You have just heard what is perhaps the best known of all the parables contained in the Gospels.  My eldest son, Robert, once told me that, in the course of a conversation with someone, he illustrated a point he wished to make by alluding to the Prodigal Son . . . and the person with whom he was speaking stared at him blankly.   . . . They had never encountered Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son.  But not so with the Good Samaritan!  The Good Samaritan is a cultural icon.  Even the most irreligious person you have ever met or can imagine meeting knows what a good samaritan is.  In spite of the United States Government’s vigilant and systematic repression of all reference to Holy Scripture in public learning, . . . nearly anyone you might chance to encounter will tell you (if asked) that a good samaritan is a person who willingly goes out of his or her way to give aid and comfort to a perfect stranger in need.  . . . Which has nothing at all to do with the Parable spoken by the Lord Jesus and which has just been read to you today.

    Listen carefully to what Saint Luke describes the situation to be, in which Jesus spoke the Parable of the so-called “good Samaritan”.  Last Sunday Saint Luke let you listen in on Jesus sending seventy of His disciples on a missionary journey to heal the sick and preach about the presence of God’s sacred Kingdom.  When the seventy returned, Luke tells us, they said to Jesus,

“Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”  And [Jesus says] to them, . . . “Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you.  Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Jesus tells His disciples to rejoice that their names are written in heaven, . . . and a lawyer, not one of the Lord’s disciples, . . . a lawyer overhears this conversation and challenges Jesus by asking, “That’s all well and good for your disciples, Teacher, but what shall I, an outsider, do to inherit eternal life?”  And our cheerful Saviour looks at the man and asks him “What is written in [God’s holy] Law?  How do you read it?”  And, invigorated, no doubt, by the prospect of a stimulating debate over the law, . . . our friend the lawyer responds by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

A good and profound and astute answer.  It pleases Jesus, and He says, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”  It’s as simple as that, Jesus says:  you cannot love God with your entire being -- with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (not holding anything back) -- . . . you cannot love God with your entire being . . . and not also experience the great counterflow of God’s holy and unconditional love back toward you.  . . . The consequence of loving God undistractedly -- with your entire being -- is that His Life fills yours . . . and this Divine Life spills over out of you and onto your neighbor as well.

    But the lawyer, like many, many, many of his friends living in those days; . . . like many, many, many people living now; . . . the lawyer has not loved the Lord God Almighty with his entire being.  . . . He is in the habit of holding some of himself back from God.  After all, if he were too religious it might be off-putting to people whose friendship he wished to cultivate.  People might avoid him.  He’d be talked about and gain the reputation of being an odd duck.  . . . And the lawyer couldn’t afford that sort of notoriety.  . . . And speaking of affording, excessively religious people are notorious for giving their money away for God to use(!), holding very little back for themselves.  Where would the lawyer be financially if he allowed himself to be overcome by every sacred impulse to generosity that rose up in his heart!  . . . And so, . . . the lawyer was in the habit of withholding himself from God, . . . save for those occasions that merited religious devotion.  . . . And so, to justify himself, Luke tells us, . . . to justify withholding himself from God, the lawyer asks Jesus one of those nasty little questions that sets a dozen rabbis to arguing and quoting Scripture at one another for six weeks at a time.  The lawyer asks, “Ah, but who is my neighbor?”

