15th Sunday

15th Sunday Ordinary
July 11, 2004

"If only you would heed the voice of the Lord... it is not up in the sky... nor across the sea... it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out." (Deuteronomy 30:10-14)
"Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He said in reply, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He replied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." (Luke 10:25-37)
• The selection from the Torah expresses in a beautiful and succinct way the nature of our moral relationship to the Most High and to each other, if we would desire to pursue a true religious and spiritual path. The divine law is written on our hearts. We were created in the image of the Most High, including an internal image of our creator's goodness, love and hunger for justice.
• This teaching was a great advance in its time over the "law of retaliation" which dictated "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". We know, both from this teaching and from the many sayings of Jesus including today's, that God's measurement of justice is not based on vengeance, but on love, forgiveness and compassion.
• Jesus' story of the "Good Samaritan" comes at the end of a conversation with a teacher of the Law in which Jesus uses the man's own answer to educate him, and then tells a story to make his point. The Samaritan, one least expected to demonstrate compassion because he was a despised foreigner not acquainted with the subtleties of "religious" legal requirements, follows the divine law of love written on his heart. Again, it is the outsider who teaches us about the ways of God. Small wonder that Jesus, like so many of his prophetic forerunners, provoked such opposition from official circles of religious authority.
• As with so many other stories from the scriptures, all of the participants can be applied to us metaphorically. We can see ourselves individually and collectively as the person beaten at the side of the road, bleeding and ignored; as the aloof zealots sure of their correctness, passing by unconcerned; as the compassionate and generous Samaritan ignoring urgent business to care for the oppressed.
• Jesus' final reply to his questioner, "do this and you will live" suggests that not to do so will result in spiritual and religious death. What if we were to take this teaching seriously and abandon the long outmoded "justice" of vengeance and retaliation? More specifically, how might our views about the proper consequences of criminal behavior (international, national and personal) be transformed? Is it really possible for us who choose the religious and spiritual path of life to ignore the law of love and compassion written on our hearts?
Loris Buccola