Love Your Neighbor
Lamentations 1:1-3 & Luke 17:5-6
Love your neighbor. That’s the theme of World Quaker Day, as I mentioned earlier. But who are our neighbors? What do they need? What can we, together, do in response?
I’d like to read you two scriptures today, both from among the suggested texts for this week from the revised common lectionary–one from Lamentations, in the Hebrew Bible, and one from Luke’s gospel. I read the Lamentations passage with the questions: what is the context in which love of neighbor happens? What are the needs of our neighbors? And I read the Luke passage with the question: how is love of neighbor a collective effort, aided by our faith, as a community?
Lamentations, as you might know or guess, is a collective lament, a series of poems of grief, specifically in response to the destruction of the temple and exile. Whatever one deems the cause of this destruction and exile–whether a conqueror from without or a kind of moral implosion from within, thanks to, according to the prophets, the greed, inhospitality, violence, and indifference of the elites–the entire community is feeling the loss and pain of things falling apart.
Lamentations is an important book, because it gives us permission to grieve. It challenges the temptation to cope with hard things with denial or avoidance, but to take time to recognize the real suffering happening within and among us.
And in the quest for a better world, better relationships, better, more whole selves, it seems pretty crucial to not skip over the important work of naming our pain and suffering, so that we can heal. Heal so we can thrive but also so that we, in our woundedness, don’t perpetuate the cycle of violence and oppression. One could argue that this has afflicted the Christian tradition–early persecution and trauma, morphing into a history of violence. We do well to lament and to listen to the laments of others.
Lamentations 1:1-3
1 How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become subject to forced labor.
2 She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers,
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.
3 Judah has gone into exile with suffering
and hard servitude;
she lives now among the nations;
she finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
Earlier I read this, from FWCC: “In times when crisis, conflict, unfairness, and untruths seem to dominate, let us see what Love can do.” Lamentations speaks to a time of crisis. A once thriving now abandoned city. A city once protected and secured–security at what cost, who can say–now like a widow, a symbol of vulnerability to danger.
A city and nation, once a princess…which…you may have difficulty sympathizing with the losses of those brought down from their thrones, while those at the bottom are still at the bottom. But no human should be subject to “forced labor” and so I suggest we ultimately land in the place of indignance and sorrow, lamenting the experience of a community being crushed. It’s tragic when many suffer because of the actions of a few.
It’s a city filled with grief, and without comfort. Abandoned by friends, allies, partners, all turned enemies. A city in chaos, restless, overtaken by others, exploiting and conquering her, in her vulnerable state.
I don’t intend to draw our attention to one person or group of people, today. But if I asked you–who is your neighbor? Or, who is your neighbor in distress? Your neighbor who is lonely, neglected, overburdened, grief-stricken, without support, without allies, at least not enough allies? Who comes to mind?
Earlier, I asked you to identify neighbors in need of Love. Which neighbors need our Love? “All of them” is a truthful statement, but not necessarily a helpful one. Specifics matter. Because you can’t just send Loving vibes into the world and hope they land where they’re most needed, at least not without something more. Love meets people where they are at, in tangible ways. Where are people at? Love which neighbors?
You said…
–READ CARDS–
Love your apathetic neighbor.
Love your weird neighbor.
Love your neighbor whose beliefs and positions are completely different than your own.
Love your scared neighbor.
Love your naked, zip-tied neighbor.
Love your MAGA neighbor.
Love your Venezuelan neighbor.
Love your ten-houses-in-every-direction-from-me neighbor.
Love your lonely neighbor.
Love your least favorite neighbor.
Love your good neighbor.
Love your literal neighbor.
Love your elder neighbor.
Love your GOP neighbor.
Love your ICE Agent neighbor.
Love all things as your neighbor.
Love your animal neighbors.
Love your oppressed neighbor.
Love your Latino Americano neighbor.
Love your world neighbors. (Also, try: “human”)
Love your undocumented neighbor.
Love your hurting and heartbroken neighbor.
Love your certain and uncertain neighbor.
Love your National Guard neighbor.
Love your elderly neighbor.
Love your tactless neighbor.
Love your immigrant neighbor.
Love your family neighbor.
Love your marginalized-youth-struggling-to-be-themselves-at-school neighbor.
Love your brown neighbor.
Love your unkind neighbor.
Love your disabled neighbor.
Love your estranged neighbor.
Love your asshole neighbor.
Love your unknown neighbor.
Love your angry neighbor.
Love your difficult-to-understand neighbor.
Love your phobic neighbor.
—
Let us see what Love can do. What can Love do, for the many neighbors we’ve mentioned, today? Do we have faith in Love, in what Love can do, in our capacity to be that Love in the world? Speaking of faith…
Luke 17:5-6:
5 The apostles said to (Jesus), “Increase our faith!” 6 (Jesus) replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
Just…take a minute–humor me–and try to imagine that literally happening–yourself, the tree, the sea, all of it. Go ahead…just…picture it, feel it.
