Who Is My Neighbor?
Rev. JT Smiedendorf
September 21, 2025
Text: Luke 10:25-37
CENTRAL FOCUS:
We manifest love of neighbor when we focus on the what of being a neighbor by asking what will happen to the hurting one?
From The Common English Bible
A legal expert stood up to test Jesus.
“Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”
26 Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?”
27 He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” [a]
28 Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”
29 But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus replied, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death. 31 Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. 32 Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. 33
A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. 34 The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, ‘Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.’
36 What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?”
37 Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May these words become Living Wisdom
within us, among us, and beyond us.
Jesus’ questioner asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” or, in modern speak, “What is really the most important thing I could do to experience a sacred, righteous, and meaningful life?”
The questioner actually knows the answer and gives it: Love. Love of God (vertical) with the whole self and love of neighbor (horizontal). Right from the tradition of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, he answers. And Jesus agrees.
But it seems the questioner wants to be right about something. He seems to want to define the “who” for the object of his neighborly love. Ahh, beware, the move from what to who. Who we should love, who we should not. Who we should care for, who we should not. Who deserves human rights and who does not. Who deserves to vote and who does not. Who deserves free speech and who does not. The list could go on.
The late great American author Toni Morrison said, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” Jesus won’t give a defined answer and instead offers a story of one assaulted by robbers, left for dead, passed by, by two different religious types and then attended to by the unexpected one, the Other of a different and disliked religious group.
Who do you imagine you might be in this story?
What kind of person would surprise your expectations in this story by playing what role? In our Scripture story, Jesus’ surprising choice of roles is meant to dislodge expectations and to reorient listeners to the what of being a neighbor rather than the who. So, there’s one piece for us today: to loosen our expectations and limits based on labels, to be careful of the “who” roles, the labels we have already assigned in our hearts and minds, and the consequent limits we might want to assign to love of neighbor.
Yet, I sense there’s more for us here in this story. And it’s right where the movement of the story happens: the movement away or toward the wounded one, the vulnerable one.
The night before his death, in Memphis, in April of 1968, Dr. King preached and commented on this very story. Ever so elegantly, Dr. King summarized the key to that story’s movement and that preaching moment by naming that the first two who passed by probably asked, ‘If I stop to help this one, what will happen to me?’ Yet, the third one to pass by, known as the Good Samaritan, reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this one, what will happen to them? Dr. King translated that in his time to “If we do not stop to help the sanitation workers in Memphis, what will happen to them?”
Dr. King’s reversal is in the spirit of Jesus’ constant stories of reversal like this one where the unexpected, disliked one is the one showing true neighborly love. The expert of religious law who was originally questioning Jesus was not wrong, indeed loving God and neighbor is the answer, but Jesus seems to need to tell this story because the religious expert’s form of knowledge, given his follow up question about who is the neighbor, is critically, even tragically, misdirected and incomplete. (11am – The story of Saul that was sung earlier is one of the more dramatic examples of reversal—of one who knew a group, a who, that did not deserve love becoming converted, experiencing a reversal, to a state of knowing the grace of God was so much bigger.)
Jesus’ point here is to teach the Law, the Torah, with compassion; to not define neighbor by group and transaction so much as by spirit and action. “They passed by on the other side,” Jesus’ story said, but the one who helped “was moved with compassion.”
Jesus is trying to move the questioner and Luke’s Community and us from the defining—
from the thoughts and rules and principles—into the body, into the action, into the lived reality of being a loving neighbor. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says.
Go and do likewise, for this is the God and the Divine activity to which Jesus is pointing. This is the Presence of the Realm of God. We will know we are Christians if we are moved by compassion. If we truly Love, we will do this kind of thing.
Who is my neighbor? The answer in the story questions the question itself.
Indeed, beyond labels, we are all the progeny of the Divine. We could be anyone in this story; sometimes in need of help maybe even lying at the side of the road, sometimes the one passing by, sometimes the innkeeper, sometimes the one moved with compassion to help. In that 1968 sermon, Dr. King humbly made fun of his own focus on organizing efforts, as one who would pass by in an effort to be on time to an important meeting. I have been that, too.
Jesus moves us beyond the question of ‘who is my neighbor’ to the what of being a loving neighbor. Rev. Dr. King goes to that loving place within where we orient to the other human lying by the side of the road and ask with compassion if I do not stop for the one by the side of the road what will happen to them.
And Lord knows so many are being left by the side of the road with the inequalities of race, sex, economics, sexual orientation and identity, all the ‘isms’ that leave people by the side of the road. And all of the painful illusions we hold about ourselves that leave ourselves and parts of ourselves by the side of the road. Even God’s precious Creation is being left by the side of the road. God’s Love in us which expresses itself as the love of neighbor, sees the one by the side of the road, is moved by compassion, and acts.
Recently, the Campus Task Force 2.0 report was released. It is a beautiful extension of the work of the first campus task force—a group that began with the thought of assessing our building and property in a material way and yet found themselves transformed as they realized there was no way to make meaning of the building and property without understanding its spiritual purpose and our Divine Call to love the neighbor. I encourage all of you to read it and to seriously consider that this orientation of loving the neighbors near and around 19th and Nicollet Avenue is one beautiful, worthy, and timely way to express our church’s purpose of humbly seeking and serving God.
Seeing and feeling the love of neighbor that includes the neighbors around our church building does not mean that every member of this church is required to walk the streets of the neighborhood or to see that their gifts and their ministry call from God is centered in this neighborhood. Yet, it does ask us collectively as a church to see these neighbors and to do what we can with the time talent and treasure that is available. Those who have been with these task forces for the last several years and those who have come to their sessions have discerned that these are the neighbors we see. And there will be those of us who will be called to directly engage and love these immediate physical neighbors and this neighborhood. And there will be those of us who can appreciate that love of neighbor and do what we can from the second or third row back in prayer, in contribution, and in sharing the joy of solidarity with these neighbors and all the efforts of love in this neighborhood.
For in the end, we all are able to respond to the call to love our neighbor, our fellow humans, even to love all of Creation as a neighbor, to move toward the one left by the side of the road in our heartfelt prayers, our actions for justice and mercy, our voting for something else, our singing of hope, our encouragement and presence to others. Each in our own collective and individual ways can express compassion and act as a loving neighbor to make a difference even with the limits we have.
Our spiritual community, tradition, and practice, our very worship here today is meant to help us at that place where we see the other lying by the side of the road. That is the place, the moment, where and when the love of God with our whole selves can come forth, being moved to say “I am able,” “we are able.” In whatever ways, we are able to respond to the God of Compassion who says to us, “Go and do likewise.”
