Who Is My Neighbor?

Who Is My Neighbor?

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a Baptist pastor from Mississippi named Jim described something that changed him permanently. A mosque in his town had organized a cooking and supply operation for displaced residents. 'I had to cross the street to get supplies for our church's relief effort from people my theology said were separated from God,' he said. 'And I found the most genuinely compassionate people I had met in the crisis. It broke some categories.' He said: 'Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan to break categories. It keeps breaking them, every generation, in every crisis, if we let it.'

The parable of the Good Samaritan is so familiar that we risk losing its shock value. The Samaritan was the despised other — ethnically, religiously, and socially rejected by the Jewish audience. A priest and a Levite — the religious professionals, the theologically correct — both passed by. The despised outsider stopped, touched the wounded man, paid his bills, and committed to his ongoing care. Jesus' closing question — 'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor?' — reframes the original question entirely. The lawyer asked 'Who is my neighbor?' expecting to define the edges of obligation. Jesus answers with a story that makes the boundary-drawer into the recipient of mercy and the despised outsider into the model. Being a neighbor is not a category; it is a posture. It is what you do when you encounter human need.