Sometimes I think people read the teachings and stories of Jesus as if he’s simply trying to give individuals a little nugget to take home and individually work on their own character. And that might be partially true, but I also think he’s trying to mobilize groups to action. He’s trying to help people come together to both resist the oppressive tendencies of Empire and those most complicit in sustaining that oppression; and to provide direct aid to those among them who are hungry, thirsty, sick, lonely, to anyone struggling to survive the harsh realities of life in such a context.
I think if we read this exchange in light of that, we might hear this request, not just as individual apostles saying “help me have more faith, as an individual” but more like “help us…strengthen our resolve and clarify our path, as a community!”
“Faith” can mean a lot of things. What is faith, here?
Faith can be a reference to our relationship with our God or gods, and all of the practices, values, symbols, friendships, social concerns, and so on, that arise from that relationship with God or with our Center. Like when I say “my Quaker faith.”
So “increase our faith” could be a way of saying “strengthen and deepen that relationship, so that our lived partnership with the God who is Love, who cares for the orphan and widow, and laments the social structures that fail them, may become more vibrant and transformative.
To which Jesus might say “if you had that kind intimate connection with the Love that is at the heart of all things, you could do some wildly amazing things, together.”
Faith can also be about commitment–our commitment to a goal, to a truth, to an overarching mission, to a story about what is important and about who matters.
In that sense, “increase our faith” could be the apostles’ way of saying “we’re torn, we’re hesitant to really commit to doing the work that is needed, to grow Jesus’ dream of world built on Love; but we want to take that leap, we want to be all in, we want to join you in your work of inclusion and holy disruption and compassion and peace!”
To which Jesus might say “if you just took a little baby step, a mustard seed size step, even if it makes you uncomfortable, that would make a world of difference. Forget being “all in” on anything, just take a simple step today, in the name of inclusion and holy disruption and compassion and peace, and see what happens.”
Faith can also speak to confidence–confidence in someone’s capabilities, their ability to rise to the occasion, or in the goodness of what they’re saying or doing. “Increase our faith!” then, could be an admission of doubt–not doubt as a moral or spiritual shortcoming, but as a natural and reasonable part of the way trust is built and earned.
Maybe they doubt God, because “God,” despite their stories, their lore, their traditions, has often felt absent, unable or unwilling to stop their hunger, or occupation, or exile, or whatever ails them. Maybe they doubt Jesus, because, while he’s saying and doing all the right things, they’ve been let down before. Maybe they doubt themselves, and, despite Jesus’ ministry of training people to create social change and take care of those in need because he believes in them, maybe they don’t share this faith.
Maybe “increase our faith” is really these people saying: “we find what we’re up against daunting…help us believe that we have what it takes, together, to resist, to transform, to create something new and better together.”
And so maybe Jesus would say, with his reference to a mustard seed…well, I mean you could read this kind of an insult by Jesus. “Ya’ll don’t even have the faith of a mustard seed! Weak! Weak faith.”
But I don’t think it’s personal. I think it’s Jesus saying, to a community–and I think that’s important here, because often groups can transcend the limitations of individuals and do pretty amazing things–I think he could be saying “if you all bring your mustard seed faith, together, those little seeds add up.”
Does that feel true? Do mustard seeds of faith add up? Could you bring your energy, your hopefulness, your Love, your desire to create positive change in the lives of others, here and beyond, and, in tandem with others…others here…other Quakers around the world…with people of all faiths or non-faiths, though I think everyone has faith in something, whether or not they’ve named the object of their faith…
…could your faith, combined with the faith of others, faith in the power of Love to change lives, faith in the power of humans to Love well, faith in the Quaker way of peace and equality and simplicity and listening and discernment and so on, faith in the crowd-feeding, feet-washing, table-flipping, nonviolent way of Jesus…
…could we…well…I don’t know why we we’d want to move a tree into the ocean, but maybe there are other seemingly impossible things that could be done, were we to bring our faiths together, not for the sake of a performative unity that says “look at us, we’re in harmony” while masking a litany of evils left accidentally or deliberately ignored, but the unity of bringing the best of who we are together, to tackle those “mulberry trees” in our world that need to be uprooted.
I assume if you uprooted a mulberry tree and planted it in the sea it wouldn’t survive, and I think that’s the point. While I think Jesus maintained a commitment to every sacred soul, there are things humans have created that Jesus would have deemed not truly sacred, no longer needed in a world where Love of neighbor is the norm.
Jesus doesn’t say, “if you had more faith, in me, then I, Jesus, would tell the mulberry tree to…get lost.” The kind of faith Jesus speaks of is not about mobilizing God or Jesus to act, at least not apart from us. Jesus says, “if your faith grew, you could do some amazing things” I think Jesus’ faith in people is extraordinary. I’d like my faith in myself, in others, in all of us, as one body, in the power of Love…I’d like that faith to be increased. How about you?
Queries:
What can Love do?
Why and where is lament needed? Why and where is faith needed?
Who are our neighbors? What do they need?
What can we do, together, in response to the needs of our neighbors?