"When Jesus said love your neighbour, a lawyer who was present asked him to clarify what he meant by neighbour. He wanted a legal definition he could refer to in case the question of loving one ever happened to come up. He presumably wanted something of the order of "A neighbour (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as the neighbour to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort of kind whatsoever.
Instead Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, the point of which seems to be that your neighbour is to be construed as meaning anybody who needs you."
(Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking. A Theological ABC (San Francisco: Harper, 1973), pp. 65-66.
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