Life Together

“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood. It’s a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?”

Perhaps some of you remember the lyrics to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” the theme song that Mr. Rodgers would sing at the beginning of his show, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. It sounds a bit cheesy doesn’t it. A little too good to be true.

Kinda like the early church in Acts. It says all who believed had all things in common. They shared their stuff. More than this, if someone else needed something, they would sell their own stuff to get money to help that person out. They spent a lot of time together, ate meals together, praised God together. They had “glad and generous hearts.” They were all in each other’s business. Nothing was off limits. They lived as neighbors. They shared life together.

Life together. Together. This is what we were made for. Even when it is awkward. Even when it is hard. Even when we get it wrong. The early church got it right, and they also got it really wrong. Goodness knows we are no different today. Fussing and fighting and giving up on each other right and left. I had the pleasure of meeting with other parish pastors this week and I shared that I was preaching on community this month and they all laughed. And I thought to myself, “has community, life together, the witness of the church born of God’s Spirit, become the laughing stock?” Is life together too good to be true?

There was a young man named Shane Claiborne who grew up in Maryville, TN in what he called the buckle of the Bible belt. He went to church, was loved by others, and went to revivals each year where he was born again. But eventually he began to wonder if there was more. While Shane was in college in Philadelphia in 1995, there was an article about a group of homeless individuals who had begun to live in an abandoned Catholic church. There was a statement from the archdiocese saying that they had 48 hours to get out or they would be arrested. Something about this didn’t settle with Shane, and so he and his friends began to advocate for these people. These people, strangers at the time, became their friends, their neighbors.

There in the ruins of an abandoned church, they gathered and read the text of the early church, our text for this morning. It was there they decided, “we are gonna stop complaining about the church we have experienced and work on becoming the church that we dream of.” They hung a banner on the church that said “how can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?” They said they had talked with the real owner of the building, God, and said that he said they could stay until they found somewhere else. This is what started what is now known as The Simple Way, a community that started in an abandoned church and began to expand into other abandoned buildings in the area. They took what was empty and made a home, creating a neighborhood that seeks to live into God’s calling to love one another, to hold things in common, and to live life.... together. Over twenty years later, this community of people still live life and work together.

It doesn’t mean it’s always easy. That there isn’t conflict. That there won’t be disagreements. But it does mean that the commitment to togetherness is greater than that which seeks to divide. It means choosing to stay. It means choosing the neighbor.

Barbara Brown Taylor was an Episcopalian priest who retired from preaching and taught a world religion class for twenty years. She discusses this experience in her book Holy Envy. During her time, she encountered a lot of kids who were vastly different than herself. Through this, she learned what it meant to be a neighbor. She said “I came to the startling revelation that if I were called upon to defend my neighbor or defend my religion, that Jesus would point me to the neighbor, that when I looked at his example…if it came to his loyalty to his tradition or his loyalty to a wounded person in front of him, a threatened person, he chose the person.” She says “once you have given up knowing who is right, it is easy to see neighbors everywhere you look.”

Part of what keeps us from life together is that we have stopped trusting each other. We care more about our rightness than we do lovingkindness. We have stopped choosing each other. We quit each other. We walk away. We don’t fight for life together.

Jennie Allen in her book Find Your People, talks about a hard conversation with her sister in which her sister shared with her how she had hurt her. They could have walked away, but at one point her sister looked at her and was like “I’m not quitting you. This is me staying. This is me fighting for us.” Have you ever had someone like that in your life? Someone who didn’t give up? Your ride or die person? Your neighbor no matter what person?

I met one of my best friends in the fifth grade, and unlike a lot of my other friends, she didn’t go to church. She thought God was bigger than a building. It didn’t matter to me. She was my friend. I’m not here to tell you some story of what a great person I was because I didn’t give up on her even though she believed differently. I am here to tell you that she didn’t give up on me. She has been present for the very best and the very worst of me, and she has never left. She has held me as I cried, laughed with me until I couldn’t breathe, corrected me when I was wrong, and invited me into her beautiful, messy life. She didn’t quit me and last year, almost 25 years later, I had the complete joy of baptizing her and her two daughters.

As I let the water run through my hands and placed them on top of her head, I reminded her of the grace of God that never gives up on her. Remember earlier, when we baptize, we celebrate the promise of God that holds no matter what. The promise that says you are mine. The promise that says nothing will separate you from the claim my love has upon you. Baptism is celebrating God choosing us, and when we choose one another. We are saying “hey I know life is messy and we may fail each other even as we try to love one another but we aren’t going to give up. We are going to walk with you through life. We are going to hold all things together in common: one Lord. One faith. One baptism. The parts we love and the pieces we would rather leave out. We are in it for the long haul. We won’t quit because we believe that life together is worth it.”

“I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day Since we're together, we might as well say Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor?”