Love Your Neighbor - Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

My guess is that most people looked at the topic for this sermon and had some thoughts as to what it’s going to include – in other words what the basic tenants of loving your neighbor include. This serves as my disclaimer to those who have expectations of what is to come – this is not probably going to be what you expect to hear. Further, the thought that kept crossing my mind as I thought about this week’s sermon is that I’m not qualified to give it. There were several times this week that I caught myself not acting in a loving way to my neighbor – my college, my friends, my family, those I interacted with the community. I thought and said some things that weren’t very kind let alone loving. But maybe that’s just why there is a need for this sermon. It is time to rethink what it means to love our neighbor.

I spent a month last summer in the hot, sticky Southern weather of Denison, Texas as a community organizer. Specifically I was sent to Denison through a faith-based organization called Communities of Shalom that originally started in 1992 as a response of the United Methodist Church to the LA Riots. In 2007 Drew Theological School inherited and revamped the vision of Communities of Shalom and now sends seminary students around the world to help people realize the gifts they already have in each other and their community. I went through countless hours of training, both with Shalom and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). I probably cannot recollect the majority of the basic principles of community organizing but I can remember the big one – Do not do for others what they can do for themselves. And oh how this principle got me into trouble with the church folk in Denison. See the church’s I was working with they’re really got the charity bit, but they didn’t know how to empower anyone. For them the having the heart of a servant meant giving things out and helping the “misfortunate” however they saw fit. The middle class came in and told the lower class what they needed. Listening was absent – no one wanted to hear what people outside of their charity workers thought they needed. And they weren’t open to receiving anything – because what could a bunch of poor folks have to teach those who were “better off”. Up against these mentalities the motto turned mantra of the community organizer butted heads – “Do not do for others what they can do for themselves.” At the heart of this principle are values church values if we just dig around a bit – love, respect, empowerment, all done with a sense of mutuality. With and not for.

I wonder what the author of the book of Hebrews would have to say about this rule. In the first verse of today’s scripture passage it is written, “Let mutual love continue.” What is mutual love? I don’t know if we even have the capability to explain it, let alone live it out in our current culture of me and mine. I’m going to do whatever I need to do to get ahead – no matter what the cost. Everything is about puffing up my self-esteem, even my sense of altruism. I help those around me in such a way to re-enforce the idea that I have power over them. I have something they need – be it food, money, transportation, employment, housing, the list goes on and on – but the only way they are going to get it is if I give it to them.

So to what do we point to diminish the concept of the corporate world – this me-centered mentality? My first thought is look to the family structure – but this week alone I have heard countless stories from close friends about the wreckage of their home life that is dominated by disrespect. Love has been replaced by selfish wants and disregard for who is hurt by the decisions they make, so if not out entire families, maybe just our partnerships and marriages. Maybe we understand mutual love a bit better on a one-to-one basis. But again, I’ve seen the invisible and visible marks of domestic violence – the terror that calls for submission. I’ve heard people talk badly about their spouses and even brag about cheating on one another. A friend who was visiting me this weekend referred to her place of employment as “the marriage and affair mill”. So if not family, perhaps the church? But if I as a church leader don’t understand mutual love, don’t live out mutual love, how can I hold anyone else to this standard?

But the author of Hebrews didn’t just leave us with the idea of mutual love – as simple, yet confusing and complex as that seems to be for us today. The author continues telling us to show hospitality to strangers, to visit those in prison, to be with those who are being tortured. Doing all that we do with the vision that we are the person in that situation. Right here the author is chaffing with the ideals of the modern church – which is excellent at helping others, but not thinking about how they would like to be treated in those situations. Would we want to be someone’s charity case of the day? Would we want someone to view us as another notch in their spiritual belt – another good deed done? My mentor for the past year in Biblical feasting detests soup kitchens. When entering into a conversation with her about it one day she plainly said, “If I wouldn’t eat that crap, why should I feel good about giving it to anyone else?” She went on to share her vision for a healthy soup kitchen where the food was fresh and not from cans. Where people are served with dignity instead of hoisting a scoop of some unidentifiable food into a dish and doing the same to the next person and the next. In her vision, maybe we can find one of the truest characteristics of mutual love for our neighbors – treating each other with dignity. Someone is not the subject of my good deed or ministry. They are the Beloved of God. And I shouldn’t treat them in any way that diminishes or insults this truth. “Do not do for others what they can do for themselves” because people need to be empowered. I would want to be empowered and I would want it to be acknowledged what I can give back. I am the Beloved of God and I have worth!

