In our Gospel reading from Luke this Sunday, Jesus tells a lawyer to obey the law, ‘love God and love your neighbour’ in order to inherit eternal life. The lawyer asks Jesus, ‘who is my neighbour?’ which prompts Jesus to tell the story of the good Samaritan. What the story illustrates is that our ‘neighbours’ aren’t just the people who live next door to us, or along the street, who we quite like, or the people we chat to in church. Our neighbours are sometimes hiding in plain sight. They are the people without homes living in tents around the town. They are the young people roaming around and getting into trouble because they have very little else in their lives. They are the lonely, isolated people who don’t venture from their homes because of illness or anxiety. Loving our neighbours can pose us something of a challenge, but it is the way we create flourishing communities and give people abundant life.

Revd Liz