Homily – The Good Samaritan
St. Luke 10:25-37
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
The lawyer wanted to test Jesus, thinking that Jesus would condemn Himself by dismissing the Jewish Law. Instead, Christ affirmed it by saying; “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live” (St. Luke 10:28). Elsewhere, He develops this answer by explaining; “on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (St. Matthew 22:40). Everything in our Faith is connected, from fasting to prayer and from serving the poor to worshiping together on Sundays. It’s all connected, and those connections are made and empowered by love.
1. There is only one thing we have to do in order to live: we have to learn how to love without reservation. Love without thinking of the gain we might accrue. Love those who are different than us with the same strength as we do our family and friends. We have to love so purely that love’s “deeper magic” emanates from us and brings transformation and healing to everyone and every moment we encounter. It’s a tall order. So tall that we have to wonder if anyone can actually do it. The great sage of the 80’s, Howard Jones, was partly right in his philosophical treatise “What is Love?” when he said; “The answer is they cannot love this much nobody can, this is why I don’t mind you doubting.” Experience shows us that we do not bring enough of the one thing needful (love) to fix everything that is broken within us and within this world. It’s frustrating. There is so much pain in this world, and we seem powerless to assuage it. The tools we have at our disposal: our patience, our charity, our skills and our collective policies, are not up to the task.
God knows this. In fact, this has long been considered the real lesson of today’s Gospel. We tend to focus on what the Parable of the Good Samaritan says about apathy, bigotry, and xenophobia, but Origin points out that it has always been more than that: it is a lesson on the source of true compassion and effective healing in this world .[… and a couple of poor substitutes].
To put it simply, the point of the parable is that we need perfect love in order for humanity to be saved, but we are utterly incapable of doing it well enough to make any real and lasting difference.
2. The man that was tempting Jesus was a master of the Hebrew Scriptures. He lived according to the Law and the Prophets. Jesus was trying to tell him that neither of these things can save humanity. There is not enough healing in them. There is not enough connection in them. They are true as far as they go, but they need the activating compassion and power of God for them to be effective.
The parable explains it this way: the man walking down from Jerusalem to Jericho is humanity, also called Adam, leaving the presence of God. He is attacked by the wicked forces of this world and left half dead, unable to continue his journey on his own. That half dead man is all of us; broken, bleeding, lacking the strength to go on. The priest represents the Law; the Levite represents the prophets. Neither is capable of saving us.
3. Who can? Christ. He is the one who fulfills the real requirements of the Law and all the demands and predictions of the Prophets. He can do this because of two things: His connection with us and His power.
The word love is thought of as an emotion, but it isn’t: it is a verb that requires both an object and an action. This kind of love is what connects Him to us. He has compassion for us – we are the object of his love – and He acts on that compassion. How did he act? Remember, he emptied Himself to take on the form of a man and then used His power – exercised most strongly through His defeat of death in the resurrection – to save us.
The Scriptures [i.e. the Law and the Prophets, although this could include all Scripture] cannot bring salvation because they are not alive, they cannot connect with us, they cannot love us. God is alive. He can connect with us. He loves us the way no book or philosophy ever could.
In his homily on this parable, St. Nikolai Velimirovic points out that the kind of connection we are looking for occurs when one person acts selflessly on behalf of another. In the parable, this happens when the Samaritan gives all his attention to the needs of this stranger and “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” Through this action, the lives of the Samaritan and the stranger are inexorably intertwined. The connection is made and power flows through it. Now think of what the parable means for our lives. Christ does this same thing to us; He gives all his attention to what we need, connects with us, and pours His power into us. Our lives become inexorably intertwined with that of God.
To finish the parable, after starting the stranger’s healing the Samaritan carries him to the inn so that his healing can continue as he awaits the Samaritan’s return. The meaning of the parable is clear: after connecting with us and healing the most pressing of our wounds, Christ brings us into the Church where our healing can continue as we await His second coming in glory.
Conclusion
In order to live, we must love. But without a real connection with God, we do not have the strength to love the way the situation requires. No one can. But through our healing connection with Christ, we can have the strength we need. Our actions will no longer rely on our own patience and power because we will will have access to the source of infinite patience and infinite power. It will no longer be us, but Christ living in us and us living in him. It takes constant repentance, fasting, and prayer, for it to be effective, but this is what the Orthodox life is about: making us better conduits of God’s grace. The many disciplines of Orthodoxy are good for this one purpose, or they would be good for nothing worthwhile.
As we become perfected in Christ through Holy Orthodoxy, when the moment delivers us someone in need, not only will be able to better focus on and connect with them, God will work through that connection to bring His healing power to bear in their lives.
And once that healing has begun, we should imitate Christ and bring them to the Inn, the Church, where that healing can continue and they, too, can await the second coming of Christ in glory.
