Loving Our Neighbors

Reading: Luke 10:25-37

The lawyer's question seems straightforward: "Who is my neighbor?" But Jesus responds with a story that shatters comfortable categories and challenges us to reimagine love itself.

The Good Samaritan parable isn't just about helping people in need—it's about crossing boundaries that society deems uncrossable. Samaritans and Jews despised each other, yet Jesus makes the despised Samaritan the hero. The religious leaders, who should have embodied compassion, walk by. But the outsider stops, tends wounds, and pays for ongoing care.

This radical neighborliness characterized the early Christian community. They didn't just care for their own—they extended family-level love to society's outcasts. Roman emperors hated Christians precisely because their inclusive love threatened the empire's hierarchical system. When Christians cared for plague victims, welcomed slaves as equals, and elevated women, they demonstrated an alternative way of organizing human relationships.

Loving our neighbors today means more than random acts of kindness. It means seeing every person as worthy of the love that God has shown us. It means crossing social, racial, economic, and political divides to offer practical help. It means using our resources—time, money, influence, skills—to address real needs in our communities.

The question isn't "Who qualifies as my neighbor?" but "To whom can I be a neighbor?" This shift transforms us from gatekeepers to bridge-builders, from judges to healers, from consumers to contributors.

Reflection Question: Who in your community do you find it most difficult to see as your neighbor? What practical steps could you take to show Christ's love to someone outside your usual circle of concern?

Action Step: Reach out to someone you normally wouldn't interact with—across racial, economic, or ideological lines—and look for a way to serve them or address a need they have, expecting nothing in return.

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer