The One Across the Fence

Pastor Rachel opened the Neighbors series with the parable most people can recite without remembering why Jesus told it. A religious lawyer asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, gets pointed back to loving God and neighbor, and then asks the question that started the whole story: 'And who is my neighbor?'

Rachel pointed out that the question itself was an attempt to shrink the category — to find the edge of the circle so he'd know who he was off the hook for. Jesus answers with a story where the hero is a Samaritan, a person the original audience would have considered an enemy, not a candidate for moral example.

She brought it home to Homewood: most of us can name our literal next-door neighbor's name, but how many of us know if they're doing okay? She shared that Cedar Hollow's staff had recently gone through the church directory and realized a third of the addresses were within a mile of each other — neighbors, on paper, who'd never met.

The challenge for the week was concrete and small: learn one actual neighbor's name, and one true thing about their life, before next Sunday. 'The Samaritan didn't solve the man's whole situation,' Rachel said. 'He just stopped, and paid for what came next. That's usually all loving your neighbor requires — stopping.'