Good morning, friends! I confess: when I saw that today’s gospel lesson was centered on “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”, the embarrassing thought “oh my goodness, how can I ever come up with something new to say on this?” passed quickly through my mind. But just as quickly, I realized that the reason this lesson comes up so often is, first of all, that this is God’s greatest commandment, (along with loving our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds). And second of all: it comes up so often because it is not only the most important directive, but also, that even though it appears simple on its surface, it’s not easy, so we have to be reminded and coached and cajoled about it pretty much constantly. In fact, every Sunday when we get together, if we just said “love your neighbor as yourself, love your neighbor as yourself” over and over and over, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea!
So, I’d like to share a few stories about this.
The first one is literally a neighbor story. This month marks my 35th anniversary of moving into my wonderful little home in my wonderful West Berkeley neighborhood. Chances are most of us have fairly similar living situations: a driveway on each side of the house that’s so narrow that you have to move the car to take out the trash. Your neighbor’s garage wall functions as a partial fence between your properties, and yours does the same for the neighbors on the other side – and to the rear, as well! All too clear views and sounds from next door: a living situation which draws upon a term from my theatre background – a need for “the willing suspension of disbelief”. We wound up commissioning stained glass windows for the kitchen and living room so that we could “willingly suspend our disbelief” a bit more: “oh, that view of the sunrise over the hills is breathtaking!” – (and coincidentally, it does an excellent job of blocking the view of our neighbor’s bathroom window, too!) Truly, a living situation which calls on us to frequently reconsider “loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
And when it’s time to build a new fence: oh, the challenges. Where is the property line, exactly? We did indeed need to build a new fence; one side of the yard, with one set of neighbors – easy! “Whatever you want, Christine, it’s all good!” But for the other side, there were already serious challenges in our relationship there, and we realized pretty quickly that we’d better have a survey done to sort out where the property lines lay, and then…. Well, things went even further south very, very fast. That neighbor was truly convinced, no matter what I did, and no matter how lovingly I tried to do it, that I meant it with “malice aforethought.” Worst of all: I saw her going to the easy-going neighbors on the other side to tell them tales about my perfidy – she was trying to turn them against me. Oh, it was a bad, bad time. The truth is, she really hated me. It seemed that somehow she had convinced herself that I was being hateful to her, and that gave her permission to hate me back, and now she was doing her best to get me to actually hate her, so that she could feel justified in her behavior. It was a horrible, horrible spiral.
Along with dread, a sick stomach, trouble sleeping, and avoiding going outside whenever I heard her door open, I started to get really angry sometimes, too. I was trying, really trying, to love my neighbor, but golly, did she make it hard! Surely it was okay for me to be angry! And one day, suddenly the thought popped into my head: “girl, Jesus did NOT say ‘love your neighbor as yourself – unless they’re really irritating – then you’re off the hook!’” So, with difficulty, I refocused on the work all day, every day.
I’ll never know the real seeds of my neighbor’s hatred and anger, but I believe that she must have experienced pain and trauma in her life that led her to that place. With lots of reflection on my part, I came to feel compassion for her.
And the thing is, my neighbor – the one who hated me – was also a devout Christian. I believe that she must also have suffered greatly at times, being under the control of those feelings; it must have been horrible, knowing that she was unable to love me when Jesus had made it clear that she was called to do it.
As I focused on loving her, I released my need for her to love me back. I released my need for her to understand my good intentions. I did not engage in so much as an expression of irritation with her; I focused on love, on patience, and on kindness. I’m not saying that I came to like her – but I forgave her, and in every way I treated her with love, to the best of my ability. And over time, it became much, much easier; it became manageable. Without any fuel from me to feed her anger, over time, her overtly hateful actions also quieted, and living next door to each became better. I could go outside without peeking through the window first to make sure she wasn’t out there. As far as I can tell, she never came to love me, but she seemed to no longer actively hate me. She tolerated me. I pray that this ultimately brought her some peace.
