Do You See This Person? Learning to Love Your Neighbour

By Matthew Garvin

Main Bible reading: Luke 7:36–50

The people behind our fears

I still remember sitting in our lounge room in Penrith, talking with Dad about how we were going to get my sister out of Indonesia.

Liz had gone to work as a teacher in Salatiga, on the island of Java. We were hearing reports of anti-Christian riots, and the trouble seemed to be getting closer to where she was living. I was worried.

Having grown up watching Rambo movies, I was planning the extraction. For everybody’s sake, it’s probably good we never got to that point.

But God has a sense of humour. The first country I travelled to overseas for ministry was Indonesia.

Nothing had quite prepared me for how different everything would feel. The air felt different. Things smelt different. Seeing police walking around with machine guns didn’t do much to settle my nerves.

I arrived with a collection of fears and assumptions. I found it hard to see the people in front of me as anything more than “Indonesians”.

During that visit, some friends took Liz and me to meet a man known as Ahok, the local regent in Belitung Timur. He was a Christian wrestling with how to love and serve the largely Muslim community he had responsibility for. Sitting with him and his sister, listening to him and travelling around the area began to challenge the picture I had brought with me.

Over that trip and subsequent visits, I grew to love the people of Indonesia. But that involved having my prejudices confronted. Fear had allowed me to think I knew people I had never met.

I wonder how often that happens much closer to home.

“Do you see this woman?”

In Luke 7:36–39, Jesus is having dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. A woman known in the town for her sinful life comes in with an alabaster jar of perfume. She stands behind Jesus, weeping, wets his feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, kisses them and pours perfume over them.

Simon watches and thinks that if Jesus were really a prophet, he would know what kind of woman was touching him. Simon has a category for her. He knows where she belongs.

Then Jesus turns towards her and says to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44).

It’s a confronting question to ask someone who has been watching her. Simon has noticed enough to judge her, but Jesus is inviting him to see someone he has already dismissed.

I think that question has a lot to say to those of us trying to take seriously Jesus’ command to love our neighbours (Matthew 22:37–40).

When fear writes the conversation

When I asked our congregation what fears hold us back from relationships, the answers came quickly. Rejection. Embarrassment. Losing confidence as we get older. Not knowing how to talk with someone from another faith.

I understand the embarrassment one. Grade seven was probably the most painful time of my life. Some experiences stay with us long after we’ve left school.

I also know that fear can stop me doing something as simple as knocking on a neighbour’s door. I perceive someone to be distant or aloof, and that becomes a reason to leave them alone. But how much do I actually know about them?

In Numbers 13:27–33, the spies return from exploring the promised land and describe the powerful people living there. They say they seemed like grasshoppers in their own eyes, and looked the same to the people they had seen.

Somehow they have developed the ability to read everybody else’s mind.

We do that too. We feel small, awkward or unwelcome, and assume that’s how the other person sees us. We can rule out a relationship before we’ve had a conversation.

Jesus is realistic about danger. He tells his disciples to be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16). We need wisdom. We also need to recognise when our fears are getting in the way of loving the people he has placed around us.

People are bigger than our categories

Martin Buber’s distinction between “I–It” and “I–Thou” has helped me think about this.¹ In an “I–It” relationship, I classify someone, experience them or use them to meet my needs. In an “I–Thou” encounter, I meet someone whose reality is bigger than my categories.

Categories help us navigate life. We have an idea of what a teacher, a police officer or a pastor does. The problem comes when the category becomes all we can see.

I can do it walking through Eastlands. I can do it at church. I can even do it with Leeanne.

Our relationship is generally not doing well when I’m relating to the Leeanne in my head rather than the Leeanne in front of me. She never quite fits the boxes, no matter how hard I try.

I wonder whether we can go through a whole week bouncing off categories without really meeting anyone. We’ve dealt with a customer, spoken to a neighbour and helped a child. But have we allowed any of them to surprise us? Have we discovered something about who they are?

When helping keeps us at a distance

Sometimes we miss the person in front of us while being very helpful.

Transactional analysis describes a position we can take in relationships as “I’m okay; you’re not okay”.² That can be a dangerous starting point when we want to help someone. I have the answers. You have the problems. I’ll fix you.

We can give time, energy and money while still looking down on the person receiving them. We can learn a great deal about their needs without ever discovering what they have to give.

Even sharing our faith can take that shape. We can give the impression that someone needs to become like us before we can respect them or enter into a real relationship.

