Who is MY Neighbor?

“Who is my neighbor?”  That’s the question the lawyer asks In Luke 10:25-37.

My wife found an illustration of a Plover Blackbird, “Toothpick Bird” standing in the gaping mouth of a crocodile.  The bird lives in peace with the crocodile, because of a symbiotic relationship.  “Symbiotic” may be another name for “neighbor.”  The Toothpick Bird picks the crocodiles mouth clean of leeches which congregate in the mouth of the croc while it is in the water.

In Jesus’ telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, he opens to us a concept of neighbor which has no boundaries.  For instance, I went on the Doctors without Borders website yesterday.  I found articles related to several peoples who are in need of neighbors without borders.  They mention Haiti and the continuing difficulties of those who became refugees as the result of the earthquakes.  In Africa, Niger and Chad have a crisis in nutrition.  Woman and children were injured in Somalia by shelling.  The challenge in southern Sudan is keeping babies alive.  South Africa may be in the world’s eye because of the World Cup, but how much attention is being paid to the more important crisis of HIV/Aids?  In Kyrgyzstan mistrust is rampant.  Greece routinely detains irregular migrants and those seeking asylum.  Most are Afghans or Iraqis.

Daily I walk in a cemetery where one lone tombstone occupies a large segment of the grounds.  The worn stone is that of a man who committed suicide before the 20^th century.  One such stone stands alone in the cemetery of a church I served.  He was a druggist.  During an economic depression in 1890’s he took his life.  His descendants told me that not only was buried without any neighbors, but that the church also unneighbored his widow.

Sometimes the challenge to being a neighbor extends to our own family, when a child sires or gives birth to a child without benefit of marriage.  It takes time to work through how we will be neighbor to our own son or daughter.

When a neighbor acts in an unneighborly manner tossing a child’s toy truck into his trash can because two wheels were sitting on his driveway, how am I to still regard him as my neighbor?

The first congregation I served had an altar with a statue of Jesus.  One woman told a friend of mine, that she couldn’t stand the people in the church, but loved the figure of Jesus on the altar.

The Missouri Synod goes into convention within days.  The synod president has been unneighbored by pastors who only regard those with whom they are “likeminded” as themselves worthy of neighborliness.

But the challenge of the gospel lesson for this weekend is not just to point out the faults of others, but how, in the light of God regarding us as his neighbors to the point of His own Son’s life, am I a neighbor even to those who would unneighbor me?