Homily for 10 July

Jews or Israelis and Samaritans. I made the mistake of doing a little research on the relations between the two; no two writers could agree on the subject! We don’t really know much about the relations between the two. Their common history appears to go back centuries, but then around the second century before Christ there was a division. As Israel sought to re-found its sense of identity after invasion and occupation by Persians, Babylonians and Greeks, worship came to be concentrated in Jerusalem and the temple in Gezirim, the temple used by the Samaritans, was destroyed. Samaritans came to be seen as the outsider, the heretic, the idol worshipper. The Samaritan was written out of the history of the good and just. So Jesus’ fellow Jews would have found it difficult to conceive of a ‘Good Samaritan’. They would have been affronted by the outsider turning out to be holy. When Jesus asks the question at the end, the lawyer cannot bring himself to say, ‘the Samaritan,’ he said, ‘the one who took pity on him.’

Jesus tells the story very cleverly. When his hearers heard of the temple priest and Levite ignoring their badly injured compatriot, they would have chuckled. The Jewish layperson would come next and be the hero. Then Jesus brings in a Samaritan, a bit of surprise there, but all right, they would expect the Samaritan to stick the knife into the poor Jew lying on the ground, finishing what the bandits started. But Jesus says that he was moved to the depth of his being by the plight of the man who would have called him an outsider. The Samaritan, in his compassion, doesn’t just do what is needed, he goes the extra mile. His effort mirrors Jesus’ own ministry. Many of his hearers would have been bewildered at this point. What is going on?

The lawyer had asked, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus does not let him, and us, off so easily. There is no easily defined circle of people who is my neighbour: people I like, people who think like I do, people of the same religion or with the same passport. Jesus asks the question, ‘Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the brigands‘ hands?’ Which of them proved himself a neighbour? Go and do likewise. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, ‘Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbour.’

Our Plenary Council identified people who have ‘experienced marginalisation within the Church, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women, those divorced, those who identify as LGBTIQA+, and those who have suffered abuse of any form.’ That is one list. We may not have a list of people who are outsiders to us, but who do I, without thought, exclude from my care? Jesus asks us to be neighbours to them too. It starts with the effort to look at someone with compassion, to open my eyes to the person I would otherwise ignore. It ends with doing with compassion.

That is challenging enough for us here. There is another aspect which Jesus slips into the parable. The priest and the Levite avoid coming near the wounded man because if they touched him – his possibly dead body – or his blood, they would be unclean and unable to serve at the Temple – they were on their way to Jerusalem. Holiness for them was what one ate, how one dressed, the obvious piety which set them apart, not having contact with the unclean. This for them was being holy as God is holy.

That is not the holiness Jesus lived and revealed. True holiness is in love, compassion, reaching out to the broken, the outcast, concretely serving one’s neighbour – in doing this we mirror the holiness of God, in doing this, he tells us, he shows us, we are holy.