The Parable of the Good Samaritan touches on the most consequential human question of them all: What shall I do to inherit eternal life?  St. Luke points out that the scholar of the law is trying to test the Lord: this guy is not looking for information; he knows the proper answer to this question already, but he wants to see how this upstart Jesus will respond, and whether he can go deeper than just a surface-level answer.  And the Lord does start on the surface, as he should, by citing the Old Testament Scriptures: the double-commandment of love of God and love of neighbor; which is the correct answer, deeply rooted in the law and the prophets.  Love God; love your neighbor.  This is uncontroversial, then and now.  The tricky part, the place where people start to disagree, both then and now, is: what does that mean?  In my life, practically, what does it mean to love God and love my neighbor?  What’s required?  What’s incompatible?  How does this look in the concrete circumstances of my own life?  And the question in the parable revolves around the central issue: what exactly is meant by “my neighbor.” 

The standard answer, even the basic meaning you’d find in the dictionary, is someone who is near to you, in both physical proximity and also, moral and social proximity.  I bet that most of you live next door to people who are in basically similar social circumstances, probably have around the same level of education and financial security, and so forth.  You probably think also of your coworkers and your friends and your family.  It’s fairly natural on a human level for us to take good care of our nearest and dearest.  But what about the Samaritan?  The foreigner, the one who is unknown and uncomfortable, the one I have less in common with.  Is he my neighbor?  Do I actually have to be loving towards him, or, can’t I just tolerate him from a respectful distance?  Can’t we just mind our own business? 

But the Lord, it turns out, is not even answering that question.  He’s making an even more profound point.  It’s the Samaritan, the foreign stranger, who is making himself the neighbor to me.  I may actually be the one who is more in need; I may be the one who is lying by the side of the road in need of someone who is willing to help me, despite our differences.  You know, the priest and the levite who passed by without stopping: they may not have just been cold and indifferent.  They may have been scared themselves; the road was a dangerous place, and they may have been legitimately afraid of stopping, lest they experience the same fate.  The Fathers of the early Church saw an allegory for human experience here.  The road of life that we walk is dangerous; it’s messy; it’s complicated; it has lots of hazards and robbers and highwaymen.  And all of us from time to time fall down and feel set upon by the perils of this journey.  In this image, the question is not whether we’re going to be the priest and levite, or the Samaritan.  We are the injured man who has fallen down by the side of the road, unable to keep going.  The priest and the levite represent human philosophies, human wisdom, human ingenuity: things which have their place, but which, when faced with problems like suffering and death, tend to get pretty scared and just scurry along past without stopping to offer any help.  Only the Good Samaritan has the answer to those problems.  And the Good Samaritan is Christ: the one who comes from far away, from the distant foreign land of heaven, who stoops down and pours oil and wine into our wounds: and it’s no coincidence that oil and wine are the same substances used so prominently in the sacraments of the Church: these are the healing balm of Christ for our life; the grace that lifts us when we fall and heals us when we ache from the perils of the road we walk.  God, who is so remote, has become our neighbor, in Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The two main characters in this story are relevant to every human experience.  Everyone is injured and alienated; everyone is in need of the healing that God’s grace brings.  But then, everyone is also called in turn to be also the Samaritan: to follow Christ and to become like him.  And this is how we inherit eternal life.  We allow Christ the Good Samaritan to stoop down and care for us.  And then we strive to be transformed by that care that he gives us, into agents of healing and transformation ourselves: so that, for us, like it is for Christ, no man is a stranger; every human soul is our neighbor; and we see in each and every encounter throughout our lives, an opportunity to pass along the kind of healing we have received, to a world in need of help from one who is not afraid to stop, to lean down, and to offer the healing grace of God as a true neighbor, one who has come close, to offer the words of Eternal Life.  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.”