This post is the working copy of a sermon I gave at Edwards Church, UCC in Framingham, MA on August 7, 2016. The live version deviates a bit, in that I was not reading from these notes. (PDF)
“I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means might appear different the ends are the same.” (The Dalai Lama, 1989)
We were asked to bow our heads before communion that day, expressly suggested to close our eyes, if I remember correctly. And the small group, let’s say twelve of us, complied, either out of actual devotion or a burning desire to appear to blend in with the crowd. Following the “Amen”, open eyes revealed for the first time that our celebrant was none other than Jesus Christ himself, with headset microphone, standing before us, preparing a table complete with souvenir take-home olive wood cups.
We hadn’t known quite how amusing this “amusement” park would be, staring at each other in disbelief as we departed the cave. But, there was little time to discuss, as the calendar of events prophesied that a special guest would be featured at the play that would be starting in the gold-plated theater shortly. (It was Jesus on a motorcycle.)
A nearly spontaneous long weekend in Orlando with my sister’s family found us a bit light in our wallets, and my wife and I decided it could be appropriate, financially, to skip the second day of Universal Studios in order to attend a Bible-based theme park, owned by a Christian broadcasting network. And I could go on all day telling you how truly bizarre this place was. I could also talk indefinitely about how uncomfortable it made us at times: actors portraying Bible characters, like a centuries’ older Plimoth Plantation; a snack bar with Biblical-themed snacks. It was exactly like the first act of a Simpsons episode, and we were the dumbfounded heroes gobsmacked by the Flanders children all around us. There was a lot to report back to our family that evening.
But, oddly enough, something that sticks with me most as I look back on this experience was the number of people for whom this was a very meaningful day. For me, it was a bit of a joke, and an opportunity to spend considerably less than I would have if we’d chosen instead to ride the Hogwarts Express a second time. But for many who bought tickets that day, in their Sunday finest (three-piece suits, bonnets), this was something very different.
Perpsective
I grew up in a “kneel at the railing with a tiny glass cup” sort of communion church. It would be nearly two decades before I learned the Catholic practice of holding your hands in front of you, or the intinction method of dipping your bread in a communal chalice. After years of “the way we always have done it”, it can feel unusual, some would say “weird” to try something different.
But, without exposure, we never truly learn to accept each other.
When confronted in Matthew 22, Jesus states that the entire Jewish law “hangs” on two simple commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (NRSV). This is Jesus at his most and least complex.
What does the second of these two commandments mean to us today? The word that is read in our New Revised Standard Version as “neighbor” is not a unique editor’s decision. I compared 24 English language translations of Matthew 22:39 and each and every one uses the same word. How different this commandment would be if we were implored to love our brother, a word we often see in scriptures to describe like-minded individuals. We all have our differences with brothers, sisters, and parents, but in the end what one of us wouldn’t leap in front of a bus to save any one of them? Those who gather with us here on Sunday morning have become our family as well. We share our triumphs, grieve together, and have become better people through these associations.
A Neighbor, Defined
So, what does it mean to “love my neighbor”?
We live in a three-family home, our landlords below us. It’s in our best interest to maintain a strong familial relationship with this empty-nest married couple. It’s they, after all, who turn on our heat in October. I say this with tongue in cheek, because in a great number of our interactions we are told that, even on the brink of forty years old, we have become their children in the house.
[Read more in my original post, “In the Face of So Much Sadness“]
Our neighborhood is full of transient renters living in multi-family buildings, mixed in between long-time owners, many of whom also serve as landlords in their own buildings. I consider myself a transient renter, though I have been resident for many years. But, in that time I have not learned the real name of a single neighbor outside my building. Not one. There’s a certain comfort in the anonymity of city life. But I hope the next step in my development may include an occasional discussion over a picket fence about how those tomatoes are coming along, Neighbor. That could show me that I’ve started to heal.
Fear, Mandated
Our previous home was in New Jersey, and we signed its lease in 2001, on September 12. Any twenty-something, unemployed newlywed is already terrified enough, it didn’t help that our early days were ranked by colorful threat levels. We were told that was a scary time. It was the age of the anthrax scare, which originated at our local postal distribution center. It was the age of the sleeper cell. We were told to be on the lookout, suspicious of everyone, even our neighbors. And we were. That group of five or six young foreigners living directly below us, who played foreign language techno music in the middle of the night and owned no furniture aside from a conference table which clearly appeared to have blueprints spread across it? There was a period during which we were quite sure our end would come at their hands, and we’d fall asleep at night clasping each other’s. And we had been told to think that way from our nation’s highest office. It began to show us the error of our thinking when they eventually moved away and offered us a bag of Turkish pistachios on their way out. That sort of fear plants very deep roots almost immediately, and can take years to recover from. Some people never do.
