ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

'What must I do to inherit eternal life?'

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis, Parish of the Nativity of Christ, Lewes, 7 December 2008

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the best known of all Christ’s stories. Many people will know it almost by heart. But it is both familiar and unusual, unusual in the sense that it has an elaborate introduction that tells us of the actual personal encounter that led to its being told.

Today I would like to look closely at this introduction, as it seems to me to say something not just about the ‘lawyer’ who got up to tempt and challenge Christ, but about Christ himself and his relationship with the Father.

We should probably imagine this scene as involving Christ seated in some way, as was usual when teaching in the ancient world, with those listening to him sitting on the ground. So when the lawyer stood up, it would have been quite a dramatic move, and his body language would probably have told everyone that some kind of challenge was about to take place.

So when he asks Christ, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’, Christ turns the question back on the man himself. ‘What is written in the law?’, he says, ‘What is your reading of it?’ The reply given is a good one, in line with Christ’s own teaching, and would seem to show that the lawyer has given some thought to the matter: ‘I must love God with all my being, and my neighbour as myself.’ ‘Do this,’ Christ tells him, ‘and you will live.’ And when the lawyer goes on to ask, ‘And who is my neighbour?’, Christ then tells his parable.

Now this initial dialogue seems to me to be very important, not so much for what it says about the lawyer, as for what it says about Christ. We know that Christ was in constant dialogue with his Father. The Gospel of John is full of this interchange between the two, which reaches its climax in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ asks the Father, if possible, to take from him the cup of surrender to the death that he sees before him (Mt 26: 36-46).

In other words, Christ himself has been asking his Father, since his baptism, this same question: ‘What must I do – right now – to inherit eternal life?’ And has been carrying out the ‘word’ that he hears throughout. And what is interesting is that the Father has given the very same reply that the lawyer gives: to gain eternal life you must love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind … and your neighbour as yourself.’ And Christ then goes on to illustrate what this means to him through the parable.

The priest and the Levite leave the wounded man lying in the dust, even though he is very probably one of their own people, a Jew travelling down from Jerusalem to Jericho. But the Samaritan – and remember that ‘the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans’ (Jn 4:9) – does stop and does take care of the man. In other words, the Samaritan crosses the ethnic divide out of love. Not only does this show that the central truths of Scripture are known outside Judaism, but it also shows that the love of neighbour that saves also exists outside Judaism.

This is precisely what we learn from Christ’s teaching as we see it in the Gospels. The Father is telling him that if he does love his Father with all that is in him, with the whole of his created humanity, he must nevertheless complete this by loving his neighbour as himself. And his neighbour is not just his fellow Jew. His neighbour is everyone, irrespective of their origin. And so when Christ, after telling the lawyer the parable, tells him to do what the Samaritan had done, he is actually telling him: ‘Do what I am doing. Do what the Father has told me to do.’

This is what the Apostles learned from Christ, and after Pentecost they left Jerusalem to spread this Gospel, this ‘good news’, throughout the world. This is what St Paul understood when he tried to describe what it means to be the Church. The Gospel is addressed equally to all peoples. And it is equally addressed to each of us. ‘Go, and do thou likewise.’ We too are to love God with all that is within us – and our neighbours as ourselves.

Amen.