Jesus replied,
“A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him.
Jesus asked the lawyer: Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Three American persons show up together at the Gate of Heaven. St. Peter meets the first one. They say: “I am Jill. I am a schoolteacher, and if you’re checking things—I did a lot of good in the Catholic schools where I taught for 40 years in St. Louis–helping other folks’ children to grow up. ” Peter says: “All I have to do is look to see if your name is in this Book of Life here…but it’s good to hear how you practiced your Catholic faith. Ah, here it is: Jill. You’re in!”—and the Gates open for her. There is a rousing applause to meet her as she walks in—but she waits for the other two in line. The second in line says to Peter: “I am Max. I was a tow-truck operator in Miami, and I always did a good professional job, but always fair and reasonable, too, and I helped people the best I could—I gave breaks to folks, free tows, and I took off on Sundays, went to Mass with my —“ Peter broke in—“Yes, Max, you don’t have to explain that all to me, as HE already knows, and you are in the Book of Life, Max. Head in. The Gates open for him. Suddenly a choir of angels sings for him and applause comes from numerous saints. ‘Nice! He gets in and waits for the third man in line to get through. The third guy in line, Wiwafo, comes up, dripping wet in a cabbie outfit, to see Peter at the Gates. Peter says: “Wiwafo, that was some bad driving turn down there a few minutes ago, as your cab and you (driving alone) fell into the Hudson River. We saw it from here, just you and the cab hurtling in. What a splash! You became a Catholic with a splash too, as we see you had a full immersion baptism at St. Paul’s Catholic Shrine on the Easter Vigil just two years ago. It’s in the records here.” Wiwafo said: “I worked a lot, was tired a lot, and never was a good driver, I’ll admit it. It’s the only job I could get there in NYC. I don’t have any accolades like the first two, either.” St. Peter said: “No worries, your name is in the Book of Life, and the Gates are opening for you.” Suddenly a huge throng of angels and saints came to meet him just inside, and he gets cheered and hugged and walked inside, smiling gladly with two thumbs up to the first two ahead of him that also got in. The first two arrivals went over to St. Peter and said: “Not to complain at all, we’re happy for the cabbie, but it’s just a curiosity: How is it that he got such a big welcome?!” Peter chuckled, and explained: “For invoking lots of prayer! For whenever people rode in his cab, it was a pretty scary ride, as he was a poor driver, but it led almost all of his passengers in back to say some very serious prayers while riding with him! In fact, he alone invoked the most prayers in New York City last year than any other person! So he gets the fanfare!”
In storytelling and joke-telling, often it is in threes that the example is given. Like this one I just told. It is the case today in Luke’s gospel account with Christ telling a story of three characters—and there is a bit of a surprise punch line to it with the third one. It’s of three people going down the lane, two religious Jews and one Samaritan—and it’s the religious Samaritan who practices the best faith—the third guy. He helps and saves a beaten man in a ditch. ‘Who knew?
It’s quite the story surprise as Jesus tells it to the lawyer—for the scholar really despised Samaritans. How can there be any such thing as a “good Samaritan?” That’s the ‘punch’ of the third example here. It is just the classic style of presenting a story or even a modern joke. Jesus uses the style to teach his lesson to the man—and to us. To be a good neighbor, Jesus says: ‘Be like the third man. The Samaritan who gave all that neighborly help!’
Jesus tells this story to a lawyer Jew who is thinking that the Lord’s lessons of combining Moses’ commandments of loving God and loving neighbor did make great sense to him. But the scholar lawyer gets into conditions about being a neighbor— “like, to whom, Lord—is that neighbor?” Jesus knows this man has these shortcomings in this area. The lawyer has drawn conditions to this profound teaching. He’d say: “And, who is my neighbor? Who would I help? Or who do I not have to help? Don’t you know how I don’t like to get involved with others—the law tells me to be clean of them!” Yet He can tell the Rabbi Jesus reads the law much better and clearer than he, the “scholar.”
Jesus says to him: ‘Do like this example I gave you, and you will be free to receive eternal life. It’s your key.’
Did the scholar do so? Did he change? It says the scholar’s mission was to test Jesus or challenge Jesus there on His not keeping ritually clean. ‘You have to avoid getting polluted and tainted by people,’ thinks the scholar. Yet Jesus is saying, ‘No, you need to love people. Look at the example around me. Love more than just a comfortable circle around you, open up to other neighbors, like to a Samaritan.
Jesus asks him—“of the three in my story, which one do you think that the beaten man would call as the man loving his neighbor?’ The scholar answers and listen to how he says it: “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Note how the scholar did not say: “The Samaritan man who treated him with mercy.” He said: “The one who treated him with mercy.” This scholar was so beset with un-neighborly judgement to each and every Samaritan –that he could not say the hero in the action was a Samaritan man. It’s too hard for him to say it.
It’s a lesson Jesus is teaching him (and teaching us) on putting conditions on loving your neighbor. Like a phrase from the film the Big Lebowski goes: ‘I didn’t know the condition my condition were in. (A Poor condition!) It’s a lot of conditional instead of unconditional love going on. Conversion is needed here!
Jesus knows that the lawyer man has many conditions to his faith, all in the manner of this man justifying himself, and so he has still fallen woefully short of what Moses’ teaching was all about. Jesus is giving lessons on how to love God and to love neighbor as one’s self—two big Torah teachings of Moses. Jesus is showing how they must merge in practice.
