Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Our readings today are concerned with interpretation. The phrase “it is not in heaven” from Deuteronomy (30:12) served as a kind of watch-word for the ancient rabbis. There is a famous story in the Talmud of a discussion concerning proper ritualistic behavior. Rabbi Eleazar called forth a series of miracles and finally a heavenly voice to prove his interpretation was the correct one. To which Rabbi Joshua replied that he was not impressed: “We pay no attention to heavenly voices,” he retorted. “It is not in heaven that you should say, Who will go up to heaven for us and bring it down to us so that we can hear it and do it?” (Deut. 30:12).

As noted by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, “Once the Torah had been given at Sinai, it was delivered into the people’s safekeeping to interpret and apply according to their best understanding, within the complex context of the ever-changing human condition.”

When we turn to the gospel selection, we encounter a situation where a lawyer engages Jesus in a discussion of the Torah. Seeking to put Jesus to the test he asks what he must do to attain eternal life. To which Jesus responds, in true rabbinic fashion, with another question: “What is written in the Torah? How do you read?” The lawyer responds with a combination of two Torah passages; one from Deuteronomy (6:5) and the other from Leviticus (19:18): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus commends the lawyer for his answer and tells him to observe the commandment and he shall have life.

Not yet satisfied, the lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” In response Jesus offers an interpretation of the Leviticus passage via a parable in which the neighbor is depicted as an enemy who shows mercy to the Jew who fell among robbers. Jesus takes advantage of the fact that the Hebrew alphabet does not have vowels. The Hebrew for neighbor and one who does evil share the same consonants. The question Jesus posed to the lawyer was “how do you read?” In other words – how do you pronounce the consonants? What vowel do you use?

Jesus read ro’ (pronounced ro-ah; evil one or enemy) not re’ (pronounced rey-ah; near one or neighbor), making the parable shocking. The neighbor turns out to be the one regarded as an enemy by Jews of Jesus’ day.

As I reread this parable in the year of our lord of 2025, I find myself struggling to comprehend the paradoxical relationship between neighbor and enemy revealed in Jesus’s challenging interpretation of Leviticus 19:18. The one who shows himself to be neighbor is the one regarded as an enemy. In this polarized world, how would I react to one I regarded as an enemy acting as a neighbor showing me mercy? If only it was as simple as the change of a vowel!