21st Annual Assembly of the New England
Synod
Sermon –
Deaconess Janet Alcántara
“Love God / Love Self / Love Neighbor”
(Matthew 22: 34-40)
When Pastor (Michael) Bastian e-mailed me today’s text, I was appalled. “Ahh, Lord!” I groaned, “The Shema!? Not only have generations of Christian pastors preached on his text, but after thousands and thousands of years, Jewish rabbis have picked in clean. How am I, a deaconess-missionary type of person, supposed to come up with something a whole auditorium of pastors and bishops have never heard before? Don’t you have something a little less intimidating?”
But the good thing about the Bible and our Christian faith is that they are so complex that no one ever finishes “getting it.” And the kind thing about the Holy Spirit is that when you ask for help in understanding, you get it. I realized that never in the entire history of the Holy Scriptures has anyone ever asked, “What does this text mean for the Assembly of the New England Synod, and assorted visitors?”
Suddenly, I found myself getting very interested, because even I can see that this passage has everything to do with this Assembly and the conversations that are programmed around the life of the church in this place ... about our expression of faith to our family, parish, state, synod … and even to partner churches in other parts of the world.
In the story that we just read about Jesus and the Pharisees, we hear that the most important things in life are: firstly, to love God with everything we are and have … to love God more than anything else – more than ourselves and our interests … to love God with that same consuming passion with which God loves us. This God-centeredness is especially important for those of us who work in the church.
It is so easy to be distracted and consumed by the work itself – good work, church work ... God’s work – and allow God to be nudged out of the center.
The second important thing is to love our neighbor as ourselves. There are a couple of things to notice here: the first is that Jesus didn’t say that the First Commandment is the best and the second is one-down – otherwise we might feel justified in dedicating our actions concentratedly to the pursuit of God to the exclusion of humanity. As it is, those of us who have a tendency to overwork in the church justify our sacrifice of family, friends, and sometimes even our own spirit, by saying that we are being consumed “in God’s work” or “for God.”
The other thing is that loving God and caring for the neighbor are not really totally separate commandments. “The second is like the first,” Jesus points out. In other words, it is all part of a piece. Loving and respecting self while loving and respecting others equally is how we live out our love for God. Developing relationships with others also teaches me about my relationship with God.
The primary purpose of loving our neighbor is not necessarily to benefit the neighbor –which may or may not happen – but has more to do with our growing intimacy with God and sharing in God’s essential Trinitarian nature of being relationship.
The word for “neighbor” – you may remember if you hark back to seminary language classes – is not a vastly different concept in Hebrew and Greek. Both languages share the sense of the literal neighbor or a friend. But the Hebrew ría can also mean “another person, in the weaker sense.” And the Greek plesíon can mean, when there are two people, the other one.
This is all quite fascinating because it can lead us to conceive of the neighbor as the person who needs, and of ourselves as the ones who provide; of the “other” as weak and ourselves the strong ones. We get to make the decision which will benefit the lot of the weaker. Sort of like in the fairy tales, where it is always the human who summons the genii from the bottle; we can’t imagine it the other way around. This way of thinking can lead into a system of paternalism on our side, and dependency on the side of the neighbor.
Now, Jesus gives the concept of “neighbor” a twist. “Neighbor” for him signifies any other person, irregardless of race or sex or religion, with whom we live or come in contact. What is intriguing about this slightly different take is that now we can also be the neighbor. The neighbor isn’t just the other poor soul.
Can you see how this changes things? If I am also the neighbor, I also have needs ... I also have vulnerabilities. It opens up the possibility of receiving. The Other is not now the only needy one. The Other also has human experience and wisdom and resources to share with me.
This places us on a different footing with the Other. It invites us to dialogue – listening and speaking, hearing and understanding. It invites us into relationship. It invites us into mutual caring.
Being in a caring relationship does not mean one side solving the problems of the other, but sharing what it means to be human, to follow Christ, in a different context from one’s own. This is something to mull over when we discuss ways for our churches to serve persons living in poverty, or about partnering with churches in other countries.
Being a neighbor is not necessarily easy. Take, for example, a North Neighbor whose lifestyle is financed by the exploitation of the resources and cheap labor of other countries, and who lives in an ambiance of cultured fear of the South Neighbor, whose very existence threatens his (or her) standard of living.
And now take a South Neighbor, where years of oppressive injustice have robbed him of his dignity and creativity, who panics at his diminishing pool of resources, and who sees the North as both the cause, as well as the way out, of his misery, provoking envy and hate for those who possess more assets than he can access.
How do these two learn to be Neighbor to each other?
And further, how can we contribute, collectively as the church, as well as personally, so that the love of God truly impacts and changes our relationships with individuals and within our ecclesiastical structures?
Well ... that (along with the inevitable nuts-and-bolts conversations) is why we are joined here to talk and plan together in this Assembly. Which cycles us back to the beginning: we are here because we seek and love God with all our hearts. Amen.