“Walk in the Spirit”
“Walk in the Spirit”, Paul bids us. “How do you read the Law?” Jesus asks before responding to the rhetorical question, “and who is my neighbour?” with the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Spirit and Flesh, Law and Grace. In the Epistle, Paul notes the opposition between the Spirit and the Flesh. In the Gospel, there is the contrast between Law and Grace. What does it all come down to? To the grace of God which causes the fruits of the Spirit to be manifest in our lives. To the grace of God which allows us to go and do as the Samaritan has done, for love is the fulfilling of the Law.
Paul elaborates on the opposition between Spirit and Flesh. It is important, I think, to be clear about what he is saying. He is not saying that the flesh, meaning the body or physical material reality, is evil. It can’t be in a Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding since creation and everything in creation is by definition “good” and the whole of it “very good”. This is the fundamental perspective granted to us in The Book of Genesis and one which has profound consequences for how we think about good and evil.
What he teaches here is the ancient wisdom shared by Greeks, Jews, Christians and Muslims, among other religious traditions, which recognizes that the problem is about our attachments to things. This is heightened in the Christian view by seeing evil as really being about our wills, what Paul calls here “the desire of the flesh”. He provides a list of “the works of the flesh”. In every case it is about our relation to the body, to the world, and to one another, all of which involve a denial of our primary relation to God. In short, the problem is not the world or the flesh per se but our willful attachment and obsessions with the world and the flesh. From adultery to idolatry to witchcraft to wrath to drunkenness, each of the works of the flesh reveals a disordered relationship to the things of creation and, particularly, to one another, and, of course, to God. Ultimately, Paul’s list here will be given a more systematic expression in the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust.
In complete contrast to “the works of the flesh”, Paul details the kinds of things belonging to the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” Ultimately, these qualities comprise the classical virtues of the soul as transformed and perfected by love. It is all wonderful teaching, I think, and while it connects with the ethical teaching of other spiritual and intellectual traditions, it also presents the Christian form of moral understanding. The emphasis is on human freedom and divine grace. It is a way of thinking that we have sadly forgotten or ignored.
The conjunction of Paul’s teaching in his letter to the Galatians and Luke’s Parable of the Good Samaritan is quite wonderful. The parable shows us something of the dynamic of that teaching. It is told in answer to the question of “who is my neighbour?” and as a further illustration about how one reads the law, by which I mean how one understands the radical teaching of the Summary of the Law. The love of God and the love of neighbour meet in Jesus in the Christian understanding. In him we see the love that perfects and restores, heals and saves our wounded and broken humanity. Christ, we might say, is the Good Samaritan.
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among thieves. He is stripped and wounded and left half-dead. At first glance, we might think he is the victim of the violent action of others. A closer reading suggests that “a certain man” is a way of talking about all of us, even you and certainly me; a kind of everyman. Biblically, Jerusalem is not just a particular city on a map and in a corner of the world, but is the symbol of the heavenly city, the kingdom of God, while Jericho is presented as the earthly city that stands opposed to the heavenly. So if we are on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho then we have turned our backs on Jerusalem, on God’s city, and on God’s will and ways. Our sins are many and varied but all of them, in one way or another, are about “the desire of the flesh” in the sense which Paul has taught us; attached to things too much, too little or in the wrong way. They leave us robbed of our God-granted dignity; they leave us wounded and broken, literally half-dead, half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho, and going in the wrong direction. It is not simply about what has happened to us; it is about what we do to ourselves. It is the reality of the Fall, the reality of sin and evil in ourselves.
This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of things that just happen to us because of the actions of others, intentional or not. Of course, but the parable is an allegory of sin and redemption, revealing the dynamic between Law and Grace and of the Church as the place for the cure of souls. Priest and Levite pass by – a strong and critical commentary, to be sure, by Jesus about the so-called religious ones of ancient Israel. Yet, there is also the sense that something more is needed. After all, they see the problem of the wounded and broken man and they do nothing. They look and pass by. What is missing in their reading of the Law is what is grasped by the Samaritan: he came where he was, he saw him and he had compassion on him.
The Fathers of the Church could not read this passage about “a certain Samaritan” without seeing it as an image of the story of Christ. The Incarnation is about God’s radical rescue mission of our wounded and broken humanity. In Christ, God comes to where we are. He enters into the fabric of our world and day, into the very fabric of our lives in the intimacy of the humanity of Jesus Christ. In the orthodox understanding of things, Christ is both God and man; only so can he be our savior and redeemer. In Christ, God sees us and has compassion on us and takes care of us in his body the Church through the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated.
Compassion is the key word in the parable that connects to the key word in the list of things that embody “the fruit of the Spirit”, namely, love. The parable is about the deep love of God for us in Jesus Christ, the love which continues to be extravagantly outpoured upon us in the Word and Sacraments of Christ’s body, the Church. These are the things signified by the oil and wine, the inn, the two pence, and so forth.
That it is “a certain Samaritan” is part of Jesus’ critique of Israel, part of his critical challenge to the lawyer who is tempting him, testing him. The lawyer’s question about “who is my neighbour?” is a rhetorical question that seeks to evade the truth of the Law in its application and meaning. Those who should be defined by the Law and should live it fail to do so while a religious outcast, like the Samaritan, Jesus is suggesting, actually gets the spirit of the law. He doesn’t just look and pass by; he comes near.
We call it the parable of the Good Samaritan. Nowhere do we read the word “good” explicitly in the story but in so naming it we connect the story to a larger world of philosophical and religious understanding. Any good that we do is nothing less than the goodness of God at work in us. “Without me, ye can do nothing,” Jesus says, echoing a profound Platonic insight about the pre-eminent power of the Good.
To “go and do likewise” is to “walk in the Spirit”, discovering that our freedom and dignity are found in Christ. Only so can we draw near to whomever we meet who is in need of care and whom in the mercies of Christ we must help. It is all Christ in us, the Good Samaritan. In Christ we learn to walk in the Spirit.
“Walk in the Spirit”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIII, 2011