The Significance Of Christ On The World

Do we really live in a post-Christian world? Have the people around us changed? Have we changed? We and the people around us can be described as crushed, beaten, ignored, rejected. We are also thoughtless, oblivious, cruel, repulsed by suffering. Sometimes we are kind, caring, loving, giving of ourselves and of our treasure. We are all of these things as we walk through life.

Thank God if we don't linger in the bad. Perhaps most of us linger in the indifferent. And yet, gloriously and often, we rise to the the good - the very good. Has being a Christian made us different?

God knows, and in this parable of the Good Samaritan He opens up to us all of these aspects of being human. We are able to see ourselves in the Divine light, both as we are and as we should be.

Come and see.

By Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

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This great reading of the Samaritan, the Good Samaritan, is very important. And in the gospel readings of Our Lord Jesus Christ we see the significance of Christ on the World. Christianity has spread all over the world. The Holy Catholic Church is everywhere, basically.

But in this reading we see something else. It is a very popular reading that is well known. We are to love our neighbor. And the crucial question that is asked is: Who is our neighbor?

And the question had had a very significant impact on the world, as has Jesus's answer. If you look at the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights you will see the reflection to the answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?"

If you look at the U. N. documents on the rights of human beings you will see a reflection of the answer to the question. They are virtually in every constitution of governments throughout the world.

We sit here in Dallas, Texas and we look at how other countries act in the perspective of answering that question. And that question is very, very important to the way that we live our lives and the way we are called to live our lives.

And there are four neighbors that Jesus talks about in this gospel reading. The first one is the scholar of the law. Now this man, if you listen to him, is full of himself. He believes he knows the answer. So he goes up to Jesus, who he has obviously heard is the Messiah, the great authority teaching, and he comes up to him and says, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus answers. And then he says… how is it… "because he wished to justify himself" he said, "And who is my neighbor?"

There is a man who is full of himself. He can look on the rest of the world, the rest of us and say, "If you were as smart as I am, you could ask the question, too, but I'm so smart, I understand the answer."

The second one we see is the priest. Now, the priest does sacrifices. In the Jewish religion, the priest was the one who killed the animals in the temple. We've heard about the offerings. The priest is the one doing the offering. He does many of the liturgies for the Jewish religion and he is subject to all sorts of strictures.

So he looks at, he's walking down the road feeling full of himself, he's going to Jericho, he's got some job he's going to look at, and he sees this man who is mostly naked who has been beaten to a pulp. That man, from the perspective of a priest, is unclean. You don't go around exposing your body, and blood is unclean. And if he did anything, he would be unclean and he wouldn't be able to perform the services for a period of time.

So, ignoring the commandments of God, he looked at the man and said, "Nah", and walked on his way.

The Levite is not a priest, but he serves in the Temple and he also is subject to the constrictions of being unclean. But, he has another characteristic. He is probably quite rich. He looked at the man. In addition to going, "He's unclean" he goes, "He's not like me. He's different. I am like the scholar of the law. I'm smart. I'm rich. I get to work in the Temple. He's just not like me. The rules don't apply to somebody like him. I'm just going to go on my way."

The Samaritan comes along. Now you have to understand that the Jews and the Samaritans don't like each other. It goes back a long way. Back to the Babylonian captivity. You've heard this in Isaiah. The Jews were taken off, then they came back. Well, the Samaritans weren't taken off. And when they got back, the Jews found that the Samaritans thought that they had the correct religion. And the Samaritans found that the Jews were all wrong.

They didn't like each other. It was dangerous for a Jew to walk through Samaria, and it was dangerous for a Samaritan to walk through Jewish lands.

So you have a man who is an alien. He sees the man lying on the road and he takes care of him. He takes care of him out of his own wealth. He nurses him. He brings him back.

Obviously at this point he is unclean. He's been in contact with blood. He is the good Samaritan because he treated the man with mercy.

But there is a fourth neighbor who is not described by Jesus other than to say that he was robbed and beaten. We know nothing about him other than his pitiful condition. He could be Jewish. He could be Samaritan. He could be Ethiopian. He could be Arab. We don't know. We know he is in a pitiful condition. We know he has been badly beaten. We know that from the perspective of a first century Jew, he is other. He is the alien. He is the outcast. He is our neighbor.

And it is this crucial aspect of being a neighbor. Oh! I can look out here, get to do it many times. All these wonderful people who come to Mary Immaculate Church. Just absolutely wonderful. I tell people. It is so wonderful to come to church because there is not a single person who walks through the door that I wouldn't like knowing. And I'm a lawyer, so I can't say that about work. You're wonderful.

But that is a very narrow definition of neighbor. Everyone is our neighbor. That's why the American Bill of Rights relates to that issue. Why do you care about the rights of all these people who have done these terrible things? Why do you care about the disenfranchised... the people who are handicapped? Why do I care about them?

Because they are our neighbors. And the knowledge of this one fact, that everybody is our neighbor, is reflected, like I said, in the American Constitution, the U.N. charter, you go to the Russian constitution you'll find it there. You will find it all over the world because of the universal wisdom of loving thy neighbor.

That everybody that you meet in the course of your life is your neighbor. Especially that repulsive man that you meet out on the street who doesn't talk right, probably is either on drugs or drunk, who rambles on, who smells, and is in desperate need of his help. And it is so easy, as a priest or a Levite, or a scholar just to go, "Eh, nah. He’s unclean." But Jesus said we are to love our neighbor. And everyone is our neighbor.
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