During his sermon, a pastor quoted Jesus, "Love your neighbor as yourself." To emphasize the point, he asked three times, with increasing intensity: "Who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor?!"

Each time he asked this, a young boy in the congregation answered quietly: "Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers!" (1)

Fred Rogers of children's television fame was a good neighbor. But the lawyer's question to Jesus is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. Who is our neighbor?

Newspaper columnist David Hunter writes for the Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel. Hunter recalls a colorful character from his childhood who was popularly known as the Good Samaritan. She was an elderly woman who spent each day on a street corner in downtown Knoxville, collecting mon…