Levelling Up an Acquaintance
So how do we advance past that fear and actually turn a “neighbor” into a “brother”? How do we level-up that acquaintance we nod to on the sidewalk every morning without ever catching a first name? I’d say that sort of relationship enhancement happens through Jesus’ completion of thought. We must love them as ourselves. In a corresponding passage from the Gospel of John (13:34), Jesus is heard to say “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Casually, these quotes appear similar.
Through John, Jesus raises a higher standard, to love “one another” to the degree of our infallible God. This seems clear, and somewhat easy. In saying “one another”, it may be easy to think only of those on our family tree, those in the pews around us. And by saying “as I have loved you” we know the degree, albeit unattainably high, to which we must work.
However, through Matthew, Jesus makes it even harder for us. Remember, he uses the word “neighbor”, that person outside our family gatherings, someone who’s never heard of Edwards Church. And, we are told to love that neighbor “as ourselves”, that is, presumably, “to the degree that you love yourself.”
I’d like to think that each of us does inherently and instinctively love each other as ourselves, the limiting factor being how much we love ourselves. In June, the Massachusetts Conference’s Annual Meeting keynote speaker, Rev. Otis Moss III pointed out, through I Corinthians 13 that if you do not love yourself, you cannot hope to love your neighbor, and you’re actually showing disapproval of God, who created you the way you are.
We’re all different, individually, culturally. To assume that our communion practice, denomination, or religion is the “correct” one does a disservice to those around us, from whom we may have things to learn. Had I trusted in that belief years ago, I may have learned something interesting about Turkey, or gotten more free pistachios. Who around us might be wishing they’d be asked for advice on a project, or to water your plants during your vacation? Although in many ways society has conditioned me to close my life off from others and I oblige, I’m made uneasy by a world in which people look upon their neighbor suspiciously, and avoid real-world contact. Paul tells us in Romans 13:10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Sadly, my entire adult life has been dominated by the loudest voices encouraging me to break that law, pointing fingers at “the other guy”. But in the course of history, this is a blip. A very correctable blip. And I believe it may be changed.
A Moment in Time
History is very hard to live through. I used to think my parents and my grandmother were dumb in not knowing what year Nixon resigned or what year John Lennon died. It was right there in my World Almanac, and they’d even had the advantage of living through these events. But that’s just it, they’d lived through them, they’d survived them, which makes it all a part of a fabric of related, interwoven events, wherein it becomes helpful to ponder “Where was I living at the time?” “Who first told me about that event?” and the like. But from a historical standpoint, these events and their aftermaths are reduced to single days on a timeline.
Conversely, trends and movements can feel like an eternity, in the present, but when separated by several generations, we can be lured into thinking that the results had always been there. No one here remembers slavery in America. Few in our community can recall a time when women could not vote. In a few years, it will seem absurd that marriage was ever defined by the boundaries we all grew up accepting unchallenged.
And in this regard, I pray that fear of the foreigner on no other grounds than where he was born, and how he worships will appear to have been a foolhardy distraction in the early part of the 21st century, revealed as fear-mongering, plain and simple.
A Brighter Future
Exposure is key. We must embrace our differences. Think of every movie about a dystopian future, and their common features: drab colors, dead stares, gray uniforms. Our society comes alive through our skin tones, our bizarre hair styles, and our most brightly colored clothes.
It’s because I’m confident in my own Christianity that I can love a Muslim or a Jew. It’s because I understand our UCC sacraments that I am not threatened by someone else’s methods of celebrating communion or baptism. And it’s because I look at people individually, that I am glad our nation includes so many people who don’t look like me.
Make the choice today to live and work with people that don’t look like you. Start a conversation with someone who worships in a different style, or who doesn’t pray at all. And if that doesn’t come natural, don’t fight it. No one wants to be approached by an insincere evangelical who’s simply trying too hard. I’ve had more than a few unpleasant run-ins with people trying to fill a quota.
But, if you truly love and understand, and accept yourself, that ebullience will shine through in all that you do.
You won’t need words to tell everyone you’re keen on Jesus, the Holy Spirit will handle that for you.
And you won’t have to talk about love, you’ll just love.