All that Simple

Romans 13:8-10

September 10, 2017

Here’s a song I wrote a long time ago. I think you’ll recognize some words in the chorus.

It’s All That Easy

First off, I need to give credit to Bruce Reyes-Chow. I heard Bruce use a variation on “it’s all that simple, and all that hard” in a benediction at a youth ministry conference back in the 20^th century. It struck me as profound in its simplicity and clarity, and I’ve used variations on it ever since. And, well, wrote a song around it.

If you set Romans 13:8-10 to music, you could use Bruce’s benediction as the refrain. All those commandments – the big ten and the whole of the Levitical codes and all the law and the prophets come down to this: “love your neighbor as yourself.” It really is all that simple.

And, of course, all that hard.

The news daily reminds us of just how hard.

Love your neighbor? You mean the resident alien? The undocumented one? The Dreamer? Love your neighbor until it’s time to produce papers.

Love your neighbor? You mean the transgender one? The gay one? The queer one? Well, judging from the statement they released from Nashville last month, our conservative evangelical Christian friends are as far away as ever from even beginning to understand human sexuality in any way other than the most hidebound binary heterosexist terms, and given the name of the committee out of which that Nashville Statement emerged – the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood -- it’s also pretty clear that those same folks probably haven’t grown beyond a first-century view of gender roles at all. Love your neighbor … until your neighbor threatens the patriarchy.

Oh, and then there’s the president’s ban on transgender persons serving in the military. Love your neighbor, indeed.

The whole complicated question of American military might and policy certainly ought to have us wondering about love of neighbors, too. Love our North Korean neighbor? Our neighbor on the other side of the interminable war in Afghanistan? Our neighbor in Iran? Syria? Russia?

The list of such “neighbors” goes on and on, doesn’t it. Love your neighbor, until the neighbor becomes an enemy of the empire.

And yet, the heart of scripture puts no limits, no fences, no square quotes around the definition of neighbor. Indeed, over and over and over again, God knocks down every wall that some people put up to keep other people outside of safe and comfortable definitions of neighbor.

“Who is my neighbor?” That’s the question that prompts Jesus to tell the story of the good Samaritan in Luke’s gospel. The Samaritan – the ultimate outsider to Jesus’ listeners – is the one who understands neighborliness.

Luke might well have written the story like this: An expert in immigration law asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?”

Jesus responded saying, “the weather forecast was frightening. A massive storm was bearing down on Houston. Catastrophic flooding was forecast. Most folks – including most good church folks – were content to watch the news on TV or read the stories on line. Most folks kept their hands clean. The biggest church in town at first locked its doors to keep those messy flood victims out.

Alonso Guillén’s father begged him to behave like most folks and not to go out in the storm. But the 31-year-old immigrant from Mexico made the 120-mile trek to the Houston area to help rescue those stranded in the floodwaters.[1] Alonso – who came to the United States as a teenager and was one of 800,000 people living in the U.S. under DACA – was determined to help. He and a group of friends took boats to the area and entered the floodwaters to rescue people. The boat Alonso was in crashed into a highway overpass on the way to rescue people stranded in an apartment building. Alonso and a friend were tossed overboard. They died trying to save flood victims. Now which of these behaved as a neighbor to the people in the floodwaters?”

We all like to think of ourselves as the one who is neighborly. We all want to think of ourselves as the one who will help out, who will stand up, who will speak out. But life itself tends often to testify against us.

All too often we are the ones who walk by on the other side of the road to avoid the smelly beggar. All too often we are the ones who close the doors on those in dire need who might mess up our lovely and ordered lives and spaces. All too often we are the ones who remain silent when folks not like us are under attack. I am pretty sure that I could give you examples of each of these kinds of actions out of my own life during the past month or so: street people I’ve avoided; messy situations I’ve sidestepped; justice actions I found too inconvenient to show up to.

Love your neighbor as yourself. It really is all that simple. Yeah, right.

So, first off, let’s acknowledge that it is pretty simple, and, let’s confess that it is also pretty hard.

It’s pretty simple to see that we’re called to help those whose lives are disrupted by disasters or wars or economic circumstance. It’s often pretty hard to figure out how to do it.

It’s pretty simple to see that we’re called to speak out when white supremacists threaten people of color. It’s often pretty hard to figure out how to do so, especially when our own complicity and privilege get in the way.

It’s pretty simple to see that we’re called to stand alongside the immigrant, the stranger, the marginalized, and the outsider. It’s often pretty hard to figure out how to do so effectively and consistently.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Pretty simple; awful hard.

Over the years I have come to three conclusions about this tension that lies at the heart of the calling to follow the way of Jesus:

First, we are challenged to discern our particular part of the calling. In other words, we’re called to figure out our several callings – to sort out what it is that is mine to do and what belongs to others. And we are called to honesty in that sorting – honesty about gifts, about time, about money.

Second, we are called, as well, to confession about our fear in letting go of those things. The cross serves the church as the great reminder of God’s limitless grace in the face of our fears and failures. We spent the summer transforming, through various prayers and acts of worship, this cross into a butterfly – taking a symbol of death and creating from it a symbol of new life. The cross should remind us that we are a resurrection people and it should remind us, further, of the lengths to which God is willing to go to bring forth new life.

Third, we are invited into a community of just such new life. That is to say, Jesus invited people to follow him into a new way of life together, as a new community that came to be called the church. The tension at the heart of the calling to follow Jesus really demands of us that we respond as community if for no other reason than the simple one: we cannot, any of us, do all of this alone. We can’t all go into floodwaters to rescue people, but we can support Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and so we will. We can’t all provide food for the hungry or shelter for those experiencing homelessness, but we can make bag meals for A-SPAN and so we will. We can’t change immigration policy, but we can host a naturalization workshop and so we will.

We cannot save the world. Indeed, that is God’s task, for it is too big for us.

But, together, as the followers of Jesus – indeed, as the body of Christ in the world – we can be each other’s neighbors, and, together, we can be neighbor to the world. Love your neighbor. It really is all that simple. Amen.  

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[1] Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2017