    And in reply to this complex question . . . Jesus gives us one of the most concise and brilliant discourses on moral theology ever to be spoken in the history of the world.  Jesus gives us what is called “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.”  The premise of this wonderful parable is that a good, law abiding Jew, on his way to Jericho, is ambushed by brigands, beaten nearly to death, robbed, and left at the side of the road to die.  . . . It’s a dangerous world, Jesus admits to us.  No one is immune to sudden attack and violence.  That piteous person lying on the ground, beaten half to death and caked with dirt and blood, could be anyone; . . . it could be someone you know; . . . it could be someone you love; . . . heck, that injured person could be you (!).  And there you are, Jesus says.  Through no fault of your own, there you are, completely helpless, in pain, and very near death.  But look!  Here comes a priest!  Here comes someone schooled in the virtues of compassion and kindness; . . . here comes a fellow creature to aid you in your helplessness.  . . . But seeing you, Jesus says, . . . seeing you, the priest treats you as if you aren’t there.  . . . He passes you by on the other side of the road.  . . . Ah, but right after this callous fellow comes a Levite, a member of the religious laity of Israel -- the Jewish equivalent of a monk save for the fact that the Levites married and raised families.  Here comes this Levite, and now you are saved!  For, surely this Levite, full of simplicity and obedience to God, . . . surely this Levite will have pity on you and bring your battered body to safety.  . . . But, seeing you, the Levite treats you as if you don’t exist, . . . and passes you by on the other side of the road.  Two of your own people -- good, upstanding men devoted to the Law of Moses -- . . . two of your own people pass you by.  . . . They are unable to help because they will be ritually defiled by contact with you -- by contact with your blood, to be precise -- and, according to the laws of purity -- the laws you live by; . . . according to the laws of purity, this defilement by contact with blood would make both men unable to come into contact, for a time, with the rest of their lawful neighbors.  And so, for the sake of the many and in order that the most effective service be rendered to God . . . the one person must be left unaided; . . . you must be sacrificed so that good might be done for others.

    . . . And then, Jesus says, a Samaritan happens by:  a man whom that good Jew lying near to death loathes and despises; . . . loathes and despises because Samaritans are so crass and unsophisticated about the towering holiness conveyed by God’s sacred Law spoken to Moses.  Samaritans claim to worship the One True God . . . but they don’t keep any of the purity laws properly; . . . Samaritans are filthy people!  Good thing too, because the Samaritan, ignorant of the defilement of blood, gives aid to the Jew who despises him.  The Samaritan gives aid to the Jew who despises him and brings him to safety to be nursed back to health.  He probably does so even as the wounded Jew struggles to resist his ministrations and spits at him and calls him names.  . . . The Samaritan even accepts financial responsibility for the care of the person who has resisted his help and cursed him.  . . . And then, . . . having told this story, . . . Jesus suggests that to be “neighbor” is not a passive state but an active relationship.  Jesus asks the lawyer not whose neighbor the man who fell among robbers was, . . . but who was neighbor to that man.  The lawyer answers, “The one who showed mercy.”  And Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

    Do you see?  The question is not “Who is my neighbor?”  The question is … “who are you if you love God?”  Loving God with your entire being, you have received God’s merciful love in return.  And it is this mercy which you are obligated to give to everyone else.  Their attitude toward you is irrelevant -- they may loathe you or they may love you:  the confused and unstable movements of human feelings aren’t the measure or standard of the Christian Life.  Today a man may rob you; . . . tomorrow he might ask you to make his bail.  Is he your enemy or your neighbor?  Well, Jesus tells us not to get all tangled up in those kinds of questions.  The question is “How has God treated me?”  Does God forgive my sins today?  Will He give heed to my prayers tomorrow?  If this is the mercy your heavenly Father gives to you, Jesus says, . . . it is the only thing you have to withhold or give to anyone else.  And so, our Lord declares that in order to be alive and not a walking corpse . . . in order that your name might be written in Heaven . . . you must not withhold yourself from God, but devote your entire being to loving that which is eternal -- you must love the Lord your God with all your heart . . . and with all your soul . . . and with all your strength . . . and with all your mind -- . . . and the eternal love of God . . . will come to you and abide with you . . . so that you attain unto the life that is eternal:  receiving God’s mercy … and giving God’s mercy, . . . unconditionally. . . to simply everyone.

    The inscription of your names in Heaven -- the Life revealed in Christ Jesus; … the Christian Life -- is a very simple thing.  You do not have to shave your head or go without food and water for a month as a sign of commitment and proof to God and His Church of your worthiness.  It is, as Moses has said:  it is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.  The inscription of your name in Heaven involves nothing more than not withholding yourself from the Lord God Almighty, . . . but giving your entire being over to loving Him Who created you and knows you intimately; Whose sacred Image you bear.  It is also giving yourself over entirely to being loved by God, . . . and, having only this, . . . having only God’s love and mercy in your possession, . . . to be a good Samaritan and bestow God’s love and mercy upon the world with joyful abandon.