How Close is My Neighbour?

Luke 10:25-37

Pentecost 5, July 13, 2025

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“How Close is My Neighbour?”

On the last day of General Synod, I met a naked man.  He was standing on the sidewalk at 7 o’clock in the morning.  Most of the delegates from our diocese of New Westminster were staying at a hotel about 2 blocks from the convention centre in downtown London, Ontario.  Downtown London is like downtown New Westminster: it’s a mix of storefronts (some empty), small restaurants, hotels, and services.  People on the streets included commuters, 300 visiting Anglicans from across Canada, and a sizeable proportion of people experiencing homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues.  Next door to our hotel was a 24 hour shelter.  In the evenings, our delegates walked back in pairs as a common-sense safety measure, past the crack circles that spilled onto the road in the sultry summer heat.  We heard fights and sirens at night but because most of our time was spent in an air-conditioned conference hall, didn’t have a lot of interactions with individuals.  Until the Sunday morning, when I headed over to the conference centre for an early breakfast.  There he was outside the front doors: motionless, looking down at the ground, not a stitch of clothing on.  Sweat already dripping down his body from the early sun. A thin, frightening, vulnerable, and strangely beautiful human.  The hotel staff and the shelter staff next door either hadn’t noticed or reacted to the situation.  Maybe for them this was a usual occurrence.  While another delegate coming down the street phoned for emergency services, I tried to ask him a couple of questions, but he was silent.  My colleague had to leave for a meeting, so I hovered at what I considered a safe distance until an ambulance arrived to assist.  My relief at being able to hand him over made me wonder: how close am I willing to get to my neighbour?

Jesus’ familiar parable is one that we call “the Good Samaritan”.  Yes, the foreigner is the unexpected person who shows mercy by stopping to help the injured man.  But the other two are not devoid of human compassion.  We do not call it “the Parable of The Bad Priest and Official”.  But they do not show mercy.  They think they are following the rules of their faith.  Both of them are on their way up to Jerusalem, which means they have responsibilities to perform in the Temple.  Others are relying on them showing up in time for their duties- duties they would not be able to fulfill if they became ritually impure by touching a bleeding or dead body.  We don’t know what was going on inside their heads when they were confronted by the person who had been left half-dead on the road.  Maybe they do not see it as their role to get involved.  Doesn’t that go through your mind sometimes when you see something happening?  “That’s not my responsibility.”  “I’m not trained to deal with that.”  Or maybe they are afraid of getting hurt, or delayed, or having a burden put on them that reaches past the present moment.  We may think “if I get involved now, there will be a future commitment and cost.”  So we take from our faith the rules that seem to allow us to avoid an unwanted encounter and use them as an excuse.  We want to have conditions on what we will offer to do.  We want to choose for ourselves who our neighbour will be.

This is why the lawyer tries to justify himself.  His first question to Jesus is “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer, as he himself quotes back to our Lord, is the Great Commandment.  Love God, and your neighbour as yourself.  Then he asks, “who is my neighbour?” He wants clear limits on what God is asking of him.  But by the end of the parable, he realizes that the tricky bit is mercy.  It’s easy to love those who love you.  To be close to your dearest.  What about those who are near but not dear?  The ones who haven’t proven that they are worthy of your time or effort or support?  The parable of the good Samaritan is about the willingness of a person who does not have kinship ties, nor business associations, nor prior relationship to the one who needed help.  There is no “deserving” here.  The injured person is a neighbour not because he lives in the house next door but because he is the one within sight and touch at this moment.  He is close by: the definition of the word neighbour.  When someone is close, you have a choice.  You can reach out to help, or you can pretend not to see and avoid by walking around.   

The truth is that there is no way to justify ourselves, to make ourselves blameless.  Our conscience may signal what is right or what is wrong in a situation.  We may even act accordingly.  But what people do always falls short of God’s mercy.   The prophet Amos describes God’s law as the plumb-line, the standard against which everything else has to be measured.  People fail spectacularly when they try to follow the rules without remembering that love is the standard.  The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the living proof of God’s love.  Through him, we are justified in faith.  We are put right with God so that we can go and do likewise by loving our neighbour.

In the story, Jesus invites us to imagine our response to those who are near us.  I find this challenging in the context of our world.  We get bombarded by human needs at every turn, both in the news and on our streets.  So many situations are brought near through the news.  So many individuals are brought into contact with us through social media.  It is overwhelming and naïve to think we can help everyone.  Still, there are choices to make about who and where to put effort.  Part of our practice may be to focus on the person in front of us as a child of God.  Not a need, not an illness to be cured, not an embarrassment or an irritation or a threat to a way of life.  From there, it is up to us how close we are willing to get to our neighbour.