Based on a chapter of the same name in Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini’ s book “Colti da Stupore – incontri con Gesù” [Struck by Astonishment – meetings with Jesus.] Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano, 2012.
There was a lawyer who, to disconcert him, stood up and said to him, ‘Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Luke 10, 25-37
According to Latin etymology, the word “neighbour” means someone very close. This closeness can be in space, in time or in family kinship. It is thus an important word that plays a role in keeping families, social groups and in some cases even nations, together.
In this gospel episode, Jesus changes or widens the meaning of this word. We see a semantic reversal that eventually over the next centuries resulted in a different meaning, at least from point of view of vocabulary, although our culture has not understood its entire message yet, in fact one can say that it almost scares us.
The episode can be divided into three parts. In the first part, a Doctor of Law interrogates Jesus, who answers with a question of his own. The lawyer answers in an appropriate manner.
The second part is made up of other questions by the lawyer, who wants to justify himself, and asks Jesus “And who is my neighbour?” The lawyer expected the usual answer: the neighbour is the one with whom you have a relationship based on objective criteria like physical proximity, family ties and kinship etc. Instead, Jesus’ answer by means of the parable of the good Samaritan, shows most of all the coldness and distraction of priests and of the temple servants for a brother who was dying. They obey the exhortation from the Book of Proverbs (4,15), which however alluded to the road of the irreverent or the godless: “Avoid it, do not take it, turn your back on it, pass it by.” On the contrary, a Samaritan, that is a heretic, one who is despised and emarginated, takes care of the poor victim in his present circumstances and even covers him for the future.
Finally, in the third part, the episode ends with a question asked by Jesus: “Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell in the brigands’ hands?” The question changes the objective meaning of “being” neighbours into a subjective one, that is “of becoming” neighbours. Jesus does not say ‘who’ is near me but broaches the possibility of becoming closer to those that in many ways may be far away. That is, we go from a passive, static concept of neighbour to an active one, capable of changing the relationships among people: therefore, it is up to us to be neighbours even to those who are far away.
Here it is not about motivations, neither religious nor humanistic. It is just a description of a way of behaving in what Jesus deems to be the right way. In fact, the episode ends with Jesus’ exhortation: “Go, and do the same yourself.”