2025/07/13 SCRIPTURE REFLECTION
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
- Max Wink, Asst Mgr of Events & Ministry Engagements
In this week’s Gospel, we hear Jesus sharing the parable of the Good Samaritan. For many Christians, the parable is one of the most well-known stories in any of the Gospels, and the story is famous even in the broader non-Christian society, with “good Samaritan” being a commonplace way of referring to someone who goes out of their way to help others. As familiar as we may be with this story and its message, it never gets old because this story is at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It is the story Jesus uses to bring to life the Great Commandment. God calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and the Good Samaritan is the model Jesus offers for being a true neighbor. The Great Commandment, in addition to being a guide for us as we seek to live a Christian life, is also a reminder of how close God is to us in our journey of Christian discipleship.
In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses teaches the Israelites that God’s law is not meant to be obscure or arbitrary. Instead, God gave the law to his people so that they could return to God with all their heart and soul. As always, God seeks relationship with humanity. He builds this relationship by asking of us things that already make sense to us. Moses reminds the Israelites that the law God has given them is not “mysterious and remote” (Dt. 30:11). Rather than being something far off, in the sky or across the sea, God’s desire for our lives is already known to our hearts. Moses says, “It is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out” (Dt. 30:14). Perhaps no law is more naturally on our mouths and heart than the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
While there are many particulars to how we’re called to live as Christians, they’re all natural to us in a certain way because they’re all contained in the Great Commandment. In Rabbinic Judaism, there is a famous story of a man who came to two rabbis asking them to teach him the Torah while he stood on one foot, testing them to see if they could teach him the whole Torah before he fell over. The first rabbi was offended by the request and refused to do it. The second rabbi said to the man, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.” As Christians, we too are called to use love of neighbor as a north star for how we go about our lives. The commandment is applicable in every situation; the challenge is learning how to live it.
It is rare that we find ourselves in exactly the situation that the Good Samaritan found himself in in the story Jesus tells us today, but we do encounter neighbors constantly. We come face-to-face with our neighbor every time we see a co-worker, our roommates, a family outside the grocery store, or people in the pews next to us at church. Not everyone needs what the man on the road needed in today’s Gospel, but there is a way in which God is calling us to be a neighbor to everyone we encounter.
To act as the Good Samaritan did with all our neighbors requires us to give our time and attention to those around us. In a homily I heard recently, the priest observed that “The number one obstacle to us living a Christian life in our society is how busy we are.” Our lives often require us to rush from one thing to the next, making it harder to see our neighbors and their needs. The Good Samaritan reminds us of the need to be attentive to the desire God has already placed on our heart, the desire we all share to live in relationship with others as friend, family, and neighbor.
As busy as we may be, Jesus trusts that we already know the Great Commandment and our need to live it out. In this Gospel, it’s the scribe, not Jesus, who recites the Great Commandment. With the scribe as with us, Jesus draws out of us the goodness that God has already placed in our hearts. Jesus’ invitation in the Gospel today is to first become aware of this goodness, and then to make God’s goodness known. We do this every time we remind ourselves of the Good Samaritan’s actions, and then make the choice to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).