Reflection on the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We see the long pattern of human behavior and the even longer pattern of God’s invitation in today’s readings. Starting with the Book of Deuteronomy, which was written 700 years before Jesus became human, Moses reminds the people to listen to the word of God and turn their hearts and souls to God as they live each day and make their choices. God’s call to receive divine love and share that love is not complicated, but it is challenging. Even in the Garden of Eden, where there was only one rule that we hear about, humans had a difficult time.

The early Jews, like the Jews in the time of Jesus and people today, do not need to be so consumed by the human interpretations and regulations of how to be faithful to God’s law that they are no longer listening to God’s voice in their heart and soul.

Jesus came to make things simpler and more clear for the people of his time and for all of us who have come after him. However, we know that simpler is not always easier. Jesus made it clear that it was not about following every line of the law and every rule ever written. And it is not about believing that we always need an intermediary to tell us how to accept God’s love and share it.

Richard Rohr says that “religion becomes much more a mystical matter… and it’s about union with all and participation in and with God.” In the Gospel we see one of several examples from Jesus clarifying and simplifying the path to life in and with God. Care and compassion without regard to someone’s race or religion is God’s preferred practice. A priest following the “rules” that require separation and judgment of the “other” does not seem to be what God wants. Indifference or self-absorption when confronted with the needs of someone in distress is not the answer. Jesus tells us that our call to compassion and our sense of “neighbor” need to be expanded beyond what any religious or civil set of rules might stipulate.

The scholar asking the question in the Gospel comes with an intent to trip Jesus up with his own answers and to “justify” himself according to the law. Jesus makes it clear that kind of thinking is not what God asks of us through the story of the Good Samaritan; the scholar, and all of us, are reminded to return to God’s message to “love our neighbor as ourself” and to understand God’s definition of who our neighbor is. A simple message that is sometimes difficult to live.

In our own time we see a flood of laws written by Christians that are meant to define correct behavior but they do so in a way that is exclusive and punitive. That is not what God calls us to do. Many of these laws are based in fear, not in love and mercy. They are disempowering rather

than caring and merciful. Look at voting rights legislation, state laws regulating teachers and education, health care access rules, housing laws, immigration laws and more. When, for example, someone breaks a law if they give a person in the desert water to avoid certain death, it is easy to see that God’s law and God’s invitation have been set aside to address manmade fears and insecurities.

While we may not feel called to be lawbreakers, we are called to follow God’s invitation and recognize those human laws and actions that misinterpret that call and set us on a different path.