrete terms.
At the end of the parable, the Lord repeats, “Go and do likewise” (v. 37).
To summarize, Christ, who when His public ministry began had been tempted by Satan (Luke 4:1-13, etc.), and who had just said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18), was goaded by a lawyer, whom Christ brought down to earth.
What can we take from this?
The Samaritans and the Jews were enemies. Christ reveals a critical aspect of the obligation of love for and care for one’s neighbor. You don’t just care for your own, you also care for your enemies. Sacrificial love is exactly that. It is exemplified perfectly on the Cross.
Moreover, Fathers of the Church such as St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) had allegorical interpretations of parables. In this case, the Samaritan is Christ, the man half-dead is fallen humanity, and the inn is Holy Mother the Catholic Church, the place of refuge and healing.
These days, many people discern serious troubles within the Church. In confusion and frustration they could be tempted to leave the practice of the Faith, to “leave the Church”. Their confusion clouds their minds. They forget that Christ founded the Catholic Church precisely as the place wherein we work out our troubles. To leave the Church is like putting yourself on the road where you will get spiritually mugged, and, probably, spiritually dead.
If we continue with the symbolic approach to the parable, we could see descending from much higher Jerusalem to very low Jericho is like the soul once in the state of grace falling into mortal sin. The beaten man falling in with robbers is like to being beset by demons and their human agents, to whom mortal sin is an invitation. As I write, I am in Chicago. To use a local analogy, leaving the Church or ignoring your spiritual life and bumbling along in a life rife with vices and unconfessed mortal sins is tantamount to walking around certain areas of Chicago wearing a couple of Rolex watches, the newest Nike shoes and waving the keys to your Porsche. Getting stripped by the demonic thieves and losing everything can be taken to having lost the state of grace, all the merits acquired in the state of grace, and the inheritance of Heaven. Being wounded by their assault is mirrored in the stupidity that sets in when in the state of mortal sin, and the weakening of our will. Being half dead means that we can’t help ourselves anymore and we need to be rescued. The Levite and the old covenant priesthood could do nothing for him. The Samaritan coming to the beaten man is like Christ with the Holy Spirit bringing prevenient grace. The binding and oil and wine is the help we need to make an examination of conscience with the aid of instruction. The door to the inn is the Confessional and inn is the Church where you are nourished with the Eucharist.
Perhaps you have strayed from active participation in the life of the Church. Get off that deadly road, friend. Perhaps you have slid into spiritual apathy, for whatever reason, about the state of your soul. Christ and Holy Church are waiting with help and healing.
Never waver in your Catholic identity, no matter how wicked or weird some of her ministers and leaders seem to be. Do not neglect your soul. Engage in works of mercy. Be a Samaritan to others who have wound up in a bad place.