AND THEN THOU SHALT SOME MORE

So how about loving that blasted neighbour with his noisy dog, his pain-in-the-ass teenagers and his whiny habit of getting himself burgled and complaining to Bibi (Yours Truly, in French) about it? (I hasten to say I have no such neighbours in real life: the few I know are uniformly delightful – an artist, a 94-year old farmer, and a former spy.) I go back to agapao and its uses. It is not a verb about feeling. It is a verb about being-there for someone: the boring spectrum of emotion that you despise when you’re a teenager, tempest-tossed with hormones and Sincerity.

Let’s look at the Samaritan. In America, he’d be a Latino. His story tells us, as it was meant to, something about “Who is my neighbour?” but also something about “What is this thing called Love?” So we should pay scrupulous attention.

In the first place, what does he not do? He does not start an NGO called “Travellers’ Aid”. He does not call the police; he does not organise a demo in front of the nearest town hall or police station demanding more security for citizens and travellers.

He seems to have learnt some first aid, dresses the wounds with oil to ease the pain and with wine to cauterise the infection, puts the battered man on his donkey and walks it to the inn where he was planning to spend the night. The next morning he tells the innkeeper to look after the felllow, pays him something on account, tells him he’lll pay the balance on his way back – and goes about his business. Apart from the initial “taking pity on him”, it’s all wonderfully unemotional: brisk and businesslike.

The helper’s Samaritan-ness is important for the point about who stops and who doesn’t: it’s of no importance for identifying what that “love” means.

It doesn’t mean an emotion. It doesn’t refer to the way you feel, but only to what you do. If we temporarily ban this word “love” it may help us understand parts of the Bible better. I like “being-there-for”, but one could think of other terms. We are told to be there for God, entirely: with our heart, our breath or soul, and our intelligence. We are told to be there for our neighbour – and it’s explained to us that in this case our “neighbour” is anyone we run into by accident who is in clear need, a need we can do something about. And why? Because it grows out of being there for God. We love God because He first loved us, and goes on doing so. But He also loves the Anyone we run into and who’s in trouble; and He needs us to put His love into practice.

The Samaritan didn’t go out looking for attack victims. He was on a business trip, and interrupted it briefly to do a good deed in a naughty world. Then he went on with his business trip.

“Being-there-for” also helps us clarify the “as thyself”. If it’s about “loving”, well, many of us are not that crazy about ourselves. But in a pinch we will act on our survival instinct and look after ourselves. That’s what we’re asked to do for others, when the occasion arises: be there for the bloke, do what you can to help out, don’t make a fuss about it.

Micah puts it very well: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” There it is. Not complicated. Not emotional. Just do it.

The image, of course, is Rembrandt's. Who else? A pen and brush drawing of the Good Samaritan, done in 1644.