"The Good Samaritan Revisited"
Fr. George Wertin
Sunday, July 11th, 2004

The famous parable of “The Good Samaritan” is deceptively profound. Its message seems so simple: do good like the Samaritan and don’t follow the hypocritical priest and Levite. (Priests always take it on the shins!) But the Bible is from another time and a culture very different from our own. Let’s do a little Scripture study together.

In the Hebrew Bible the Israelites were called to become like God – to imitate God. One way of doing that was to create a world of compassion, justice and love. That’s what the prophets – Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah and the others – were all about: challenging the status quo and reforming society.

There was another way to imitate God: the call to holiness through the purity codes. These were outlined in great detail in the Book of Leviticus (cpts. 17-26). Purity codes became very important to a people who had been in exile. Following prescribed rituals and behavior gave the people a sense of identity and fidelity to God.

In Jesus’ day the dominant religious paradigm in Israel was based on the purity system: “Be holy as God is holy.” And holiness was based on separation from what is impure, unclean, defiled. There were multiple criteria and degrees of being pure or impure: birth status, gender, behavior, physical integrity, prosperity, paying tithes. Men were more pure than women. The righteous were pure and sinners were not. Contact with blood or dead persons was defiling. Paying the temple tax and observing the Sabbath were necessary for purity – and therefore, for holiness.

In our parable the priest and Levite are conscientiously following the purity code. They are not totally cruel and insensitive to the man beaten by robbers. But he might be dead – the Gospel says he is “half dead” – and to touch him could very well make them impure and, therefore, not acceptable to perform their temple functions. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is moved by compassion, breaks the taboo of touching a Jew – and helps the wounded man breaking down the barrier. As the parable concludes with the question, “Who was neighbor to the one who was injured by robbers?” the definition of neighbor is stretched. The one who is a non-Jew and, therefore, an enemy is recognized as a neighbor because of his compassion. Thus, the definition of neighbor is broadened and universalized.

Jesus undermines the purity system. He says, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Unfortunately this is often translated as “Be perfect as God is perfect” or “Be merciful as God is merciful” which weakens its meaning. In other words, for Jesus compassion is the central quality of God that we must imitate.

Compassion is challenging and demanding. It demands that we identify with others in their suffering and pain as well as their joys and celebrations. That’s where Alice Walker’s remarkable book “The Color Purple” gets it right when Shug tells Celie, “When I bleed, God bleeds. And when anybody bleeds we all bleed.” Compassion unites and is inclusive. Purity divides and excludes.

In Hebrew the word for compassion is rich in meaning. It is derived from the word for “womb.” In other words, God’s concern for us is like a mother’s concern for the child of her womb. Compassion is more than just an intellectual understanding. It is to feel the feelings of another in a visceral way – from the heart. God is the one who gives birth to us. And so, again, we see the feminine face of God. If God’s love extends to all her children, then so must our love.

Jesus, as a radical reformer, attacked the purity system: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. “ (Mark 7:15). What distinguishes Jesus and his followers is their acceptance of others. Jesus shares table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (read ‘the impure’). Jesus associates with women in public and treats them as equals. He reaches out to poor people and the destitute as well. He breaks down the barrier between neighbor and enemy and calls all to be equals. He heals – and act of compassion – on the Sabbath – breaking the purity code of holiness.

Very little of this seemed important to me when I was ordained a priest 40 years ago. What was important was to follow the rules and have a strong personal relationship with God, to be a good conforming Catholic, fearing God and keeping free from sin. This was the purity code of the pre-Vatican II church. It was what I was taught in the seminary. Reaching out with the politics of compassion was something that I learned through disillusionment with the established system and through some wonderful mentors who helped me to follow Jesus rather than the church.

Today we live in a society with a secularized purity code system. It is based on ambition and affluence. It says that you respect people for their appearance and achievements. Yes, it says that some people are better and superior to others. It challenges people to be competitors, consumers and to put self-interest before the common good.

But Jesus has it otherwise. Yes, God is like a mother – passionate for her young. And we are called to be like the mothers mentioned in the reading earlier: the Black grandmothers in the ghetto, the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina, the women in the refugee camps who are moved to action. We are called to a politics of compassion. It is touching the pain of others that becomes the key to changing the world and being compassionate like God our mother.