There is nothing wrong with doing for people what they cannot do for themselves – but the church has swung way past this principle to doing charity. Giving without receiving. When I was in Denison, my advisor came down to visit me for a few days. Across from where I was staying there stood a sign that read “Free food for all” – bearing the name of the church community I was working with. My advisor turned towards me and started to shake his head – “That sign has to go” he said. In the idea of not doing for others what they can do for themselves, my advisor was able to see the vision of a true community garden, having those who want to eat help tend as they are able. From my advisor I learned another truth about mutual love – it isn’t conventional charity, it’s working together, side by side.

We are further admonished to let go of our desire for money. To honor the relationships we are in. And be content with whatever God has given us. To hold what we cherish gently, and treat it with care. What would it look like if we learned to hold each of our relationships in the palm of our hand – as the old chorus states that God does with each of us – instead of grasping tightly onto our relationships as if we own them? What if we transcended being sorry for our neighbors and crying for them to crying with them? The differences here don’t lie in mere semantics – they are different at the core of how we seem people. How we treat one another. And how we view loving our neighbor.

So where did I find an example of mutual love? In one of the places that most wouldn’t expect it to be found – behind the walls of the Edna Mahnn Women’s Correctional Facility in New Jersey, where I was a student in PREP – Partnership in Religious Education in Prison. When I entered behind those walls each Monday, I wasn’t an “real student” taking a class with a “prisoner”. I was an outside students learning from and with inside students. My status was that of an equal, which threw some of us for a bit of a loop at first, as we have been trained to believe that prisons exist to keep the bad people away from the good people. But in my class I saw the reality of mutual love as described by the author of Hebrews. The women in that room had to work together in order to be able to survive and thrive. They empowered each other to keep going on the days that seemed hopeless. Those who had better academic skills spent time teaching others how to read and write, so they could better themselves both inside of the prison and when they were released. They treated each other with dignity, simply because they believed it was the right way to live, and because they were rarely treated with dignity by the guards and those who came in from the outside, who treated them like they were tainted. And they looked out for each other, even when it broke every rule that the prison system tried to place on them. Heart wrenching tales of women thrown into the highest degree of lock up for sharing their hair dryer with another inmate, since that was considered bribery and not a sign of meeting the needs of another. Women sanctioned for trying to get a little extra food to another inmate who needed nourishment, before the food is thrown in the trash to go to the dump. And women who consoled each other late at night, when tears were shed for love ones lost – as they would be sent to the psych ward if they cried, even about death, in front of the guards. No one person was the head, and no one was the subject of care. It was truly mutual. For if one suffered, all did, in the hearts of these women who loved each other so much. And in their mutual love, they praised God through their sacrifices. They loved their neighbor from a deep and sincere place, albeit unconventional in the eyes of most of those looking in trying to punish them for loving each other.

So I ask you, brothers and sisters, do we love from this place? What does our love look like? Does it empower others? Does it acknowledge their worth as the Beloved of God? Is it nurtured by our need to be in control and to have power over someone, or it is born out of a desire to treat each person we have contact with, with dignity? Are we willing to walk side by side with someone, admitting our own needs and heartaches, even to a stranger? Are we willing to risk being unconventional, even to the extent of being punished, for this radical love that is mutual? Do for or walk with. Cry for or cry with. It’s our choice. What is the ministry of this church going to be? For or with? Amen.