Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Intro

Pray

Talk about the centrality and core of Christ’s message

Offer examples of what we think that is

10 commandments

Repent and be saved

As if heaven were the only goal of salvation. Spoiler alert - if heaven is your only goal in faith it will likely be missed entirely. Living life for Heaven is counter to Christ’s message entirely.

Even very helpful scritptures that we love to through in unbelievers faces can be the core of what we believe.

Only through Christ can you be saved we might offer. And rightly so! But what is this “through Christ” stuff all about? Is it just acknowledging He is real? Obviously not. Even the most evil can acknowledge fact - although in today’s society I find that people’s ability to prove their own evil intentions by acting as if facts aren’t facts simply because they are inconvenient for them or their side to be evidence that our capacity for evil is much higher than I might like.

So it isn’t just saying Christ is real, so it must be something else! Some call that being born again. Or to take the Christianness off of those words, to accept the life of Jesus and the sayings and thoughts and desires of Jesus and make them the cornerstone of your life.

And there lies the truth. Inconvenient or not. Jesus is the only arbiter through which we are to judge scripture and our lives. Put more simply, everything we think and do needs to be funneled through the ideas and words of Christ.

And so when we are looking for the core of our faith, we can’t look to anything, really, that isn’t Jesus - if it is that we are Christians. So what did he tell us? What command can we follow to live like He truly wants us to live?

Matthew 22:36–40 ESV

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matt 22:36-40

Love God, Love Neighbor.

That’s it. There is nothing else. ALL THE LAW - THE ENTIRETY OF THE FIRST 5 BOOKS OF THE BIBLE - AND ALL OF THE PROPHETS, THE REST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ESSENTIALLY; THEY ALL HANG ON THOSE TWO COMMANDS!

Jesus’ words. Not Jeff’s.

So what does that mean? Well it means that Every single thing you can say, do, or think, that doesn’t start with those two commands is worthless.

Paul agrees with that. So scripture agrees with itself and I with it. No matter what you do, or think; no matter what position you hold in life or society; no matter your posts, your team, your flag, your rights, or your fundamental beliefs - if those things don’t start with love of God and neighbor - AND WORSE IF THEY ACTIVELY CAUSE YOU TO DISLIKE YOUR NEIGHBOR - they are not things of God.

[warring neighbors]

But who is my neighbor? Is it people here in this church? Maybe it is people who go to a “bible believing church?” Maybe it is any Protestant - cause you know, those Catholics and Mormons aren’t Christians like us. Maybe it is Americans. Maybe it is any democratic nation.

You see where I am going.

The question of who is my neighbor is as old as time. And one, thankfully, that Jesus speaks to.

Luke 10:25–37 ESV

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Luke 10:25-37

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Mercy. It springs from empathy. Which springs from a desire for another person to be fully safe and at peace in life - like one of your children. Jesus claims - and be sure you get that, this isn’t Jeff here, these are His words - that to love god and neighbor is to find life. “Do this and you will live.” And when the man understands that mercy is the goal Jesus tells him to “go and do likewise.”

It is written right on the doorpost of our church.

Go have mercy. Go love others. A command from Christ to drop the walls we create. There are no sides here! There are no people for whom we are called to NOT feel a need and deep internal desire to alleviate ANY suffering they might be experience - AND CHURCH THAT IS REGARDLESS OF FAULT!

Should that man have gone down that road dressed like he was at that time of day? Maybe if he had a job he wouldn’t have been going down that road. Maybe if he would have prayed about it he would have known better. All those excuses we write in our minds to exclude another from the mercy Christ tells us to have for all people.

It is all anti-Christian

And notice, here, this isn’t about God’s love for them. This isn’t about a general respect for them as living people. This isn’t any of that stuff we have lined up as teh payment we think is sufficient to have fulfilled Christ’s call for loving neighbor as being ANYTHING apart from unqualified love that creates empathy in us and ultimately mercy for all those we meet in life.

Loving neighbor is providing for them. Without questions. Without excuses. And especially without the trappings of the society in which we might find ourselves.

So to sum up - Jesus - the one we claim to follow, unequivocally tells anyone who would every ask the question “who is my neighbor,” that your neighbor is everyone. And further, you must have mercy on them all. And even further, that all mercy and love flows from you and your mercy for them and toward EVERYONE else in the world.

Who is my neighbor. Everyone. So what do we do? We love them. Truly love them. Every last one of them.

[frances Ellen Watkins harper]

From those with which we agree, to those we do not. We must find common ground with each other - fellow creations of God - if we would ever even dream of finding common ground with God.

I want to say that again to drive it home. You will NEVER find yourself on common ground with God so long as you find no common ground with EVERY person on this earth.

If you can’t love and sense and recognize their humanity and see God’s image in them then you are far from God I am afraid.

This woman is a wonderful example of that. And honestly, I would be shocked if you had ever heard of her. It is Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and she was a poet in her time. But far more than that, she was a human - our sister detached in time. On the occasion from which I will quote her, she had been invited to share at the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention in New York City where she sat on the platform with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

This woman with no real rights at all had been willing to come speak to the rights of women to vote. But not all women, obviously, they were only there speaking of white women’s rights.

