Sunday 15C – July 11, 2010
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37
Receiving Love
Scripture scholars tell us that Luke took the original parable of Jesus and put it into a Gospel context that changed its emphasis. So, as we are used to hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke’s context invites us to identify with the Samaritan, and we know well that we ought to try to be like him. But the original parable of Jesus, scholars tell us, invites us to identify with the fellow who lies along the roadside. Have you ever listened to this parable trying to identify with the fellow lying along the roadside?
This morning I would like to retell the parable in more contemporary terms as a way of inviting you to do just that. As I retell it, I encourage you in your imagination – and feel free to close your eyes if you wish – to allow yourself to experience what is happening in the parable, even emotionally if you can. Let the original parable and its original point teach you anew.
You are walking down Bonforte Avenue on a summer evening when two thugs jump out of a passing car and mug you. They strip you, beat you and go off leaving you on the sidewalk half dead. Msgr. Adrians happens to walk down the sidewalk; he sees you, but crosses to the other side of Bonforte and walks on. Likewise, Laura Escalera comes down the sidewalk and she sees you, but she crosses Bonforte and walks on, too. Then a limp-wristed young man with a bright red and blonde Mohawk, terribly thin and deathly pale, wearing tight black clothing, metal studs and earrings, journeys down the sidewalk. He comes upon you and is moved with pity at the sight. He approaches you and binds up your wounds as best he can. He then calls the paramedics and travels in the ambulance with you to Parkview Hospital, all the while holding your hand. He waits with you at the emergency room and he stays at your bedside throughout the night. Two days later, when you are released, you find that your hospital bill is already paid. Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to you?
For Jesus, being neighbor means loving others as ourselves in the totality of what it means to love: accepting others as they are, being hospitable to others, serving others, forgiving others, never, ever shaming others. From the perspective of the Samaritan, today's parable teaches us how to give love. From the perspective of the person lying along the roadside, the parable teaches us how to receive love. For we show compassion for others not only by giving love.
We also show compassion for others by receiving the love they offer us.
It seems to me that most people are pretty fussy about the "who" and the "how" of receiving love. I know I am. I can be put off easily by another's love if that love is offered other than the way I want it offered at the moment. I know, too, that I sometimes reject love because I want it from someone other than the person who is offering it.
In either case, as today's Gospel calls us to large-heartedness in receiving love, it calls us to renounce our fussiness about receiving love and to begin our renunciation by asking ourselves some tough questions. Do you ever feel needy and hurt, and pout around the house or your friends waiting for one particular person to ask about it, while refusing to unburden yourself to others who ask? Do you ever say "no" to spending time with someone and instead wait around for a call from another? Are you ever deliberately vague in making plans with someone so you can get out of it if a better offer comes along? Do you ever long for generosity and enthusiasm from a particular person in your life while you reject generosity and enthusiasm from someone else? Have you lost friendships because you just didn't care enough to reciprocate? Are any of these ways of behaving a pattern in your life?
These are painful questions to face. Honestly answering them, however, is crucial to our salvation because whenever we are fussy about whose love we accept, we are being arrogant, mean spirited, often shaming … and we sin.
As today's second reading from Colossians explains, Christ Jesus, image of the invisible God and God’s own Word, is the origin of everything and the goal of everything; everything continues in being through him and all fullness resides in him. What that means is that Christ Jesus, across his life and ministry, in the life of the Church we share around this table, and in our lives each and every day – Christ Jesus shows forth to us God’s free, abundant, lavish, unconditional and tender love for you and me as we are. The implication of God, through, with and in Christ Jesus, being love itself for us is this: God, through Jesus, is always and everywhere listening to us, reaching out to us, caring for us and fulfilling our need for love fully and completely … if only we accept that love whenever, wherever, however and from whomever God offers it. For even if love comes through a limp-wristed young man, deathly ill and wearing a Mohawk and metal studs, the love being offered us is the love of God himself.
All of us, each and every one of us, spend some time during our lives lying along the roadside half dead. Some of us spend much of our lives there. Our need for love is very great! So, no matter how love is offered, or when, or where – and no matter who offers it – who are we to dare to put off or reject a love that is a gift offered us from God himself! By Fr. Michael Papesh