Homily - Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 11, 2004
Remember the familiar poem of Robert Frost – Mending Wall:
“But at spring mending time…
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go….
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
And I wonder if I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors?...
Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down!’”
We reflect on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and the
walls that separate us – and on Jesus’ action in our world to dissemble those walls.
We reflect on what it is that allows us to justify separation – to rationalize
our distance from the others.
A few thoughts on neighborliness:
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Your next door neighbor…is not a man;
he is an environment. He is the barking
of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a
dispute about a wall; he is drains that are worse than yours or roses that are
better than yours.”
Martin Luther King Jr called good
the neighbor “who looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner
qualities that make all people human and therefore brothers and sisters.”
And Dietrich Bonheoffer suggested that “neighborliness is not
a quality that we must discover in other people before we accept them as
neighbors; it is, rather, their claim on ourselves. We have literally no time to sit down and ask
ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must get into action and obey; we must
behave like a neighbor to him.”
Our Gospel parable is a familiar one. It is certainly quoted
often.
The scribe/lawyer is a good man and he wants to know how to
be saved – what to do to be a true follower. He is sincere. And of course Jesus
recites for him not a new law – and ancient one from the Book of Deuteronomy
that we need to love God and neighbor – its that
simple. Or is it?
And the scholar of the law knows it is not that simple. He
wants some clarification. And so he persists for a definition of “neighbor”.
It would be good for us to persist. It would be wise for you
and me this week ahead to wonder who our neighbors are. And we should wonder if
our description of the neighbor fits with Jesus’.
Because Jesus overturns the man’s thinking. He must have
confronted his usual way of operating.
Jesus tells him that the Samaritan in his story was the
neighbor.
Samaritans were hated vociferously by the lawyer’s racial
group. They were considered unclean. They were considered people that should be
avoided.
Actually it is interesting that the roots of the hostility
between these people goes back 520 BC when the Jews were returning from Exile
and the inhabitants of Samaria and the Jews returning got into territorial
disputes. And so this territorial argument became expanded – And by Jesus’ time
they weren’t supposed to talk to one another.
Doesn’t this sound familiar?
In our own time we often see disputes between peoples that are just
traditional hatreds. There is no logic to the argument. It’s just there. And of
course it isn’t just about nations. There are peoples in families that don’t
talk to each other – and they’d probably be hard pressed to explain the enmity.
I remember in my own mother’s family sisters that would cross the street rather
than encounter the other. When you’d ask why there wouldn’t even be an answer –
there actually wasn’t one. I’m sure we all have a story or two about that.
And so Jesus turns the student of the law around. The priest in the story acted as he was
supposed to according to tradition. He had to avoid the near dead bleeding
body. He couldn’t touch the “unclean” Samaritan. And the Levite likewise as an
ardent student of the law knew what he should and shouldn’t do – according to
the law. But Jesus says its not about the law – its about love – its about
compassion – its about the fact that God can be found in that person in the
ditch and in the Samaritan on the road.
This student of the law who really wants to do what is right
finds out that the law is not supposed to be a boundary – but a way.
We revere traditions. Our certain ways of doing things are
how we exist. We celebrate with our families in particular ways. We do certain
things because they help us to be who we are. And even as religious people
there are certain things we do that would help us to know God – to realize
God’s power and presence. We would
perhaps like to begin our day in prayer because that helps focus us – that is a
good thing. We gather on the weekend to receive the Eucharist to nourish us for
the week’s journey.
And even in the case of the people in the Gospel story –
their traditions and rules were meant to bring them to salvation. The ancient traditions about what to touch
and what to eat and so many of the others had their origin in protecting them
from what would harm them. Let’s face it even today we would hesitate to touch
an open wound without gloves and protection.
But the traditions and the rules and the codes can become
barriers. And isn’t that what Jesus continually overturned.
Because we pray a particular way or dress a particular way
does not mean that the one who doesn’t is not as worthy and clean and good as
we are. We know that in our heads – but how do we act in our hearts.
Who is our neighbor? We don’t have the same problem that the
scholar of the law and the priest and the Levite had. Our walls are different.
I was at a meeting on Thursday in Asbury at Salvation Army
looking at the needs in
We make excuses for building the walls; our safety, the other
person’s irresponsibility; we don’t want to enable; we just plain afraid.
But our posture – if we are to listen to this Gospel and live
Jesus’ way has to be about tearing down the barriers between us – to realizing
our connective ness. No more than a wave
is separate from the ocean are we separate from one another.
We look at one another – Catholic and not Catholic; Christian
and Jew and Muslim and Buddhists and all the rest; gay and straight; male and
female; young and old; physically challenged and able bodied; black and white;
tall and short. Our society and indeed our churches have made an art out of
building walls and barriers.
As we read in the book of Deuteronomy in today’s first reading
the presence of God is not contained. The presence and spirit of God is not
across the sea or up in the sky or locked in a tabernacle. The presence of God
is very near to us – in the one sitting next to us – in the neighbors we
encounter each day this week Let us be
sure to act as neighbor to them.