2007 Week of Compassion Offering Observance Begins

Friday, February 16, A.D. 2007

Beginning this Sunday, Disciples across the U.S. and Canada are being invited to make their gifts to the 2007 Week of Compassion Offering. Our hope, to be sure, is that our members and friends will be as generous as ever. The invitation, however, is more, much more, than a simple request for some of your dimes and dollars, cash and checks for another special offering in the church. It is also an invitation that bids us to confront a fundamental question in our common humanity and in the Christian faith - the question posed in this year's theme: “Who is my neighbor?”

Who is my neighbor? When I was a small child, my neighbors were the people who lived next door, across the street. Later, after I got my first bike, I discovered I lived in a neighborhood and had even more neighbors. Indeed, part and parcel of growing up is discovering ever larger neighborhoods, new and more neighbors, until now - with the internet, globalization, and jet travel - the question might well be, "Who isn't my neighbor?"

I was talking with a pastor/friend recently, and she commented quite favorably on this year's offering materials -- attractive, good resources, good ideas. But she pointed out that we didn’t get the question quite right. The question Jesus addresses, she said, is not so much, "Who is my neighbor?" but rather, "To whom am I a neighbor?" I've read Luke 10:25-37 umpteen times but I missed that. I read it again. She was right. The question really is, "To whom am I a neighbor?"

It's a subtle difference, but a critical one. The first question draws lines, sets limits, rationalizes, evades responsibility. The second question is a summons to a relationship, a call to responsiblity and to a new way of living. Indeed, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan not to answer the question, "Who is my neighbor?" but to challenge me now to ask, "To whom am I a neighbor?" And the answer is to anyone whose need constitutes a claim on my mercy - anyone whose predicament demands from me a compassionate response.

Every day we encounter people whose need, whose situation in life, cries out for neighborliness, for compassion and mercy. Look around your sanctuary on Sunday morning. Read the names on the church prayer list. Drive through the streets of your community. Peruse the morning paper. Watch the evening news. There are people everywhere whose needs would lay a claim on our compassion.

It is certainly at the center of everyday life here at Week of Compassion. People in Florida whose communities have been ripped asunder by tornadoes; folk throughout the Gulf South still wondering if they’ll ever be able to return home; farmers in the Midwest, having lost their livestock from winter storms, now worrying if they will lose their farms; families in Darfur, Sudan, on the run from violence and terror; survivors of the earthquake in Pakistan, the tsunami in Indonesia, the landslides in the Philippines; people facing another year without rain, and therefore without food, in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia. Everywhere there are people whose needs place a claim on our compassion.

It can, of course, seem so demanding as to be overwhelming, if not downright impossible. No wonder some pass to the the other side. But for those who stop and offer whatever "oil and wine" they can - Jesus offers the greatest invitation of all -- to live as his neighbor, in his neighborhood, now and forever.

Neighborly,

Johnny Wray

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