Churches and Hospitals: Which is the Neighbor?

The parking lot was filled to overflowing.  A woman dressed in a burka, trailed by three children, passed me on the parking lot.  She looked at me with a look that I can best describe as fear. I smiled at her and said ‘hello’.  I don’t know if it helped ease her fear. 

In the bridgeway from the parking lot to the hospital I was passed by black and brown and white children and their parents.  Some small kids were carried on backs of moms. Some children were pushed along in wheel chairs. Some parents were chatting and walking as if they had just received very good news. Some were quietly moving forward as if  the news was difficult to comprehend.

At the reception desk, while they made the inquiries to verify that I could join a family as their pastor in waiting for the results of an infant’s heart surgery, I picked up business-sized cards offering access to interpreters in Mandarin, Arabic, Burmese, Cantonese, Spanish, Hmong and Somali.  Disease does not discriminate. Neither should the effort to offer a cure.

What does it mean to be a ‘neighborhood hospital’ today? I grew up a block from a ‘neighborhood hospital’ which served the ‘Protestants’, while the other hospital in town served the ‘Catholics’. At least that is the way I perceived it. Today, I think, the definition of ‘neighborhood’ is closer to what Jesus was trying to get at when he talked about being a neighbor in Luke 10:25-37. A hospital’s ‘neighborhood’, especially one serving a specialized population like children, is not defined by geography or religion or social status. A hospital’s neighbors are those in need of its services.  Anyone and everyone is welcomed to these places of care, and they are doing their best to make sure you feel welcomed. They speak your language.

You might say, “Well, of course, that is what we expect a hospital to be. Healthcare should erect no boundaries, should ask no questions other than, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’”

Is the only question a ‘neighborhood church’ asks of its guests, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’  If Jesus re-wrote the story of “The Good Samaritan” using churches and hospitals as the illustrations, which would be the model ‘neighbor’?