Biography
Vinay Samuel graduated from seminary in India and pursued doctoral studies in England. As one of the founders of the Bridge Foundation, he and his family are deeply committed to the poor. His ministry reaches people with education, welfare, vocational training and long-term employment through development of enterprises among the poor. He recently replaced John Stott as General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Community. He lives with his wife and four children in Bangalore, South India. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Who is My Neighbor?" 
I will read to you from the Bible passage which forms the basis of my reflections. It is the story of the Good Samaritan, found in the gospel according to St. Luke, Chapter 10, beginning to read at the 25th verse.

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?" And he answered, "You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, `Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

I live in a deprived area which, in the recent past, has been gentrified, more middle-class people moving in. This past September 12th, between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., nearly 2,200 families were shifted from the worst slum in my city of Bangalore in South India and literally dumped into our neighborhood, 500 yards from where we live. There was, of course, a chorus of protests. People said, "We don't want them here. They can't possibly be our neighbors." Our own church, which had grown in this area during this period, had to come to terms with these new neighbors. "How do we respond and react as Christians?" we asked. We turned to the Bible and tried to learn from it what God would have us do. My message this evening summarizes those reflections from God's word.

The neighbor has a key place in the teaching of our Lord Jesus, especially in the teaching concerning our relationship with God himself. In Mark chapter 12, we have a very interesting story which Jesus tells. In fact it is an incident in the life of Jesus, when a scribe comes to Jesus and asks him, "Tell me, Jesus, which is the greatest commandment?" And Jesus says, "The first is to love God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength," Quoting, of course, from Deuteronomy 6:5. "And then the second is to love your neighbor as yourself," says Jesus, quoting from another verse, Leviticus 19:18.

The scribe who asked the questions repeats the answer back, but rephrases them, and says: "Love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus acknowledges that the scribe has identified the true spirit of the commandments. Loving God and loving neighbor are two sides of the same coin. One flows from the other, one expresses the other. Love of neighbor, then, is the yardstick by which we can measure how we love God. In the light of this understanding of our neighbor, our neighbor then becomes vital to our spiritual life as individuals and as communities.

In the Old Testament, the teaching about neighbors came very early to the people of God as they settled in the Promised Land. Preoccupied with their settlement, their security - and rightly so - God reminds them that they have a fundamental responsibility to their neighbors, even when they have to deal with their security first. In Leviticus 19:13-18, the neighbor is, of course, the fellow Israelite. But of what kind? The one whose land happened to be next to yours, the family who was next door, yes. But significantly the teaching of Leviticus reminds us that the neighbor is the blind person, the deaf, the hired servant, the poor or great, the unequal people, the disadvantaged ones. These are the neighbors who are specifically focused on in the teaching to the people who are preoccupied with their own security and their own livelihood.

In the same section the teaching goes further. In fact, in Leviticus 19:34 we are reminded that the neighbor now includes the outsider, the foreigner, the potential enemy. You must not just deal fairly with him, but you must love him as yourself.

Here we have in those very primitive and early times that tremendous teaching that you should love your neighbor really as yourself - a remarkable teaching. Now mind you, this is not a visiting foreigner to whom you can show hospitality for a few hours or a few days, but a resident foreigner among you to be loved as your neighbor, and just as yourself, to be treated not just with respect, but with love. Such teaching was unique at that time among the people. Neighbors were generally of your own race, of your own class, of your own religion.

The people of God were given a new vision, a different vision of who the neighbor really was which enabled them to measure how much they really loved God, and how much they could truly love themselves. And this neighbor was identified as that unequal person, that disadvantaged person, that invisible person, and especially that resident foreigner, the potential threat among them.

The New Testament takes up this teaching. Return now to the teaching of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount the neighbor has a very significant place. In Matthew 5:43-47 where this is recorded, the neighbor here included the enemy. He or she is differentiated from the brother, the member of one's family, even of one's race. It is here that the enemy gets included as the neighbor that we must love, that we must respond to, turn the other cheek to, and by whom we can truly define our own spirituality.

It is in the story of the Good Samaritan we find the fullness of Jesus' teaching on the neighbor. We see here the key issue: How do we identify our neighbor? It is not just the fellow Israelite, our natural neighbors by race, by community, by social standing. Who, then, is our neighbor? That is the question of the lawyer to Jesus. And it's that which we notice here very clearly.

In the story of the Good Samaritan we see the body across the road on the other side. The neighbor is anyone who finds a human being in need on the other side of the road. The priest and the Levite both pass by. (We will not summarize the findings and speculation of scholars about who this priest and Levite represent.) The body on the other side represented a potential threat - a risk, a disruption to the life of those walking on their journeys.

Once the neighbor responded to the body across the road who could forecast what it would involve, how far it would take him? It demanded a commitment without counting the cost.

I've used the New Delhi airport many times. As the taxi drives into the airport there is a high wall and I often wondered what was behind that wall. One day when a plane was late I walked in and discovered that there was only a narrow opening inside. And when I went in I discovered, to my horror, a terrible slum - people living there in abject poverty. None of the dignitaries who use the airport and take limousines to see our heads of state will find these people. The walls make the poor, the neighbor, invisible.

