Today’s readings: Deuteronomy 30, 10-14; Colossians 1, 15-20; Luke 10, 25-37.

The stories in the gospels, writes Michael Frost in Exiles, far from being soothing bedtime stories for baptised children, are the most dangerous element of the Christian experience. How true that sounds when we read today’s Jesus narrative about the indifference of many of us in the face of the violence we see daily. The ‘dangerous’ element of these stories is that they tell a truth that many a time we deny, and because they are proclaimed to provoke in us all an intelligent and incisive faith response.

The words in the first reading from Deuteronomy – “obey the voice of the Lord your God” – evoke in us today the need to listen for the voice of vocation within us. There are moments in life when in the midst of all we do routinely, we catch a glimpse of our true life and ask ourselves: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?

This happens because it is so easy to live a life other than one’s own. As Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak, “We listen for guidance everywhere except from within”. That is exactly what Deuteronomy reiterates today: “The Word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance”.

The priest and the Levite in Jesus’ story seemed too busy doing what they were supposed to do. Yet they failed to stop and listen to the voice within provoked by the suffering of the other. Duty before compassion, forgetting that becoming good news to another person includes much more than conveying a message.

In our changing Western landscape, religion is becoming as much a demonstration as it is proclamation. Our actions many a time are way behind our words, warn the authors of the book Emerging Churches.

We speak of the rule of law as a framework within which we all aspire to live and which ultimately we hope safeguards our security and peace of mind. We think logically that as long as laws are obeyed, society thrives and order will reign. Yet life in a world so diversified and fragmented is not so simple and plain sailing. What is worse is that we’ve transposed this logic even to our churches, making order take priority over people even within our faith communities.

In today’s gospel account the lawyer is a case in point of someone who saw life as venturing beyond the rule of law. His main concern was not what is right or wrong but rather “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He knew that living and living fully was not a matter of just obeying the law. Many a time we ourselves experience this when in our journeys of faith, simply doing our duty leaves much to be desired.

The law ensures order, but is not necessarily life-giving or life-enhancing. This is a major issue in determining what Christian living is about. Very often, and we still do it, we opt to secure one’s right relationship with God by simply referring to the rule of law framework even within the Church. The gospel of Jesus makes it clear today that the law may regulate the social order, but this in no way guarantees a remedy to indifference and does not automatically lead to acknowledging who is the other.

To the question “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answers in a narrative form. Our life’s fabric itself is made up of narratives, of moments and experiences whereby we discover depths otherwise uncharted, and uncover faces otherwise never recognised. Unfortunately we risk living in a society where many, many people remain ‘faceless’ in spite of a Facebook culture that is so dominating and invasive.

People come and go in our life and can remain faceless, unknown and unknowable.

On this count, Christianity is called to be counter-cultural, dangerous and provoking. It is in the faceless Jesus that the human face of God was revealed to us. It is in the faceless man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho that the Samaritan traveller recognised his neighbour and went out of his way to give that man back the dignity that a violent society had robbed him of.

Being in denial and simply “passing by on the other side” is not only indifference towards the victims of violence, but makes of us perpetrators of violence.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.