Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Paul tells the Colossians. It is only through him that we can know God. Only through him can we know God's vision for the human race, God's plan for mankind. Only through him can we know how to relate to our fellow human beings. That plan and vision is revealed through the life lived out among by Jesus two thousand years ago. At Mass each Sunday, the gospel presents us with the manner in which Jesus approached a particular human dilemma. And the context in which that dilemma is explored is necessarily the Jewish culture. If we are to explore his message satisfactorily, we must have at least a vague idea of the history and culture in which he operated.
The background to today's gospel dilemma is important. In theory, the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria had equal rights as citizens of Israel. But in practice, the Samaritans were despised. Jesus himself was of course a member of the tribe of Juda. The hostility that existed between the two tribes was deeply rooted in their history. When the Jewish people were carried into exile in 587 BC and the temple at Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians, the Samaritan peasants took over their lands and intermarried with settlers that the Babylonians had planted there. To make matters worse, many of them forsook the Jewish religion for the pagan religions of their partners.
So when the Jewish people returned from exile after fifty years, they found a racially and religiously transformed people occupying their former lands. Even those foreigners who had been resettled there now called themselves Samaritans. When the Jewish people set about rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem, they refused to allow the Samaritans to have anything to do with the project. In response, the Samaritans established a rival priesthood and a rival temple. The breach was soon complete. Each group's loyalty to its own tradition served to nourish its hostility towards the other group. So, by the time Jesus came on earth, the Jews and the Samaritans had enjoyed 500 years of unhealthy hostility. In fact there are very striking parallels between the loyalist/nationalist divide in the North and the Jewish/Samaritan divide in ancient Israel. I always found it rather ironic that this gospel is read in the middle of the loyalist marching season around the 12 of July celebrations.
The particular will show us that we should not be too hard on the Priest and the Levite. For example, the priest and the Levite had particular functions to fulfill in Jewish worship. On of the laws was that if they touched a dead body they were forbidden to act in their religious role.
When Jesus came on earth he found that the bitterness which began 500 years previously had lost none of its energy. The Samaritans were still ostracised. A Jew was forbidden by law to walk on the same side of the road as a Samaritan. Throughout the gospels Jesus misses no opportunity to undermine this hatred. You will remember the incident of the woman at the well when Jesus asks her for a drink of water. She is shocked. She says to him, "And you, a Jew, ask me a Samaritan for a drink?" This was unheard of in Jewish society in his day. Today's gospel recounts another attempt by him to expose and condemn this hatred. The lawyer's question in "Who is my neighbour?", provides him another opportunity to confront the ancient hostilities. For the traditional Jew, to love one's neighbour was understood as loving someone who belonged to the Jewish community.
In today's gospel, Jesus challenges the lawyer to question that received tradition. If your religious tradition invites you to despise your fellow human beings, then it is not in accordance with the mind of God. If loving your neighbour means being disloyal to your tradition, then disloyalty itself becomes a virtue. The ultimate loyalty is love.
During the 'marching season', we witness the weight of inherited hatred and hostility between two traditions in our own country. Jesus tells us that, as his disciples, we must be disloyal to those who would play upon our inherited prejudices. If religion needs hatred to nurture it, it certainly is at odds with the religion Jesus founded. The gospel of Christ challenges hatred and promotes love. And that challenge is always to extend the boundaries of love to include our traditional enemies. If the gospel does not liberate, then Christ died in vain. He died so that all, be they Jew or gentile, could have life in his name.
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