Being a disciple of Jesus Christ starts with caring about the person immediately within your orbit. Not having an attachment to that person, but choosing to care about them. And so in Ephesians, one's immediate relationships are addressed by Paul. Your spouse, your children, the people you work for, the people who work for you. The person with whom you interact every day, the person who just sits next to you on the bus, the person you stand next to in the grocery store.
Being Jesus for the person next to you, loving the person next to you like yourself, doesn't start with grand gestures, it doesn't start with missionary service, and it doesn't even start with volunteering at food banks, homeless shelters, or entering pastoral ministry. It starts in the quiet, one to one, intimate and semi-intimate interactions with the people right next to you. If you cannot be Jesus for your spouse, how are you going to be Jesus for the stranger? If you cannot love your children as yourself, how are you going to love the homeless man, the immigrant, or the person who hates you?
Discipleship begins and is practiced in these single, one to one interactions whether you have a longstanding relationship or interaction with that person, or you see them once and never again. It's the person next to you, the person who asks for help, the person who you know and the person that you don't. How can I best love this person I'm talking to right now, standing next to right now, chatting with over social media right now, arguing with right now?
In the first century near east, the people far away were just that, far away. You didn't see them on T.V. screens. Celebrities didn't just appear on computer monitors or smartphones. The average person had never seen the emperor in real life, and would never see photos or video of him. When Jesus says to love the person next to you as yourself, He literally means whoever is next to you at the moment, whoever you're interacting with at the moment. Care about that person in that moment when they enter your orbit. While it can be a very active thing to go out and do this with people you do not know, it must start as a discipline, a practice with the people already there with you, no matter who they are, and then extend to each new person whom you encounter. Don't worry about those you see on the screens that you have not personally interacted with yet. They might as well be imaginary for all intents and purposes (not that they don't exist, but that you have no interaction with them yet and thus cannot do them any good at the moment). Practice with the people you meet as you go, especially those within your immediate orbit, regardless of their response.
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