When I talk with my Muslim friends, we have real differences in how we understand the world. But if all I can see is “a Muslim”, I’ve put something between us before we’ve begun. I need to meet the person, recognise what they bring and trust the Holy Spirit to do his work.

Neither of us can pay

Jesus challenges Simon’s sense that he is the person who has everything sorted.

He tells him about two people who owe money to a lender. One owes five hundred denarii and the other fifty. Neither has the money to pay. The lender forgives both debts, and Jesus asks which of them will love him more (Luke 7:40–43).

Simon says he supposes it will be the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.

The amounts are different, but neither person can pay. Both need something they cannot provide for themselves.

That is a fundamental starting point for Christian faith. Our standing with God rests on what we have received through Jesus. We all need grace (Ephesians 2:8–9).

Yet we can know that intellectually and gradually forget it in practice. Hang around Christians long enough and you develop an idea of what a good Christian looks like. Perhaps it’s someone who knows all the words to the songs, can pray without stumbling, or gives a lot of money.

We find ways to feel that we’re doing reasonably well. Then we meet someone whose brokenness is more visible than ours, and forget how much we have in common.

The woman at Jesus’ feet understands her need for grace. Her great love shows what forgiveness has meant to her. Simon’s confidence in himself is getting in the way (Luke 7:44–50).

That’s one reason we begin our services at Citywide with communion. Before we do anything else, we need to remember what makes it possible for us to be here. We are all different, we are all a bit broken, and we all need Jesus.

Jesus lets her give

There is something else in this story that I love: Jesus allows the woman to minister to him.

If anybody had all the answers, it would be Jesus. Yet he receives what she brings. He lets her love him, and draws Simon’s attention to her gift.

She has washed his feet with her tears, kissed them and poured perfume over them. Simon has been so occupied with what is wrong with her that he has missed the love she is giving (Luke 7:44–46).

Those of us who spend our lives helping people need to pay attention here. Always being the giver puts us in a particular position of power. We remain the capable one. We decide what is needed. We can keep our own vulnerability safely out of sight.

But everybody is a gift. Everybody has something to bring.

Paul makes this clear when he describes the church as a body. The eye cannot say to the hand that it isn’t needed. The parts that seem weaker are indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:21–26). We need what each other brings, including the people whose contribution we find easy to overlook.

That includes our children. We can approach children’s ministry as something we do for them and forget that they are already part of the church. They have gifts to bring to all of us.

How do you go at letting your neighbours love you?

Can you let them see where you need a hand? Can you admit that you don’t have it all together? Can you receive something without needing to take charge of the relationship again?

When Jesus sent his disciples out, he told them to travel without the money and supplies that would make them self-sufficient. They were to stay in people’s homes and receive their hospitality (Matthew 10:9–14). They would bring a blessing, and they would also need to receive.

We live in a culture that encourages us to organise our lives so well that we don’t need anybody. I wonder how much loneliness grows out of believing that is a good way to live.

We need people. Learning to love them includes opening ourselves to the gifts they bring. Sometimes that means letting someone help us when we would much rather manage on our own.

One person, this week

Jesus’ question keeps coming back to me: “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44).

Do you see the person serving you at the supermarket? The child in your class? The person at Centrelink? The doctor, the nurse, the young person down the mall?

Can you see beyond what you expect from them and become open to who they actually are?

We also need to hear that question for ourselves. We can put ourselves in categories just as firmly as we put other people in them. Not good enough. Too difficult. The wrong kind of person. Someone who doesn’t fit.

In order to love others, we need to know we are loved (1 John 4:19). We need the message of the cross, reminding us that we can come to Jesus with our need for grace. We don’t have to have it all together.

I reckon it would make a difference if, just once this coming week, we allowed Jesus’ question to interrupt us. In the middle of an ordinary encounter, before we retreat into our assumptions, we could stop long enough to listen.

Do you see this person?

Can you let them matter to you? Can you learn something you didn’t already know, and receive something you couldn’t have given yourself?

Perhaps loving our neighbour begins there: allowing ourselves to meet the person Jesus already sees.

Source notes

1. Martin Buber, I and Thou. The distinction is paraphrased here. ?
2. The life positions framework in transactional analysis, discussed in the sermon. ?

Adapted from Matthew Garvin’s sermon at Citywide on 20 September 2026. Read the sermon notes. Bible links open the relevant passages in the New International Version (NIV).