Making The Neighborhood Larger

We live in a world that is more divided than any time in recent memory. We’re told that certain lives matter more or less than others. We are told that our individual freedoms matter more than the health and safety and property of those that aren’t part of our group. Certain people in this world are our neighbors and we would do anything to help them. Others are not our neighbors and they deserve what’s coming to them. This is not the way. The Parable of the Good Samaritan was given in response to a man’s desire to divide the world into neighbors and enemies. It was given to a man who wanted to put limits on mercy and kindness. God’s mercy and His kindness are infinite. Everyone is our neighbor. When we see someone beaten up on the side of the road, we have two choices. We can check their voting records and their stance on gun rights or abortion and then decide if they deserve our help. Or we can recognize that they are a person that is beat up on the side of the road, and we can remember all of the times when we’ve been beaten up and left on the side of the road, waiting, hoping, praying for someone to stop by and help us. We can remember all of the priests and the Levites who passed by on the other side, and how horrible that felt and how we had become more and more convinced that help would never come for us, that we had no neighbors left in the world who would love us. And we can remember above all, that what we have done to the least of these, to the lowest, the most hated and despised, we have only done it unto God. Christ, a sinless man, has come to the side of each and every sinner, has braved the contact of the unclean, and has taken upon himself our sins and our wounds so that He may know how to help us. He has made himself just as bloody and lost and hopeless, so that together we can be cleansed and healed and saved. When we go out and be the Good Samaritan, when we take upon us the wounds of those whom we may despise and who may despise us, we become like the Savior. We understand a little of how to help them. And once we get past the identities of those we are saving, we realize that they are just as lost and confused and broken as we are, just as desperate in their need for a loving neighbor as we are. And the person we help can come to see past our identity and recognize that despite differences in political opinion, or religious ideology, we are neighbors. God invites us to make our neighborhoods larger. God invites us to include every single person on this Earth in our neighborhood.