15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, July 13, 2025)
“Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25-30)
Love is a funny thing. Its greatest happiness is to pull what it loves into its heart and to embrace it with that which most pleases the beloved. Love is big enough to include the world in its heart. It’s first to notice when someone is in need and first to help in that need as best as they can. Love does not limit its scope of loving but offers compassion and assistance indiscriminately.
In todays’ Gospel, Jesus responds to a very important question posed to him from a scholar of the law. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered with another question: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The scholar replied with great understanding that love of God with heart, soul, strength and mind and neighbor as oneself is how to enter eternal life. He was right on and Jesus told him so. “You have answered correctly; do this and you shall live. But this was not a question for the intellect only, it needed to include one’s heart. He wasn’t ready for that so he asked a question that he thought would divert Jesus from the heart of the question. Jesus gave him and us that beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan.
The parable redefines just who our neighbor is. It challenges the listener to see a neighbor not as someone who is socially, ethnically or through their belief system similar to theirs but as anyone who requires compassion and assistance. It brings into focus the importance of mercy and compassion as the foundation of Christian love. Why? Because it is grounded in the belief that we are placed upon this earth to respond to a God who fills every atom with his presence. And to believe it so strongly that God and neighbor are inseparable and to love God is to love our neighbor. It spills over into practical acts of service and compassion.
Three persons came upon the man who was robbed and injured and left by the wayside. Only one, the ‘outsider’, was a neighbor to him. This one saw his need and acted. The other two walked by. Jesus brings the parable to an end by asking another question: “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robber’s victim?” The scholar answered him, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Short and sweet: go and do likewise. As simple as that. Yes, love is a funny thing. Love is the well of living water deep within from which we can draw our strength when our will and emotions are dry. Jesus, help us to draw forth the living water of the Spirit you have placed in each of us to ‘Go and do likewise.’ To love you in our neighbor and our neighbor as ourselves.