Category Archives: Great Commandment

My Brother’s Not Heavy. Jesus Said So.

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I’ve been thinking about the cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) last week. Remember the House voted 217 to 210 to separate SNAP from the farm bill. The legislation that passed will significantly reduce SNAP funding in the next four years.
Good! Too many people abuse that program. Too many people sit around- expecting handouts.
Do you really think that? Do you truly believe the majority of food stamp (SNAP) recipients are just sitting around, doing nothing, and waiting for the mail?
Yes, I do. I’ve been to the grocery store on the day the benefits come out. It’s crazy.
Did you think it might be because people didn’t have the funds to go shopping prior to that day? Maybe their spare cash went to rent or a car payment.
Or to cable or to pay for an iPhone.
What would satisfy you in this scenario? There are genuinely people who cannot make ends meet. Do you care at all about that?
Let them get a second job.
Who will watch their kids during that time?
Maybe they should have thought about that before they had kids.
*Sigh*.
You know, the gospel reading for this Sunday is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. You know the one where the rich man feasts every day in expensive clothes and there’s a starving, sick man outside his doorstep whom the rich man ignores. Maybe he doesn’t even ignore Lazarus. Maybe he truly doesn’t see him.
Anyway, Lazarus dies and the angels carry him to be with Abraham. The rich man dies and goes to a place of torment. When he asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water, Abraham informs the rich man that the chasm between them could not be breeched.
Furthermore, Lazarus can’t go to warn the man’s brothers what happens if they are not good stewards of the gifts with which they have been endowed. They already have Moses and the prophets to do that.
What does this have to with SNAP? Or are you trying to change the subject because you were losing?
No, we always think about how Lazarus would have loved the crumbs from the rich man’s table. We make a big deal about how little the rich man could have done and how much it would have helped them both. But, in truth, SNAP is just table scraps, it’s nothing but crumbs. Congress could have passed that legislation and it would have been the merest noblesse oblige, but they couldn’t be bothered to do even that.
You always want to give other people’s money away.
No. I want to distribute God’s gifts. We can’t just throw out scraps or cast-off clothing or donate an old car and consider our duty done. There’s no justice in that.
Where’s the justice in feeding someone who doesn’t work?
Fine. There are people who cheat. There are all cheaters at all levels of society, but our almost single-minded focus on those in the lower economic bracket is gross and misguided. If you want people to NOT use SNAP and other assistance programs, we have to start sooner. We have to work on schools and neighborhoods and our justice system. We have to actually care enough about our neighbors to want to see them flourish and to help them do it.
Why?
Would you show up at a barn raising and throw a sack of nails across the floor and call it good?
No. I wouldn’t go to a barn raising at all. I don’t care about someone else’s barn.
And why would you? Their barn is their problem. They need to get it up by themselves. Fill it by themselves. And then feed themselves from it. Just like you do.
Yes.
Where do you get your seeds?
From the farm supply.
That’s cheating. Make them yourself.
But-
NO! You can’t have help. You have to make the seeds yourself. And it’s going to be a bitch building your own tractor. Let me know how you’re going to figure out smelting your own iron and making the rubber for the engine gaskets.
It’s not a subtle point you’re making.
It must be. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the same fight all the time. No one is self-made. There is a fundamental human community that must be recognized so that life for EVERYONE can improve. Lazarus and the rich man must learn to see one another, accept help from one another, and truly desire the wellbeing of one another.
But doesn’t Jesus say, “There will always be poor among you.” If I help the poor, aren’t I proving Jesus wrong? You wouldn’t want that.
Jesus isn’t proscribing a permanent situation. He’s speaking about a specific instance wherein his body could be honored- when people could actually honor the body of God. (Mark 14:7) He goes on to mention you can help the poor ANYTIME, but you shouldn’t fail to do so- under the guise of “giving to God”.
You just have all the answers, don’t you.
No, I don’t. But I do believe God expects us to help our neighbors. And I believe that God grieves when we miss clear opportunities to lift other people up into freedom and hope. Cutting SNAP is exactly the kind of thing that causes pain and is the evidence of a society with misplaced priorities.
Do you want people to be on assistance forever?
No. I dare to dream of something bigger- where people have enough to eat and aren’t afraid of getting sick and are able to save and have dreams for themselves. I dream of the possibility of joy. Not happiness, but joy. True gospel joy that flourishes in security and trust. Not flat happiness that is fleeting and based on momentary stability that can be snatched away. We must all want that enough for our neighbors and want it more than we want money or goods or services.
What if I don’t?
Then maybe you need to revisit Luke 16. 

