Dear Family,
Sometimes the simple things confuse us because we expect something to be more complicated than it is.
This weekend’s scriptures are a case in point, at least for me. We hear Moses: "For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.” The Psalm response: “Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.” Paul tells the Colossians: “He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church.”
In Luke, Jesus tells us about the Good Samaritan, and then He, Jesus, ends it up with, “Go and do likewise.”
Seems simple enough, and yet... we also heard Moses say, “If only you would heed the voice of the Lord.” Paul tells us Jesus is the image of the invisible God: “... making peace by the blood of his cross.” That doesn’t seen like an inviting image.
Then to top it all off, the ‘scholar of the law’ who questioned Jesus about obtaining eternal life, hears Jesus answer him with the truth that any good scholar of the law would know, namely the Shema Israel: Hear, O Israel the Lord your God is Lord alone.
Wikipedia tells us, “Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation as a mitzvah (religious commandment). Also, it is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, and for parents to teach their children to say it before they go to sleep at night.
I’m going to this length of explanation to make the point about just how hypocritical the scholar was. You see it when he throws in what I call his ‘Yes, but...’ and then asks, “Who is my neighbor?” He is trying to “justify” the reasons why he apparently avoids having anything to do at all with certain people, the ‘unclean.’
I suspect you will have heard me speak about this in today’s homily. Just remember, “repetition is the mother of study.”
When you hear today’s scriptures in the light of the horrible sights and sounds of the terrible shootings, trying to think about “neighbor” becomes even more difficult. Every time I think about the two-year-old whose parents were both murdered in the Highland Park shooting, I tear up.
From the earliest times, various church writers interpreted the story of the Good Samaritan in a couple of ways. One might see the Good Samaritan as any one of us being called to a charitable way of life.
On the other hand, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 AD - c. 215), sees the Samaritan as Jesus: “Who can this neighbor be but the Savior himself? Who but he has had pity on us as we lay almost dead from the dark forces of this world, with so many wounds, so many fears and passions, so much anger, so much sorrow, so much deception, so many deceptive pleasures? Jesus alone can heal these wounds.”
I ask Jesus to heal the wounds that have me tearing up over the two-year-old. We ask Him to bind all our wounds.
In Him,
P.S. Last week I met with my audiologist, and I promised her that I would mention the following to you: GET YOUR HEARING CHECKED!
She said that people have all kinds of check-ups but they often fail to check their hearing. Something I didn’t know was that an unchecked hearing condition could even lead to things like dementia. So, I’m keeping my promise to Billie. Get your hearing checked. (If you need a phone number, call me).
