Tag Archives: neighbor

Sermon – John 13.31-35, E5, YC, April 24, 2016

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

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A few years ago, some friends of mine engaged in the elevator speech challenge.  The idea was simple.  If you were stuck in an elevator with someone for thirty seconds and were asked to tell them about your faith, what would you say?  The challenge was to explain to someone your faith in Jesus Christ in thirty seconds or less.  I remember when my friends started sharing their elevator speeches, I was totally intimidated.  First, I knew that if someone actually asked me to do this in an elevator, I would probably stutter through some answer, mostly filled with “ums” and “you knows,” and not much of substance.  But more importantly, even when I tried to sit down and give myself way more than thirty seconds to formulate my thirty-second speech, I could not do it.  I could not figure out how to distill everything that had happened to me in my faith journey, why I still believe and am so devoted to church, and who I believe the three persons of the Godhead to be.

The last night in the upper room that we hear about in our gospel lesson today is a little like Jesus’ elevator speech.  Although the disciples did not fully grasp the importance of that night, Jesus certainly did.  If you remember, back on Maundy Thursday, we joined Jesus and the disciples on this night.  Jesus tells the disciples many things.  He teaches them about the importance of servitude as he washes their feet.  He teaches them how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  But when Judas leaves at the beginning of our reading today, Jesus knows he is out of time.  The end is coming and he desperately wants to leave the disciples with a few words of wisdom.  Knowing his time is up, Jesus does not tell anymore parables or give them any convoluted metaphors.  He keeps his words simple and direct.[i]  “Love one another,” he tells them.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  That is all he gives them.

His words are simple, perfect, and beautiful.  I am sure those words were in many of the elevator speeches I read.  God is love.  Our call is to love as Jesus loved us.  That is how others will know us to be Christians – through our love.  The problem is this:  though “love one another” sounds simple, perfect, and beautiful, loving one another is really hard work.  Think about that one family member who is so difficult – the sibling who always tries to start a fight, the family member who always has some story about why they need to borrow money from you, or that aunt who is just plain mean.  Jesus says we must love them.  Or think about that classmate who started a nasty rumor about you, the coworker who took credit for your idea, or that friend who shared your confidence with someone else.  Jesus says we must love them too.  Or think about that political candidate that you cannot stand, that religious leader who constantly says offensive things, or that homeless person you tried to help who was completely ungrateful.  Jesus says we must love them too.  Jesus words, “Love one another,” are simple, perfect, and beautiful.  But Jesus’ words are also hard, frustrating, and sometimes seemingly impossible.  Loving one another is at times the most wonderful, rewarding thing we do in this life, and at times is one of the most challenging, difficult things we do in this life.  But we love because that is what Jesus taught us to do.

Today we will baptize a child into the family of God.  Baptism is our sacred initiation rite.  During any initiation rite, we normally summarize what is most important to us so that the newly initiated person knows what we expect from her.  In this case, the parents and Godparents will be reminded of our ultimate priorities so that they can teach her in the years to come.  Most of those promises and priorities come in the baptismal covenant.  We ask five questions:  Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?  Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?  Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?  Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?   The questions are big questions – the guiding principles of our faith.  But most of the questions boil down to that night in the upper room:  love one another.

As we think about baptizing Elaina today, and teaching her to love, some of us may feel overwhelmed.  We know how hard loving is.  Elaina will even teach her parents and godparents how difficult loving is:  when she learns and uses the word “no!”, when she throws her first epic temper tantrum, or when she first utters those dreaded words, “I hate you!”  But Elaina will also teach the parents and godparents how wonderful love is:  when she first calls you by name, when you first see her helping someone or tenderly comforting a crying friend, or when she finally learns those wonderful words, “I love you!”  Everyday her parents and godparents will have the chance to teach her about what her baptism means by showing her how to love.  They may not have a patented elevator speech, but Elaina will understand what her Christians identity means when she sees what “love one another” really means.

But today is not just about Elaina, her parents, and her godparents.  Today is for all of us.  Today is a day when we too can take stock of how well we are living into our own identity as baptized children of God.  Every day we can take a moment to remember where we have failed to show love and where we have excelled in showing love.[ii]  The moments will be small and sometimes seemingly inconsequential.  But all those tiny moments add up to a lifetime of loving one another.  And today we will promise to, with God’s help, keep trying to be a people who love another.  Loving one another may not be a fancy elevator speech.  But loving one another might be much more powerful in the long run than any fancy words we can assemble – because Jesus’ commandment today is not so much about what we believe, but about how we live.[iii]  Jesus did not tell us to love one another because he knew loving one another would be easy.  But Jesus did tell us to love one another because he knows that we can.  He has seen each one of us do that simple, perfect, and beautiful act.  Today, he invites us to keep up the good work.  Amen.