Still she spoke, and did so elegantly. I want to read a portion that I find a wonderful answer to the question, who is my neighbor? It is almost the opposite side of this story from scripture for us today.

A warning before I begin. There is a moment of appropriate language for the time, and is spoken because it was written and shouldn’t be written over by me as a white man.

I FEEL I AM SOMETHING of a novice upon this platform. Born of a race whose inheritance has been outrage and wrong, most of my life had been spent in battling against those wrongs. But I did not feel as keenly as others, that I had these rights, in common with other women, which are now demanded. About two years ago, I stood within the shadows of my home. A great sorrow had fallen upon my life. My husband had died suddenly, leaving me a widow, with four children, one my own, and the others stepchildren. I tried to keep my children together. But my husband died in debt; and before he had been in his grave three months, the administrator had swept the very milk-crocks and wash tubs from my hands. I was a farmer’s wife and made butter for the Columbus market; but what could I do, when they had swept all away? They left me one thing-and that was a looking glass! Had I died instead of my husband, how different would have been the result! By this time he would have had another wife, it is likely; and no administrator would have gone into his house, broken up his home, and sold his bed, and taken away his means of support.

I took my children in my arms, and went out to seek my living. While I was gone, a neighbor to whom I had once lent five dollars, went before a magistrate and Swore that he believed I was a non-resident, and laid an attachment on my very bed. And I went back to Ohio with my orphan children in my arms, without a single feather bed in this wide world, that was not in the custody of the law. I say, then, that justice is not fulfilled so long as woman is unequal before the law.

We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the Negro. You pressed him down for two centuries; and in so doing you crippled the moral strength and paralyzed the spiritual energies of the white men of the country. When the hands of the black were fettered, white men were deprived of the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press. Society cannot afford to neglect the enlightenment of any class of its members. At the South, the legislation of the country was in behalf of the rich slaveholders, while the poor white man was neglected. What is the consequence today? From that very class of neglected poor white men, comes the man who stands to-day, with his hand upon the helm of the nation. He fails to catch the watchword of the hour, and throws himself, the incarnation of meanness, across the pathway of the nation. My objection to Andrew Johnson is not that he has been a poor white man; my objection is that he keeps “poor whits” all the way through. That is the trouble with him.

This grand and glorious revolution which has commenced, will fail to reach its climax of success, until throughout the length and brea[d]th of the American Republic, the nation shall be so color-blind, as to know no man by the color of his skin or the curl of his hair. It will then have no privileged class, trampling upon and outraging the unprivileged classes, but will be then one great privileged nation, whose privilege will be to produce the loftiest manhood and womanhood that humanity can attain.

I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life. I do not believe that white women are dew-drops just exhaled from the skies. I think that like men they may be divided into three classes, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. The good would vote according to their convictions and principles; the bad, as dictated by preju[d]ice or malice; and the indifferent will vote on the strongest side of the question, with the winning party.

1 John 3:18–20 ESV

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

How on earth can you love when you are hated? How can you look in the face of those who stand against you and then support a cause that will help them?

By realizing that we are all in this together. Bound together, as she says, in one ball of humanity. There is no other side.

I say again - no matter what you want to believe, there is no other side. This isn’t some reality TV show or soap opera. We are all the same. And we must love because we were first so loved by God.

But how?

Not with words. Not with prayers. Not with thoughts. Not with hashtags. Not with a temporary profile picture. Not with a momentarily broken heart that if it were truly broken would lead to change.

We must love in the truly Biblical way.

This is the end of my time in ministry. These are the last words I will likely ever be blessed to say to a congregation. So for each young person here. For everyone here. For my wife. For my children. This is it.

These verses today are all you really ever need to know or do.

Love God. Love Neighbor.

Who is your neighbor? Everyone is your neighbor. And you are called to show them mercy in all things.

Showing them mercy requires love - and this is how you love.

This is my favorite verse in all of scripture. Because it is the inflection point between what we know we have been told, and what that looks like, and how we do it.

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[mr rogers]

And as I leave you with that, I want to leave you with words from another former pastor. But one who had a far greater impact than I. But also one who kept Christ in his heart as he lived in the world. So it is one who tells us that we have no excuse apart from our unwillingness to try.

Love, if we live it out, will constantly fill us up. It will guide us to those in need and will offer us the reward of love for others and for ourselves once we open the door to it.

And, “Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.” But even in listening, we must be willing to hear another. Truly to hear them. And that “Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in this world.”

Sometimes, “the toughest thing is to love somebody who has done something mean to you. Especially when that somebody has been yourself.” But love gives room for mistakes and difference of opinions.

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like 'struggle.' To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” And in that striving to accept them, to then have mercy on them.

But even with all of that, it sounds very nice and it sounds right, but how do we do it? How can we put into action Christ’s call to love everyone? What on earth can I say to help us to get there?

I wish I had the answer. But I don’t. All I have is this - my final point I ever get to make.

You are enough. You. Just the way you are. Not you plus social acceptance or position or ideology or power. Christ died for you because he loved you just the way you are. Following Him will allow you to feel that love more acutely and to be filled by it more completely. And there in that love, church, you will find life.

Church, God is love. I say it again, God is love. So if you want to bring someone to Christ show them love.

“The greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.”

You are loved, Church. Now, no matter where you go or what you do or who you are with - so go and do likewise.