The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

It was sometime in 1967. I was 19 and in the Minor Seminary of the Immaculate Conception at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. From here, the details are somewhat fuzzy, but I do remember the relevant parts. I was driving back to my home in Bloomfield, living at the college was not required in our first two years.

I don’t recall the month, but it was evening, and I was in my 1962 Pontiac Tempest. All of a sudden, it just conked out. There I was, no homes in sight, just the huge looming Veteran’s Hospital across the way and I was about two miles from the university. I panicked. Within minutes, a car pulled up and stopped in front of my stalled Tempest. A man got out and approached me. I think he was about 50 and he was black, which is how we white folk described African-Americans back then.

If you recall, in July of that year, racial riots broke out in Newark not all that far, down South Orange Avenue, about five miles from Seton Hall. Whether my bad luck night was before or after that I do not recall but either way there was racial tension brewing in Essex County, New Jersey. So this man took a chance stopping for a white guy.

The man approached and asked if I was having trouble. I explained that my car just wouldn’t go, and I had no idea what to do. He went to his car, grabbed a set of cables and jump-started my car. I thanked him profusely and then he went back to his car and drove off, It left such an impression that I can recall much of the scenario these 58 years later. The Good Samaritan? Certainly, was that night.

Samaritans were the most despised of all peoples. Calling someone a “Samaritan” was considered a huge insult. If we want to hear the story as the crowds in Judea did, just change the label “Samaritan” to one that reflects prejudices with which we are all too familiar. Who would be the last person that the world’s conventional judgment suggests we trust with our life if we were lying in a ditch bleeding to death?

In the time of Jesus, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notorious for its danger and difficulty and was known as the "Way of Blood" because of the blood which was often shed there by robbers.  It's possible that the priest and the Levite wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible they thought the man on the ground was merely faking, just acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to lure them there for quick and easy seizure.

And so, the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

The victim has no name, one of a number of characters in the Gospel who remains anonymous. We know nothing about him except that he was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who beat him and left him half dead. Jesus doesn’t tell us that he was a decent person or that he was a scoundrel. All he says is that he desperately needed help.

In the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer, Jesus does not answer the question “Who is my neighbor?” but rather the question “Whose neighbor are you?”  The answer is “Everyone” because Jesus does not limit the commandment of love as the lawyer probably wanted him to do, like those tied to him by blood or communal association.

Yes, we are everyone’s neighbor, but the sermon Jesus preached to the lawyer and the crowd around him was not meant to instill guilt about what they do or don’t do, but rather to remind us not to confuse our philosophical or theological conversations about love with the doing of love.

In more contemporary terms, this story tells us not to just talk the talk but to walk the walk by helping the other, the stranger we meet on the road of life, especially the neediest and even the unlovable. I’ll bet many of you could share a story about that kind of unexpected encounter.

The real issue is not so much who is my neighbor but who acts like a neighbor when, in fact, our neighbor may be someone society has conditioned us to fear or avoid.

Who among us has not felt like we were left by the roadside at some point in our lives? When we feel stranded, don’t we all seek a place of safe refuge—no matter who we are or on what road we are walking; a place where tired sojourners may rest and be refreshed; where anyone who has been beaten up by the world or robbed of their peace and security, or who sometimes feel more dead than alive be bathed in God’s healing grace?

The deeper meaning to this Gospel is found in the extravagance with which the Samaritan cared for the man left to die. It is an invitation for all of us to be healed and caressed and comforted by the extravagant love of God. That’s exactly what the Good Samaritan did. Jesus tells us today: “Go and do likewise.”