Napier Baptist

We all have neighbours.

Whatever the size of our property or nation, there is someone who abuts our boundary, or overlooks our clothesline, someone we drive or trek past to collect the mail, someone who knows a little more than we might like about the hours and the company we keep and about our own comings and goings.

Some neighbours act as watchdogs for us; their presence in our lives can be comforting and give security. The watchfulness of others is a burden and embarrassment.
Sometimes we end up with neighbours from hell who breach our boundaries with unwanted noise, roving animals and free-range children.

Some neighbours arrive in our letterbox or on our TV. Starving, displaced people with empty eyes and bloated bellies. Children with flies on faces where their tears have long dried up. Neighbours who make our conscience weep and our wallets twitch.

‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
Of all the commands the Bible hands down, this is the one that causes many to stumble. We who wouldn’t murder, deceive, commit adultery, dishonour God or our parents can still struggle to love our neighbour.

When asked to name the supreme commandment, Jesus ran two together: ‘Love the lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your might, and love your neighbour as yourself.’

To love our neighbour is as important to God as loving Him.

We are called to love them as we love ourselves – even the neighbour whose dog fouls our lawn, even the neighbour who smashes bottles over his partner’s head at 2 in the morning bringing the screaming of ambulances and the wake-the-dead march of police, even the one who lives in a nation whose politics we don’t understand, who speaks languages of sorrow and loss, who we would never know if we locked the mailbox and turned off the TV, and demanded ‘no more junk mail’.

Love your neighbours… even the ones who murder your tranquillity, even the ones you just don’t like.

Who is our neighbour?

Jesus tells us with a story, so familiar to us that it no longer has first century impact. The good Samaritan – the man from a race despised by the Jews who aids a man beaten by the wayside. The religious men kept a holy distance, not wanting to contaminate themselves with his despair, yet the despised Samaritan, acting as a neighbour, brought comfort and healing to a damaged stranger.

The broken, bleeding, bypassed world is our neighbour.

Paris Hilton, the Mongrel Mob, the widower next door, Helen and John, the orphans of Darfur and the displaced in Timor, prisoners and pop stars are all our neighbours.

The kids who tag the church and vandalise the cross outside: they are our neighbours.
The Scottish tourist beaten to death in Taupo, and the young man who killed her: our neighbours.
The sporting teams who beat us – we are to love them as we love ourselves.

It’s a lot easier to obey the ten commandments given to Moses – but Jesus says this is NOT enough – we must also love our neighbour – as ourself.
No wonder the way to the Kingdom is narrow and overgrown.

I find it hard to love my neighbours. It’s struggle enough to love my family at times. Yet in loving our neighbours we stop just ‘doing good’ and start ‘being good’, as Jesus asked us.

The Pharisees were professionals at ‘doing good’. They followed the letter – but not the spirit – of the law. Jesus had no respect for that, and continually told them that they would not be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus urges us to be good – to love our neighbours, just as much as we love ourselves.
Nothing less will do.
I have got a lot of work to do to be good, but I’m trying.
How about you?
Let’s go out into the world and love our neighbours.


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