Who is My Neighbor?

Housing Opportunities for Women (HOW) has provided housing for homeless women in Rogers Park since 1983. The goal is to provide women housing as soon as possible to get them off the streets and then offer “wrap-around” support services to help them move forward in their life (e.g. mentally, financially, emotionally).

HOW’s philosophy of housing homeless women reminds me of the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus tells us in Luke 10:25. In the parable, the Samaritan man is the one who stops to help a man who is attacked by robbers on the road to Jericho, and he attends to his needs by putting him up in an inn to rest and heal from his injuries. Key to Jesus’ call to love our neighbor in this parable, is the giving of hospitality - - especially giving hospitality to those who have been abandoned.

In the parable, the Samaritan man takes out two denarii and gives them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” At HOW, the women served typically stay in their program for an average 4-5 years. In this context I think about the parable and wonder how Jesus’ audience at the time would have reacted if the Samaritan would have agreed to care for the injured man for this period of time. They probably would have laughed. The parable was challenging enough for them already.

On the other hand, most of the time when Jesus physically healed someone he was doing more than attending to their physical needs, he was healing them spiritually and forgiving their sins. While outwardly their injury or disability was visibly obvious, Jesus cared more about the condition of their hearts, and I think this is true of HOW.
Building on the initial impact HOW has made with homeless women in Rogers Park, HOW decided ten years ago to get involved in Partners for Rogers Park (PRP), which is a coalition of a dozen community organizations. The coalition began to try to make the community safe from crime, drugs, violence, and to create a community plan and promote affordable housing in the neighborhood.

Thinking of Jesus’ ministry again, one thing that was always apparent was that as he went from town to town preaching, teaching, and healing, the Scribes and Pharisees were always at his heals criticizing and challenging him. “You can’t do that. What gives you the right to do that? Who are you, and under what authority do you do these things?”

Similarly, I was surprised to learn that PRP has had problems with its own brand of Pharisees: Bloggers. It seems these bloggers have used the Internet as a way to criticize and challenge the progress being made in Rogers Park. I guess it all goes to show that human nature hasn’t changed that much over the last 2000 years.