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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Pentecost 8 (Year C)
14 July 2013
Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Luke 10:25-37
Last night, as I was trying to get the baby to go to sleep, I heard the verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial. He was found not guilty of murder in the second degree. Last March, Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in an altercation. Zimmerman suspected Martin of trespassing or other wrongdoing and pursued him (against police advice and warning). They got into a fight and Zimmerman had a gun and used it.
Who was the neighbor?
             In 1973, a psychological experiment was conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary. Students were told they were in a study on religious education. They completed surveys about their own religious thoughts. Then they were given a task- to either talk about seminary jobs or to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan. They were told to give the talk in another building. Some were told they had plenty of time, but others were told they were already late.
On the way to the other building, they passed a man moaning and calling for help. Regardless of their speech topic, students who thought they were late stopped 10% of the time. Only 10%. Those who thought they had plenty of time stopped 63 % of the time. Overall, 40% of the students offered some help to the victim.
Who was the neighbor?
The parable of the merciful Samaritan isn’t just a story with the upshot of being nice. It is not something we get to do when we have time (Princeton study) or when people are not frightening to us (Zimmerman/Martin story). It is the way we are supposed to live our lives. It is the essence of the commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself
When I say the word commandment, we all get a little indigestion. A commandment sounds like something we know we should keep and at which we expect ourselves to fail. Well, what if we came to understand it in a different way? What if we came to hear those words as a blessing: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
These words are a blessing, a gift from God, when we understand them to be one of the ways God is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit. It is not drudgery, not a task that we can ignore because we have received grace, not something we can wait on until we have time or money or both. To love God and to love our neighbor is God’s gift for this moment and every moment.
            We have lost the sense that the author of Deuteronomy is trying to impart: Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.
            In ancient Israel, the sea represents chaos and fear. In the passage, God’s commandments toward a just society, neighbor love, and worship life are neither stored in heaven nor far away in hell. You don’t have to extra pious to hear them or receive them. You don’t have to have an arduous journey or send an adventurer to retrieve them. The commandments are part of God’s blessing. Do we work for the blessing or does it come to us through Jesus Christ? Just as we aren’t striving for grace, we aren’t working for God’s laws. They are written all over us with the grace of God… and, just like the grace that we only begin to understand as we rely on it, the commandments begin to reveal our freedom as we follow them.
            My great-uncle, my paternal grandfather’s brother, died last month. My dad saw Uncle Max a week before he died and Max told him this story:
Sometime in the ’50s, Uncle Max and Cousin JE Dunlap went to Fayetteville to help JE’s sister on some project, maybe a move or building a porch. On the way home by way of Raeford, they came upon a couple of teenage Indian (Native American) boys selling watermelons. They stopped and discussed the virtue and price for a few moments before JE remarked what a nice farm it was and if they owned it, angling toward an invitation to come bird hunt. One of the boys said, “Mister, these watermelons are the only thing we have in this world.” Max and JE bought them out without further negotiation.
Who was the neighbor?
            In a movie, an interaction between two white men in their 30s and two teenage Native American boys would not look like this. Yet, this is the story. And who is the neighbor? The neighbor is the person we stop to help and the neighbor is the person from whom we are willing to accept help.
            The commandments of God and the story of the neighbor who showed mercy aren’t merely about “being nice” or even “doing the right thing”. They are about the nearness of God, the nearness of grace in our hands and our mouths. Every. Single. Day.
            You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.  It is both a commandment and a blessing. It opens us to the closeness of grace and the ways God uses us. When we trust in the blessing (not burden) of this commandment, God helps us to see how we can help those around us. We learn to trust our neighbors and we are more clearly involved in how God’s kingdom comes.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.  Fewer young black men will end up dead or in prison. Fewer trials will end with verdicts that frustrate and disappoint and seem far from justice.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.  Sometimes you end up with a bill at a hotel on the road to Jericho. Sometimes you end up with a bunch of watermelons. Sometimes someone pays your bill or buys all your watermelons. But “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe”. And it is a blessing.
Amen. 

