I want to focus on a passage of Scripture found in
More specifically, my focus is on the question, “Who is my neighbor?” It’s an important question, one that has weighed heavily on my mind for many years. I’m convinced that if we attempt to answer this question only from the vantage point of our own predominant cultural experience, we will miss its many implications for how we should live our lives as Christians.
In this passage, an expert in Jewish law asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, very aware of who He is dealing with, responds in essence, “Why are you asking Me? You’re a teacher. You’re an expert in the law. You’ve memorized the first five books of the Old Testament. You ought to know.”
Here Jesus demonstrates a very useful teaching technique. Instead of just answering the question, He responds in a way that engages the inquisitor to facilitate thinking.
The expert gives a good answer: “‘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 neighbor as yourself.'” Jesus acknowledges that the expert has answered correctly. Then He adds, “Do this, and you will live.”
When the expert in the law asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus tells a story. It’s the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has served as the core of my work in urban ministry during the past three decades.
Our salvation is not based on our own righteousness but on Jesus’ righteousness. This does not mean we shouldn’t care about how we live as Christians. In fact, I think we should care even more. That is, in response to Jesus’ sacrificial love, we ought to be highly motivated to live as Jesus would have us live.
At the church I have served for more than 30 years, we have strived to do ministry based on the strong conviction that those who would follow Christ are those who do their best to love their neighbors as themselves. The small group of high school kids who had the idea of starting this church was motivated by the goal of loving their neighborhood.
All the ministries that through the years have emerged from Lawndale Community Church—including the health center, the development corporation and various programs for youth, those struggling with addiction and others—are rooted in the goal of loving our neighbors.
How can we follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors if we don’t know who our neighbors are?
In my book Who Is My Neighbor?, each chapter focuses on some trait or characteristic that I hope will bring us to a truer understanding of who our neighbors are. The following sample illustrates one of these characteristics.
My Neighbor Is Someone Nobody Wants to Help
Because he was in a state of total helplessness, we safely can assume the man who’d been beaten and left to die on the side of the road was hoping and praying someone would come by to help. We can assume he was praying for the right person to stop—someone who would come to his aid, not someone intent on exploiting him further, perhaps by finding out if he had anything left to steal.
Imagine how relieved the beaten man must have felt when he saw, of all people, a priest approaching. He must have thought his prayers had been answered. Perhaps he was thinking that for the rest of his earthly days he would have this wonderful testimony about how during a time of great vulnerability (to say the least), he prayed, and his prayers were answered almost instantly. Whatever joy he felt evaporated quickly when the priest simply moved to the other side of the road and kept walking.
A Levite, another religious leader, was also high on the list of people the man was hoping would find him. In fact, maybe the Levite was in an even better position than the priest to stop and help. The priest may have been in a rush, on his way to carry out whatever priestly duties were on the docket for the day; but surely the Levite would stop. After all, isn’t that what people of faith are supposed to do?
We certainly can understand why the man would be thinking this way. Imagine being in a position of total helplessness and vulnerability. Assuming you were even able to pray, you most likely would pray something such as, “God, please send my pastor by to help me. If not the pastor, I’ll settle for a deacon or an outreach counselor from the church or even a Sunday School teacher. I’ll take anyone from the church.”
A short time later, your pastor or a deacon comes into view. You shout as loudly as you can, “Praise the Lord! Thank You, Jesus! My prayer’s been answered.” Then the person you were praying would come by makes a quick assessment of the situation and decides to move on, leaving you perplexed, disillusioned and still in need of aid. This is exactly what the Levite did. He didn’t want to get involved.
Our neighbors are those nobody—religious people included—wants to help.
Why Do Some People Help While Others Don’t?
Why do those who have the opportunity decide not to stop to help other people? On a related note, why do some people get help while others don’t?
I have thought about this question a lot in the years following Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Many times, I’ve looked at my own neighborhood of North Lawndale and imagined what it would be like to have every single building either wiped out or damaged so severely that it had to be torn down.
Several months after the Katrina disaster, violence erupted again in the Middle East. Hezbollah had set up headquarters in Lebanon and started bombing Israel, which bombed back. The United States had a number of its citizens in Lebanon at the time.
The media showed footage of huge cruise ships worth millions of dollars sent by the United States to Lebanon to get our citizens out of the country and away from danger. I could not help but contrast this with the image of a rowboat going up and down the flooded streets of New Orleans in a desperate effort to rescue people from rooftops. Some of these people had to wait for several days for help to arrive.
My point is that with Katrina there was some effort put forth to come to the aid of people in need, but it was far from the urgent, no-holds-barred, whatever-it-takes effort our country made to rescue its wealthy citizens from danger in Lebanon. Some people get help; others don’t.
Modern-Day Lepers
In Jesus’ day, lepers were among those who could not count on any help from the government or society. In fact, lepers didn’t even get to live in their area of choice. They were required to live with other lepers in colonies on the outskirts of town. According to the law, whenever lepers came into an area where there were other people, they had to shout, “Leper! Leper! Unclean! Unclean!” One can only imagine the embarrassment associated with such a legal requirement.
The modern leper might be the person who tests positive for AIDS. Can you imagine somebody who is HIV-positive being required upon entering the church to announce, “HIV-positive! I’ve got AIDS! AIDS person walking in!”
Let’s be honest and admit that although we don’t ask people to announce their afflictions, our society has its ways of keeping people with AIDS at a distance. There have been cases in which doctors, nurses, schoolteachers and others have made it clear they don’t want people with AIDS in their presence. Sometimes the discrimination is overt; more often than not, it is subtle.
Maybe the modern leper is the person on the street who’s addicted to alcohol or who can’t kick a drug habit. Maybe it’s those who have been on and off drugs more times than they can count, so many times that people in a position to help have given up trying. Maybe it’s a person known as an ex-convict, someone who’s just gotten out of prison.
What if former inmates were required to proclaim, “Ex-con! Ex-con! I’ve been to prison!” Again, we don’t require this, but we do treat them differently. Even though these people have paid their debts to society, most businesses won’t give them jobs; and most people don’t want them living in their neighborhoods.
Maybe it’s the person with the bad reputation—someone who lives in the wrong part of town or hangs out with the wrong kind of people. We are tempted to ignore these people; if they need help, we look the other way.
Maybe the modern leper is the person who is just plain annoying. Most of us know someone like this—somebody who gets on your last nerve. This person gets on everyone else’s last nerve, too, so you know it’s not just you who feels that way.
Who will come to the aid of these people when the world has beaten them up, cast them to the side and refused to help? I hope the answer to this question is you.
Founding Pastor, Lawndale Community Church; President, Christian Community Development Association. This church founded the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, which facilitates economic development, education and housing. The church also founded a health center that sees more than 150,000 patients a year. For more see: LawndaleChurch.org.
This article is adapted from Gordon’s book Who Is My Neighbor? with permission from Regal/Gospel Light.
