Luke 10:29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
As a child, my neighbours were mostly folks who were African-American and Protestant, just like me.
I now live in a neighbourhood full of various ethnicities and faiths. My understanding of who my neighbours are has changed.
The lawyer who challenges Jesus before the parable of the good Samaritan represents the strong tribal sensibility of biblical societies. For the lawyer, neighbours are fellow Jews, not Samaritans.
At the end of the story, Jesus changes the lawyer’s question by asking if the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan in the story was a neighbour. That is, who was the true neighbour? The parable’s true heart is found in Leviticus 19:34: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
God has created all people, and in God’s neighborhood tribal divisions are irrelevant and our neighbors are all of God’s people, whether or not they look, act, or believe as we do.
MOVING FORWARD: Pray for your neighbours, even the grumpy ones.
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