“Won’t you be my neighbor?”

Mister Rogers earnestly sang those words on every one of the 895 episodes of his show. The question is so worn you might miss how profound it is. How many people would you ask to be your neighbor? The circle is probably pretty small, I bet. How many people do you know that you would want to live next to you? You know what that entails, right? They would expect you to enjoy dinners together, have game nights, and of course you would be the first person they would call for that emergency babysitting need. 

Rogers invites us to come near so that he can treat us as his neighbor. And he means it. His invitation is unnatural.

Two thousand years ago a lawyer engaged Jesus in conversation. “Teacher,” he asks Jesus, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25)

Jesus responds, “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” (Luke 10:27).

The lawyer isn’t comfortable with just how broad this net is that Jesus has cast. And so, “desiring to justify himself,” the lawyer responds, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).

“What is the absolute minimum I can get away with, Jesus?” That is my natural heart. Our natural heart is a heart of self-justification and minimizing our responsibility to others.

This is the heart of the world. We narrow our circles; we cut off those who are difficult. I’ve read far too many Facebook posts lately that end with, “If you don’t like this, then unfriend me.” I get it. It’s easier to shrink your circle to a band of the like-minded, to find your neighbor in the one you agree with. But this isn’t how Jesus thinks. This isn’t the type of love Jesus calls us to.

Jesus responds with a story you’ve heard before, a story of a man in desperate need of help. He’s been beaten up and left for dead by robbers. One by one, passersby excuse themselves from the uncomfortable task of caring for this man. Until one, the least likely of the lot, offers costly mercy to his brother in need. This is the man who understands who his neighbor is, Jesus explains.

“Won’t you be my neighbor?”

In those honest and simple words Mister Rogers profoundly exposits and applies Jesus of Nazareth’s declaration that we are to love God and our neighbor. Rogers maximizes God’s call to our neighbor by inviting all to be his neighbor.

My natural impulse is to minimize that call. But if I truly understand the power of God’s love for me, that God loved me when I was unlovable and invited me in when I was undeserving, my heart ought to soften toward my neighbor.

When my heart begins to understand God’s love for me, I glimpse God’s love for my neighbor. And that calls me to action. It calls me to maximize, not minimize who God calls me to love. It gives me an urgency to share the rescuing love of God with those around me.

Let me not be the one who asks, with a furrowed brow, “And who is my neighbor?” Instead, let me speak with the heart of Jesus the invitation of Mister Rogers, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”

I pray that New Life is a church that asks the maximal, not minimal question, that we are looking for anyone we can call neighbor. That is why “God loves you and your neighbor” is our fourth cultural statement on which we hang our hat as a church. We long to be a community that swims against the currents of our heart and culture and maximizes our responsibility to our neighbor, no matter how different they may be.

So, dear reader, I ask you, won’t you be my neighbor?

Church Culture Series:

Part 1: God Is Big and God Is Good

Part 2: The Gospel Changes Everything

Part 3: The Bible Is Our Source

Part 4: God Loves You and Your Neighbor

Part 5: We Are Contributors, Not Consumers

Part 6: Character Over Charisma

Part 7: Life Is Better Connected

Part 8: Big Church, Small Feel

Part 9: Healthy Churches Multiply

Photo by Zac Gudakov on Unsplash