If you read St. John’s epistles near the end of the New Testament, then you’ll see there just how important this dual understanding of Jesus’ message was to be taken.
I would like to just guess that this scholar did decide to take Jesus teaching to heart. It’s not told about in the gospel, but just imagine with me that the man decides to act in some large unconditional way to someone, and he feels the Light of God shower down upon him. It even convinces him that Jesus is the Lord and Messiah. He comes to faith.
He finds himself near Calvary when Jesus is crucified at Calvary. In a moment of irony, he notices that Jesus happens to be crucified in-between two robbers from the road to Jericho, who’d been arrested and convicted for crimes against innocent travelers. The parable had mentioned such violent robbers. Yet here is Jesus on the Cross in center giving his life to offer forgiveness to people, even to such dregs as these two robber ones. He hears Jesus forgive the one on the right—who had repented last minute. They call him Dismas. That forgiveness act will solidify the scholar’s faith in Christ Jesus and lead him to get to meet the apostle Philip, one of the Master’s closest pals. He tells Philip that he wants to go with him to preach the Gospel.
Jesus appears in His Resurrection visits to his believers. He is seen by all those who had put faith in Him. He goes one time to Bethany, on that Jericho/Jerusalem road, and Jesus delights in seeing Martha, Mary and Lazarus again. They see Him as risen! Then Jesus goes to Capernaum where He meets Peter’s mother-in-law again, who is strong of health and strong of faith in Him. She sees the Risen Lord. Then Jesus goes to Samaria to see the woman and people of Sychar who He brought to faith at Jacob’s well, and He meets two others there, who also see Him risen from the dead. It is the apostle Philip and his evangelist companion, David, the scholar turned believer, who now is living the gospel among the Samaritan people, whom he once despised but now calls his neighbors in The Lord.
1, 2, 3. The old formula again. With some imagination.
###
Extra:
Jokes with threes are still popular today. Here’s one with the moral lesson to not over-estimate your own greatness or better mind.
A small plane is flying from Dover Delaware over nearby to BWI and it has three passengers and a pilot. Near the Cessna plane door there are three yellow parachutes and also a yellow backpack put next to it. About halfway on the trip just over the Chesapeake Bay, the engine sputters and dies. The pilot runs out of the cockpit, screaming “We have to abort. I put the plane on auto-pilot to fall into the Chesapeake, since the landing gear won’t work, plus the fire will worsen, and we have a problem with the amount of parachutes on board, but I consider myself the smartest and most important person on board, so, (and as he opens the door, grabs a yellow pack, and says) “sorry, there are only two parachutes left, but three of you!” The pilot jumps out quickly.
This leaves the three passengers startled. One is a 12 year old boy, then next his rabbi uncle, and thirdly a woman college professor. The rabbi says: “I’ll immediately pray to see which of us is left without the parachute! Maybe I should be the one to stay. O Lord, what a situation!” The woman professor says: “The pilot claimed he was the smartest and most valued—yet it is I who serve as a teacher/doctor at Johns Hopkins, you should know. I help save many lives, so I think I should get a ‘shute, and the boy ought to come with me, just because he has so much life ahead, and needs to grow up and learn.” The boy says: “We don’t have to choose at all!” The rabbi and doctor blurt out: “Why so?!” The boy says: “Because the pilot, despite claiming to be so smart, did not notice it. ‘Nor have you!” “Noticed what?”, they said. The boy laughed and shouted: “That the so-called smart pilot who just jumped out the door has grabbed my yellow backpack that I put down near the parachutes. and that’s what he put on! The three yellow parachutes are still all here! We can all be saved!” And they successfully parachuted down.
So the selfish and worldly-wise and the hasty do not profit as so much as they think. Rather than taking what can save them, they grab onto something that’s useless to them in the end, which cannot save them. ###
Those three-fold stories and jokes with three people in them have lessons to teach. A rabbi, a minister and a priest walk into a bar…. a classic opening to a joke too often used and usually at the priest’s expense. A rabbi, a minister and a priest walk into a bar, and the bartender says: “What is this, a joke?!” Yes it is!—and the signal for the homily extras to end soon, too.
We’ll close with a review of the parable. This Samaritan represents Christ. Our Savior manifested for us a love that even greatly excelled a zillion times over the love of the Samaritan man who extraordinarily helped the beaten man.
For there are very, very many of us who have been the one in need of a rescue, and Jesus Christ came to be our “God-Hero.” Romans 8:5 says “that while we were yet sinners, Christ came and died for us.” When we each were bruised and dying and helpless, HE had pity upon us. He did not pass us by on the other side, and leave us, hopeless, to perish. He did not put conditions on whether we were worth saving, or if we’d ever be thankful and faithful back to Him—He just came and loved us so. God’s Son could have remained in His holy, happy eternal home, where He was beloved by all the heavenly host and in Blessed Union with the Father and Spirit. Yet instead, He came to save us—the poor sinners of earth who had all turned from God and been born in the poor, fallen predicament passed on to us. He beheld our sore need, He undertook our case, and identified with all of those in humanity calling out—even while so many in the world would so easily pass us by, go around and not even care for us. Yet Jesus stopped, and saved us. Pointing to His own example, He says to His followers, “These things I command you, that you love one another”; “as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”(John 15:17; 13:34.) While even Christians do harm and speak poorly of even one another—being a bad neighbor even “in house” –Jesus is looking for love and faith in our relationships, and the type that tries to be unconditional about it, and then we are to live that love in union out to the world, and find a need and fill it.