Preached on Sunday, July 13, 2025, the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, at Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock.

Jesus asked, “Which was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 

All this talk of neighborliness reminds me of Robert Frost and that famous poem of his, “Mending Wall.” It’s one of his early masterpieces. You probably know it.

The poem tells a rather simple story. The narrator and his neighbor meet at the stone wall dividing their two properties to do some repair work. But as the narrator inspects the damage, he starts wondering whether this particular wall is even necessary. He reminds his neighbor that their lands don’t need separating: my apple trees aren’t going anywhere, he says. Who needs a fence? But the neighbor quips back that famous punchline of the poem: “Good fences make good neighbors” [1].

The narrator starts to come around to his neighbor’s thinking. Good fences do make good neighbors. There’s something about a boundary, about self-differentiation, even if a bit arbitrary, that gives clarity to our relationships. With good fences come good relationships, because there’s something good about maintaining––mending––the fence together. The better we can be at separating ourselves, at defining ourselves in distinction to others, the better relationships we can have. “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Now, there are a lot of ways to read a poem by Frost. But some of us, many of us perhaps, may hear a line like that and think that self-preservation is what life is all about, that good, sturdy fences make good neighbors. But the Gospel pushes back against that kind of thinking. The Gospel says, “not a fence, but mercy makes a good neighbor.” And mercy knows no fences.

Come with me to the story. What we have here is not a poem, like with Frost, but a parable, one of Jesus’ favorite ways to make a point: a folksy story with a punchy moral truth. This parable begins with a question. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” And always the good rabbi, always ready to take on our questions, Jesus replies with this story.

A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, a notoriously dangerous road where travelers were often attacked by robbers. On his journey, he was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. First, a priest—a respected religious figure—passed by but avoided helping, likely to maintain ritual purity. Next, a Levite––another religious official––saw the wounded man but also walked away, unwilling to get involved.

But then comes that Samaritan, a person from a group despised by the Jews at the time due to ethnic and religious differences––fences of every kind. And despite all this, the Samaritan was moved with compassion. He had pity. He stopped, tended the man’s wounds, and took him to an inn, paying for his care and promising to return. The Samaritan’s care was radical. It crossed social boundaries; it was costly; it was inconvenient.

And then, here comes the punchline. Jesus asked, “Which was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer responded, “The one who showed him mercy.” Not the one who kept fences up, who remained guarded. No, the one who showed him mercy––this was the neighbor.

The moral truth from this parable is almost so familiar that it doesn’t even surprise us anymore. We forget that we are swimming in a world of fence-keeping. We forget that mercy is in such short supply. We think that the fences we make help order society, help give definition to ourselves and to our relationships––and that’s true, to an extent. But Christ blows all that up. Christ tears down our fences. And that is what we mean by mercy. As the late Walter Brueggemann once wrote, “Justice is important, but mercy is the engine of the kingdom of God” [2]. “To be a neighbor,” wrote Brueggemann, “is to act out the mercy of God, even when it costs, even when it disrupts our routines” [3].

What routines need disrupting? What fences do we have that prevent us from being a neighbor? What narratives have we constructed for ourselves that need to be rewritten? What assumptions do we make that need to be left behind? What prejudices do we carry that need to be discarded? What mercy do we have to give?

If I find myself in a place where I say, “I could have mercy on this person, but I shouldn’t, because [fill in the blank] ,” I have to stop and back up. That “shouldn’t” is the fence.

I shouldn’t show mercy because that’s someone else’s responsibility.

I shouldn’t show mercy because I don’t know what they’re going to do with the mercy I give them. 

I shouldn’t show mercy because I disagree with the choices they make.

I shouldn’t show mercy because they vote differently than I do.

I shouldn’t show mercy because my people don’t help their people.

I shouldn’t show mercy because the law says that they’re not really my neighbor, but an illegal neighbor.

It’s so easy to justify our fences. So it was for the lawyer, who wanted to justify himself. And so it is for us. But Jesus calls us to a higher standard than justifying ourselves. He says, “go and do likewise”––no ifs, no buts, no shouldn’ts.

Mercy is a scary thing. It’s an act of vulnerability: we make ourselves vulnerable when we let down the fence and show mercy to our neighbors. But you know what? Jesus is there. The kingdom of God is there. So, it can’t be all that bad. 

And such neighborliness, such mercy, always begins with the small acts. As Walter Brueggemann once put it, “the world is not changed by grand strategies but by small acts of neighborliness” [4].

Let me close with a story:

A few years ago, when I was working at a church in downtown Washington, D.C., I spent a lot of time with the church’s outreach ministry. This was a long-time ministry that fed breakfast to Washington’s homeless every single Saturday and Sunday morning, week after week, year after year, for nearly 50 years. But it wasn’t your typical feeding ministry. The team would load up in a car, drive around Washington using their well-tested route, drive into homeless camps, get out, go up to the tents, hand deliver meals and coffee, and then head to the next one. We would deliver a few hundred paper bags every morning we went out. We would leave at 5 in the morning just so that it was easier to break traffic laws, as needed: driving the wrong way, driving down blocked alleys, driving up into parks, driving in federally restricted areas––you name it!––all so that we could reach our homeless neighbors. Let me tell you: this ministry knew no fences.

Well, at first, I was the newcomer, and I was totally overwhelmed. All of my fences were up. How was it that I was going to be able to do this? How was it that I was going to be able break all these traffic laws with such confidence? How was it that I was going to get out of my comfort zone to be in relationship with those in need? How was I going to be a good neighbor?

I remember asking such questions to Tina, the saint who had led this ministry for decades. And I’ll never forget what she said as we calm drove backwards down K Street at 5:15 in the morning. She said, “This ministry is a big thing, but big things like this start with the small things. It starts with looking your homeless neighbor in the eye when you’re stopped at a traffic light when you’d rather look away or just pretend like you’re on your phone. It starts with asking their name—and remembering it. It starts with seeing the ‘other’ as they truly are: beloved children of God.”

Small things: we can work with that!

Mercy makes good neighbors because mercy breaks down the fences we’d rather just keep up. And neighborliness is a big thing, but it always begins with the small things. After all, it’s the small things that refashion the world. It’s the small things that build up the kingdom of God. It’s the small things that show forth God’s loving mercy in a world that so desperately needs it.

As Jesus said, “go and do likewise.” Amen.

[1] Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” North of Boston, 1914.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture, 2013.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, 2008.

[4] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2001, paraphrased.