Who is My Neighbor?
Learning to Truly See Those by the Side of the Road

In Luke 10, a religious expert asks Jesus to define “neighbor” — not out of curiosity, but to find the limits of his obligation. Jesus answers with a story that dismantles every boundary we use to sort people into insiders and outsiders. The priest and Levite who pass by the beaten man are not villains; they are people like us, navigating fear, uncertainty, and feeling overwhelmed. The hero is a Samaritan — an outsider by every social category — whose defining quality is not his ethnicity but his compassion: a gut-level refusal to disengage his heart. 

When Jesus defines neighbor as the one who is wounded, vulnerable, and alone, he reframes the Great Commandment entirely — loving God and loving our neighbor is not a comfortable affection for people who are easy to love; it is a call to move through our hesitation toward those in need, doing what we can with what we have, and trusting others to carry what we cannot.