Who Is My Neighbor?


“The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death. They boasted of injuries and wore their scars with pride, and they reserved their special admiration for mutilation: a boy with a finger missing could be their king. They loved violence; they would run miles to see bloodshed; and they never missed a hanging.”
Ken Follet, The Pillars of the Earth


When you listen to that you could apply most of it to our times and say it accurately describes the attitude and character of many contemporary youth raised on Call of Duty and other violent video games. They’ve grown used to violence and cultivated a dismissive attitude and disdain for most forms of authority. We shake our heads at this generation and wistfully remember what it is was like when we were kids.

Problem is, the boys described by Follet lived in the year 1123 – they predate our own year by close to a thousand years. Those were the “old days,” although clearly not all was good about them. It as always been thus to some degree, whether we are talking about the present year, or the 1970’s or the 1940’s and ‘50’s. We create a skewed memory of a better, simpler time. But human beings are human beings. In a time closer to 2010, 1964 to be exact, New York City, a place infamous for its violent crime, was shocked by the murder of a 28 year old woman named Kitty Genovese. What was shocking about her murder was that it happened in front of her own apartment building, in the presence of multiple witnesses, none of whom cried out for help or sought to stop the violence in any way. The indifference of the bystanders came to be known as “the bystander effect” or “the Genovese Syndrome.”

A young woman was killed and people watched it out their windows, but nobody lifted a hand to help.


“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10.30


Did anyone see it? Yes, the narrator says. . .

“By chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on by the other side.”

Before we try to answer why the priest ignored the man in trouble, it may be helpful to consider a little of the physical context. William Barclay says that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a notoriously dangerous road. The road traversed the mountains around Jerusalem to the relative coastal area of Jericho in a short distance, dropping 3,600 feet in twenty miles. It was steep, narrow and rocky; full of canyons and sudden dropoffs. It was geographically forbidding. But it was dangerous in a still more deadly way. It was the hunting grounds for many criminals and outlaw bands. It was so bad it garnered the nickname “the Bloody Way” and was called that for five hundred more years. If one had to travel that way, you did it in groups for protection. No one in their right mind traveled it alone. It’s like you know you don’t walk around certain parts of a city after dark by yourself. It’s just not done. Everyone knows this.

And so as Jesus told this crime story about a traveler on the Jerusalem to Jericho road, his listeners would immediately think, “Fool.” He deserves what he gets.

Jesus knows all this of course. It’s his story. He could have picked a more righteous and sympathetic victim just as he could have picked a more popular hero. But he didn’t. Why? Remember what prompted the story in the first place. An expert on the law asks Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer is testing Jesus. He wants to show his superiority over the rabbi. He wants to “justify himself.” The lawyer is not really interested in living a life that questions his selfishness. You can hear it in the follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?” He is like many who just want to be congratulated for their right opinions.

But Jesus has other ideas. The priest in the story is obviously not excused simply because the victim had been foolish, likewise the Levite in the story. The hero of Jesus story is an anti-hero in the eyes of his Jewish audience – this not so special Samaritan, this “certain Samaritan” fulfills the great commandments of God to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Who is my neighbor? The Samaritan demonstrates Jesus teaching that our neighbor is not just our friends, our family, or our racial tribe.

My neighbor is anyone who needs me.

So who is your neighbor? Is it just the people you like to hang around? Is it a very close and closed off social network into which you will allow no others to enter? Have we, like the lawyer questioning Jesus, separated our good beliefs from any responsibility in our neighborhood and town? Will we help only those people we think deserve our help?

Timothy Keller says that when people ask him, “How can I become a Christian?” he answers, “It takes two things and a third.” The two things are repentance and faith. The third thing is not so much a separate thing but how you live out the first two things. You can’t just think or believe in repentance and faith, it must be lived out individually and in community. Everything in the New Testament indicates that a person must confirm their individual faith decision with the public and communal acts of baptism and life in a community of faith. And the church is the community of faith living in the community of our neighborhoods and towns. The church isn’t the building. It’s the living, breathing witness of the believers in every locale. Remember the test of spiritual growth – are you loving more these days? Is your heart growing bigger? Are your arms open wider toward others, or are they wrapped around yourself? Do you have room for anyone else in your life?

This group of people we call the church is a great but underutilized asset. We can be a force in our community. Our neighbors need us. We can do great good for them. We can make our world a better place.

But as much as our neighbors need us, we need them more. As we live and serve in our community do you know who we’re going to meet? Jesus, buddy, we’re gonna meet Jesus.

Let’s start by meeting our neighbors: arrange people into neighborhood groups.