[i] Gary D. Jones, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 468, 470.

[ii] David Lose, “On Loving – and Not Loving – One Another,” April 21, 2013, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2542 on April 20, 2016.

[iii] Jones, 470.

Homily – Deuteronomy 15.7-11, Charles Freer Andrews, February 12, 2015

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Today we honor Charles Freer Andrews.  Born in Birmingham, England, in 1871, Andrews was ordained a priest in 1897.  Turned on to social justice efforts in college, Andrews became interested in the cause of social justice throughout the British Empire, especially in India.  In 1904, he began to teach philosophy in Delhi, where his students and colleagues began to refer to him by an Indian name which means “Friend of the Poor.”  Andrews openly criticized the racist treatment of the Indian people by British officials, and in 1913 he successfully mediated a cotton worker’s strike which could have become violent.  He travelled to South Africa to help Indians there.  While there, he met Gandhi.  Andrews was impressed by Gandhi’s teaching of non-violence, knowledge of Christian faith and practice of peace.  Andrews and Gandhi worked together to negotiate matters of Indian authority with the British government.  Andrews also took up the Indian cause in Fiji, and eventually returned to England where he taught about social justice and radical discipleship.

I am sure Andrews was no stranger to our text from Deuteronomy today.  The passage is all about the sabbatical year, where debts were forgiven.  The passage warned the faithful against scheming around the rules of the seventh year.  Knowing that year was approaching, people were hesitant to give to those whose debts would be quickly forgiven.  Instead, the people of God are told, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

In many ways, St. Margaret’s is a faithful witness to opening our hands.  We are constantly collecting food and basic toiletries, giving gifts to the less fortunate and growing produce to feed the hungry.  We give liberally and ungrudgingly, as the text suggests.  But in all our good works, I sometimes wonder whether we could be labeled “Friend of the Poor,” as Andrews was.  It is one thing to give good or money to the poor, a necessary and important effort, but giving to the poor is not the same as being their friend.  Being a friend means getting involved, hearing their stories, finding out how they got to where they are today.  That work is much harder and messier, yet more meaningful.

Last week a story broke about Pope Francis and the Vatican opening up a new set of showers and a barber shop for the homeless of Rome.  The facility is beautiful and the homeless are treated with dignity and care.  The Vatican is trying to live into a life that embraces the poor and recognizes their humanity.  Now whether they become “friends of the poor” is something that is yet to be seen.  We all have that same invitation – to see the dignity of every human being and then to try to be their friend.  Good luck with your work!  Amen.

Sermon – Matthew 22.34-46, P25, YA, October 25, 2014

30 Thursday Oct 2014

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I hear it all the time.  Whether talking to engaged friends or working with a couple in premarital counseling, inevitably the question will come up, “So why do you want to get married?”  And then I get the response, “Well, we’re just so in love.”  Though their googly eyes are endearing and make me somewhat nostalgic for a time long ago, my thought is almost always, “Cute.  I wonder how long that will last.”  Though I try not to squash their mushy moment, eventually we get around to talking about life outside of their love bubble – talking about what happens when they argue, how they will negotiate the in-laws, and who will balance the checkbook.  Those are the times when the warm emotions of love are sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.  I do not meant to suggest that those warm, fuzzies of love are temporary necessarily; I simply mean that the emotional experience of love is not enough to sustain any relationship – neither those between couples, family, nor friends.  We are right to assume that love is necessary for relationships, but our definition of love has to be much bigger if we are to maintain any kind of meaningful relationships with others.

Sometimes we forget the multilayered meaning of love when we hear passages like the one from our gospel lesson today.  When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… and… love your neighbor as yourself.”  These commandments are so familiar to us that we sometimes forget how hard they really sound.  If our definition of love only includes the emotional kind of love that we might call “being in love,” does that mean we need to have googly eyes toward God?  I know very few people who profess to be “in love” with God.  In fact, I am not sure we would even say that we love God.  We might be grateful to God, we may revere God, or we might even be in awe of God.  But I know very few people who would say, “I love God.”  That emotion just feels strange to us.  And yet, Jesus says today, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Now the second commandment is a little easier.  We are used to loving our neighbors – loving people is what we are used to doing.  We love our friends and our family.  But Jesus says to love our neighbor, not just our friends.  Our neighbor includes those grouchy neighbors next door, that kid from school or that guy from work who always pushes your buttons, and most certainly that woman who cut you off while driving.  Our neighbor also includes those neighbors that often go unseen by us: the teen at JFK High School whose family cannot afford clothes and school supplies this year, that family who picked up our produce in Huntington Station through Food Not Bombs, that homeless man who received basic toiletries from St. Ignatius this week, or that Veteran’s family who is struggling to put life back together after returning to Plainview from war.  About these grouchy, mean, and unseen neighbors Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

