THE NEIGHBOR IN THE AGE OF FENCES

 THE NEIGHBOR IN THE AGE OF FENCES

We live in an age of fences.
Some are built of steel and concrete.
Others are built of fear.
Some are drawn by politics.

Others are drawn by wealth, race, religion, ideology, and suspicion.
The world grows increasingly skilled at separating people into categories.

Us and them.
Citizen and foreigner.
Success and failure.
Friend and enemy.
Deserving and undeserving.

Every generation builds its fences and calls them necessary.
Yet Jesus stands beside a road and tells a story.

A wounded man lies in the dust.
The priest sees him.
The Levite sees him.
The Samaritan sees him.
The fence remains standing.
Yet mercy crosses it.

The Gospel has always been a challenge to fences.
Not because every boundary is evil, but because human hearts have a habit of loving fences more than neighbors.

We build barriers to protect ourselves from danger.
Then we slowly begin protecting ourselves from compassion.

We distance ourselves from the poor.
We avoid the lonely.
We ignore the forgotten.
We explain away the suffering of others.
And the fence grows higher.
The neighbor grows farther away.

Yet the Kingdom of God moves in the opposite direction.
The Incarnation is God crossing the greatest fence of all.

Heaven draws near to earth.
The Creator enters creation.
Mercy enters history.
Love steps across the divide.

Jesus did not merely preach about neighbors.
He became one.
He walked among the wounded.
He touched the untouchable.
He welcomed the outsider.
He crossed every fence that prevented mercy
from reaching a human soul.

And now the same question stands before us.
Not how many fences we can build.
But how many roads we are willing to cross.

For the measure of faith is not found in the distance we keep from people. It is found in the nearness we offer them.

The homeless person beneath the overpass.
The struggling family next door.
The lonely elder.
The refugee.
The addict.
The wounded stranger.
Each stands before us as a living invitation.

Not to solve the entire world.
But to become a neighbor.

For the world changes
whenever someone chooses mercy over indifference.

Whenever compassion is stronger than fear.
Whenever a fence becomes a bridge.
Whenever a stranger becomes a neighbor.

The age of fences is not overcome by larger fences.
It is overcome by larger mercy.

And wherever mercy crosses the road toward another human being, the Kingdom of God becomes visible once again.

For in the age of fences,
the neighbor remains God's most powerful testimony.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
May 29, 2026