Like a Good Neighbor – Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost (Romans 15:1-6)
For a few years, a little less than a ten years ago, on Thursday mornings you would usually find me driving to the hair dresser. I did this because on Thursday morning I would take an elderly couple from church on their weekly errands. Charlie and Norma were in the 90s, he was going blind and she was going deaf, so they were unable to drive themselves. So, I was their chauffer. These Thursday morning trips would revolve around Norma’s trips to the hair dresser. Norma like to chat as she rode in the car, sharing her observations about the world. There was one particular thing she said that has stuck with me, though.
It was actually a recurring phrase that she would somewhat regularly. She would say, “People just don’t know how to neighbor anymore.” In this sentence the word ‘neighbor’ was a verb. It didn’t just describe where someone lived in proximity to someone else. Neighbor was something someone could do. It was a way to interact with the world. It was something you could do for people. And in Norma’s case, it was a behavior that was expected of people. Folks weren’t just neighbors; they were expected to do neighborliness. To neighbor for people, especially if those people were the elderly couple next door who needed help with things. Things like getting the recycling bin out to the curb each week. (In this case I should also say that to neighbor meant to perceive when your help was needed, even if it wasn’t asked for. Norma’s husband, Charlie would take the bins to the curb, he considered it his job and he wanted to do it, but Norma realized it wasn’t easy for him. Then, since a previous neighbor had helped him out with this task, she was disappointed that the new neighbors weren’t stepping up in the same way.)
So, in this way, to neighbor isn’t just to live next to somebody. To neighbor is to be there for somebody. Just watch any State Farm commercial, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” A good neighbor is there. They are there to do the work of neighboring. I think that was the idea behind Norma’s lament about the lack of neighboring the folks next door were doing. As neighbors we can help each other, build each other up, and set an example of neighborliness. If you are neglecting to do those things, well, then maybe you just don’t know how to neighbor.
Now, I don’t mean that to sound like an accusation. Certainly, I don’t know your relationships with your individual neighbors. And I think, overall, the concept of being a neighbor is different now than it was in Norma’s day. I know when it comes to my neighbors the agreement seems to be that the most neighborly thing we can do for each other is mind our own business. So, there is not a lot of interaction there. To complicate it further there are at least three different languages spoken in my apartment building. So, the expectations of a neighbor are different these days. It can be difficult.
And yet, we find little ways here and there to be good neighbors. When packages get left out on the doorstep of the apartment people will move them inside. Sometimes they will even take them and set them outside the door of the apartment the package is addressed to. Once I noticed a neighbor had left their keys in the lock on their door. So, to be a good neighbor I knocked and let them know they were there. Sometimes, being a neighbor is simply being aware that other people live here too. Its not just me, it’s not just us.
So, we can try to be good neighbors, but we realize it can be difficult to navigate because communities are different than they were in decades past. People don’t have the same relationship with their neighbors that used to have. So, no, maybe people don’t know how to neighbor anymore, because the nature of our relationships is different now. With the technology available to us, we have all become a little more isolated. We can do more things from home. Many people are also more mobile. They can easily leave their neighborhood and go find what they need, or meet with who they want.
These things are true for the church as well. The notion of the neighborhood church is not as prevalent today. Especially in a big metropolitan area like ours where there are so many churches and places of worship. Also, people’s relationship with the church has changed. Churches are no longer staples of the community or the culture in the way the once were. People in society engage with church differently now, and that’s if they even engage with church at all. For the church to be good neighbors, then, we must accept that people’s relationship to the church is different now. No matter how the world around us shifts, however, we can hold fast to one thing. God’s love for us does not change and it does not shift under our feet. So, because of this who we are called be in the world, and how we are called to engage the world does not change either.
