July 8, 2018:
Ezekiel 2:1-5
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13
So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we’re together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Won’t you please,
Won’t you please?
Please won’t you be my neighbor?
No, that’s not a Bible verse… it’s of course part of the opening theme song to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, the program that helped to form children, and I suspect parents, for 31 seasons on PBS. That song came to mind for a couple of reasons. First, Leslie and I recently saw a new documentary about Fred Rogers called Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which is still playing at the Princess Twin on King Street in Uptown Waterloo — if you leave today feeling inspired. But more importantly for our purposes, I can’t help but think that that theme of being a neighbour to others — to be in relationship with others — comes through in the readings today:
Ezekiel is being sent to to be a prophet among his people — to be a neighbour with a certain purpose in life. To be God’s voice for this people that has often shown itself stubborn — especially when they were living together as neighbours, too close for comfort, in their long walk through the desert to the Promised Land. (A walk that lasted even longer than Mr. Rogers’ show!)
And Paul, like Ezekiel, has had grand visions of God. He’s heard powerful things that ordinary humans aren’t fit to repeat. But he doesn’t brag about this, at least not directly. He seems most interested in taking credit not for himself, but to give glory to God. He’s content with accepting his own pain and weakness, so that God’s power can shine through; not his own. In that way he’s a good, and grounded neighbour.
And in the gospel we have two connected stories. The first, where Jesus struggles to get through to people who don’t accept his message and healings, because to them, they still see him as a neighbourhood kid playing kick the can in the streets. And then in the second story Jesus sends his disciples out into the surrounding area, and it seems that the strategy is to depend on the kindness and generosity of neighbours. They get to know their neighbours. They live among the people, as neighbours among neighbours. Over meals, and I suspect over conversations that stretched out into the night, they talked about what God was up to by saying “since we’re together, would you be mine, won’t you be my neighbour?” To me, this humble strategy of evangelism mirrors the Incarnation we celebrate specially at Christmas — the coming into the world by God, as one of us. You might recall (…) in my Advent letter this past year, I quoted from the first chapter of John, specifically from a more literal translation by theologian David Bentley Hart: The Word was made flesh and pitched a tent among us. That’s kind of what the disciples are instructed to you. Finding themselves among neighbours.
For me, these principles inform my understanding of our role as a church. My approach, and I think our approach, this past year and a half, has been to be a good neighbour among neighbours. To be a positive stakeholder in the neighbourhood. To be fed by the sacred meal that Jesus left his community, and through it, to be empowered and inspired to be sent out to live compassionately among those who may not be part of the community. To experience, or maybe even just, to ‘kind of make out,’ or ‘get glimpses’ of God in the stories that we hear, and in that communion meal, and then to be able to ‘kind of make out, get glimpses’ God in the world, in the neighbourhood.
And that’s part of why I love how we’ve embraced opportunities like Neighbours Day, which was about a month ago. Where we joined with several dozen other organizations and neighbourhood associations in putting on a fun little event on June 9th. Here we gave out free ice cream. On one hand we can be cynical and say that it’s just free ice cream on a hot day. Not really rocket science. But really, in a world of suspicion around the role and relevance of faith, and religious extremists taking up much of the attention that religion gets in the media, it’s opportunities like that when we get to say to those around us that we want to be a good neighbour among neighbours. That we see evangelism in the context of a relationship of trust and respect. And that, just as the disciples in the gospel are dependent on the hospitality of others — because they weren’t allowed to bring food, or money, or backpacks — in a sense too, we’re dependent on the hospitality of our neighbourhood. Are they willing to imagine a role for a church in their neighbourhood?
Thankfully, it seems like many of them do. Like the previous year, we invited our ice cream guests to fill out surveys, about their thoughts on where they live, and how the see a church relating to the city. And that’s where people wrote that they see a church serving the community by hosting public gatherings, like potlucks, and meetings on social action issues. The church planting food and hosting gardens, like we’re starting. To be open to those most in need around us. To support existing organizations like The Working Centre and ROOF. And one particularly interesting piece of feedback: “They [churches] usually seem to have their own events, making some believe it is only for parishioners. Maybe could show [up] more at regular community events.” So the community wants to show hospitality to the church, just as people hosted the travelling disciples in our gospel reading.
People, it seems, are looking for the church to be a good neighbour among neighbours. People seeing the church as having a role in bringing people together, especially in welcoming those who aren’t always made to feel welcome in the world.
So today, as I’m thinking about the disciples’ mission, and Mr. Rogers, and our experience with Neighbours Day, I’m reminded of a powerful piece of guidance from my favourite theologian, William Stringfellow. Writing in the mid-‘60s, he describes how he would do evangelism. He writes:
First, the Christians have to live a while in the streets before they can know how to minister to, how to love, the people of the streets and how to understand, to accept and enter into, the action on the streets….
If I were a bishop, I would first of all devote myself to walking the streets, trying to see the inner city for myself. I would, so to speak, make myself available to the actual inner life of the city; I would visit and try to listen to the voices that can be heard in the taverns and the tenements, on the street corners, and in the shops. First, I would try to hear the city, if, indeed, the city would tolerate my presence long enough to permit me to listen.
Then, I think, I would go out to scour the land to find perhaps five hundred Christians — men and women, clergy and laity — to commission and send into the city…. I would instruct them that upon their arrival they should do only one thing: knock on every door. Most doors would not be opened, at least not readily. But when a door was opened, they missionaries would say: “We have come to be with you because God cares for your life, and because God cares for your life, we also care for you.” Period. There would be nothing more — no invitations to join the Church, no programs to offer for the people or their kids, no rummage to give away, no groups to join or meetings to attend, no gimmicks, no concealed motives, and no hidden agendas. There would be just the bare announcement of God’s love and the freedom which that love gives people to love each other.
Of course, at first, because the world is so accustomed to guile on the part of those who come in God’s name, this message would not be either welcomed or believed. But with persistence, some would receive the message. Then there would be time enough to deal with all of the other issues of Christian witness beyond the event of merely caring…”
[Free in Obedience (New York: The Seabury Press, 1964), 40-42.]
This week maybe we can each go out into our neighbourhoods. Watch and listen. Go for a walk. Sit on a bench. Shop at a local store. Have a coffee. And be attentive to glimpses of God at work in the world. And then to sit with that experience, and be open to the movement toward hospitality that we might be nudged to extend, or to accept.
© 2018 The Rev’d Matthew Kieswetter