Preached by Brother Marc
Holy Wisdom Chapel
Jer. 2:1-8; Hebr. 6:7-12; Lk. 10:25-37
--We cannot truly come to love God with our whole being all by ourselves. Love of God needs to be grounded in the world. The first commandment needs to be incarnate with other people, with those around us.
--Our neighbors need not inhibit us from coming closer to God, but rather, it is through everyone we meet and know, living in their own world, that we are brought nearer to God. Our responses to them turn us more and more into the likeness of God.
--To our great distress, our so-called neighbor is usually not of our own choosing.
--We are told to love others as ourselves, whether they are friendly or unfriendly, whatever the cost, and whether we like them or not.
--This kind of love is not emotional. It simply desires the other’s well-being. It is in tension with our own self-love and our own needs.
--Where does compassion come from? It may spring from good character and upbringing, great love or suffering, a grateful heart, or an awakened and enlightened spiritual and religious life. This kind of love is larger than all of us. Love of God is the grace of God, the life and presence of God, enveloping us and our neighbor in its warmth.
--In the gospel today Christ asked literally: “Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbor to the person fallen victim to the robbers?
--The lawyer knew the commandment “Love your neighbor.” Looks like Jesus has turned things around a bit. Jesus was pointing out to the lawyer that actually being a neighbor in that love is more real, concrete, and down-to-earth than simply loving the neighbor in our own minds and having good will toward all.
--Am I a neighbor when I am nearby, in close proximity, or on the road, aware of the concrete challenge to deal with the immediate needs of a person who was attacked and wounded by bandits?
--Being a neighbor, it seems, is not seeing another person, or other persons, as separate from me and my life or as other than me and us.
--It’s not so much a question of who our neighbor is: it’s more a matter of who or what we are.
--The good Samaritan on the road had “agape” love while the two religious passers-by did not.
--Agape love is love in action.
--Agape says, “Now BE a neighbor, you know, and DO it.”
--And so in the gospel Jesus ends the conversation with, “Go and do likewise,” and it’s a great way to end the story.
--He tells us to do something but doesn’t tell us what. And that leaves it open for discussion. What are we supposed to do?
--When Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” is coming to church and being charitable enough? Does He actually want us to go and do anything or respond in a radically different way?
--We can prepare for those unique moments of love’s demands by practicing how to please God rather than simply pleasing myself. We can begin by listening to our own better natures.
--The other two were on way to do what they thought the Law required: they wanted to please God in the temple, but they missed a golden opportunity for grace that was suddenly set up for them along their path.
--Only the Samaritan took advantage of that passing moment of grace. He was the one who succeeded in pleasing God.
--The Samaritan did not possess the true worship, but he was the one who fulfilled the Law and the prophets in spirit and in truth.
--Finally, how surprised we might be to realize every last one of us is half dying for need of both treating and being treated the way people who are truly alive treat one another.
