2020.05.17 | Being a Good Neighbor
Being a Good Neighbor
Pastor Pepper
This is a test…just a test...
In today’s scripture reading, an expert in Jewish law and customs tests Jesus by asking him how to inherit eternal life.
Jesus answers with one of the fundamentals of the Jewish faith: love God and love your neighbor.
Thinking to trick Jesus into saying something unpopular or even blasphemous, the expert asks a follow-up: So, who is my neighbor?
In response, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan: an injured Jew is laying on the road from Jerusalem, having been beaten by a robber. Two Jewish leaders — first a priest and then a Levite — see the man and cross to the other side of the road to avoid the beaten man. Then a Samaritan comes along and helps the man, taking him to a safe place, treating his wounds, and paying for his expenses.
What we often miss about this story is that the injured Jew and the Samaritan are basically enemies. For centuries before Christ, Jews and Samaritans had disagreed on all the major tenets of their Hebrew ancestry and had separated themselves so far from one another that they did not talk or travel in each other’s territory.
Imagine that an Eden Church member, say a gay man, got beaten up after Church and was laying injured on Grove Street and first Pastor Marvin and then Pastor Arlene went by without stopping to help but a pastor of a conservative church known to be homophobic in the extreme stopped to help the Eden member, drove him to Eden Hospital, paid his medical expenses, and then drove him all the way home.
This is the way in which this story would shock us because it so clearly invites us to reflect on how easy it is to bypass someone who is different from us religiously, politically, racially, linguistically, or by social class or material wealth. The path to eternal life, according to Luke’s Jesus, is about transcending the biases that we’ve been taught or who we fear or are physically separated from by circumstance.
The Stewardship Committee chose this passage as our theme for this year’s pledge campaign because they thought it captured the essence of Stewardship in the time of COVID-19. Even as we shelter in place we have an opportunity to reach out to those we wouldn’t normally connect to: the homeless person, the man who collects recyclables, the tough-looking teenager walking the street at odd hours, the women wearing hijab, the orthodox Jew. From a safe distance, by a note or a letter, we can inquire about their well-being, offer our support, tell them about our food bank, or simply smile and wave hello.
It’s a challenging time to try to connect. I spoke with a neighbor who told me that he is dividing his neighbors into safe and unsafe. The safe neighbors are those who take precautions against COVID by wearing masks, limiting their time in stores and offices, and avoid large gatherings of any kind. The unsafe neighbors are those who don’t take those precautions and don’t understand how the virus can be communicated to others unbeknownst to themselves. Being a good neighbor means being an expert in the Gospel and creative about how to demonstrate care and concern for others without harming yourself or them.
And that connects to the second reason the Stewards chose this passage, which is that it captures the essence of Eden Church. Our pledge dollars support the operations of the Church, which supports our many programs to get food and other resources into the hands of people who need it, regardless of their race, religion, social situation, or legal status.
As we prepare and dedicate those pledges today, please remember that the first part of Jesus’ answer to the legal expert was that the path to eternal life is first and foremost to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind. If age, health, or your living situation prevents you from volunteering or helping your neighbor as you would normally, God sees and understands your situation, as do your friends. Don’t be distressed — focus instead on what you can do to show God that you love with your whole heart and mind. Pray, study, gather in Christ’s name by phone or Zoom, and donate what you can. As we always say at Eden, pledging is not an “ought” or a “should” — it’s a prayer of thanksgiving to God that should bring you and your family joy.
I’d like to close by teaching you a small portion of a poem by Marge Piercy that I think expresses what it means to be a good neighbor in the time of COVID. If you’d like to read the whole poem, it’s called “The Seven of Pentacles.”
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
Amen.