7/10/2016 – 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time – The Story of the Good Samaritan – Luke 10:25-37

      This has been an incredibly hot summer already, so unfortunately, we have already heard several versions of this same sad story.  There was a lady coming out of a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas one hot summer afternoon. She passes by a car, seeing a small boy in a car seat, all alone in the locked car with the windows up.  No parent or adult in sight.  The boy looked hot and sweaty - it looked like he was having trouble breathing.  She saw a security guard, alerting him about the situation, saying that they needed to break into the car to save the boy. The guard wanted nothing to do with the situation, saying that the police could arrest them for breaking into the car without permission. That didn’t matter to the lady.  She got a tire iron from her trunk, broke the car’s windshield, climbed through it, and brought the boy to safety.  He was dehydrated and very hot, but fortunately he was OK.   Surveillance footage show that the boy had been in the locked car for 40 minutes.  When his father came out, he said that he had forgotten the boy was in the car.  The police said that the lady would not be charged of any crime because of Texas Good Samaritan law, which provides legal protection for those who assist a person who is injured or in danger from unintended consequences that result from their assistance.

      Today’s Gospel story is a part of our modern American consciousness, as we call someone who helps another in need a Good Samaritan.  Being a Good Samaritan may entail helping someone pay a utility bill, driving someone to a doctor visit, or sending a note of encouragement when someone is going through a rough patch in life.  It may entail helping someone who might dislike us greatly or praying for someone who has a lot of resentment toward us.  Being a Good Samaritan can lead us to very difficult, challenging, uncomfortable situations. 

        We hear the phrase “Good Samaritan” in today’s Gospel, but who exactly were the Samaritans in Ancient Israel?  Samaritans were half-Jewish and half-Gentile. There was a great animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans in Jesus’ day.   When the Assyrians took the Northern Kingdom captive in the 8^th century BCE, they intermarried, settling in Samaria, just north of Judea.  Samaritans abandoned the Jewish faith, worshipping false idols instead. Samaritans desecrated the Temple that the Jews were trying to rebuild in the 6^th century BCE, increasing the animosity the Jews had for Samaritans.  The Jews avoided entering Samaria at all cost, even when they had to go way out of their way in their travels. The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable would have been seen as the least likely person to help out a Jew, since the hatred between them was mutual; hatred would not be too strong a word to use to describe this relationship. 

         The law of God that the legal scholar quotes in the Gospel states that we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. But even after hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan, we might still ask, “Who is our neighbor?”  Loving our neighbor does not mean just loving our next door neighbor, loving only someone who is just like us.  Our neighbor may be the stranger who needs our help or the person who needs our encouraging word or the person in our community who has opinions or a lifestyle the polar opposite of ours.

       The Samaritan shows compassion for the dying man. His compassion is not just a strong emotion – it is also action and care.  True compassion leads the Samaritan to being involved in doing good in helping the robbed man, no matter what the cost and time involved.  St Ambrose says: Mercy, not kinship, makes someone a neighbor. 

       The debate amongst the Jews of Jesus’ day concerning the identity of the neighbor was a very heated debate indeed.  The dying man is indeed the neighbor in the parable.  But in answer to Jesus’ question – “Which one of these three was the neighbor to the dying man? – the neighbor is the Good Samaritan.  Jesus uses this parable in a very creative way to tell us who our neighbor is.  We are in the midst of the Year of Mercy.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is indeed a parable of mercy.  We become the neighbor to our fellow human beings because God draws near to us and continues to draw near to us through his Beloved Son, helping us to be neighbor in the midst of our wounds and our weaknesses.  By loving God, we are able to love our neighbor.