Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Introduction

This Sunday Gos­pel (Luke 10:25–37) touches a fun­da­ment­al ques­tion – life after death. It is about the rais­on d’être of human right­eous con­duct – the quest for etern­al life. The lawyer’s ques­tion is both an exist­en­tial and soteri­olo­gic­al ques­tions. Who is not in any way con­cerned with the here­after? The concept of etern­al life is a uni­ver­sal concept. Although stated dif­fer­ently, every reli­gion and every people believes in the after­life. Accord­ing to Hinduism for instance, until a per­son attains Enlight­en­ment, Sam­sara will con­tin­ue. Sam­sara is a con­tinu­ous cyc­lic­al pro­cess of birth, life, death and rebirth. This is the Hindu concept of the trans­mi­gra­tion of the soul. The attain­ment of Enlight­en­ment sig­ni­fies a per­son has attained etern­al life and will no longer exper­i­ence samsara.

God’s kingdom and neighbour

There is a link between my rela­tion­ship with my neigh­bour and the king­dom of God. Like the Jews, many Chris­ti­ans believe and deceive them­selves think­ing that observing cer­tain laws, rules and reg­u­la­tions and recit­ing all the pas­sages of the Bible off by heart are the things needed to please God and make heav­en. These are all the­ory. Unless the laws have prac­tic­al applic­a­tions, they are use­less and can even become unjust and make those who observe them hypo­crites and super­fi­cial. Every law and proph­et is sum­mar­ized in do good and avoid evil. This is what Jesus meant when he said to his dis­ciples “in everything, do to oth­ers as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the proph­ets” (Matt 7:12). Again, in his teach­ings from the Mount, Jesus said to them “give, and it will be giv­en to you. A good meas­ure, pressed down, shaken togeth­er, run­ning over, will be put into your lap; for the meas­ure you give will be the meas­ure you get back” (Luke 6:38). Oh yes! That is the Golden Rule – if you know that which when done to you or said about you, it will pain you, do not do it or say it to anoth­er per­son, because what you give out will def­in­itely come back to you, wheth­er you like it or not. As the say­ing goes, what goes around, comes around. The way we relate with oth­ers has a lot to do with the king­dom of God. Even we mas­ter all the laws and mem­or­ize all the pas­sages of the Scrip­ture and does not treat oth­ers justly, we are hypo­crites and empty ves­sels (cf. Matt 7:21; Luke 6:46).

Conclusion

With this story, Jesus con­demns or rather under­lines the super­fi­ci­al­ity of human law and spir­itu­al­ity. Offer­ing a help­ing hand to the wounded was more import­ant than any oth­er thing. Many Chris­ti­ans and many people are vic­tims of what Jesus cor­rec­ted with the story in Luke 10:25–37. We must go bey­ond exter­n­al­ism and super­fi­ci­al­ity. What non­sense sac­ri­fice was that Priest and his col­lab­or­at­or (the Levite) going to offer when they could not help the needy lying wounded before them? What sort of pray­er, vigil, heal­ing are you doing when you can­not give a prac­tic­al touch and relief to your broth­er or sis­ter? Your neigh­bour is anoth­er human being and you need not know him or her before you can assist him or her. For the Jews, a neigh­bour was a fel­low Jew. Jesus dis­agrees and refuses to par­take in such dis­crim­in­a­tion. Dis­crim­in­a­tion! Are you free from this sin? 

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 15^th Sunday is found in The Word of Life, vol. III, pages 370–382. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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