Wild Samaritan

The Church's Gospel passage yesterday was of the good Samaritan story from Luke; an awesome tale of a Jewish man in need, receiving care from a kind Samaritan after being snubbed by two previous "religious" folks--a Levite and a Jewish priest.

Our priest began with a story about his father's dog, Bridget, a very well-behaved Pointer, going crazy one day in the presence of a fox. While normally tame, the dog became wild and unwieldy in a setting provoking his instincts. In the same way, the story of the Good Samaritan seems like a tame one, learned when we're children and incorporated into societal norms and laws. When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, however, it was wild, uncouth, and quite challenging to people of the time... as it should be to us today!

Why is it so wild? He touched on the following points:

1) Christ used an enemy of the Jews, a Samaritan, to teach a lesson. He taught compassion, love, care, and generosity via an enemy. This would be like using an al Queda member to show us compassion. Whoa. I can't imagine a better way for Christ to show the people humility, especially when admitting that one's enemy did the right thing. Very tough!

2) Christ showed two very "good" people using religion as an excuse and reason to keep their distance. There were certain laws and rituals governing the behavior of these religious leaders, which is why they ignored the injured Jewish man on the side of the road. How often do we use our busyness with church activities/religious affiliation to avoid really reaching out to those in need?

3) We should be offering charity to every man, despite our insecurities. We should be loving the homosexual couple, the illegal alien, the poor, the man on death row... Challenging stuff, especially to an affluent, white parish! Very cool.

4) And when it's all said and done, we come back to the Eucharist, to Christ, for renewal, for reason, for acceptance ourselves. Yes!

I looked over at GG after the priest finished and he mouthed the words "boo yah".
You got it. The priest brought down some BOO YAH to challenge all of us... It was awesome. So awesome that I had to share!

Hugs and prayers for an awesome day! May it be richly blessed.