Children of God

What does it mean to be a Christian? What are the fundamental beliefs?

• God existed before all things.
• God created the universe and all that is in it as an act of pure love.
• God created “man in His image; in the divine image He created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
• Man rebelled against God, introducing death and suffering into the world, and leaving man separated from God.
• God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, into the world.
• Through His death and resurrection, Jesus conquered sin and death, and reconciled God and man.
• By believing in and following Jesus, all of us can reap the benefit of his sacrifice, which is eternal life in heaven.

There’s much more (I’ve said nothing of the Holy Spirit, who flows through all of God’s works), but this is the essence of the Christian story and Christian beliefs.

I’d like to focus on that third point and its profound implications, which Jesus articulated so eloquently. Our day and age is one of division. We are divided by race, class, nationality, political beliefs, what shows we watch, what school we went to… the list could go on and on. The media we consume profit by exacerbating and provoking these divisions, and we are frequently (if unwittingly) only too happy to be provoked, further dividing us from our fellow man.

Recognizing that we are all God’s children is essential to living a Christian life. Not only that, it confers moral obligations on us. We all recognize that we have moral obligations for our biological brothers and sisters. What is so radical about Jesus, both in his day and in ours, is that he is extending those obligations, not merely to those in our town or our nation, but to all of mankind.

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) begins with a scholar of the law asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him what the Law teaches, and the scholar replies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus tells him he has answered correctly, prompting the scholar to ask, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus then relates the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten, robbed, and left by the side of the road. Two religious leaders – a priest and a Levite – pass by, doing nothing. But a Samaritan comes, dresses his wounds, takes him to an inn, cares for him overnight and pays for his continued care.

Now the Samaritans and Jews were enemies at the time of Jesus. The Samaritans, like the Jews, were descendants of Abraham. The two groups were divided especially over the Chosen Place to worship in God: Mount Zion in Jerusalem for the Jews, Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans. In Jesus’ time, the Jews considered the Samaritans to be ritually impure, so (for example) a Jew would not drink from a cup touched by a Samaritan. (1) The religious outcast, then, is the hero of the parable, rather than the two religious leaders who take the easy way out.

After relating the story, Jesus reverses the scholar’s question. The scholar asked him, “Who is my neighbor?” Knowing that he had to love his neighbor as himself, the scholar seemed to want to limit the definition of neighbor in some way. He couldn’t be expected to love everyone as himself, could he? But at the end of the story, Jesus asks the scholar, “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” The scholar answers, “The one who showed him mercy,” and Jesus tells the scholar to “go and do likewise.”

By reversing the question – Who was a neighbor to him? – Jesus emphasizes that being a good neighbor is a matter of concrete works of charity and mercy towards our fellow man. It’s an action, not a state of being, and not one limited by all the markers we use to divide ourselves.

Moreover, while being very specific about the identities of the three men who encounter the victim, Jesus pointedly says nothing about the identity of the victim himself. We don’t know if he is a Jew, Samaritan or Gentile, or whether he is rich or poor, or young or old. None of this matters to Jesus. Our obligation is to be a good neighbor to everyone we encounter. We cannot help everyone, but we are obliged to love everyone we meet on our journey. (2)

Martin Luther King Jr., in what turned out to be the last speech of his life, talked at length about the parable of the Good Samaritan:

The Jericho Road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conductive for ambushing. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt the man on the ground was really faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you. 

May our fears never keep us from being a neighbor to all those we meet. For we are all children of God.

Notes:

• The New American Bible Copyright © 1987 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., note to John 4:9.
• Joel B. Green makes this point in his The Gospel of Luke, Eerdmans, 1997, p. 432.

Image: The Good Samaritan, after Delacroix by Vincent Van Gogh (downloaded from Wikipedia Commons).

Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day for the salvation of souls!