“And when he saw him, he had compassion on him”
We know it as the parable of the Good Samaritan. A familiar story, a familiar concept, even in our secular world, it suggests the powerful influence of religion on culture and society. We want to think that we can and should do good towards our neighbours, towards our fellow human beings. But we know, too, that what we want to do and even what we do is never fully complete, never fully enough. We even know at times that our efforts to do good have precisely the opposite effect. We make things worse.
Such reflections do not take away from the power and the truth of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Quite the opposite. They help to make us think more deeply about the Good and to realize that the power of doing good does not simply come from us. It is really altogether about God in us, not as if we are merely ‘passive vessels,’ but as moving our hearts and minds as active agents towards certain actions that arise from a certain kind of thinking. In a way, the parable is more about a certain attitude of mind that is needed in us and which is illustrated so beautifully, so powerfully, and so poignantly in the parable which Jesus tells.
What we see is the radical nature of love itself, the love that is God himself and God in us without which we are not lovely and without which we can only ‘look and pass by’ those in need. The divine love moving in us allows us in the journey of our own lives to come near to those in distress. It allows to see, to have compassion and to act. But it does not allow us the presumption to think that it is all our doing or that we have all the answers to the world’s problems. The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us about what I would call, the humility of compassion.
What that entails is the realization that we ourselves are like that “certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead”. And we ourselves are like that “certain Priest” and “Levite” who “look and pass by”. But we are also to be like that “certain Samaritan” who, “as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” In other words, we ourselves are in this parable in every way both in our intentions and actions and our sufferings and failings. Yet we are called to be compassionate towards one another, both the stranger and the friend, because of the divine compassion which has been bestowed upon us. That is the deeper meaning of the parable, I think, and the only way in which we can understand it in relation to the questions which precede it.
Questions. Actually questions upon questions. Intriguing and important questions that belong to the context of the story lead not so much towards dogmatic answers as towards a way of thinking and doing, a certain attitude and approach towards human suffering and failing. It is not the ‘I can fix everything’ approach – the arrogance of our technocratic culture which assumes the answer to every problem – for that is precisely the problem. No. The idea of humble compassion is far greater than the mechanics of our problem-solving kind of thinking. It is a deeper kind of thoughtfulness.
That is, I think, the point of the litany of questions with which we are presented. “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This first question is asked by “a certain lawyer” but with a malign intent, for he “stood up, and tempted him”, testing him as it were. But the exchange which follows goes far beyond that initial malignity of intent. It brings out more fully the true weight of the question. Jesus responds in good Socratic fashion with a question to him. “What is written in the law? How readest thou?”
That is, I think, the point of the litany of questions with which we are presented. “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This first question is asked by “a certain lawyer” but with a malign intent, for he “stood up, and tempted him”, testing him as it were. But the exchange which follows goes far beyond that initial malignity of intent. It brings out more fully the true weight of the question. Jesus responds in good Socratic fashion with a question to him. “What is written in the law? How readest thou?”
It is an amazing moment and an amazing phrase. How do you read? More precisely, how do you read the law, referring to the Law of Moses, the law which is correctly summarized as the love of God and the love of neighbour. It is at once a summary of the central and essential feature of Judaism and which carries over into Christianity. Aquinas, in his treatment of the Ten Commandments, following Paul and Augustine, notes that love is the real meaning of the Law. The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan, it seems to me, is that it makes that point explicit and that it is explicit – literally made flesh, incarnate – in Jesus Christ and that intensifies the whole idea of the relation between law and love.
Jesus’ response to the lawyer is that he has “answered right” with respect to what is known as the Jewish Shema, a kind of short-hand of the Law as the love of God and the love of neighbour and which we know as the Summary of the Law. But this acknowledgement prompts the next question by the lawyer, a question which is not, I think, malign but totally genuine, a question which haunts us and troubles us, as it must, every day. True, he is seeking to justify himself which suggests already that he feels the force of the Law and its hold on us ethically. Yet the question is true and necessary. “And who is my neighbour?”
The parable makes clear that every one is our neighbour. What is often overlooked, however, is that the “certain man” in the parable is really ourselves in our fallenness. We are all on the road from Jerusalem – a symbol of the heavenly city – to Jericho, a proverbial symbol of the earthly city. The question is precisely about the direction in which we are going. The Fall is precisely about how we are going in the wrong direction and therefore are robbed, wounded, naked and half dead because of the sin and wickedness that beset us all. Precisely what we don’t want to hear! And yet it colours everything especially with respect to our obligations towards one another.
We want ‘the feel good’ of doing good without any awareness of the reality of our own fallenness. Thus we miss the deeper point of the parable. Jesus Christ is the Good Samaritan, the one in whom the love of God and the love of man meet and are one. He is the love which moves our loves.
This is to focus on the explicitly Christian meaning of the parable but not to the exclusion of the ways in which other religious and philosophical traditions understand the same fundamental intellectual, ethical and spiritual principles about the nature of our obligations and commitments to one another. Perhaps, the power of the parable lies precisely in the way in which it illustrates what Paul refers to in the Epistle reading as the “fruit of the Spirit”.
The fruit of the Spirit, it seems, is really several fruits – “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law”. Why? Because they transcend the law and belong to its fulfillment. They are all manifest, I think, in the parable which Jesus tells. But to say they transcend the law does not mean they supersede or negate the law. The deeper point is the fulfillment of the law in Christ, in God’s engagement with our humanity. Our humanity finds its truth in God and in a living and active way. That is the real point of the story. It requires the recognition of our connection to one another. It counters the culture and world of ‘them versus us’. The divine compassion at work in us allows us to recognize ourselves in the other.
The parable of the Good Samaritan provides the counter to our secular and sacred confusions but only if we feel and feel intensely the questions which belong to its telling. The parable itself ends by way of a question. “Which now, of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” Who is our neighbour in the situations of our fallenness? The God who is with us becomes himself our neighbour; his otherness becomes his nearness. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. His care is not simply therapeutic – it is about our wholeness, a wholeness which is only found in God. And that is the deeper meaning of compassion, the compassion which challenges our thinking and our acting, compelling us to do the best we can even in the awareness of our shortcomings, strengthened by the grace which Christ’s compassion provides so wonderfully signalled in the parable in the images of divine care that belong to the sacramental life of the Church..
“And when he saw him, he had compassion on him”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 13, 2017