And that is what we do, isn't it? We build our cities, our suburbs, our neighborhoods; we choose who should be our neighbors. We structure our neighborhoods in such a way that we plan who will be our neighbors and who will be left out, who will be a part of it and who will not be a part of it. We decide who will be our neighbors locally, nationally and even internationally. The rest become invisible.

I believe that Jesus was teaching an important, fundamental lesson - that we must seek and find our neighbors. Our neighbors are not just our natural neighbors. They are also the invisible neighbors whom we must seek and find. What does that mean? I believe it means being willing to take risks - risks of crossing frontiers, of going across the boundaries of our chosen neighborhoods.

Yes, of course you choose your neighborhoods. I do too. Crossing the frontiers of our comfortable friends, of our class, of our community and even our country will involve the willingness to be disturbed in our plans, our programs. I can well imagine the priest saying to himself, "I've got a very busy schedule ahead of me, an important program. My diary is full. How can I let that body across the road disrupt all the plans I have in Jericho?" And yet, finding our neighbor demands that we allow ourselves to be disrupted, to take the risk of being changed.

Look at what the Samaritan did. He took the risk. The man's need was clearly a potential threat, but the Samaritan crossed over, he crossed the frontier. He crossed the frontier of fear - a psychological frontier. He crossed the frontier of race - a social and racial frontier. He crossed even a religious frontier - a community frontier. He crossed the road. He went across to the other side. He got involved. He found his neighbor and he loved him. He stayed involved until the man was whole.

Being a neighbor was not confined to a few acts of charity. He didn't just bind him up and say, "Do the best you can, I've done all that I can." It was an act of commitment to bring healing and wholeness, to put the man back on his feet, to bring final restoration, to restore him to his family, to his community, to his society; to restore him to his humanity and therefore to God. That was the commitment of the Samaritan. That was the risk he took. He was willing to commit himself in spite of the disruption to his plans, in spite of the demands that were made upon his life, in spite of the demands that were made upon his resources. He was willing to take the risk!

Loving one's neighbor, finding the true neighbor, requires crossing frontiers, and loving him requires a commitment that is willing to not count the cost, but to give and share all that one has.

But you see, Jesus turns the question from finding our neighbor to being the right neighbor to those God sends us as neighbors. So he turns the question and asks the lawyer, "Who became the right kind of neighbor to the one in need?" The focus is on the lawyer himself. Has he been the right kind of neighbor to those God has already given him, to those in need whom God has brought across his path? Has he gone out to find the invisible neighbor?

The theme of finding our neighbor continues in the scripture, it is not just the theme of the Gospels. It is a teaching which runs as a fine thread in the teaching of Paul and James. In Galatians 5, Paul talks about our fellow believers as our neighbors. In Romans 3:8-10 he talks about all those who come in contact with our lives as our neighbors, and in Romans 15:2 the focus is particularly on the weaker Christian, those who struggle in their faith, those who may be agnostic, those who may not understand, those who are struggling. He says that all these are our neighbors and we must express our love for our neighbors - constantly!

In James 2:8 we have James' own particular concern for the Christian faith to become relevant in society. He describes "loving our neighbor as ourselves" as a Royal Law, the law of the King himself. All the ethical demands of God are summed up in this one law, the love of the neighbor as ourselves.

James speaks of the rich who are our natural neighbors, but then he says, "but also the poor." The Royal Law focuses on the poor. For both Paul and James the poor and the needy should be sought out and made our natural neighbors. Our human inclination is to find people who are like ourselves - of our community, our race, our class, our background - our natural neighbors. Both Paul and James enable us - challenge us - to focus on the invisible neighbors, the poor, the disadvantaged, the unequal people of this world - even crossing frontiers locally, nationally and internationally to discover those neighbors God gives us to enable us to love God as we ought to love.

What then is the relation between neighbor and family? In the teaching of Jesus it is very clear that the family does not take such a significant place. In fact, Jesus tends to focus far more on the neighbor than on the family. Family, often, is seen as that which might even act as a barrier to one's love of god and one's love of neighbor. Therefore the teaching of Jesus is a true corrective to our very just and right preoccupation with the family. Families are our responsibility. Neighbors are our mission, our call to be involved for God in God's work in this world.

So we can then say that the neighbor is essential for defining our love for God, and our love for ourselves and our family. May I then suggest that we need to pause and identify our current neighbors? Who then are your neighbors, my friends? Who do you call neighbors? I believe we should pray and ask God if there are any invisible neighbors who have been walled out from our lives, who have been separated from our lives, and we must ask God that he will open our eyes, that he will give us the courage, the willingness to take the risk to seek and find such neighbors.

We must begin, then, to cross the boundaries of our lives, and start exploring. As we are willing to take the risk, the Holy Spirit of God will help us to take those hesitant, but I hope courageous, steps of risk to find those invisible neighbors, those disadvantaged people. In loving them we will begin to discover what it truly means to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul and with all our strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you that we are your neighbors through your Son, Jesus Christ, who came, who shed his blood, and who rose again, so that we become your neighbors and your family. Forgive us for walling out a lot of people and not loving them as our neighbors. We pray that you will enable us to reach out, to cross frontiers, to find those invisible neighbors and to love them, and to discover in them all the mission that you have given to us. We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.