Peace be with you. Friends, the gospel for this
fifteenth Sunday of the year is one of Jesus’
best-known parables: the story of the
Good Samaritan. Something that Karl Barth
taught in the twentieth century —he learned it from
the Church Fathers— is that every
parable of Jesus, every teaching of Jesus
really is about him. That's to say,
they might have a moral import
that we can draw ethical lessons from them —so we should behave the
way the Good Samaritan does— but at the deeper level, all these stories are
finally about him, because he's
the great model of the moral life
and the ethical life. Well, this is a
really good example of that principle I think. Another place to find
this idea is in Chartres Cathedral, my favorite church
in the world. One of the splendid windows
on the side of Chartres interweaves two stories,
the story of the fall and the story of
the Good Samaritan. Again, this is from
the Church Fathers, that these two stories
illustrate each other. So let me show you
with that in mind that this story is
fundamentally about Christ in relationship
to fallen humanity. Let's walk through
it step by step. So listen to the opening
line of the parable. How often, by the way,
in great storytellers and novelists and poets, the opening line is
of great significance. So listen: "There was a man going down
from Jerusalem to Jericho." Well, anyone who's been to
the Holy Land knows this, that there's literally a
great descent from Jerusalem —Mount Zion,
it's high hill country— and then you literally go down
this long road to Jericho, and of course Jericho
is one of the lowest cities in the world because it's the level
of the Dead Sea, which is one of the
lowest places on earth. Jerusalem is always
associated with heaven. Think of the heavenly
Jerusalem with salvation; it's the place
where God dwells. So Jerusalem stands for
the heights, the heavens. Jericho, which is
downhill from Jerusalem, stands for the city of sin. Think of when the Israelites
come into the Promised Land, they cross over the Jordan
and the first place they have to conquer
is Jericho in that great
liturgical display. They process and they blow
the trumpets and they sing and down come
the walls of Jericho. Well that means they're
conquering the city of sin. Think of blind Bartimaeus
in the Gospel of Mark. He's sitting by the
walls of Jericho. The idea there is
that our blindness, spiritually speaking, is associated with
this city of sin. So again, there was
a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. That's all of us; that's fallen humanity
that's fallen from its dignity as
children of God and has fallen into
this place of sin. So now we have
the interpretive key for this whole story. Listen as he goes on. "He fell in with robbers." Now, this was literally
true in Jesus’ time, and travel was always
dicey in those days. There were no good roads
and things were dangerous, but there also were kidnappers
and robbers along the way, they say, especially the road
from Jerusalem to Jericho, robbers and
thieves and so on. But let's keep reading
it spiritually. What does sin do to us? It robs us of our dignity,
it robs us of our powers, our spiritual powers,
our intellectual powers, the powers of will. Sin compromises us. The Council of Trent is
really good on this point, that sin produces a kind
of falling apart within us; an injustice obtains
inside of us. That means we're
out of balance, we're off kilter. As sinners,
we don't see things right. We don't think about
things the right way. Our wills are perverted,
our passions are now at odds with each other
and together at odds with our will and our mind. Does that sound
familiar now, fellow sinners,
listening to me? Sin has robbed us
of all of this. It's compromised all of us. It's a very important point,
I think. for biblical people
to make over and against our culture today, which tends so to
valorize the individual. "All is great with me,
whatever I say is right. Just let my voice
be heard.” Now, biblical people know that
we are severely compromised. We've been robbed of these
powers on our journey from Jerusalem down
to Jericho. Listen now as they go on. "They,” the robbers, “stripped him, beat him,
and then went off leaving him half dead." I’ll speak now out of
the Catholic tradition —does sin, original
sin and its effects, utterly destroy our
spiritual capacities? No, we don't say that. We don't have an anthropology
of total depravity, to use the
technical language. You'll find that in
Luther and Calvin, for example. Catholics don't hold that. We hold that we remain in
the image of likeness of God but we are compromised. We're affected,
we're debilitated. So this language to me
seems exactly right. They stripped him —that's an act
of humiliation, isn't it? If you're stripped naked
in a public place that's humiliating. Well, sin does humiliate us. Of course it does. They beat him —so we're, again,
compromised. But then, they went off
leaving him half dead. That's about right. We're not spiritually
completely dead, but we're half dead,
or turned around, we're only kind
of half alive, we sinners. All right, listen now
as the story goes on. "A priest happened to be
going down the same road. He saw him
but continued on. Likewise, there was a Levite
who came the same way. He saw him and went on." Now, official religion,
a priest and a Levite. The representatives
of law and liturgy and the great
Jewish tradition. Is Luke saying here
that these are just hopelessly
compromised, that these are
bad in themselves? No, no, no,
I don't think so. I mean, no one coming out
of the Jewish tradition would ever say that these
things are bad in themselves, that the temple
and law and Torah and liturgy and
all that are bad, no. But notice this little detail
