I have been wanting to watch the movie Hotel Rwanda for a week or two now and managed to get along to see it last night. What a powerful movie! I’d read an article by a Christian leader in America that this was a movie that church leaders should be encouraging their congregations to go and see even more than The Passion of the Christ. I can see why. It is a modern day equivalent of the good Samaritan; an almost unbelievable true story of one man’s courage and selflessness in helping protect over 1000 people who would have otherwise been slaughtered.

The world is so full of labels and categories and the crisis in Rwanda back in 1994 was a shocking example of what can happen when these get taken way too far. Labels have the potential to blind us to another persons humanity. Why is it that when a tragedy happens in some part of the world that the news broadcasters always focus on the British casualties? Does it not matter about the others who aren’t British? This is a challenge for us today as Christians. We must not see people through the blinding lens of labels and categories. It is not about black or white, American or Canadian, British or French, Ghanaian of Nigerian; are we not all human beings created by and loved equally by God?

Hotel Rwanda tells the powerful story of one man (a hotel manager) who didn’t see people through labels and categories but simply saw them as people. He, like the good Samaritan, wasn’t concerned with who the people were or the ‘proper’ protocols for dealing with that ‘type’ of person (slaughtering them); he simply saw people in need and realised that he was in a position to help. And isn’t that what we are all as Christians called to do? Jesus told us that we are to love our neighbours as ourselves and Jesus’ telling of the story of the good Samaritan was a direct response to the question ‘who is my neighbour?’.

At the start of the movie, the hotel managers’ concern was solely for his family. He wanted to ensure that his family was safe and that was all that mattered to him. Over time though he was moved with compassion at the plight of the people running to the hotel for protection. He started to see that he needed to help all these people. He was in a position where he could do something to make a difference and he risked his own life on numerous occasions to ensure the safety of the people flocking to his hotel.

This is such a challenge for us as believers today. But we must remember that God has called us to be a blessing to this world and to all of the people in it. It doesn’t matter who the people are or what label they have been given, we as followers of Jesus are called to see them as our neighbours. Who are the people around us in our lives who God is saying we need to be a neighbour to?

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