- Vincent Kundukulam
To the question what man must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus’ answer was the parable of Good Samaritan (Lk 10, 25-37). And towards the end of the story, he added: ‘Go and do likewise’. It means that Church also, to be saved, must do what the good Samaritan did: serve the collapsed ones by networking with others. Now let us enter into the content of the parable.
The core message of the parable is that one has to treat the strangers as neighbors in order to inherit eternal life. The priest and the Levite in the story could not see the half-dead man on the street as their neighbor. They might have reasons for not considering the wounded man as their neighbor. The traditional point of view saying that they were afraid of defilement does not stand, according to the contemporary scholarship. Because, as per the studies, a priest travelling alone rather than in a group means that he was not heading towards the temple, but from the temple to his house after the service. Therefore, he did not have any reason to be upset about becoming impure. In fact, he behaved according to the general attitude of Jews towards the other nations.
Exactly, it is this official perception of the Israelites towards the gentiles which is questioned by Jesus. At his time, the concept of love among the Jews was not as bad as it is often said. The Jews loved the neighbors (people of the same race) without bearing any grudge against them. Not doing any revenge against the neighbors was of a high standard of love at a time when revenge for wrong doing was considered just. The Jews were also asked to love the aliens like themselves (Lev. 19, 34). But there was a loophole in the Jewish law – they were not bound to love the enemies. In concrete life, the aliens were at times made enemies by the Jews (Mic 7, 6) and then they were persecuted. It is in this context Jesus says to the lawyer in the parable that those who are not ready to love even the enemies will not achieve salvation.
The sarcastic side of the parable is that Jesus placed as role model a Samaritan, whom the Jews extremely hated. They detested them more than the gentile nations. And it was such a hatred, heretical and schismatic Samaritan whom Jesus crowned as the hero in the story. What lesson the Church has to learn from Jesus’ method of positing the despised schismatic as a model to the elected people? Was he not prompting us to cooperate with the people whom we consider as enemies, provided their initiative is righteous? The other believers and agnostics are His children and our brothers and sisters. “The compassion of man is for his neighbour, but the compassion of the Lord is for all living beings” (Sir 18, 13) says the book of Ecclesiasticus.
What does it mean by saying ‘to associate with “others” in mission? It includes interacting with them in different ways: affection, service, sharing, mutual help, friendship, etc. Leaving aside all sorts of inhibitions he had against others, the good Samaritan used his own clothes for bandages. He anointed the cuts with oil and wine. He sought the help of an innkeeper. In this regard, Jesus, the Good Samaritan, is Himself our great model. He refused to follow the binary ways of looking at others as the pure and impure, privileged and disadvantaged, believer and pagan, citizen and foreigner, etc. He looked every human being as His heavenly father saw them. He placed himself at the side of the excluded and the foreigner. He subverted the categories which the religious leaders of his time used about the “other”.
Christians must not think of other believers as a separate people, although we have a unique mission to realize on earth. This is because there is an invisible and innate communion among the humans due to their common origin. All humans, irrespective of caste and creed, are created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1, 27; Jn 1, 1-4). In the third millennium, the act of mission means working in partnership with other believers and non-believers to ensure love, truth and justice, another way of building up God’s reign on earth. In order to acquire eternal salvation, no easy way for the Church than that of the Samaritan: ‘help others’, including our enemies.
- Kundu1962@gmail.com
