The Good Muslim (15th Sunday) Year C

Today's gospel asks the all-important question: who is my neighbor? Almost every major religion has a variation on the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In today's gospel, Jesus takes two commandments of the Hebrew Scriptures and combines them into one Great Commandment: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

God we can pretend to love, loving ourselves may be harder but at least we have a better idea who we are. But our neighbor? Hmmm... I may have to move.

To most people, of course, neighbor is broader than just the people living next door or down the block, but it usually is still limited to people who at least think like us if not necessarily look like us. (All Mets fans are my neighbors; Yankee fans, not so much.)

The young man in today's gospel was eager to do good and be good and he wanted to make sure he covered all his bases so he asked Jesus to define just want he meant by "neighbor." In turn, Jesus gives us the now famous parable of the Good Samaritan.

If Jesus were to use today's examples, we'd have the parable of the Good Muslim, the Good Japanese or the Good Wall Street Broker. That is, anyone whom we consider below us and not worthy of our help, much less our love.

The gospel describes two others, a priest and a Levite, who saw the man lying deathlike on the side of the road and did nothing. Now, in their defense, they were only following the law as they understood it. They were probably going to Jerusalem, if not the Temple, and had to maintain ritual purity if they were to enter. Contact with blood or with the dead would render them ritually impure. So just to be safe--and holy--they cross to the other side.

In life more often then not we are like that priest and Levite. Our position, our family, our job give us excuses for not fulfilling the commandment to love our neighbor. I remember back in 1987 I visited Havana Cuba as part of a trip organized by Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I remember sitting at the Alvero Dera beach, arguably one of the most beautiful beaches in the world with soft, white sand and clear, warm, turquoise-colored water. I remember sipping a Cuba Libre (rum & Coke) and puffing on a Cuban cigar and thinking, "Ronald Reagan may be the most powerful man in the world, but he will never get to do this."

It's a paradox of life: the more responsibilities we have, the less freedom we enjoy. But Jesus tells all of us who, like the young man in the gospel who wanted to do good and be holy, we have two choices; we can use our positions as excuses to avoid reaching out to others or we can go beyond stereotypes and prejudices and fulfill the commandment to love anyone whom we encounter who needs our help, regardless of race, religion, economic position, political party, social class, sexual orientation, age or illness. And if, as is even the case with priests today (In Maryknoll our lawyers and insurers tell us whether or not we can extend hospitality to "outsiders"), let us at least humbly admit that nothing we do can make us holy. Only God can do that.