Message from Pastor Kelsey Fitting-Snyder

Who Is My Neighbor? Reflections from Mexico City

There is a difference between visiting a place and being immersed in it.

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico City as part of an immersion experience with AMEXTRA (Asociación Mexicana de Transformación Urbana y Rural), an organization supported in part through the ELCA’s global mission work. Over several days, we learned about Mexican history and culture, visited sacred and historic places, experienced the work of AMEXTRA, and spent time listening to people and communities whose lives and experiences are different from my own.

I returned home thinking about the importance of service learning. Often, when the church talks about service, our first instinct is to ask, What can we do? How can we help? What can we give? Those are not bad questions. But immersion asks us to begin somewhere else: What can we learn? Who can we listen to? What might our neighbors have to teach us?

That shift matters. AMEXTRA’s work emphasizes holistic transformation, unconditional service, local participation, compassion, and justice. We learned about programs in education, health and nutrition, agriculture, and local economic development. What struck me was that the goal was not to enter a community and “fix” its problems. Instead, the emphasis was on accompanying communities, recognizing the gifts and wisdom already present, and working alongside people.

That feels deeply connected to the church’s mission. We do not bring God into places where God is absent. God is already there. Our calling is to pay attention, listen, accompany, and discover what God is already doing among our neighbors.

For me, part of that listening involved language. I do not speak Spanish fluently, and I traveled alongside people for whom Spanish is their native language. There were moments when I depended on others to translate or explain what was happening. There were conversations where I caught only pieces. I had to become comfortable not being the person who immediately understood everything.

And yet, communication still happened. A smile needs little translation. Neither does hospitality. Sitting around a table, watching children play, walking through a neighborhood, sharing food, and laughing together reminded me that human connection is often larger than the words we speak.

One of the gifts of the trip was being reminded of our shared humanity beneath all the labels and assumptions we so easily carry.

 

Our public conversations can easily reduce people to categories. But categories are never people. People have families and jobs. They worry about their children. They laugh with friends. They worship. They create. They work. They celebrate. They grieve. They hope.

Perhaps one of the most important things immersion can do is replace a category with a face and a story.

That was also part of our visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As a Lutheran pastor, I entered that space knowing that Marian devotion is expressed differently in my own tradition. But I came to better appreciate the importance of Guadalupe within Mexican faith and culture, particularly the Indigenous influence within her story and image. It was a reminder that faith is always lived within particular cultures, histories, and communities, and that sometimes the first faithful thing we can do is listen before assuming we understand.

Throughout the trip, Jesus’ question about the neighbor kept coming back to me. In the story of the Good Samaritan, the conversation begins with the question, “And who is my neighbor?” We have spent centuries finding ways to make that question complicated. Jesus has a way of making the answer remarkably concrete.

Your neighbor is the person in front of you.

The person whose language you may not speak. The person whose culture you do not completely understand. The person whose experience of Christianity looks different from yours. The person on the other side of a border. The person whose story cannot be reduced to political rhetoric. 

The church is called to cross borders and boundaries, not because we have all the answers on the other side, but because Christ is already there. We cross boundaries to listen, learn, build relationships, receive as well as give, and discover that the body of Christ is much bigger than the communities with which we are most familiar.

I went to Mexico expecting to learn about another culture, another country, and the work of one of our ministry partners, which I certainly did. But I also came home thinking differently about my own community.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of immersion. It reminds us to see beyond assumptions, differences, and labels. Who are the people around us whom we have turned into categories rather than neighbors? Whose stories have we assumed we already know? Where might God be inviting the church not to arrive with an answer, but simply to show up, listen, and accompany?

That is what it means to be a neighbor: to show up, to listen, and to recognize the image of God in the people we encounter. And wherever we meet our neighbors, God is already there.

In the love of our neighbor,

Pr. Kelsey 

---

NT-NL synod staff are excited to engage in-person on Sundays for worship. As good stewards of time and travel dollars, we will be utilizing online meeting formats in our new hybrid reality when possible. If you would like to schedule a meeting with the bishop or Synod staff please contact them directly.

Bishop Gronberg:

September 19-20: Trinity, Miles
September 22-26: Conference of Bishops, Chicago
September 27: Redeemer, Greenville
October 3: MEF Seeds that Change Banquet
October 4: Central, Dallas
October 8-10: Wartburg Seminary Board, Dubuque, IA

Pastora Bañales:

September 14-19: Vacation
September 22: Planning Team: Conferencia Latina Couples Retreat
September24: New Starts Training SAWL and SAWC
September 30: DEM Advisory Team Meeting
September 30: Santa Maria, Irving

Pastor Fitting-Snyder:

September 14-16: Houses of Hope Facilitator Training, Austin Seminary
September 20: Immanuel, Killeen
September 27: St. John, Bartlett
September 28-30: First Call Retreat, Episcopal Center, Mustang Island