Lord, give us the eyes of Jesus to see our neighbors and the strangers we meet.
Teach us what it means to love the stranger as we love ourselves.
Forgive us for our selfishness, for our silence,
for not caring enough for the strangers who come to our communities.
Teach us to love and care for the stranger the way you love us all. Amen
(Rebeca Jiménez Yoder)
Last week the readings were about our allegiance to God (or Caesar). This week it is about love.
As the Beatles would say – “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
Jesus is asked by a lawyer who was confronting him after he silenced the last leaders who challenged him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
You can feel the lawyer trying to trap him in his words, but Jesus reminds us of our interconnected relationships.
Jesus said to him, "`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
It is an ethic of love that matters most. Our relationship, our love of God who created us, to whom we render the whole of our lives and the love of our neighbors as we love ourselves. Love is the key to our interconnectedness to creation.
As a friend of mine put it, “This love I am talking about is a choice, a decision, an act of the will, and it belongs in the heart of your relationship with your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings, your friends, your co-workers. [and I would add it belongs to the heart of our relationship with our God.] Have the courage to not simply talk of love, but to put love into action. The love God has for you is patient and kind and will never fail. Choose to share that same amazing love with the people in your life.” (The Rev. Canon Frank Logue)
As I sat with my friend’s words, I saw this across my screen:
“One neighborhood in Minnesota put their love into action by paying back a beloved World War II veteran who likes to spend his retirement walking around the neighborhood twice a day. But at 95 years old, at times Harvey Djerf needs to stop to catch his breath. “A few years back,” Djerf told ABC News, he noticed one neighbor had left a chair outside for him in their yard.
“It’s kind of snowballed now. I’m up to 12 chairs now,” he said. “They must’ve seen that I was pausing and catching my breath and that’s when they probably took pity on me.”
It’s kindness not pity that makes Djerf’s neighbors in Plymouth, Minnesota, put chairs out for the veteran. They also bring him lemonade on hot summer days and even cookies, he said.
Djerf said it means a lot to him, especially since he’s been living in the neighborhood for 66 years. In fact, Djerf and his wife of 69 years built their home in 1951.” (ABCNews.com)
That is love for the neighbor, a stranger who walks in their very midst. It is kindness. It is following what Jesus asks of us. And sometimes love goes even deeper, for the ethic of love, is an ethic of life.
In March 2008, Christopher Gregory died suddenly from a ruptured aneurism. He was 19 years old. His parents were devastated. In the awful, bewildering hours following their son's death, they were asked to consider donating his organs. But Chris had already answered that question: just the week before he had innocently mentioned that he wished to be a donor. Their decision to donate simply affirmed their son's generosity.
Three months later, they received a letter: "I cannot possibly imagine the grief caused by your loss," it read. "Certainly, there are no words anyone can say or write to extinguish that pain. Nevertheless, you have shared with me the grandest gift I will ever receive - the gift of life."
Chris' parents eventually met the writer whose life was saved by their son's lungs. They would go on to meet the four other people who were given second chances by Christopher's gift. Chris' mom and dad have since become advocates for the Donor Network of Arizona.
Chris' father, Eric, wrote this in an article this past summer [June 12, 2017]: "The experience of losing Christopher, but knowing his death meant life for five others, changed me in ways I never thought possible. I learned that it's possible to see God in all things, even tragedy. The more I learned about the science of organ transplantation, the more confident I have become in the existence of God. I learned that the butterfly effect is real, that something as seemingly inconsequential as checking a box while applying for a driver's license can have a tremendous effect years later and miles away . . . Most of all, in the face of division and distrust in the world today, I learned that how we treat one another matters. If the heart of a 19-year-old white boy beating inside the chest of a 65-year-old black man does not give us hope, then I do not know what hope is." [American Magazine]
To love with our whole heart and soul and mind enables us to move beyond our fears and sorrow in order to comfort, to forgive, to heal. Jesus reveals the mystery of our beloved God loving his creation so completely and so selflessly that God asks that such love be shared by his people throughout his creation.
The generosity of heart of people like Chris and those who make possible the gift of organ donations is centered in the love of the "great commandment" of Jesus' Gospel: to love with the same selfless compassion, care and completeness of the God who created each of us.
Those neighbors in Minnesota also showed a generosity of heart for a neighbor in a simple gesture of providing a chair for him to sit in and rest while he walks.
This is love. Love of neighbor as we love ourselves. This is how we love God, by how we treat God’s creation. In the end it is up to us to act:
Do all the good you can,
To all the people you can,
In all the ways you can,
As long as ever you can. (J Wesley)
And do it with love. Amen.
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