by CCW | 29 August 2021 08:00
There are five questions in today’s Gospel that shape our understanding of the familiar Parable of the (so‑called) Good Samaritan which illustrates the ethic of compassion. The questions belong to a deeper consideration of the radical meaning of this parable and its place in the ethical understanding that belongs not only to the interaction and connection between Judaism and Christianity but between the major religions and philosophies of the world. In other words, there is something profoundly universal communicated to us here through the idea of the law as grace and in the insistent point about the nature of our obligations towards one another in care and compassion.
Thus this Gospel highlights the idea that we are primarily and essentially social, spiritual, and intellectual beings whose lives are bound up with one another in an ethical community. In this sense, it counters the reigning ideology of our times which assumes the self-completeness of the radically autonomous individual and which leads inescapably to the technocratic mastery of anything human or non-human that would limit the negative freedom that such autonomy assumes.
The first four questions belong to the setting of the scene for the parable; the fifth belongs to its conclusion. Two of the questions are raised by “a certain lawyer;” the other three are the questions of Jesus. The whole passage assists us in the understanding of what Paul means by “walk[ing] in the Spirit” and as not being “under the law.” This is challenging since the parable illustrates precisely the meaning of the law as primary, as a given good. The point, I think, is that the law in so far as it speaks to the reality or the nature or the form of our humanity embodies our freedom and dignity and is not simply a constraint. Such is the ethical wisdom of the teachings of the sister religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and of the Hindu teaching about ‘dharma’, of the eightfold path in Buddhism, and of the concepts of ‘ren’ and ‘li’ in Confucianism, for instance, and in accord with the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle as well, albeit in very different registers of meaning and approach. It has, in general terms, to do with a life lived in accord with reason, a reason that belongs to the order of the cosmos and the human community through which individuals find their fulfillment. That order is not simply a human construct but depends upon an abiding principle, something divine, which informs our humanity. Such is the concentrated wisdom in this Gospel.
It is not simply the questions but the spirit that animates the questions that is of critical importance; not just what is being asked but how it is being asked. This goes to the issue of intent. What is intended in the questions? This takes us back to Genesis, to the story of the Fall. The first question in Genesis is that of the serpent, “more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made,” who asks the beguiling question, “Did God say?” The question insinuates doubt because we know what God did say concerning the trees of the garden. Thus the question of the serpent seeks to undermine what is known or at least to suggest another possibility but as determined by us. Such is the cunning of reason, a reason used to undermine what is known. It leads to the eating of “the fruit of that forbidden tree,” what Milton calls “man’s first disobedience” which “brought Death into the world and all our woe.”
The rest is history, we might say, but importantly it is philosophy in the sense of an awakening to self-consciousness through separation from God and the good order of creation. “Then the eyes of both were opened.” This is further emphasised by the questions of God to ‘the Adam’, meaning our humanity generically considered, but concretely expressed in the individual figures of Adam and Eve. “Where are you?” God asks. It is not as if God does not know. The question brings out our self-consciousness as does the second double question. “Who told thee that thou wast naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” This emphasises our awakening to self-consciousness through division and separation. Finally, there is God’s third question, “What is this that you have done?”
This sequence of questions in the garden shapes the questions after the fall in the story of Cain and Abel. “Where is Abel your brother?” and “What have you done?” In both stories the questions confront us with ourselves. More than simply condemnation, the questions belong to the beginnings of the biblical quest for wisdom as known in God and in his will for us despite our sin and evil; hence, the law as embodying our good. The questions bring out the necessary interplay between knowing and willing albeit through their separation; in short, our agency in disarray.
Thus the questions of the serpent and God relate to the spirit of the questions here in today’s Gospel. Luke tells us that the lawyer’s initial question is asked in order to ‘tempt’ Jesus, echoing explicitly the serpent in the Genesis story as well as the temptations of Christ by the devil in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In other words, the lawyer has an agenda, an ulterior motive. Nonetheless, the question itself is significant. “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with a double question. “What is written in the law?” and “How readest thou?” The what and the how illustrate the whole possibility and meaning of philosophy and education but only in the ethical context of “the law.” The lawyer in spite of himself is compelled by the truth itself to answer honestly at least with respect to the what, namely, “What is written in the law?” He sums up the classical and essential insight of the Torah and of Judaism in general general – the Shema in an extended form by way of Leviticus (19.18) – and in what becomes the Summary of the Law for Christians. It is the principal ethical teaching for both and extends mutatis mutandis to other traditions.
But how is it to be understood? How is it to be lived? That is the point of the parable. We get to it by way of the lawyer’s second question. Jesus commends him on his answer “but he, willing to justify himself” asks “and who is my neighbour?” Thus his second question too reveals an agenda, namely, the intention to avoid the ethical demand of the law by way of a kind of sophistry about the meaning of neighbour. This goes more to the issue of how he reads the law, not as seeking to live it but to get around it, not unlike the questions of the serpent and Cain in Genesis. “Who is my neighbour?” is like the serpent’s “Did God say?” and Cain’s “Am I my brother’s keeper?“ Yet, Jesus takes this second question seriously as seen by the parable of the Good Samaritan which has as its purpose the conviction of conscience of both the lawyer in his self-serving cynicism and all of us in our neglect of one another. For the parable illustrates the real meaning of the love of God and neighbour by showing us that we are all neighbours to one another in our common humanity.
It is shown by way of the outsider from within Judaism, “a certain Samaritan” who does not, like the Priest and the Levite, and this is an explicit critique of Israel in terms of the reading of the law, look and pass by the “certain man” who “fell among thieves” and lies “wounded and half-dead” but “came where he was” and “[seeing” him”, “had compassion on him.” It is a strong word that Luke especially uses. And it is especially used about Jesus in relation to our wounded and broken humanity. In the Christian understanding, Jesus is the “good Samaritan” (though the word good is not in the parable) because he is both God and Man. He unites the love of God and the love of neighbour and shows us what that means in the concrete images of the parable with all of their pastoral and sacramental significance: “[binding] up his wounds”, “pouring in oil and wine”, “set[ting] him on his own beast”, “[bringing] him to an inn”, and providing for him in the present and in the future. It is a most compelling and convicting story. It brings us to the fifth and final question, Jesus’ question to the lawyer: “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” Note the words, “thinkest thou.” The lawyer is forced to confront the truth which he had sought to ignore and deny. He is moved by the power of truth to answer, “he that showed mercy on him.” He is told, and so are we, “go and do thou likewise.” It means to act in accord with what we have been given to know.
There is nothing here of the sentimental moralism that masquerades as compassion in contemporary culture. The parable moves us because it crystallizes profoundly the idea that there is a human nature, an essence to who we are in our humanity, counter to the ideology of the autonomous individual free to make himself, herself, itself, zirself, their self into whatever is imagined and in flight from any determinants of order or being. The “certain man” is unnamed as is the “certain Samaritan”. He is said to be going “down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” thus going away from the image of the heavenly city towards the image of the earthly city, a turning away from the truth of our humanity as grounded in God and not in our own wills, what the Prayer Book calls “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” In other words, this Gospel concentrates for us the ethical substance of the nature of our lives in community through which we learn what it means to be human through the unity of the love of God and neighbour. Such is the spirit of the law.
It all turns on the sophistic question of the lawyer turned by Jesus into philosophical wisdom. “Who is my neighbour?” confronts us with the imperative of our obligations and connections to one another in and through our life in Christ.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 13, 2021
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