How to Be a Neighbor

The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.” —Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

One of the winter activities our family enjoyed pre-COVID was what we called Soup Saturdays. We’d put out a blanket invitation to friends and neighbors, make a couple of kinds of soup, and have an open door every Saturday in February. It fostered many good conversations during a month when everyone mostly stayed home and hibernated, bored.

For us introverts, it was less intimidating than specific invites to a dinner or party. We struggle with being good neighbors because we’re not great at putting ourselves out there. This low-key evening we could handle. It was our way to learn more about people and about being good friends and neighbors.

Jesus told a parable about neighboring that is so well known, we name hospitals and laws after it. When an expert in the Law approaches him, wondering how to gain eternal life, Jesus asks what the man thinks. Then he affirms that what the man says—love God and neighbor—is the right answer. Eventually, though, the lawyer wants to narrow things a bit and asks, “Well, who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the story of the Good Samaritan.

You probably know the story of the traveler beaten and left to die on a roadside and the Samaritan man who cares for him, at great cost to himself, rather than pretend he doesn’t exist (Luke 10:25-37). The Samaritan is the last person Jesus’s audience expects to help. He’s a second-class citizen, despised and rejected because of his mixed race and his religion. He isn’t neighbor material.

We assume we know the point. We know this story so well, we don’t pay close attention. Jesus is answering the question by telling the legal expert—and us—that everyone is our neighbor. This assumption, however, is wrong.

First, to understand the story, we have to understand its setting. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was renowned as a dangerous place, a haven for thieves, who could hide in caves and attack passersby. Jesus chooses this “rough neighborhood” for a reason. He’s intentionally giving the legal expert an out. What will the first thought in his mind be?

What was the victim doing there? Why was he alone? Why didn’t he take better care? If the expert in the Law Jesus is conversing with can blame the victim for his own choices, he can decide who deserves to be called “neighbor.” This is what the text tells us the expert wants to do. He doesn’t ask who his neighbor is out of curiosity. He asks in order to narrow his liability and to show that he is already a good person doing good things. “But he wanted to justify himself,” Scripture says (Luke 10:29 NIV).

We also can be good at blaming the victim so we don’t have to have mercy on some neighbors. What was she wearing? How much did she have to drink? Why didn’t she come forward before now? What did he do to provoke it? Why didn’t he just obey orders? Why don’t they come legally? The questions are remarkably like those of the expert who wants to get out of caring for his neighbor.

The funny thing is, Jesus never answers the man’s question. Instead, he forces the man to answer Jesus’s question. (Jesus does this a lot.) “Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man?” he asks. He turns the assumption upside down. He isn’t telling us who our neighbor is. He doesn’t want to give us any room for choosing who deserves to be our neighbor. He leaves no option for cutting down the list to our preferred choices because he doesn’t allow us to even make a list.

Instead, he asks the expert, and us, “Do you act like a neighbor?”

Are you the kind of a person who is a neighbor? Or are you the kind of person who decides who is and isn’t your neighbor? It’s a completely different question with completely different implications.

While the expert is trying to choose who is deserving of his neighborliness, Jesus is asking him if he knows what it even means to “‘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” (Luke 10:27). Because if the expert did know, he wouldn’t have asked who his neighbor was. He’d just be a neighbor to anyone in his path. Like the Samaritan.

My husband and I aren’t the best of neighbors. We don’t even like some of our actual neighbors. We’re socially awkward and prefer quiet nights in our house. We stayed home alone before it was cool. Yet when the invites for Soup Saturday went out, we didn’t discuss whether people deserved to be invited. We just invited the whole street and anyone else we could think of. It was a standing invitation for four weeks, and we never knew who would show up. Sometimes it was one friend; sometimes it was fifteen college students. What we did know was that, for that week, those people were the ones God had placed on our path as neighbors.

That’s the thing about the Samaritan: He doesn’t seek out heroics. He goes about his day, sees someone in need, and chooses to be a neighbor. Mercy is his automatic response, not an option if the person on the road deserves it. It never occurs to him to narrow the scope of who he must show kindness to. Whoever is there is the right person.

Whoever is in front of us: on social media, in the news, at work, at school, or on the HOA email chain—they’re the neighbor God has put there for that moment. We might not like them or their choices. We might be next door or across the country. Are we the kind of person who acts like a neighbor? If so, we choose mercy. With neighborliness in short supply, maybe being a neighbor is a good way to begin a new year.

Jill Richardson is a writer, speaker, pastor, mom of three, and author of five books. She likes to travel, grow flowers, read Tolkien, and research her next project. She believes in Jesus, grace, restoration, kindness, justice, and dark chocolate. Her passion is partnering with the next generation of faith. Jill blogs at jillmrichardson.com.