Helping Without Hurting: The Bible and the PoorExemplo

Our Neighbors

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

Invisible. Johnny Price is 44-years old and is struggling to raise two kids alone while being unemployed. Jodi earns $6.25 per hour and depends on a food pantry for survival. Rosa lives in an unheated garage and says half the people in her church are in a similar situation. Juanita, a recent immigrant, works 70 hours a week as a domestic servant at wages that amount to $4.03 per hour. None of these individuals live in low-income inner city neighborhoods or Majority World villages. They live in suburban America. And yet they often feel invisible. A lawyer, seeking to put Jesus to the test, asked how to inherit eternal life. He knew the answer: “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.” Yet the lawyer pressed on and “desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” In response, Jesus told a story of a Samaritan who came upon a robbed and badly beaten man lying on the side of the road. A stranger, he bound his wounds and carried him to an inn where he cared for him. Interrupted. Inconvenienced. The Good Samaritan looked with compassion on the one in front of him, his neighbor, and met his need.

Proximity. The poor aren’t just “out there” but are right among us, if only we look. The suburban poor live in older apartment complexes, pocket communities of mobile homes, and small enclaves of modest single-family houses in the shadow of 5000 square foot homes. Our neighbor is not just the orphan in Ethiopia who we can support monetarily and write a letter to now and then, but also the single immigrant mother struggling to survive in a forgotten apartment complex near our home. Are we willing to be interrupted and inconvenienced? Will we be neighbors to the people who can complicate our day-to-day lives? Look around. Jesus says, “You go, and do likewise.”

Jesus, open our eyes. Show us our neighbors. Give us compassion and a willingness to be interrupted and inconvenienced by the materially poor among us.