Who Is My Neighbour?
Have you ever watched the soap opera Neighbours? I admit to once being a regular viewer. It was hardly edifying; yet its sense of community was very appealing.
Jesus is clear that it’s crucial to love our neighbours but do we actually do it? He instructs us to:
‘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 ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).
Trying to justify ourselves – are we too busy?
As Christians, we have a plethora of bible studies and church meetings to go to. Whilst intrinsically good, it can be easy to prioritize these to the extent that we neglect those around us. When Jesus is asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’ by a lawyer ‘trying to justify himself,’ he tells the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). At times I have certainly behaved more like the men who walk past the other in need. Christine Caine highlights this when she says:
‘As I read the story I felt as though I was more like the Levite and the priest who were so busy going to their next religious meeting that they walked past the very person they were called to reach. They saw the wounded man as an interruption to their ministry, not as the object of their ministry.’
How often do we try to reason away the promptings of God, making excuses for not reaching out? It’s messy and can feel socially awkward, but as Beth Moore writes:
‘Sometimes good is best when the law of the heart eclipses the law of the land. Stepping across a boundary to help is sometimes our first introduction to the commonality of humanity on the other side.’
I often wonder how Jesus would respond when encountering homeless people on the streets. The problem is complex. What does it look like to be a ‘neighbour’ in this situation? Should we stop every time to chat and offer them something? Is it enough to walk on by and pray for them? These are hard questions to grapple with.
Do we know our literal next-door neighbours?
We live in a time when the potential for loneliness is enormous. I recently heard of an elderly man living on a housing estate nearby who was the only person to attend his wife’s funeral. The thought of nobody attending his is heart wrenching. In their recent book The Art of Neighboring, Pathak and Runyon challenge us to love our literal neighbours:
‘Jesus gave his followers an incredible blueprint to engage the entire world in the most organic way imaginable, but there’s only one problem. Hardly anyone is doing it.’
How do we interact with our neighbours?
As we identified earlier, reducing our schedules in order to make time for others may be necessary. As John Ortberg says:
‘Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.’
Living life to the full
It’s interesting that after the two instructions to love, Jesus says ‘do this and you will live’ (Luke 10:28). We know that eternal life is not earned through our doing, so perhaps He is referring to quality of life (see John 11:25)?
Resources:
New Wine Magazine (ed) Mark Melluish
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
Jesus The One And Only by Beth Moore
The Art of Neighboring by Pathak and Runyon
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