Who Is My Neighbor?
Some thirty years ago, I went into sermons from the early third century into the nineteenth century dealing with this story of the Samaritan, and I found out that most preachers, when they comment on that passage, comment on it in order to show how we ought to behave towards our neighbor, when in fact this is the opposite of what Jesus, who tells that story of the Samaritan, wanted to point out.
The Pharisees came to ask Him, “Master, Teacher, tell us who is my neighbor?” They didn’t ask him, how does one behave to one’s neighbor? They asked him, point blank, the question: Who is the guy whom you call neighbor?
And he, as a story, told them a man was going down to Jericho, fell among robbers, was beaten up and left wounded. A teacher goes by, a priest goes by, sees him and walks on. And then an outsider comes along, the traditional enemy, and turns to the wounded man, as an internal turning, and picks him up, takes him into his arms and brings him to the inn. So he answers them, “My neighbor is whom I decide, not whom I have to choose.”
There is no way of categorizing who my neighbor ought to be. [...] The Master told them who your neighbor is is not determined by your birth, by your condition, by the language which you speak, by the ethnos, which means really the mode of walking which has become proper to you, but by you. You can recognize the other (hu)man who is out of bounds culturally, who is foreign linguistically, who – you can say by providence or by pure chance – is the one who lies somewhere along your road in the grass and create the supreme form of relatedness which is not given by creation but created by you.
How do you relate to the notion that your neighbor is someone you decide, not someone you have to choose? Can you share a personal story of a time you created a sacred form of relatedness with someone else? What helps you go beyond the limits of your conditioning to truly create relatedness with another?
Here's my take on this text as a preacher: Jesus was saying "Your neighbor is the person you least want to be 'beholden to'." That's a colloquialism from my youth growing up in Appalachian USA. So I totally agree with Ivan Ilich!
I've not felt like I had to chooose which one I'd want for a neighbor. I do know my heart will tell me who my neighbor or is though.
'My neighbor is someone I decide' means to me that my neighbor is someone I decide to relate to with true care and in a way that helps him or her have what is needed to heal and/or grow. There have been times that I have listened carefully, responded in a way that was respectful, responded in a way that the other felt safe, responded in a way that connected with the othier, provided what was needed, and the other benefitted. Such times were sacred forms of relatedness with the other. What helps me create relatedness with another is to truly be present with the other and listen to and respond to what the other is presenting, not to my tlhinking, prejudices, expectations, agendas, or judgments, which allows intimate healing sacred relatedness.
Ivan Illich, an exiled Russian in Mexico, would know what he is talking about. He had to redefine "family" and "neighbor" in order to have a life in community instead of an exile of alienation. Thank you for reminding me of one of my heros from my youth. Indeed, Illich provoked new definitions, thinking and behvior in me, precisely, because he forced me to realize how connected I was to all of society and humanity, not just those who looked like me or lived/thought/assumed the same way. Like Illich, my life and thinking expanded the more I met and befriended 'the other.'
