15th Sunday of Ordinary Time – 13 July 2025
One of the things in which I have recently taken an interest in my own life of prayer are the questions that we discover in the texts of the Gospel. It is quite a fascinating exercise to go through the texts and identify the questions that are posed in them. I have come to recognise that they have great significance and indeed establish the scaffolding, if you like, of our discipleship of Jesus.
One of the most important questions that we come across is the haunting question at the heart of this account we here today: “Who is my neighbour?” it is a question which is meant to take hold of us, and to unsettle us. It is one of those questions that we never quite answer for its insistence is constantly put before us. “Who is my neighbour?” The parable of the Good Samaritan which Jesus teaches us, in effect, suggest a very short answer to the question “Who is my neighbour? They are the one I cross the street to avoid.” In many ways we need say no more. The answer is, in effect, as simple as the question. Who would I cross the street to avoid? That is the one to whom before whom I am called to be present. And that person, whoever they might be, reflect back to me my genuine commitment, or otherwise, to the way of Jesus. And when I think of who those people might be for me, it is very unsettling. My attitude to them demonstrates the extent, or otherwise, that the message of Jesus has seeped deep within me. I find this deeply challenging. And I am sure, that like me, each of us finds this an attitude that will always cost us. I don’t think we ever get to the point that it is easy or natural. No, it requires a constant decision on our part – and, as I say, always a decision that will cost us.
One of the most remarkable things about the parable of the Good Samaritan, however, is not just the one helped in the story – but the one who does the helping, the Samaritan. When we focus on this figure we realise even more strongly the cost of what Jesus is envisaging of us when we let the question of who is my neighbour truly confront us.
In first century Palestine, Samaritans were the outside. They were not welcome in Judea, and if discovered there they would very quickly be identified and hounded out of the place. This man is in a place in which his own safety is, in effect, at great risk. He really shouldn’t be there at all. He would have constantly had his eye on his own safety, on getting through the place without being harmed himself, and on getting through as quickly as possible. And yet, this is the one who stops. He stops in a deserted place. His vulnerability is thus only increased. He becomes even more vulnerable by putting the man on his donkey – let alone taking him in to an inn – because all of this would have slowed him down considerably further. [1] In the midst of his fear, he risked loving. It is this which makes his action so extraordinary.
We too are afraid of getting involved with certain people. They are too demanding; they are too unpredictable; they wear us out. We have been hurt by them in the past. We don’t quite know how we are to react to them or what we might say to them. And so, it is so much easier to cross the street to avoid them. Yet, it is when we recognise this instinct to cross the street, that the call of Jesus kicks in. Do we stay with our fear? Or knowing our fear, and not pretending it to be otherwise, do we make a decision that takes us beyond our fear. Do we stay on this side of the street and risk an encounter? This is where our authentic Christian identity becomes apparent or not.
It is such a hard challenge, and it never goes away. This is what makes our Christian discipleship never an easy option. We can talk about love – and we can feel lovely and warm about the possibility; but genuine Christian love is actually quite painful. It costs. And therefore, it can seem to us, best left as an idea rather than an action.
Here we might turn to the wisdom of the spiritual writer, Thomas Merton. Merton suggest that in order to love in such a way, we have to come to terms with two things. Firstly, we have to be prepared to dismantle any categorisation of who is worthy of my love and who isn’t, and secondly we have to beware of our Christian love falling prey to the problem that the cartoon figure, Snoopy once enunciated when he declared, “I love humanity; its people I can’t stand!” (I am not sure that Merton knew of Snoopy but he certainly sought to address Snoopy’s sentiment.)
Firstly, as Merton writes, we have to come to terms with this issue of who or not is worthy of our love. It means that we must resist,
. . . the refusal to love those whom we consider, for some reason or other, unworthy of love. And, on top of that, to consider others unworthy of love for even very trivial reasons. Not that we hate them of course: but we just refuse to accept them in our hearts, to treat them without suspicion, and deal with them without inner reservations. In a word, we reject those who do not please us. We are of course, “charitable towards them.’ An interesting use of the word “charity” to cover and to justify a certain coldness, suspicion, and even disdain.
. . . This means that we have to get along without constantly applying the yardstick of ‘worthiness” (who is worthy to be loved, and who is not) . . . God is asking of me, the unworthy, to forget my unworthiness and that of all [others] and dare to advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us all in God’s likeness. And to laugh, after all, at the preposterous idea of “worthiness.”[2]
And secondly, as Merton writes, it means that we must love always with particularity. It is easy to love humanity; it is not so easy to love those we have to actually encounter. As he wrote elsewhere:
Instead of cultivating [some kind] of diffuse aura of benevolence, you should enter with trepidation into the deep and genuine concern for those few persons God has committed to your care – your family, your students, your employees, your parishioners. This concern is an involvement, a distraction, and it is vitally urgent. You are not allowed to evade it even though it may often disturb your “peace of mind.” It is good and right that your peace should be thus disturbed, that you should suffer and bear the small burden of these cares that cannot usually be told to anyone. There is no special glory in this, it is only duty. But it in the long run it brings with it the best of all gifts: it gives life. Unlike the great benevolent and public movements, full of noisy and shared concern, it is not foggy, diffuse, devouring and absurd. Only a personal concern of this kind leads to love.[3]
May this love – personal and particular, and, yes, as difficult as it will always be – be the very thing that prevents crossing the other side of the street to avoid the one we would want to pass by.
[1] See Elmer Ibarra, Gospel Reflections for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
[2] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (London: Burns and Oates, 1965), 156-157.
[3] Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 83-84.
