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Sermon September 10, 2023
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, MSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Track 1, Proper 18
https://lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp18_RCL.html#nt1
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__September_10__2023
Video: https://youtu.be/ss08V_iW1Lk
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans 13:8
This past week some friends and I traveled to Swarthmore, near Philadelphia, to visit an older couple who have been and still are mentors to us in living the Christian life. As always our visit was filled with lively discussions and trading of stories and helpful resources.
And of course my friends, both of whom I’ve known over 30 years, and I had lively discussions in the car. I had been thinking about this sermon and about what it means to be a good neighbor. Of course the advertising slogan for State Farm Insurance kept popping into my head. You know the one, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”
I hadn’t ever really stopped to consider that slogan before. How kind of weird it was in a way. Because insurance is really about catastrophe and traumas, right? So good neighbors are about who is there in our tragedies and traumas in our lives??
I shared my quandary with my friends and one of my friends grew up in a farming community and talked about how when tragedy occurred, the whole community would rally around and help out. She also questioned whether we’d lost that.
In a radio program this week, I heard WITF podcaster and reporter Marquis Lupton talk about his new podcast – The Melanin Report. The podcast, according to the WITF website, “provides a platform for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to share their stories, perspectives, and experiences while celebrating the rich tapestry of cultures that make up Central Pa.”
Mr. Lupton was being interviewed about his career and the new podcast. He spoke about working as a TV journalist in Atlantic City, NJ during the time of super storm Sandy. He said the TV station preferred stories of tragedy or looting, for instance. Every time he found a story of neighbors helping neighbors, he was told that was not the story they wanted to report. Being a good neighbor does not necessarily win you any recognition or acknowledgement.
What does it mean to be a good neighbor? Paul says that being a good neighbor…loving our neighbor… is our major obligation. It is a commandment. All of the laws we create can in some ways only touch the surface of the depth of what it means to love our neighbor.
As I was reading further about this passage and what it means to love our neighbor, something I found helpful was the idea that we cannot confuse the emotion of love with the love that Paul and Jesus talked about. Hopefully most of us have felt that kind of emotional love where we bond to another person and often feel joy in being with them.
Yet the love that we are asked to give and “owe” to our neighbor is about action, rather than emotion. It is our actions toward the person who is near by as the definition says, that is the love Paul is talking about.
In one of my favorite commentaries on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, it says:
To love someone is actively to promote that person’s good.
Love acts for the good of another.
…such love means to cease actions that harm another person and to do what promoted the person’s good.
The entry for “neighbor” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible points out that Jesus was the compassionate neighbor and that is what we are also called to be.
I heard somewhere that we are to pray for other people what we hope for ourselves. I think that’s another way of understanding what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.
What is the good we hope for or have ourselves? Is it relationships, the basics of life like food, clothing, shelter? Is it safety? Is it our spirituality? Whatever good we have in our lives, we need to work for that in our neighbor’s lives.
A pastor colleague often says to other folks, “I want that for you.” What is it that we want for others and how do we take action to make that happen?
And we need to look not only at individuals, but also communities. As a parish, how are we loving our neighbors…loving our community…seeking the good…not doing harm?
Last Sunday the Program and Mission Committee met and talked about various ways to be good neighbors through our Giving To Others donations, activities at the Commons and Gardens, keeping in touch with our college students and people we know in the military.
With Giving To Others, we came up with $23,775 in donations with another $1,326 set aside for other needs that may arise once we get more information. The total amount of $25,101 comes from a tithe (10%) of the actual money we received from the Deckard and Bechtel Trusts by December 31, 2022.
We just helped a student who needed some things to go to college. We give to the Neighbor Helping Neighbor Food Bank each month. We supply our own little food bank.
In other words, we do know how to love our neighbor.
And we also know that we are imperfect in this regard and pray for God’s guidance and grace to more fully and more deeply love our neighbor. It is our number one obligation.
Amen
Marquis Lupton: https://www.witf.org/2023/09/09/witf-launches-new-podcast-the-melanin-report-with-marquis-lupton/
Romans(Interpretation, a Bible commentary for teaching and preaching), Paul Achtemeier, 1985, John Knox Press. Pg 209
The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible K-Q, 1962, Abingdon Press, p. 534-535