The second story I’d like to share is about the rally sign I made for a big No Kings protest a year or so ago. I used a magic marker to create a sign that said “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself” on the top, and “Welcome the Stranger” on the bottom, with attributions to Jesus. I was walking around with my sign, up and down University and San Pablo Avenues, when someone called out to me “you know, it says that in the Old Testament, too!”
Well, naturally, I had to go look it up! Indeed, it turns out that “love your neighbor as yourself” is first mentioned in Leviticus: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, I have to say, that’s close, but not quite the same; I think Jesus took it a step further, as he often did: this interpretation of a “neighbor” implies that it just applies to your own people, while Jesus calls us to call ALL people our neighbors – no exceptions.
As for “Welcome the Stranger” – it’s also in Leviticus! “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” So, indeed, these two important themes from the Gospel are a reiteration of directives given to us long before. And taken together, they illustrate that everyone is a neighbor.
But somehow, these fundamental things have proven terribly challenging for us humans – including people who describe themselves as devout faith practitioners – our fellow descendants of Abraham. People go looking for excuses to make exceptions, to deprive people of their rights, to commit violence on their bodies or their property, to defame them. We’ve all heard the excuses – that that person isn’t really a neighbor – that we get to draw small circles of importance to define who deserves our love and care. I think Jesus, as well as his ancestors, make it pretty darned clear – we should love our neighbors as ourselves. And who are our neighbors? Everyone. Every single last one, near or far, is our neighbor.
I have one more story to share; as you know, many of us attend a weekly rally at El Cerrito plaza. This past Friday I was there, along with Beth and Jim Beller and Becky Osborn-Coolidge, and a dozen or so other folks. As Beth has described, these are generally peaceful events. A handful of seniors – I’m one of the youngest folks there! – hold up their signs and flags, wave, and offer peace signs. A number of folks bring chairs and walkers and sit for an hour, holding up their signs. A large number of passing drivers honk, wave, offer peace or power signs to us, and yell their thanks and encouragement. Every week the positive responses grow in frequency and in volume. Some number of folks just drive by with no response. And about one or two folks a week will flip us the finger, or yell something rude at us. It’s interesting to see how our fellow protesters respond to the rude ones: some just smile, but sometimes one of those seniors will flip them off in return.
Very, very rarely, we get a passerby who goes ballistic. That’s what happened this past Friday. I arrived just in time to see a man screaming “you’re enabling pedophiles!”at a fellow protester. He was screaming so hard that the spit was flying. And the protester, a white-bearded man, blew him a kiss as the guy stalked off. The protester filled me in on the rest of what had happened: the passerby called the group Nazis and a number of other wild and nasty things. And the protester had said a few mild responses before realizing that he needed to shut it down, and he told the man he loved him; the man’s response was “liar!” I had arrived just after that had happened.
Given that I had just put the finishing touches on today’s reflection, this certainly got me thinking. I returned to talk further to our fellow protester; I asked him if he had a faith practice. He was a bit startled by the question, and answered “not really.” He went on to share that previously, when counter-protesters had flipped him off, he’d flip them off in return. But that lately he’s switched to blowing them kisses, or telling them that he loved them. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
I went over to Becky to share that I’d asked him if he had a faith practice, and that he’d said “no”; Becky responded: “Oh, he has a faith practice, alright – it’s in here.” she said, pointing to her heart. And of course, I had to go home and rewrite my reflection!
I would like to leave you with one more thought. It is the season of stewardship, so I want to share this: St. Alban’s is a very special place. A place where we come together every week to practice God’s love in action. It is a remarkable thing to feel so very comfortable and welcome here that we can share our deepest selves, our prayers, our personal and deep reflections on learning to follow Jesus’ teachings, and to express these things with complete comfort and joy. Every day, in every way, the commitment we make to this community spreads God’s love in ways that we may never see, but are very, very real. Our support of this community through our pledges, as well as through all the things we do to keep this work going, feed all the branches and roots it makes into the community.
Amen.