The Seventh Sunday Pentecost
July 15, 2007
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
Luke 10:25-37
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
A couple of months ago my wife and I were informed by our pediatrician that our youngest daughter did not have health insurance. He sent us a bill with no deductions from what our policy normally covers. So Kristina called our health insurance provider to see why the bills had not been paid. They explained that after our youngest daughter was born she was on the policy for only thirty days, after which we had to fill out an application. From the information on this application our insurance provider would determine whether to insure the newest member of our family. That is, if Joan had had some defect that required a great expense to fix, the insurance provider desired to reserve the right not to cover the person most in need of health insurance. I was appalled, but upon reflection I recognize that from a business standpoint this makes sense. Insurance companies are in the business to make money. They are not in the business to show mercy. That is the job of Christians.
Contrast my insurance company’s unwillingness to incur any great expense on behalf of the most vulnerable member of my family with the generosity of the Good Samaritan in the parable we heard from today’s Gospel. Not only did the Good Samaritan care for the Jewish man who had been beaten by robbers, he also gave the innkeeper two days’ wages to care for the man and to allow him space in the inn. Moreover, he promised to pay back the innkeeper whatever additional expenses that might arise while he was away. He places no conditions on the kind of care the victim can receive, and he assumes the cost of that care himself.
In this generosity we see the first characteristic of those who are merciful. Merciful people do not have preset limits on what they are willing to provide to those in need. The merciful recognize that the needs of the vulnerable ought to take precedence over financial considerations for the bottom line. The value of a person’s life cannot be reduced to an expense report. His life is, in fact, priceless, and only when we do not limit what we are willing to spend do our actions reflect the reality that every life is priceless. I saw recently a story about how the government tries to predict the monetary cost of raising a child. The U.S. Department of Agriculture claims it costs parents on average about $15,000 a year from birth to age 17 to raise each child (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/Raisekids/P37245.asp). How merciful a society do we live in when our own government calculates how much children cost, in order that her citizens can calculate how many children they can afford to bear? Mercy does not consider such banalities, because like the Good Samaritan, the merciful trust in the providence of God. The merciful trust that God will always provide for those He loves, and therefore they need not limit their mercy, because God does not limit His own.
Limitless mercy, of course, requires great sacrifice. When I make the assertion that God will provide for those he loves all that they need, I have often been met with the counter assertion that the poor do not have all they need. Does that then mean that God does not love them? The parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates that it is not God who does not love the vulnerable and the needy, but rather we who are lacking in charity and mercy. We mustn’t forget that the Jewish victim of the robbers was ignored first by a priest and then by a Levite before being tended to by the Samaritan. We can assume that both of these men, who were of the privileged class in Jewish society, had the resources necessary to help their Jewish brother. Their choice, however, which God allows everyone to make, was not to share what they had. They chose to keep for themselves the gifts God had given them to share with those who do not have as much. Thus, the Lord provided out of his love for the poor. In their contempt for the vulnerable, the priest and the Levite refused to show mercy. And they refused to show mercy because they did not want to sacrifice.
The Good Samaritan, on the other hand, delayed himself on his journey by an entire day. Then he tended to the beaten man himself. Finally, he gave of his treasure to ensure the man would have a place to recover, with gentle hands to comfort him. The Good Samaritan had somewhere else to go, something else to do, and resources he could have spent on himself. To make the sacrifice he did he had to hold the conviction that his own desires are not as important as the life of someone minutes from death. How often do we rush by those in need? How often do we fail to make the effort to serve the needy, face to face, side by side? How often do we buy for ourselves things we don’t really need, use money that could be spent in the service of life for the vulnerable? To the extent that we hoard our time, our talents and our treasure, we demonstrate an unwillingness to suffer loss for the sake of life. In the end we demonstrate an unwillingness to take up our cross and follow him who was willing to give everything on the altar of the cross that we might live. A willingness to sacrifice is the second characteristic of the merciful.
The third characteristic of the merciful is that they are kind to the undeserving. If we consider the sociological reality of the 1st century, when Jesus told this parable, the idea of a Samaritan helping a Jew was quite shocking. The Samaritans were in a sense half-Jews, peoples who had intermarried with Gentiles, while retaining certain Jewish customs and worship of the one true God. In other words, they were apostate Jews, so the hatred between the groups was akin to the Catholic/Protestant rivalry that prevailed in much of the world before the Second Vatican Council, and which is still present in parts of the world today. Further proof of their poor relations with each other comes in St. John’s Gospel, where the woman at the well asks Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9). My point in recounting this ethnic rivalry from 2,000 years ago is that of all the people who passed by the Samaritan would have been most justified in ignoring the Jew in need. The priest and the Levite were the Jewish victim’s flesh and blood, one in faith and heritage. The Samaritan, on the other hand, without even choosing as much, began his life with an adversarial relationship to his Jewish neighbors. They were, in fact, the enemy. They did not deserve his help. They may even have deserved from him quite the opposite of mercy. Yet the Samaritan did not give what the man deserved, but what he needed.
The love of the Samaritan from this parable is a reflection of the love God has for us. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, received from us denials, abandonment, betrayal, torture, mockery, and death, and yet he is willing to show us mercy because of the depth of his love for us. He does not give us what we truly deserve but what we require. For all the sins against him that we have committed, we deserve denial, abandonment, betrayal, torture, mockery, and death. But instead we receive from him forgiveness and life. If we are to be the Good Samaritan, if we are to be like Jesus, if we are to be merciful, we must love even those who have done nothing to deserve our self-oblation.
This, then, is mercy: limitless generosity, sacrifices that benefit the needy and kindness to the undeserving. All of these require an immanence among the suffering of the type expressed in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Mercy cannot be done from a distance. As Christ came among us, pleased to dwell with us as one of us, so the generosity, sacrifice, and kindness we offer must be given face to face and side by side the vulnerable, the weak, and the needy. The Church is Christ’s presence on earth, so it should come as no surprise to us that the largest private charitable organization in this country is Catholic Charities. It should come as no surprise that in the Church, from the Church, we see the work of the Good Samaritan being performed every day.
But don’t be content merely to observe such work. Go forth from here and do some of it yourself. Go forth from here and let the undeserving, the destitute, the helpless, and even our enemies know the love the Church has for them by showing them the mercy Jesus has shown us. Go be the neighbor Jesus calls each of us to be, the neighbor Jesus was to us when he picked us up out of the street, dressed our wounds with his own loving hands, and promised to provide all we’ll need to receive the life we require.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.