Christ’s parables were made-up stories, but they weren’t “tall tales.” The parable of the Good Samaritan, about a man beaten up and robbed on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was believable because things like that happened all the time. Bandits populated the Jericho Road.
Jerusalem sits way up high on a mountain, 2600 feet above sea level. Jericho, only fifteen miles to the east, is the lowest inhabited city on earth. It is around 800 feet below sea level. That’s a huge drop within a short distance. The steep, winding mountain road with its curves and blind spots was tailor-made for ambushes, muggings, and robberies. Thus Christ used this very credible scenario to teach a lawyer (and the rest of us) a valuable lesson.
The Jews were relentless in attempting to trap Christ, who they constantly accused of contradicting the laws of Moses. In Sunday’s passage, a Jewish lawyer attempted to ambush Christ with this question: “Teacher, how do I inherit eternal life?”
The lawyer ended up answering his own question because he already knew the answer: “Love God, love neighbor” (Dt. 19:18). But then the lawyer, thinking he had Christ cornered, messed up with a follow-up question. And in doing so, he forgot the first thing he was taught in law school: “Never ask a question to which you do not know the answer.” The question was: “And who is my neighbor?” Here the carpenter from backwater Nazareth proceeded to utterly destroy the big-city lawyer’s worldview. Christ got the man to admit that a Samaritan, his hated enemy, was his neighbor.
The Samaritans, who lived in the middle section of Israel, thirty-some miles north of Jerusalem, had intermarried with the Assyrians centuries earlier. That made them “half-breeds.” There was bad blood between Samaritans and Jews. Sometime between 6 and 9 AD, when Christ was a young boy, Samaritans snuck into the temple in Jerusalem after midnight during Passover, defiling the sacred space by scattering dead men’s bones everywhere.
On a normal, everyday basis, the Samaritans pestered any Jews who were traveling through their territory. The gospels recount that when a Samaritan village refused Christ a place to stay, the Apostles James and John suggested that they send fire down from heaven to consume them (see Lk. 9:51-56). Who wanted to love neighbors like the Samaritans? The Jews certainly did not. But that was Christ’s lesson: Love your enemies.
We should qualify something here: Loving your enemies does not mean pretending they are your friends. To love someone does not mean you have to like them. The Samaritan did not like the robbed and beaten man he assisted. He didn’t even know him. But, unlike the Jewish priest and the Levite, the Samaritan loved him, and showed him compassion, a word that means “to suffer with.”
The Samaritan loved the injured man because the Samaritan loved God first. Notice the hierarchy in the two-fold command to “Love God, love neighbor.” God has to come first in the order. It has to be that way due to the fact that God’s love precedes ours. God loves us before anyone else does. So, in response, we have to love Him back first.
The confused argue that by loving God first, we somehow love our neighbor less. But they have it totally backwards. The love we have for our neighbor is a consequence of loving God. It can be no other way. We love our neighbor because we see that he, like us, is a child of God.
When this order breaks down, the world comes up with ideas that defy all logic and common sense. Listen to the following phrase from a US Supreme Court justice in 1992. He wrote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” That was his argument in defense of partial-birth abortions. And since God of course is the author of all life, there was no love of God in it, and consequently no love of neighbor.
For how is it love to snuff out innocent life? And how does it help one’s neighbor by convincing him that it is his right to define his own concept of existence? What if, for example, his neighbor claims to be Napoleon Bonaparte? Is it really love to affirm him in his obvious denial of reality?
We were nothing. We did not exist. Now we are something. We do exist. But we did not make ourselves. We are not the cause of our own existence. Christ is the cause.
For in Him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through Him and for Him. (Col. 1:16-17)
The only thing we made that God did not is sin. And when we were all headed for hell due to that sin, Jesus Christ, who is mercy Himself, ransomed us with His Blood.
To help us never forget that reality, Christ commanded us to worship Him in public on the Sabbath, when we “Do this in memory” of Him. In our present day, that amounts to about an hour a week of our time—one hour out of 168 hours. Too many people resent God for making such a command of their time. Do you ever do that? Well, you wouldn’t if you understood something very important: The command is for your sake, not God’s. The command helps give you the strength and stamina to make your way through this dangerous mountain road on earth, a road tailor-made for ambushes and robberies of your soul.
God not only commanded your time, He commanded your money, the first fruits of your labor. Why? He did so to show you that everything you have comes from Him. Again, the only thing you truly own are your sins. The rest of the things you have you are just borrowing for a very short time.
So, all of us, now and then, need to re-examine how and what we offer back to God. Far too many make the excuse that the Church is corrupt and therefore that somehow exempts them from tithing, from paying God first. But that is a terrible excuse. For where in this world are things not corrupt? The corporate world and government offices are hardly pillars of purity. Yet people rarely exempt themselves from giving them large amounts of their money. And remember, Christ, who lived amidst corruption at the temple, tithed. He paid the temple tax. That was not an accident. He was giving you a financial example to follow.
And He gives you a charitable example to follow. A religious sister wrote:
Here the Lord is the Good Samaritan of His own parable. Mankind lay dying in the roadway until eternal love was sent and spread oil and wine for his comfort, healing the wounds which Satan’s attack had caused in paradise.
My friends, never resent Christ’s love for you, and the fact that He loved you first. Never resent His commands. For those commands help save you.
In the silence ask, “Teacher, how do I inherit eternal life?” You know the answer to the question, because Christ already gave it to you. It is not, as Moses warned, too mysterious and remote for you. No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out: Love God, and love neighbor. In that order. Do this and you will live.
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