FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2025)
Readings:
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Psalms 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36-37
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37
Our first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy sets the stage for understanding one of the most familiar parables in all of Scripture – the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Shortly before his death, Moses pleads with the people to understand what God has called them to. He knew that the people could be difficult, and he knew that once they got into the promised land there would be plenty of temptations to turn them away from the living and loving God. As much as Moses taught them over the years, the “commandments and statutes that are written in the book of the law” are really rather simple, especially if one acts with all of one’s heart, and all of one’s soul. God’s desire for humankind is not up in the sky and out of reach, Moses teaches. “No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”
In our second reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Paul gives Deuteronomy a Christian twist, for in our heart and in our soul (word for soul=everything we are) is the Christ, in whom “all things hold together.” Jesus is “preeminent,” the “first born of all creation,” the one in whom “all the fullness was pleased to dwell.” There is no room for selfishness in the Christian’s life. A selfish person puts him or herself at the center of their life. A genuine Christian puts Christ at the center of their life, which leaves us room to connect with all the other people in whom Christ wishes to dwell. You will recall our beloved Pope Francis correcting the vice-president’s concentric understanding of how we love. It doesn’t start with us, and then reaches out to those closest to us by blood, and then reaches out to our neighborhoods, and then reaches out to the world – that is a selfish understanding of love, for it has ‘me’ at the center of my life, and that is the place where Christ should be, who came into this world to redeem all people, to be the center of everyone’s life.
This brings us to this marvelous gift of a gospel, the parable of the Good Samaritan, a gospel so needed in this particular era. I can only wonder what the president’s primarily Catholic cabinet does when they hear this parable proclaimed, for there is no escaping the challenge it presents.
The parable in Luke’s gospel starts out with the worst of intentions, for the scholar only desires to “test” Jesus, and to walk away feeling “justified.” It’s the way we listen to the gospel when we want it to affirm our worst intentions. The trip from Jerusalem to Jericho involves a 3,000 foot drop in elevation. It was rigorous to say the least, and it was dangerous for there were plenty of places for robbers and thieves to exercise their cunning. On the side of the road, with all of his belongings taken, lies a terribly beaten, probably naked, man. Jesus is quick to tell us that “a priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side (getting too close would make him unclean and unable to worship). Likewise a Levite (helper of priests and all things related to the Temple) came to the place, and when he saw him, he (too) passed by on the opposite side.”
But there was also a Samaritan traveler, perhaps going in the opposite direction. When he saw the badly beaten man, “he was moved with compassion at the sight,” a phrase Luke has great affection for. The scholar Pheme Perkins (who I had the privilege of having been taught by her) points out that Luke uses the same exact expression in two other Lukan stories: when Jesus raises to life the only son of a grieving widow in the middle of a funeral procession, and the phrase is used of the Father when he sees from far off the Prodigal Son returning home. To “be moved with compassion” is to have your entire being identify with what you see. The Samaritan put aside any thoughts of the enmity that characterized Jewish and Samaritan relations and moved quickly to do what was in his heart and soul. The Samaritan only wanted to relieve the suffering of one like him, without stopping to think or calculate costs, limits, or appearances. The Samaritan acted/reacted like a person who places Jesus at the very center of his soul. Even the self-righteous scholar, without mentioning the word “Samaritan,” knew that the real neighbor in the story was “the one who treated [the victim] with mercy. Jesus closes the story with advice for the scholar and us: “Go and do likewise.”
There is no escaping the reality of today’s parable piercing the darkness of today’s immigration policies. Everyone knows that less than 6% of people disappearing or being deported have any kind of serious criminal record. We think that those being deported are criminals because it makes us feel better about it. We ignore our Christ-like desire to be merciful and compassionate, choosing to believe in the lies that are uttered over and over again by those in charge of our country. There is nothing merciful about a Gulag in El Salvador; there is nothing merciful about Alligator Alcatraz; there is nothing merciful about separating families or scooping up your landscapers; there is nothing merciful about the death in detention of a seventy year old man who lived in this country for sixty years; there is nothing merciful about scooping up a woman picking figs in the front yard of her home where she has lived for more than fifty years. Is this what “Go, and do likewise” means?
There is that famous quote from Pastor Martin Niemoler: “At first they came for the communists and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. The they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak out – because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.” Christians have a choice today: you can be the Priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan. Two choices are without cost. The last choice calls you to mercy and compassion. Who do you want to be?
parishionersforjustice.com 