4th Sunday after Trinity 13 July 2025
Readings: Deuteronomy 30.9-14; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37.
Theme: Faith, Hope and Love
Faith, hope and love are theological virtues. They are a foretaste of eternal life. That is to say, they are ‘graces’ or gifts of God. They are freely given to us so that we may know something of heaven on earth. But, we have to dispose ourselves to receive these virtues. If we want to receive the gift of faith, or ‘trust’, as we can think of it, we should ask for it, and we should do all the thinking, acting and praying which is conducive to receiving it with an open and generous heart. The interpenetrating set of relationships between the ‘preparation for’ and the ‘receiving of’ these theological virtues, together with our ‘response to’ them, is the theme for our liturgy on this Fourth Sunday after Trinity.
The first reading from the book of Deuteronomy makes it clear that faith/trust is in our mouths and in our hearts/minds. We simply need to receive it. In other words, it has already been given to us. The difficulty, is receiving this gift! But why is it so difficult to receive it?
Receiving a gift properly requires us to have a certain disposition. We experience the challenge of having this right disposition when, each time that we are given a gift, we are not able to properly receive it. In order to receive a gift properly, we require self-knowledge, but self-knowledge, for most of us, at least, does not come so easily. It takes time. Moreover, it usually requires us to have travelled on a long and difficult journey with the taking of numerous wrong turns to have discovered this truth about ourselves. Such a truth is the word of faith or trust planted like a seed in our mouths and hearts by the Lord. It sets us free from hostility to our neighbour, so that we may become good Samaritans for others.
In the second reading, we have the full triumvirate of theological virtues presented to us in a wonderful cascade of greetings from St Paul to the community in Colossae: “faith in Christ Jesus, the love for all the saints, and the hope stored up in heaven.” This reading, taken from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, is a warm greeting to the Christian community in Colossae. It provides us with a wonderful example of a compassionate church living, during New Testament times, in a large Jewish city in the Lycus valley of central Turkey.
In this reading, we learn of Paul’s helper, Epaphras, who may have evangelized the community on Paul’s behalf, and Timothy, whom Paul had mentored, and was now his faithful friend and co-author of the Letter to the Colossians. Paul and Timothy both wish the community to be made strong with the strength that comes from the glorious power of the Lord, so that they are able to endure all that comes at them (and much was indeed thrown at them in the devastating earthquake that hit the region in the 60s, which is the time that Paul and Timothy are writing to them). This earthquake left the area facing real hardships; and hardships that the region never properly recovered from.
In such circumstances, Paul and Timothy thank God for the theological virtues of the Colossae, which will bear fruit in every good work, and which will help to prepare the way for a growth in the knowledge of God amongst the community. Such preparation for the reception of the virtues would have aided the Colossae in coping with hardships.
In the Gospel reading, it is the parable of the good Samaritan, which enlightens us as to the interrelationships between ‘preparation’ (or the disposition required to receive properly), ‘reception’ and our ‘response’ to the theological virtues. Here a lawyer poses a question to Jesus about the ‘preparation’, or ‘disposition’ required, for the proper ‘reception’ and generous ‘response’ to the theological virtues: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” As Jesus gives the answer, we should listen to it carefully. So, let us examine what Jesus says to the lawyer.
Jesus begins by asking what is written in the law. This means that the preparation or disposition required in order to properly receive the eternal life of the virtues is the faithful completion of the commandments. If we do this, we will live. But who does Jesus mean by the ‘we’, here? That is the specific aspect of the question which this parable of the good Samaritan is meant to address.
The answer given by Jesus is that the ‘we’, in question, is the outcast, the Samaritan, the one who is not a full member of the Jewish community, who in fact probably occupies a somewhat marginal relationship to the Jewish community. Applied to us, this means that when we realize that we are sinners, we can take it that the preparation to receive the gift of eternal life is underway in us. It is the one who knows themselves to be unworthy who is following God’s law.
This preparation forges in us the disposition required to properly receive the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. When this work is accomplished, such a person is able to receive the virtues. This then allows that person to respond, in the correct manner, to the one who has been left for half-dead on the road down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Then the good Samaritan naturally arises in us through God’s grace.
In the parable, the good Samaritan becomes the paragon of virtue for the lawyer, and indeed for all of us to imitate, if we are to truly desire to inherit eternal life. Coming to know one’s own self as unworthy, is the true preparation required to receive the gift of eternal life from the Lord.
However, the question which this instruction of Jesus poses to us is: are we desiring eternal life? This is a question for each and every one of us, who have been baptized, since, like the man going down on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; along the road, we too may have fallen into the hands of brigands who have filled our minds and hearts with all kinds of illusions about life. For this reason, it is good to examine ourselves as to whether the faith that we have received through our baptisms has become defiled by other ideas not originating from the Holy Spirit?
So, as we sink into this hot summer period, and do what we can to manage with the higher daily temperatures, let us deepen our exercise of self-examination, so that we may discover afresh, as our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy proclaims, that the word is very near to us, it is in our mouths and hearts, if only we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the hearts/minds of love to perceive.
Through exercises of self-examination, we prepare ourselves to receive the cool and gentle breezes which refresh us with the gift of eternal life. Then, once these begin to blow over us, we will come to better understand that we have nothing to offer others than the shelter of the good Samaritan for all who have fallen into the hands of brigands on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.