No Elaboration Needed (Sermon 3/11)

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Lent 3 (Narrative Lectionary, Year B)
Mark 12:28-34
            When I was in my first couple months of seminary, there was a guy in a couple of my classes named “Bob”. Bob was one of those people who is not good at picking up on social signals. He talked a little too loudly, asked questions that were a little too personal, and volunteered more information than you might want. He was a very nice guy, though, friendly and well-meaning. No one disliked him, but no one really sought him out either. (Yes, you may point out the painful irony of this behavior in seminarians.)
            One evening, I decided to walk from my apartment to downtown New Haven and I ran into Bob. He had been riding his bike, but he hopped off and walked along with me. We talked and we went to a little diner and had a piece of cake. Then we walked back up the hill to the divinity school. He was really talking and I felt awkward trying to say goodnight, so I invited him in for a cup of tea.
            I called a friend to let her know that Bob was with me, just so someone would know this information. (For the record, there was never any point where I was concerned about my safety with this guy. Otherwise, I would not have allowed him into where I lived.) In the meantime, Bob looked at my shelves and asked about watching a movie. I made tea and he sat in one of my two chairs and I sat in the other. At one point, he was chilly. He asked about a housecoat, but I gave him my huge flannel bathrobe, which he put on over his clothes and a blanket he put over his lap.
            I emailed my friend, “Bob’s STILL here! Watching a movie! Third cup of tea! Wearing my bathrobe over his clothes!” I could practically hear her giggling over the email, “What are you going to do?” I didn’t know what to do, so I sat through the rest of the movie thinking about how to get him out of my apartment. When the movie ended, he announced that it had been a terrible movie and proceeded to go through the reasons why. He brought up things I had never considered and he was right.
            Then he asked to use the bathroom and said he thought he should go home. He asked if he could give me a hug. I opened the door to the apartment and we hugged briefly in the hallway and then he left. At this point, we’d spent about seven hours together. I called my friend and we kept laughing about the oddity of the situation and about “Bob”. Not my finest moment, that.
Many weeks later, he returned a borrowed book to me with a note thanking me for helping him to feel less lonely. Thank you, he said, for being a friend when I wasn’t sure this was a good place for me. Thank you for being so generous with your tea, your housecoat, and your time. Your friend, he said, Bob.
            That note made me want to kick myself and I’ve never forgotten it. I especially remember it in my own Bob moments- when I talk too long, tell a story that doesn’t quite hit the mark, when the words I offer seem woefully inadequate. When I’m trying to love my neighbors as I love myself, even when I’m not sure about how I feel about them or about me.
            The greatest commandment, the Shema of Deuteronomy 6, doesn’t need elaboration. It says what it means and it means what it says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus adds to it from Leviticus 19:18, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The commands go together and are the foundation of what it means to have faith. These commands are how we respond to the way God has loved us, even in our most human moments… especially in our most human moments.
            We’ve all been welcomed when we were Bob… when we awkward and uncertain…when we have over-stayed a welcome… we’ve had makeshift families or friends in odd places who offered us hospitality… we’ve all let someone who needed to stay longer than we wanted… We will be called to offer that welcome again. And we will receive it again. These are the moments of God-with-us and God-in-us that are the challenges of living in this world.
            Fulfilling these commandments doesn’t make us closer to God, but helps us to perceive God’s nearness to us. In those moments, of welcome and of being welcomed, we are not far from the kingdom of God.
Amen.