In our scripture reading today, Paul uses the words ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ to reference the relationship of those in the church to their neighbors. Paul tells us that the strong are to help the weak. The strong people Paul is referring to are those who have come to believe in Christ and who have made a community around that belief. When Paul talks about the weak, his use of the word weakness does not imply failing. it simply recognizes the current situation some people find themselves in. They may not be in a situation of strength and power. There may be factors in their life that are making things difficult. So, it is not a failure to be weak, or confused, or hungry, or poor, or oppressed. It is certainly not something that is worthy of punishment.
Likewise, strength is not something that should be flaunted. It should not be abusive or controlling. The strong should not use their advantage to bolter their own freedom to the disadvantage of others. As Pual reminds us, Christ did not come to earth please just himself. He came to help others and to be a light for those seeking to live a new way. That’s what it means to be strong. The strong must neighbor. They should actively support the weak – that’s Christian neighborliness.
It’s the point of the story of the Good Samaritan. When Jesus was challenged with the question “Who is my neighbor?” If I must love my neighbor, who is my neighbor?” he responded with a story about a man lying robbed and wounded on the side of the rode. The only person who stopped to help him was a Samaritan traveler. Someone who came from a different place, a different group, a different faith. Someone who, by the societal norms of the time, it was okay to hate and reject. Yet he was the one who stopped and helped the man in need. The neighbor is the one in need and the neighbor is the one who stops and helps.
Christ was not self-serving. So, neither can we be self-serving when it comes to sharing our gifts with others. The gifts of time talent and treasure. The gifts we have discussed these past few weeks. We cannot be self-serving, because didn’t Jesus tell us something else about being a neighbor? Jesus stood in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, quoting scripture, from Deuteronomy “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.” Then he added a little something, “and love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, if we are to love the neighbor as ourself, I suppose that means on some level we must first love and appreciate ourself. This means taking into account our gifts and assets, and seeing them as the blessings from God that they are. This can help us to learn to love ourselves more completely.
It is a way to recognize the love of God that is always present in our life. If we are able to embrace that about ourself, then we will be better able to embrace it in others, in our neighbors and friends. We are blessed to have been given these gifts from God, but because God has given us these gifts, we know that means they are not for us alone. These gifts make us strong and so they must be used to help the weak. As Paul says, we must be attentive to our neighbors and offer encouragement that helps to build them up. God gives us the courage and the hope to remain steadfast with one another as we seek to live into the life of community God calls us to.
Unfortunately, we are too often reminded that we live in a world where people don’t know how to neighbor. This can be especially true about those who consider themselves strong, but use that strength for their own ends. Right now, in our country, in the middle of this ongoing government shutdown, needed food assistance is being withheld from millions of poor and impoverished people. During the month of November, when we celebrate and give thanks for the bounty of the harvest, the abundant gifts we are blessed with, people will go hungry in the richest nation the world has ever known. All because the strong are using the weak as pawns to try and score political points, so that they can more easily exploit the people’s suffering. It is tragic, it is wrong. And it ain’t neighboring. Certainly not in the way Jesus taught us to neighbor.
That’s the thing about neighboring though. People can do it so wrong sometimes, but when push comes to shove it can be an instinct. I may not speak with or even see my neighbors very often, but if there were a tornado of some other sever storm, I know that we’d all be down in that basement of that building together. I like to think we’d help each other if we could. That the neighbor instinct shows up in the hard times.
Norma’s neighbors may not have helped with the bins every week, but one day they noticed that they hadn’t seen Charlie and Norma around very much recently, so they called the church and spoke with my dad, who they knew was one of their ministers. They wanted to check on their neighbors. As it happened, Charlie and Norma were at that moment living in a care facility, as Charlie was in hospice care, losing his battle with cancer. When they learned this, the neighbors snapped into action. They started taking the mail in while Norma was gone, they shoveled the drive way and put salt down so it didn’t get slippery in case they came home. They even took out the trash. When the time came, they stepped up, and they neighbored.
That is my prayer for us, church. That we continue to reflect on and give thanks for these assets we have from God. These gifts we have been given to harvest. So, that when the time comes, we can be the strong, helpful neighbors God calls us to be. Amen.