Pentecost+5/Proper 10C (Amos 7:7-17; Ps 82; Col 1:1-14; Lk 10:25-37)

Our stress (or emotional suffering if we want to call it) happens when we want to have it all. Life doesn’t allow us to have everything we want. If we choose one thing, then we are to let go of the other. For example, when you buy a car, you are there to choose one unless you’re very wealthy. You might have several choices and narrow them down to two or three and then one. You can’t have it all. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have two cars, you can’t drive them all at the same time. In today’s gospel lesson, this is what the lawyer is struggling with. He wants to have it all. He asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He already knows the answer to his own question. It is to do the law of God that will grant him eternal life. Whether he truly believes he can physically live forever or not, eternal life is only possible in the presence of God. With the grace of God, one’s continuing awareness of God’s eternity can be experienced in one’s action. Doing God’s law, not just memorizing it or understanding it, helps one live in God. So, the lawyer knows what to do to inherit eternal life, and he answers, “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; and your neighbor as yourself.”

I said earlier that the lawyer is deeply bothered both by his own answer and Jesus’s advice to do what he says. Go love God and your neighbor as yourself! Loving God would be actually easier since God isn’t physically visible in our eyes. But loving my neighbor as myself? He wants to inherit eternal life but doesn’t want to do what’s required. He wants to have eternal life without having to love his neighbor as himself. He wants to have it all even though he can’t. He has to choose one way or the other. The problem arises from his desire to live eternally and not do all the work. So, he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” not because he doesn’t know who his neighbors are but to get away from them. 

Jesus doesn’t respond to his question right away. Why? Because his question is wrong to begin with. Instead of correcting him, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. As we know, there are many lessons in this parable but I want to focus more on Jesus's question to the lawyer. His question is completely different from the lawyer's. His question is his response to the lawyer's question. The lawyer asks, "Who is my neighbor?" while Jesus asks, "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" 

There’s a radical difference between these two questions. The question, "Who is my neighbor?" centers around me. Who can be my neighbor is up to me. I'm in control of picking who. It is so self-centered and self-serving. Jesus's question, "Who is neighbor of the man who was beaten and robbed?," on the other hand, suggests a different perspective. It’s not up to me to decide who my neighbor can be. It's up to the ones who are suffering. Rather than who qualifies to become my neighbor, Jesus throws this question to the lawyer and us this morning, "Do people in suffering consider me as their neighbor?" We don't choose our neighbors but the oppressed and vulnerable. Therefore, we don’t help out people in need because we have decided they are our neighbors. We reach out to them in order to become their neighbors and continue to do so until they consider us as their neighbors and friends while accepting we cannot push them to see as their friends. It requires humility and patience which are the fruits of charity, love, compassion. 

My friends, this is the essential nature of the Christian mystery, incarnation. God can choose who can be his neighbor, yet he doesn't. Because his love is kind, gentle and never coercive, he asks whether he can be our neighbor by going downward to where we are, by becoming human like us, by becoming himself the Good Samaritan. He lets us choose whether he is our neighbor or not. He lets himself be in our hands. We might take for granted to see ourselves capable and competent to do what the Good Samaritan does in the parable. But this can never motivate us to do it in the long run. If we simply take Jesus’s saying to “go and do likewise” as it is, it becomes a duty or an obligation. This doesn’t move our hearts. Instead, we ought to see ourselves as robbed and beaten first and meet Jesus who himself is the Good Samaritan. He doesn’t pass by us when we suffer. He’s moved with compassion (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη). He reaches out to us, goes out of himself (extasis) and bandages our wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. He doesn’t leave us abandoned. He takes care of us, giving his entire self. Love heals. But it’s not the end of it. Love elevates us to share in the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which we do by loving God in our neighbors. 

Because we were once beaten, robbed, saved, healed, and made whole by Jesus our Good Samaritan, we know what it’s like to receive that love and compassion. Our experience of pain and suffering and our remembering of that experience, which can be metaphorically imagined as “our healed scars” help us be compassionate to and empathize with those who are suffering. Our act to go and do likewise is then simply our response to Jesus because we first received that healing and salvation from him. As we respond to Jesus’s love, we enter the life of the divine love which is God’s eternity. When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we join the presence of God who is love. Then happens the friendship of charity in which God communicates his happiness and joy to us. In a way, those who are beaten and robbed, those who are suffering in the world are the way for us to enter the eternal life of love in God. As we see Jesus in them, we become the body of the Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ to them. 

So, when you see those who are suffering or struggling, remember your own suffering and struggle in which God came to you and healed you. Let your hearts be filled with gratitude to God who heals, restores, and gives you life and love. Only then, see what you want to do about them. Only then, we can do what Jesus our Good Samaritan tells us this morning, “Go and do likewise.” Only then, we will truly live this life in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.