Luke 10: 25 – 37 (Sunday, July 15, 2007)

In the opening prayer of our liturgy today, we prayed, “Lord, may your love make us the people you have called us to be.” Christ loves us and has shown his love by first dying on the Cross for us. It is this same love that he invites us to share with us. He has called us to be people of love. Christianity is a religion that is founded on love and we cannot speak of a Christianity without love. The act of Jesus Christ on the Cross reflects the deepest sense of love and it is this act that liberates us from our life of sinfulness and calls us into this community of love, called the Christian Church. We cannot say we are Christian if we have no love in our hearts for other people. It is this love that is the key to the kingdom of God. Jesus told the teacher of the law in the gospel of today that love of God and neighbor is required in order to enter into the kingdom of God.

The story of the man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho is an amazing story that truly teaches us true love. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a dangerous road, yet this man stupidly decided to go on the journey alone. He is attacked by arm robbers. The priest saw him and passed by; the Levite saw him and also passed by; it was only the Samaritan that stopped and helped him. These three characters: the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan teaches us three things about what Christian love means.

The priest did not want to be defiled because as a priest he was not supposed to touch dead bodies. By doing so, he is liturgically barred from offering sacrifices in the temple for seven days. The priest was more interested in his liturgical performances than in the love of neighbor. True Christian love is actively helping people and changing the world. It is not just enough to come to church on Sunday and attend Mass; it is not just enough to say many rosaries; it is not just enough to pray for the poor in our society – we’ve got to go out and help them in their situations. When we come to Mass on Sunday, at the end the priest or deacon says, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” With these words, we are sent on a mission. A mission to go and serve our brothers and sisters in the world. The Eucharist empowers us to go out and love; to go out and be of service to our neighbors. True Christianity is not just being devotional or liturgical alone (though these are very important aspects of our religion) but it is also practically working to help those who are in need.

The Levite passes by because he is afraid that by stopping, he could be lynched by a band of other robbers. True Christian love means being ready to take risks for the sake of the good of others. Jesus Christ tells us in the gospel, no greater love than a human person has for a friend than to lay down his or her life. We live in a society that is very secular and materialistic. We just keep acquiring, we put our comfort primary over the suffering of so many people in different parts of the world. Some people have two, three, four and even five retirement accounts, yet, they are not ready to take a little risk with their money in order to help those poor people here in our community or in other parts of the world. In the early church, during the period of the great epidemics, many people died, but Christians lived. The simple reason many Christians survived these epidemics is the fact that they risked their lives in other to care for their sick brothers and sisters in the community. While many of the pagans isolated their sick ones, Christians brought food and water to their sick members and took good care of them. Their love for neighbor was very important to them and they were able to risk their own lives in other to save other members of the community.

The Samaritan stopped by and helped the man. This character teaches us that true love means loving everyone, including your enemies. Jesus tells us in the gospel of Matthew 5: 44 that we should love our enemies. If we love only those who love us, how different are we from the pagans, for they too love those who love them. The Samaritans and the Jews are not friends. The Samaritan man could have passed by asking himself, “Why should I help this Jew, our enemy?” No, but he stopped and helped. We as Christians are invited to love everyone. Those that seem to be our enemies today are the Iraqi’s. We must love them and pray for them. That is what Jesus wants us to do as Christians.

There is a temptation we sometimes fall into and use it to justify our reluctance to help. We say, “I made it on my own; they too can make it on their own. If they cannot make it, it is their own fault; it is because they are lazy or they refused to work hard.” People do make stupid decisions that put them in situations that they should not be in. In the story, the man going on the journey from Jerusalem to Jericho definitely made a stupid mistake by going on this dangerous road alone. Despite his mistake, Jesus does not want him abandon there. We never make it on our own, we always make it with the help of God and it is that same God that asks us to reach out to everyone. Our five fingers are not equal, though they belong to one hand. We will always have the rich and the poor, the have’s and the have not’s. Those who have, Jesus invite you to generously share with those who do not.

We are called to love and share with all because we are all created in the image and likeness of God. Whatever happens to anyone, anywhere in the world, should affect us, should be our business. In the movie, Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesibagina asks the American journalist to show the images of the genocide in Rwanda, hoping that when Americans see them, they would immediately respond and change the situation. The journalist told him, Americans will watch them and says, what an awful thing and then they will continue eating their dinners. As Christian people, we should respond when there is evil anywhere in the world – we don’t have to respond only when it affect America. We should be concerned when an Iraqi is blown up by a suicide bomber as much as when an American is blown up. This is because both the Iraqi and the American are created in the image and likeness of the God who created us all.

It is by loving that we can truly be the people God has called us to be. We pray that the Eucharistic meal we share today would empower us to go out and be instruments of Christ’s love among his people.