When I work with those couples planning weddings, I am grateful when they choose the First Corinthians passage for their wedding, “Love is patient, love is kind…”[i]    I am grateful because then we can talk about what love really is.  We can talk about how love is more than simply a warm feeling or even a passionate desire.  In fact, when scripture talks about love, more often than not the kind of love scripture is talking about is not a passive emotion, but an active mercy.  In scripture, love is not something we feel, but something that we do.  To help us understand the difference, scripture will often translate the word for love as “loving-kindness.”  Love is not a feeling, but a choice:  a choice that we have to make over and over again.  As one person explains, “To love neighbor as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you.  We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.”[ii]

So what does this active love look like?  For our neighbor, this kind of love is a bit more obvious.  The next time someone is rude to you or unkind to you, instead of reacting to them defensively, perhaps you take a moment to wonder what happened to them in life that made them act this way toward you.  Once you start to wonder about what things make them human and what has hurt them in life, your ability to be angry with them for hurting you lessens a bit.  In my early working days, I worked with a woman who most of the time was pretty pleasant to be around.  But there were times that she lashed out – and when she did I used to be both perplexed and angry.  I eventually started avoiding her altogether when, in a totally different context, someone who knew her shared with me that her father and an ex-husband had been alcoholics and were both abusive.  Suddenly the pieces fell together for me.  She had not known the kind of love that God commands – and I had not loved her as my neighbor.  The next time she snapped at me, her snapping felt less personal and awful – and instead I could see a vulnerable, hurting person who did not know how to love.  When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, this is the kind of shift in thinking Jesus invites.

In some ways, loving our neighbor is a tangible task we can imagine assuming.  But loving God still feels a little foreign, let alone loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul.  Luckily, God leads by example.  Our stories of God tell us of how, time and again, God chooses God’s people, makes covenants with them, forgives them, and invites them into relationship again. God’s love for God’s people is not an emotion, but an action.  Just recently we reheard the Exodus stories of how as soon as the people get out of bondage, they complain about not having food, not having water, and feeling separated from their creature comforts.  We heard again about how when God takes too long with Moses up on the mountain, they quickly revert to worshiping a golden calf.  And yet God keeps providing for, caring for, and loving them.  This is our model for how we are to love God too.  “We can love with our heart: through generosity to God’s people.  We can love with our soul: by worshiping God and praying for our neighbors and ourselves.  And we can love with our minds: studying God’s Word and letting it correct us, enlighten us, and send us out in loving action to the world.”[iii]

As we continue to prayerfully walk the way through this stewardship season, I first wondered whether this lesson really had anything to say about stewardship.  But as I thought about loving God and neighbor, I realized that is what stewardship is really all about.  Like love, stewardship is not something we feel or think about – stewardship is something we do.  When we make a financial pledge or contribution, we are expressing to God our gratitude for our blessings.  We take money from our pockets – money that certainly could be used for a hundred other things we want or need – and we instead give that money to God.  This is our full-bodied way of loving God with our heart, soul, and mind.  And, when the church uses that money for educating our children, serving our neighbors in need, and sharing the Gospel in our community, the church helps us to love our neighbor through our money too.  Jesus is certainly inviting us to change our feelings about God and our neighbor – but Jesus is also inviting us to change our actions toward God and neighbor.  That is what love is.

Next week, you will have the chance to act on that love.  We will process our pledge cards forward, as a symbolic gesture of our financial commitment to the work and ministry of St. Margaret’s.  We commit to funding the worship, which helps us love God with our soul.  We commit to funding the outreach and evangelism, which helps us love God with heart.  We commit to funding education and formation, which helps us love God with our minds.  And we commit to funding a ministry that enables us to not only love God, but to love our neighbor as ourselves.  I cannot think of a better way to invest our money than to invest our money in love.  Amen.

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.1-13.

[ii] Clayton Schmit, “Matthew 22:34-46 Commentary,” 2011, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1063 on October 21, 2014.

[iii] Schmit.