that's often overlooked. “A priest happened to be
going down the same road,” from Jerusalem to Jericho. “A Levite who came
the same way . . .” You see what these
stand for, therefore, are compromised
versions of religion. Not religion in itself,
not religion at its best, but call it compromised
versions of religion, these people going down the
same road as the Samaritan. Well, that's why
they're compromising, but that's why they
can't help him. And you see it reflected
in their bad attitude; even though they see
this poor man beaten and stripped and
humiliated by the side of the road,
they don't help him because they represent
a fallen religiosity. Still on display today? Oh, you bet,
look all around. Good law and liturgy and
custom and tradition, but compromised by sin. So it can't really help us,
it can't help us in our sin. Okay, now the turning point. "But a Samaritan who
was journeying along came upon him and was moved
to pity at the sight.” Now, we know this,
it was very well-known to people in Jesus’ time
who heard this story, a Samaritan,
they were half-breeds, they were outsiders,
they were Jews who had intermarried with the
Assyrian invaders long before. They were seen as
compromised figures, not true in their religion,
morally corrupt. Pious Jews went around
Samaria on their way from south to north
or north to south. Samaritans were
just a bad lot. So think of —look, all of us sinners have
groups that we don't like. Well, think of that's the
group we're talking about. And the Samaritan who was
journeying along came on him, but he was moved
to pity at the sight. Well now, who's
the Samaritan? Remember our
interpretive key here; we're talking about
the fall of humanity, and now we're
talking about Jesus. Corrupt religion can't
solve the problem, but this outsider —and see, mind you,
Jesus, who was in his own time
from Nazareth, “can anything good
come out of Nazareth?”, Jesus, this questionable
figure in the minds of many. But he's the one
who shows pity, the mercy. How good Pope
Francis is of course, emphasizing “misericordia,” the mercy of God,
the mercy of Christ. This is the pity that
the Son of God shows to fallen humanity
as we are languishing by the side of the road
in our sin. Listen now. "He approached him and
dressed his wounds, pouring in oil and wine
as a means to heal." Ah, one of the most basic
descriptions of Jesus, everybody, is “soter,”
which means healer. That's translated into
Latin as “salvator,” savior. I've often told you,
I think, that our word “salve,”
S-A-L-V-E, comes from that “salvator.” It means “healing balm.” Jesus is a healer,
and notice what he does. He pours in oil and
wine as a means to heal. Is that accidental? I don't think so. It stands here
for the sacramental life of the Church. Oil which is used at Baptism, oil which is used
at Confirmation, oil which is used
at Holy Orders, oil which is used at the
Anointing of the Sick. And wine, of course,
stands for the Eucharist. How does Christ heal us? All of us, we're fallen. We're members of the
fallen human race. We're languishing by
the side of the road. Corrupt religion
can't save us, but Christ can save us
by bringing us precisely to authentic religion,
which is found in the sacramental life
of the Church. You know the beautiful
thing, everybody —the Church is full
of compromised people, yeah, like me
and like you. I mean, let's face it. Nevertheless,
across the centuries, in its preaching,
in its authority, in its sacramental life,
the Church remains integral. The Church remains the
means of salvation. And we see it there: Jesus, through the sacraments,
pouring healing balm into our wounds. Then listen, “he hoisted him on
his own beast and brought him to an inn,
where he cared for him.” What's this now but
a beautiful symbol of the Church, the inn where this
sick and beaten-up and compromised man
is cared for. How beautifully Pope Francis
compared the Church to a field hospital, remember that
some years ago? People are staggering
off a battlefield. Well, that's true of
our culture today, isn't it? But they stagger toward this
field hospital of the Church, where they are cared for
above all sacramentally. He goes on, "The next day he took out
two silver pieces and gave them
to the innkeeper." We speak of Christ,
the Redeemer. Do you know what
“redeemer” means? It means the one who's
bought somebody back. “Redimere,”
to buy back from. You'd redeem someone
from a kidnapper, you'd buy him back. What's the redemption? Christ paid the price
that we owed as sinners but that we weren't
able to pay. There we were helpless,
so he pours in the healing balm
of the sacraments and he buys us back. He pays the price on the
cross to bring us salvation. Beautiful; the fall
of man is interwoven with the journey of Christ
all the way down to our God-forsakenness. Now, one last stop. Jesus concludes,
“Which of these three” —so the priest, the Levite,
the Samaritan— "Which of these three was
neighbor to the man who fell in with the robber?" The answer comes, "The one who treated
him with compassion.” Jesus said to him,
“Go and do the same." Okay. Now we see the ethical
implication of this great description
of Christ. Once we know who Christ is,
our job is clear. We are to be other
Christs to the world. Once we understand this
is about how Jesus heals a fallen humanity,
that's now our job. We've got our
marching orders. Our job is to look around
to see who are those who are lying helpless
and wounded by the side of the road. And we are
instruments of grace to bring them
to the sacraments, to bring them to the Church, and bring them to the
healing power of Christ. So there it is. We know who Jesus is, we know what
we're meant to be and what
we're meant to do. And God bless you.
