Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | October 29, 2023

Matthew 22:32-40

When I lived in Clarion Iowa, we owned a cat, Tiggy. I’m allergic to cats, so I’m not much of a cat person. It was more like Tiggy and I lived in the same house. Tiggy was neutered and sometimes he would go outside. There was another cat in the neighborhood that look just like Tiggy, only this cat was not neutered. This other cat was a nuisance and sometimes people mistook it for Tiggy. At least I think that’s what happened.

One evening a woman called on the phone and did not identify herself, but said, “You’d better keep your cat inside or it’s going to be a dead cat!” And then as happens with anonymous threatening phone callers, she hung up before I could respond. I didn’t even get a chance to say, “Oh yeah? Well let me tell you…”

I was writing a column for the local newspaper at the time and I made an amusing article out of that phone call. I talked about the idea of being good neighbors and how people should keep track of their animals and the case for mistaken identity. I closed the article by referencing Robert Frost’s poem on neighborliness and quoted his line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” I ended it by saying to my anonymous caller, “I don’t know who you are, I just hope that there’s a good fence between you and me.”

Shortly after my column appeared in the paper, the neighbor who lived directly behind me called on the phone. She was quite angry and accused me of publicly shaming her for the anonymous phone call. I told her she sounded nothing like the other caller, and if she read the piece, she would find no reference to my suspicions about identity. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Within days she and her husband put up a fence between our back yards. A big fence; a spite fence. Oh well, it would seem that good fences do indeed make good neighbors.

When Jesus was asked about what is the most important commandment, he said that it is to love God with all of your heart, soul and mind. And right up there as a close second is to love your neighbor as yourself. The idea is that love for our neighbor is the evidence of our love for God.

We all have neighbors. Some of them may be across the back fence or across the field and forest, but they are there. The person tailgating us on the road could be considered a neighbor; or the person in the aisle at the store. And in this world where everyone seems to be instantly connected, our neighbor could be anywhere and everywhere; anyone and everyone we encounter at any time. What does it mean to love them and how do we love them?

If we look at the world stage, it’s pretty clear that from the moment Jesus uttered those words, humankind as a whole has ignored them. From that time until now, there have been plenty of people who claim a great love for God, in whatever way they describe God and by whatever religion they pursue in their devotion to God, but they will show it by killing their neighbors.

That’s one reason we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s a reminder to God and ourselves that we are aware of the situation and we hope to somehow partner with God in making it better, in a good way of course. Putting that partnership into action can be hard work.

Love is not easy. C.S. Lewis once said something to the effect that it is easier to love humanity with a capital H than it is to love individual persons. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.

One of the challenges in loving your neighbor as yourself, is that you may not like your neighbor. We all probably know, or have known people, our “neighbor” in the broad sense, that we just don’t like; for whatever reason. The good news is, that’s perfectly okay. We don’t have to like everyone. In fact, the bible doesn’t talk about liking anyone. It doesn’t say, “You shall like the Lord your God,” or “You shall like your neighbor as yourself.”

We can be honest. There are people in our lives, maybe past or present, who we just don’t like. For whatever reason and try as we might, we don’t like them. And the same goes for us; we can be on someone’s “don’t like” list. But that’s okay. If we had to like everyone, then we would have to be nice all of the time. And we of all people know the profound nuances of “Minnesota Nice.”

Had Jesus been “nice” he would have said to the Pharisees, “Let’s see, which of the commandments is most important. That’s a good question. With hundreds of commandments, we really can’t say one is more important. That would make the other commandments feel bad. They’re all equally important and we should do our best to live by each one.”

Thankfully Jesus was willing to speak to the truth. “You guys are a bunch of snakes. You are corrupt. You are whitewashed on the outside and rotten on the inside. How can you talk of good when you are evil?” He said that to them because he loved them. Love is not necessarily liking someone.

Being nice all of the time can be a burden. There is an alternative to nice, which is simply to be kind. We can be kind to everyone. If you want to know how to love your neighbor, then simply be kind. Kindness has more depth than nice. Kindness doesn’t gloss over wrongs; and kindness can lead to compassion. To love as you love yourself means that the compassion we show others, the kindness we live by, is the same as what we apply to ourselves.

When I talked about this text three years ago, I told a story that at the risk of repeating myself, I will share again with you today. If you remember it, then you get a gold star. It happened this way –

There are times in life when we experience something that clearly defines for us what might be termed, ‘the way it is.’ Like a dose of reality served up in one easy package. These experiences are as varied as human experience. They serve to inform our world view.

Experience can define us; it can control us; or oppress us; experience can free us.

Sometimes we have no choice in the matter. Sometimes we are the ones who make the choice.

When I was 12 years old, I went along with my pals Marty and Craig while they made their paper route collections. It was a warm summer night, a Friday in fact. We rode our bikes. My bike was a clunky one speed that my folks bought at a police auction. My friends had decent bikes – three speeds or sting rays with banana seats.

We rode over and made some collections and then decided to leave when bigger boys started throwing rocks at us. We were making good progress on our bikes when they jumped on their bikes and made chase.

Marty and Craig could get away on their bikes, but I couldn’t on mine.

It was only right that they should save themselves along with a promise to “go get help.”

Soon thereafter I was surrounded.

There were too many of them for me to have any chance of fighting my way out and so I decided that whatever happened I was not going to cry and that would be victory enough. The leader of the pack stepped up to me. He wasn’t the biggest of the lot, but he was the meanest and he was two years older than me. They took what little money I had, shoved me around a bit and broke my glasses.

Then the head honcho said to his pals, “Okay he’s had enough.” And he put out his hand to me and said, “Want to be friends?”

Not sure what to think, thinking maybe what have I got to lose, I put my hand out and said, “Okay.”

Then he punched me in the face and said, “Some other time!”

They rode off just as Marty and Craig were rounding the corner with the promised reinforcements. 

That moment crystalized for me a particular meaning of life – the promise verses the reality. Or I should say, the false promise.

The hand of friendship followed by the punch in the face.

The older we get the more we learn to live with realities that don’t meet our hopes and dreams. The longer we live the more we experience life as the proverbial punch in the gut. The challenge is learning how to take it in stride. Learning how to take a punch.

I believe that somewhere amidst all the mixed messages of our world, that there is the genuine hand of God reaching out in authentic love. How we find God’s love, how we embrace it, experience and share it with others, is the journey of our lives.