A little help…

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

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As a parent of two young children, I have had to readjust how I do about pretty much everything.  Grocery shopping is one of the trickiest.  My current method is to put my oldest in the shopping cart seat (luckily she is still small enough for that) and to put my youngest on my chest in a baby carrier.  This mostly allows my hands to be free for pushing the cart, getting items off the shelf and onto the belt, keeping up with my shopping list, and generally entertaining two kids while trying to accomplish the task at hand.  It works, but it also feels like trying to manage a tornado.  I am happy if I remember most everything on my list and get the groceries and family home safely.  But I can only imagine what this chaos looks like to outsiders; and truthfully, I have never taken a moment to observe how others see me.

So imagine my surprise this week as I was trying to keep my oldest in the cart and my youngest from crying on my chest while unloading our groceries into the car, when, out of the blue, a young woman appeared and asked me if I would like some help loading our car.  I really have no idea what direction she came from, how long she had watched me scrambling, or what made her approach me.  And I must admit, my first thought was to worry about a stranger seeing the other chaos that is my car trunk.  Dumbfounded by the offer, embarrassed by the knowledge that I must have really looked like I needed help, and humbled by the fact that I really could use some help, I hesitantly allowed her to help me.  Before I knew it, the car was loaded and she was gone.  As I got in the car, my brain was filled with questions.  Had I thanked her sufficiently?  Why didn’t I ask her name?  What was her story?  Why did she offer to help me?

But the question that lingered the most was, “Why was I so hesitant to receive her help?”  I have worked for several nonprofit agencies that help those in need.  I have often given lip service to how my children are not just raised by me, but raised by a village.  I often preach about the value of vulnerability within community.  And yet, my immediate reaction to a stranger offering to help me was to insist that I could do it on my own.

Of course, this is often my struggle with God too.  How often have I gone to God in prayer, and then immediately tried to take control again when I felt like I was sufficiently at peace?  How often have I complained to God about an issue and then refused help from someone who was likely sent by God in the first place?  How often have I been willing to wash others’ feet, but not allowed Jesus to wash mine?  My parking lot experience this week reminded me of how much my pride gets in the way of authentic, vulnerable, beautiful relationship with God and my neighbor.  It takes a tremendous amount of trust to allow that kind of intimacy.  But when I do, I continue to be amazed at the ways that both God and my neighbor really do rise to the occasion.

On discomfort…

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

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I have regularly told people that when I preach, I am preaching to myself.  I find that my messages often resonate with others, but first and foremost, I make sure they resonate with me.  This has led to me needing to be honest about my faith struggles, to be vulnerable about how I still need to grow, and always seeking how God is speaking in fresh ways to me, calling me into deeper relationship with God.

This Sunday though, I found myself with a profound sense of conviction that I have yet to experience.  My sermon was about Matthew 5.38-48, and can be found here.  But what you would not know is that between our 8 am service and our 10 am service, a neighbor in need stopped by to ask if for financial assistance.  I had spoken with this neighbor before, and helped by covering the neighbor’s rent within the last month.  In general, I am able to help neighbors in similar situations because of my discretionary fund – a fund supported by the church and by contributions when I perform weddings or funerals.  But the fund is not large, and so my general policy is to keep within a certain range for each distribution of funds and to only offer assistance to the same family once every six months.  The idea behind the policy is that this allows me to help more families, and keeps enough monies in the fund for emergencies.  So when this neighbor came on Sunday, asking for further assistance, nowhere near the normal six-month wait period, the case seemed cut and dry to me.  I could not offer him what I would not offer to others.  Instead, I gave the neighbor some referrals for additional help, and we lit a prayer candle and prayed together before the neighbor left.

But the tricky part was getting back in the pulpit at 10 am.  I had just read aloud Jesus’ words from the gospel lesson, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”  And I preached about seeing others with God’s loving eyes.  And though I felt like I was preaching the right message, and I know that ultimately I did the right thing with our neighbor, I still felt a little sick to my stomach.  As one who proclaims the Gospel, I felt like a hypocrite.  I remember wondering how if our neighbor had stayed for worship, whether the neighbor would have thought I was a hypocrite too.  And yet, I also felt an overwhelming sense that any kind of exceptions I had made that day would have undermined my ministry in our community.

I still have not come to peace about the situation.  I do not have some clean, clear answer that makes the situation feel resolved or redeemable, even if I still feel I made the right decision.  But in these last days, I have been thinking that perhaps my discomfort is the point.  I try regularly to find the Good News in scripture – to find where the hope might be in seemingly challenging or bad news.  But perhaps this week it is okay if I am just uncomfortable.  Perhaps we all need to dwell in the discomfort that the Gospel creates from time to time – only then can we be more authentic followers of Christ.