At our most recent Christian-Muslim dialogue, we had a discussion about being good neighbours. Particularly, who is our neighbour and what does it mean to be good to them? It was an interesting discussion in which our respective gospels told.

Our Muslim friends told us, quite seriously and proudly, that the concept of being a neighbour in Islam means anyone who lives within 40 square houses of yours. So, the view was that anyone 40 houses from yours, in any direction, is your neighbour. By my maths – and it depends how you cut this – that means neighbourliness extends to a maximum of 160 people (if you are the centre of a cross, with 40 houses to your north, south, east and west). I suppose if you had diagonals emanating from your home too, you might have 320 neighbours. At an absolute maximum, if the entire square is filled 40 houses to the north, south, east and west (which I make to be an 80×80 square) you’ve got a total of 6,400 neighbours. My most generous reading (6,400 neighbours) was not the reading we were getting in the room, but something closer to it’s just the 40 neighbours on my right and 40 on my left, so 80 neighbours total. But I am willing to grant the more generous reading for our purposes here, even if it isn’t the figure arrived at in practice.

From a Christian perspective, the obvious question is: what are we supposed to say about number 41? Is it okay for me to just let them die in a ditch because they aren’t within the 40 houses that Allah suggests are my particular remit? Though it wasn’t quite put in those terms, that was the broad noise we were getting. The argument was, if everybody is supposed to treat 40 houses in all directions as their neighbour, everyone will have someone within the 40 and thus someone who should be looking out for them in a neighbourly way. Allah doesn’t insist you must treat all as your neighbour, but that all will be somebody’s neighbour even if they’re not mine. But the problem that rears its head in the Christian mind is, but what if you’ve got bad neighbours who aren’t very neighbourly? Who will care for you then? What are my responsibilities when I see someone without anyone functionally being their neighbour? Can I just wash my hands of them because they’re not within my 40? The answer, it seems, was yes.

This, of course, is the general trouble with works-righteousness and law-keeping. The letter cannot save, neither spiritually nor practically. It doesn’t save us because we can’t keep the law well enough to save ourselves and it doesn’t save anyone else because it can’t cover every eventuality to ensure, by the letter of the law, all are always well served. Law fails spiritually, but it also inevitably fails practically. Sometimes – as we all know – the law is an ass. Even the Mosaic law acknowledges this about itself, which is why Jesus had stuff to say about the legitimacy of David eating the showbread even though he wasn’t permitted legally to do so. The law cannot cover every eventuality and holding to the letter of the law in every circumstance – as the Pharisees did (except, actually, Jesus points out even they didn’t really) – will inevitably lead to consequences that the law never foresaw nor intended. Jesus admits as much about the Mosaic Law.

This was the problem when it came to the idea of neighbourliness in Jesus’ day too. In Luke 10:25-37, the man who approaches Jesus to ask about eternal life is told to do what is written in the Law if he is to receive it. The man then boils the whole Mosaic law down to two key commands: love God and love your neighbour. Jesus agrees with this reading; he has mentioned elsewhere, all the law and the prophets hang on these two. Of course, Jesus knows that nobody does this perfectly and thus ‘doing the Law’ will not save anybody and lead to eternal life. But Luke gives the game away in v29 when he says, ‘but he wanted to justify himself’ and so the man goes on to ask who, exactly, is his neighbour? In effect, I might be alright if we can keep it to just within 40 houses on my left and my right. That leads to Jesus’ parable of the good samaritan.

Without rehashing the whole story, I am convinced many Christians have misunderstood what this story is about. The key clue is that the man was trying to justify himself so Jesus is clearly telling a story that won’t let him off the hook. We must read it with that in mind. We must also read it in light of the actual question: who is my neighbour? That is the key point at issue, not – as many seem to treat it – what does loving my neighbour actually look like? So, Jesus is concerned with showing that this man has not loved his neighbour as himself because of who he has failed to love rather than how he has failed to love them. And that is why the story turns on the Samaritan being the one who is good.

The parable is showing that the “good” religious people – who themselves were keeping the letter of the law by not stopping, going on to the temple and not becoming ritually unclean – were not being neighbourly. Their law-keeping actually prevented them from being good neighbours to a man they should have helped. By contrast, the Samaritan – enemies of the Jews in Jerusalem and looked down upon in every way – was less concerned by the letter of the law (as Jews in Jerusalem already thought about them) and more concerned with loving this man who was conditioned to hate him. The lesson is, again, not about the how but the who. In short, even our so-called enemies are actually, on Jesus’ reckoning, our neighbours. Which is to say, everybody in the world is our neighbour!

Of course, this raises questions on the Muslim view we heard earlier. Specifically, they wanted to ask, how is this even possible? You cannot possibly act as a good neighbour to everybody in the world? There must be some way to actually fulfil this command and if everybody is your neighbour, even some dude you’ve never met, then it isn’t possible. To which my answer was a hearty, that’s right! We live in a globalised world in which every decision we make impacts someone somewhere and we may or may not be good neighbours to some people as we make them. Indeed, every decision we make will have positive impacts for some and negative impacts for others. We are necessarily bad neighbours all the time, even without meaning to be! It is, indeed, impossible.

This idea of impossible law to keep isn’t new though. Even the Mosaic law created cleanliness laws that were impossible to avoid. Women became ritually unclean at their time of the month. Any ‘issue’ by a man (let the reader understand) made him unclean. This necessarily has implications for fulfiling the command to be fruitful and multiply! There was no way around it. Similarly, anyone who got ill became ritually unclean and there was no way to avoid it. These things were baked into the law with no means of keeping it. And that was intentional! These laws existed to show God’s people they were not clean by nature and, therefore, their law-keeping was never going to save them. They needed someone who was clean to come and save them apart from law because the law simply pointed out that they were necessarily unclean.

Back then to Jesus’ parable and the impossibility of being a good neighbour. We are not the Good Samaritan. We are the man who has been beaten and left for dead. The answer to our predicament – just as for the beaten man – is not religious law-keeping because that stopped the “godly men” from helping; it took them away from being good neighbours. The answer was someone, who was on paper an enemy of the beaten man, coming to him to save him. The man was half-dead and the implication was, if something didn’t happen soon, he would be totally dead! The hated Samaritan picked him up, cleaned him up, put him up, paid for him and saved him. Jesus is the Good Samaritan and we will only be saved by his perfect neighbourliness.

This is not a moral tale telling us how to be nice to one another. This is a parable that tells us we need a good neighbour to save us. Once we have experienced the love of our godly neighbour, the Good Samaritan, that one who loved us even though we were his enemies, then we can go and do likewise. We can experience the neighbourly goodness of the Good Samaritan who loved us as his enemies and then, having experienced his saving work, go and do likewise, loving our enemies as good neighbours. Which makes everyone our neighbour and gives us responsibilities to everyone the world over. We clearly cannot keep such a command perfectly, but we similarly know we aren’t saved by our law-keeping, but by our Good Samaritan, Jesus. But as the one we now call Lord, we look to emulate him and, as our imperfections are manifest, we are able simply to point people to him and tell them, he can save them too just as he saved imperfect neighbours like us.