Cycle C -- Homily -- 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time -- 10 July 2022

Cycle C – Homily – Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time – 10 July 2022

Also called the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary I                                           Lectionary II

Deuteronomy 30:10-14                           Amos 7:7-17 – with Psalm 82

Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37    or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 – with Psalm 25:1-10

or Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11                         Colossians 1:1-14

Colossians 1: 15-20                               Luke 10:25-37

Luke 10:25-37

Let us take a look at these readings for today.  I would like to start with the Psalm.  Notice we have a choice for our Psalm – From Lectionary I we have Psalm 69 or Psalm 19 and from Lectionary II we have Psalm 82 or Psalm 25.  I think we should just concentrate on the opening line of the indicated strophe of Psalm 19.  “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul; the decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple.”  Keep those thoughts in mind.  All of these readings are very tightly knit together.  I ask you to think about how the law of the Lord is perfect as we look at what the other Scriptural authors have to say today.

All three of the readings have exactly the same theme – and that theme is a continuous reflection of that first line of the reading from Psalm 19 – the law of the Lord is perfect.  According to the reading’s innate crescendo, let us question the meaning by asking, “Perfect?  According to whom?”

Our first reading from Deuteronomy is a pleading from Moses to the people of Israel.  Moses implores them to heed the voice of the Lord.  You can almost hear the desperation in his words.  He wants the people to listen to that perfect law – and this was before the Psalm was even written.  Moses tells the people they already know the law.  He says, “It is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”  How many of us have heard this – either from others or from that worrisome voice deep within our psychic beings?  We know what Moses is saying.  Jesus came along 1200 years later and verbalized that law of love.

The reading from Colossians establishes Christ Jesus as the image of God, as the head of the church, as the fullness of all and the reconciliation of all things.  This is important if we are going to pull the reading from Deuteronomy – the voice of the Lord – into the Gospel message from Luke.  We need to have that God-identity – Jesus Christ as Lord – as we move into the gospel, the reading that expounds on an application for each of us on a very personal level.

Personal level?  Yes!  This gospel reading is the personal application of the message of the law of the Lord.  That is the “Law of the Lord that is perfect.”  Let us look at it.  Oh, you are saying that you know the story of the Good Samaritan.  You are certainly familiar with all the hospitals around the world named “Good Samaritan.”  And you know the term from the news.  And you have certainly heard the Gospel story probably close to a million times – or more!  In preparing this homily, I actually tried to find out how many hospitals and medical centers named Good Samaritan world-wide there are.  Too many to count!!

OK.  We all know the story.  But do we?  A guy going from Jerusalem to Jericho got robbed and beaten up and was left for dead by the roadside.  A priest and a Levite – separately! – came upon the poor fellow and they each crossed the road so they didn’t have to walk too close to the victim.  Think about ritual purity!  That is what they were required to do.  They weren’t being nasty.

As a sidebar, we should spend a moment here clarifying the difference between a Priest and a Levite.  Our religious ancestors knew the difference, but we don’t think about those things much today.  To clarify: Think of a circle and label that circle as LEVITE.  Within that circle notice a smaller circle.  Label that smaller circle as PRIEST.  So, all Priests were Levites but not all Levites were Priests.  For a more detailed explanation go to: https://www.gotquestions.org/difference-priests-Levites.html as that cite presents a very good explanation.

The priest and the Levite were not necessarily bad men.  Nor did they necessarily have any evil intents.  They were simply following the letter of the law.  Think Ritual Purity!  They could not touch blood.  They could not contaminate themselves with this unclean person whose identity and religious heritage were clearly not known to them.  They were following the letter of the law.  They were not doing anything wrong; they were not breaking the law.  At least they were not breaking the Levitical law!  It didn’t matter that the assault victim was dying; they were free and clear.

But, then, who comes along?  A Samaritan!  Does everyone have a picture of what a horrible social outcast a Samaritan was?  I mean, this guy was a half-breed of the worst kind!  (In modern connotation we might think of someone worse than a character in Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince!  If you know the ending there, think of the parallel.)  Those religious ancestors of ours were downright cruel – by our standards anyway.  In colloquial terms both then and now Samaritans were half Jewish and half-anything else.  Historically Samaritans are generally thought to be descendants of the lost northern tribes that had intermingled with the local tribes.  Samaritans practiced Judaism – but not the orthodox Judaism of the conventional tribes of Israel.

The state of being of a Samaritan makes this gospel all the more real.  A Samaritan was this horrendous outcast who helped the person who had been clobbered by robbers.  That fact probably meant more to the people who listened to Jesus telling the parable than it does to us.  Those people spat on Samaritans.  For us, spitting on people is not common practice.  Priests and Levites circumvented hurt people.  Ritual purity was so important!  But, a Samaritan picked up the injured man and cared for him.  A Samaritan gave the innkeeper money to keep caring for the fellow.  A Samaritan didn’t care what anyone thought; he did what he knew was the right thing.

OK – let’s go back and put ourselves in the story.  What or maybe who do we have?  A victim, a priest, a Levite, a Samaritan, an innkeeper.  Add to that we also have the letter of the Jewish law and the spirit of the law of Jesus.  We also have ourselves, the readers of the parable!

Every one of us – at least I can speak for myself – has assumed each of these roles.  Have you been a victim?  I have!  Sometimes justifiably and sometimes not.  Are you with me?  Have you been a priest or a Levite?  Have you walked around – surrey, perhaps – and you saw a victim, someone you could have helped, but because of ritual purity (however it is defined today!), you did or did not?  We do not have ritual purity as defined in the Bible.  But, we still have it!  I challenge you (as I challenge myself) to find our own personal and cultural examples of ritual purity.

I worked for almost five years as a volunteer at one of our local hospitals.  If the sign on the door of a patient’s room said “Gloves and Gown”, I put them on.  But I still went in.  Common sense does not mean abandoning the person who needs me.  Ritual purity might.

But, I have abandoned people who did or do need me.  I think we all have – though I can only speak for myself.  Maybe we haven’t been as ritualistic as the priest or the Levite.  But, we’ve all done it.  Any time we follow the “Yeah, but…” gospel, are we not formulating a modern brand of ritual purity?

Another sidebar:  The “Yeah, but…” gospel is when we think we need to add something to what Jesus actually said.  For instance, Jesus said we are called to love everyone and we add, “Yeah, but my neighbor is a dirty, rotten, cheating, scoundrel.”

Have we ever been that innkeeper?  Think about him or her for a minute.  We know nothing about that person.  We do not know what else that person may or may not have done.  We do not know if that innkeeper had a sense of caring and was willing to go perhaps an extra mile (or kilometer!) for the Samaritan.  Gosh!  The innkeeper didn’t know if that Samaritan would even be coming back!  That innkeeper must have trusted the word of the Samaritan!  Have we ever been that innkeeper?   I have.  Sometimes I’ve been right; sometimes I’ve been wrong.  I’ll bet everyone has been there.

The innkeeper had a job to do.  We all have a job to do.  Should we go above and beyond that job?

And, finally, the Good Samaritan.  We don’t even know this person’s name!  The Good Samaritan – the societal outcast – went above and beyond the call of duty to do what Jesus said to do.  We are to follow the command – to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  The Good Samaritan exemplified that statement from the Psalm – “The law of the Lord is perfect.”  The Good Samaritan headed the voice of the Lord.  The Good Samaritan knew what Colossians meant about the image of God.  The Good Samaritan knew the message – to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  Yes, the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul.

Dr Roberta M Meehan