WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

Do you remember when Jesus was asked this same question? It was by a teacher of the Law who tried to trap Jesus with the question, “What must I do to receive eternal life?”. Jesus asked him if he knew what the Scriptures said about the matter. The man answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Jesus told him if he did that, he would have eternal life. But the teacher of the Law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” (read the story in Luke 10:26-37)

If someone asked me that question, I would probably tell him or her the names of the people who live next door to me. Jesus didn’t, he answered the question with a story, which we call the story of the “Good Samaritan.” The Samaritan saw a man beaten, robbed, and lying in a ditch. The hurt man was a Jew, and his Jewish religious colleagues did not stop to help him. The Samaritan saw a man in need and did not worry about his ethnicity.

The Samaritan cared for the man, treating his wounds and escorting him to an inn for rest and recuperation. It would cost him additional money, so he agreed to pay the innkeeper the next time he came by. The Samaritan was the neighbor, although he didn’t live next door to the Jewish man. He didn’t even know him.

A true neighbor is aware of people in need and cares for them.

Another “neighbor” story: The widow of a member of a group of prophets told Elisha that her husband was dead and that a man he owed money to was going to take away her two sons as slaves for payment. Elisha wanted to help her but found that she had nothing at home but a small jar of olive oil. He told her, “Go to your neighbors and borrow as many empty jars as you can.” (2 Kings 4:1-3) He knew that her neighbors would help her because she knew her neighbors. The neighbors did not have any oil, but they shared the containers they had so that Elisha could fill them with oil. The widow had good neighbors.

Joice and I had neighbors at many locations: in the towns and villages where we grew up, roommates in college, next door neighbors in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, New York, and Texas, to name but a few places.

I call them neighbors, although most of them did not live next door to us. Although we Americans most often use physical location as the primary marker for defining our neighbors, I am thinking of neighbors who, like the Good Samaritan, help others in need..

When we lived in a small hamlet in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a man named Yandawae and his wife were our neighbors. He was a great help to me. 

One day, Yandawae was in the bush (the forest) cutting firewood. It had been raining, and the small log he was holding in place with his bare foot was very slippery. His axe slipped and almost cut off his big toe. It was bleeding badly, so Yandawae stuffed some moss in the cut and wrapped his t-shirt around the wound. He then made a crutch from a tree branch and limped to our house, which was some distance away. He needed help, and he knew his neighbor would help him. It was late in the afternoon when he arrived. I took one look at the blood-soaked t-shirt and wound and realized immediately that I needed to get him to the Lutheran mission clinic, eight miles away.

I had a small motorcycle (a Honda 90 trail bike) and decided it could get us to the clinic. As I got my boots on and prepared to leave, Yandawae was on our living room floor playing with our son Kirk. We left for the mission station, and although Yandawae had never been on a motorbike before, he was obviously enjoying it and waved to people along the way. At the clinic, they sutured his wound, and several days later, he limped back into the village. He was one tough man, and I was his neighbor.

Neighbors care for one another. They can live hundreds, or even thousands of miles away, but if they know you have a need, they respond.

Although I had studied for one year at the Biola School of Missionary Medicine in Los Angeles, my knowledge of medicine was limited. I did give penicillin shots, and we dispensed pills and other medicines. But we had to get serious cases to the Lutheran clinic or the government hospital (15 miles away). Often, we did not know the people we treated, but we cared for them because they were our “neighbors.”

Sometimes, they thought we knew more than we did. A pregnant woman once asked Joice for something for her pain. Joice gave her two aspirin and, somewhat in jest, said “You are going to have a boy.” Within an hour, outdoors and along the trail, the woman gave birth to a baby boy. It wasn’t long before other pregnant mothers were coming to Joice, asking her for the pills that would make the baby come. “And tell me whether it will be a boy or a girl.” Joice claimed ignorance, but the women weren’t sure.

Joice was their neighbor, and they knew she cared about them, but they gave her extra credit for knowledge she did not have.

Being a neighbor doesn’t mean knowing everything.

Karl Franklin