Being a Good Neighbor
This is my sermon for Sunday, October 2, 2022, at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church as we celebrate our annual Homecoming . Our theme is Being a Good Neighbor and our scripture readings in worship are Micah 6:6-8, Psalm 8, Romans 12:1-8 and Luke 10:25-37. We’re focusing on the Micah and Luke passages.
Good morning, St. Timothy’s family and friends, everyone who has gathered for worship and celebration this morning! It is so good to be together.
I want to begin with a word of gratitude for the last year, mine and Teresa’s first year with you. Thank you for welcoming us and adopting us into the St. Timothy’s family. We are so happy to be here with you. Thank you for all you do, for serving on the Vestry, for leading and serving in various ministries around the church and neighborhood, for consoling one another, praying for one another and keeping tabs on one another through the best and the most difficult days. Thank you for showing up, smiling, even if behind those masks, in person and on Zoom, for reading in worship, for lending us your voices, and for sharing encouragements all along the way. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And as we gather to celebrate this Homecoming Sunday and think on the year gone and to regroup for the year to come, it’s the perfect time to hear Jesus tell a story, that familiar and yet never-gets-old story of being a good neighbor.
A Good Story
The story begins with a question, “What must I do to have eternal life?” I know we often read eternal life as simply “personal salvation” or we hear the question as “how do I get saved,” but I’d invite you to expand your hearing of that question: “What must I do to really live… to live in a way that matters, to live in view of and in step with things which are eternal?” Because the answer is not all that individualistic or only about getting saved and going to heaven when we die… the answer from Jesus is both individual and communal, about the now and the then.
Jesus turns the question back on the asker and asks “what do you think?” And we really so often know the right answer don’t we? We aren’t dumb. We know what is right and what is good, we know how to live as in step with things eternal: we embrace our God in love, and we embrace our neighbor in love. The answer given to Jesus is a reflection of scripture, and it’s a really good expression of what Micah said: do justice, show kindness and humbly walk with God. The same understanding of what is right and good must have been on your minds as well here at St. Timothy’s when you crafted our mission as a church: to live in love, walk by faith and serve our community.
The story could have stopped there, right? I mean, that’s good stuff… in church we would say, “that preaches!” Love God and love others! Done. But wait… I don’t like all my neighbors! In fact, if we’re honest we’re pretty good at not liking a lot of people around us! In the text Jesus has to deal with the perfectly human follow-up question to loving one’s God and loving one’s neighbor….. yeah, but Jesus, you don’t mean that neighbor over there do you? I mean really, who is my neighbor? If you want to avoid anything, make it a philosophical or rhetorical question, right?
But Jesus is ready, as Jesus always is, to help us past some of these very human foibles we carry in our hearts. He tells the story that many of us are super familiar with by now. The phrase “Good Samaritan” is part of the English language and we use it to means someone who is helpful in the moment, right? In the story Jesus tells of a person who falls victim to some the rougher aspects of this life, beaten down, robbed and left in an undignified ditch. He’s passed over and passed by by folks who should know better, religious folks, good folks. But when our neighbors are dirty, hurt and complicated, it’s easy to look away isn’t it? When stopping to help and to be with our messiest neighbors means that we may also get a bit dirty, and maybe we’ll have to spend some time in that same undignified ditch, it’s all too easy to move along and find another neighbor to love. And so we come to the point of the story from Jesus: the question is not who is my neighbor, the question is will I be a neighbor? We will you be the neighbor? Will we be the good neighbors that the world around us so desperately needs?
Being Good Neighbors
The invitation from Jesus is to go and do likewise. We’re sent to be neighbors to the world around us. It’s an invitation to embrace the role of neighbor, not looking away, not ignoring or seeking an easier road, but seeing those around us and loving them, caring about them and even lending a hand when things get rough and dirty.
As we move into this next year, from now until next Homecoming Sunday, let’s explore the ways that we can be the best neighbors! It starts right here right now in that very pew, or at home on that very couch where you’re sitting. The people you see right now, or will see soon and visit with today… love them, see them, and make a promise to yourself that you won’t look away.
As you go through the coming week and the coming months, going to school, to classes, to work, coming to church services, going to the grocery store, on vacations, walking down your street and going about the routines of daily life, love the people you see, care for them and let your heart wrap around them even in the messiness and struggle in which we often find them.
The Samaritan in the story that Jesus told paid a price for seeing that neighbor and loving that neighbor. Money changed hands. The way Jesus tells the story it also sounds like that Samaritan had every national, ethnic, racial and religious reason to pass on by… but instead they tore down the barriers that might divide and the paid the bill for meeting someone else’s needs. And being a neighbor sometimes will come with a price tag, and the question of whether we are willing to pay with our money, time and energy.
But why? Why should we have to be the neighbor? Why should we have to humble ourselves and get dirty? Why shouldn’t we look away? Why shouldn’t we hurry past like the priest and the religious folks in the story? Why not just lower our heads and watch out for ourselves? Because we want to have that life too, right? Back to the question that started this off… we want that life of meaning, that life in step with things eternal, we want the kind of life that carries us through hard times and the ditches in which we find ourselves. Because sometimes we need a neighbor, too.
As we continue to emerge from the years of pandemic separation, and we try to make things familiar again in life and figure out what really living means, as we work to build back lives of purpose and joy and eternal’ness, to build up our church family and grow it with folks joyfully learning of God’s love and life, we’ll do that in the neighborhoods in which God has placed us and with the many neighbors with whom God has placed us. Together is how we find life. Together is how we love. Together is how we really live. Amen, amen and amen. ~ Rev. Todd
Let’s go a little deeper…
toddthomas.net 