Love Your Neighbor

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Good to be together on this snowy and let's just say it somewhat warm day compared to what we've had. I don't mind. I don't mind at all. I'm Debbie Manning if you're new here, one of the pastors here at The Table. I don't know if anyone saw it, Patty, you want to throw that up there? Did anyone see this?

So a week ago we were asked to do this go to your corner, step out your door, shine your light and our kids and our many grandkids happened to be over doing some ice skating on our little rink on the backyard and we all walked down to the corner 46 and lit candles and remembered. We kept telling the kids that it's this is the sacred time. We're just gonna remember those that have been impacted. Alex and Renee and Liam those have been detained and deported and abducted. So we did that. So together we did that and as we sat around that picnic table there on 36th and Colfax we started just talking a little bit about this and I think for me it was this moment of realizing the deep impact on our children and my guys are little. I mean these are like nine and under till nine from two to nine years old, seven of them and it really hit me when the stories came out when little Nellie who's a kindergartner, six years old is sharing how her they give her teammate a ride to hockey because their parents can't leave their home and hearing from little Ben who's four years old saying yeah yeah yeah there's people there's people who who want people with different color skin to leave our neighborhood our city.

You hear these stories and you realize the depth of even the trauma. I hear the stories of kids all of a sudden their sleeping patterns are different. You know they might not be able to verbalize when they're so little what's happening with they they feel the tension and they're jumping into bed with mom and dad in the middle of the night because they're afraid or people kids are feeling sick they're feeling the tensions we're feeling and some of these conversations that I've been having with the youngest of us they're heartbreaking and they're kind of dear because you hear the tenderness and then sometimes they're kind of funny.

Like when that little one when her father with a bunch of people went to the rally a week ago in earnest while he was gone looked while her dad was gone looked at her mom and said “gosh I hope I hope if dad sees Donald Trump he'll arrest him.” Now we don't like to be partisan here although we do say we're political but it was hard not to chuckle a little bit when we heard that one. But they're very aware of what's going on in our community because it's nearby is wrong. There's something wrong about that and I think those little children are reflecting exactly what all of us feel, right? This injustice that's happening. Deep down in our soul we all know that this is not right and we have a longing for justice.

It's not just a 21st century thing that longing for justice is a human thing. Ancient people have always been and people today continue to hmm I hated the word wrestle because I'm not sure why we're wrestling with some of that but we seem to be wrestling with the ideas of fairness, mercy, goodness. What should these things look like how do we experience them how are we to pursue these things?

Well y'all it's your lucky day because we are continuing in the revised common lectionary which we have continued to say is a three-year cycle of scripture and text that was determined in 1992. And today the text is from our Hebrew scriptures some might be more familiar with saying the Old Testament, and we're in the book of Micah. And for the record just so you know on the front end Micah is not meant to be like a feel-good kind of book. If we look back on the book of Micah throughout the book the major themes are: sin, judgment, hope.

Well y'all it's your lucky day because we are continuing in the revised common lectionary which we have continued to say is a three-year cycle of scripture and text that was determined in 1992. And today the text is from our Hebrew scriptures some might be more familiar with saying the Old Testament, and we're in the book of Micah. And for the record just so you know on the front end Micah is not meant to be like a feel-good kind of book. If we look back on the book of Micah throughout the book the major themes are: sin, judgment, hope, it's kind of like the hard things that you don't really want to hear but you know you need to hear that's what Micah is about.

So here's this prophet sent to speak God's word to God's people in the eighth century BC that was a very very long time ago. But here's the beauty of this inspired word of God you guys is that this word spoken thousands of years ago speaks to us in this moment as much as it spoke to the people Micah was speaking to that long ago. Now there are moments in our world right that we feel like we almost can't breathe. Moments when the questions of faith stop being theoretical and actually feel very urgent. Moments when we have to ask not just what we believe but who are we who are we becoming. We're in one of those moments right now. And in this moment this text doesn't just whisper, it speaks very plainly.

We're in Micah 6:1-8:

Hear what the Lord says rise plead your case before the mountains and let the hills hear your voice. Hear you mountains the case of the Lord and you enduring foundations of the earth for the Lord has a case against his people and he will contend with Israel. Oh my people what have I done to you and and what have I worried you answer me. For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and I redeemed you from the house of slavery and I sent you before Moses Aaron Miriam. Oh my people remember how what King Belak of Moab had devised what Balaam son of Beor answered him and what happened from Shittim, Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high. Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams with ten thousands of rivers of oil. Shall I give my first born for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul. [Here we go.] He has told you Oh mortal what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

So we got to do a little context here. So Micah doesn't open with any comfort but with a courtroom scene a cosmic courtroom. Hear what the Lord says rise plead your case before the mountains and let the hills hear your voice. God calls the mountains the hills the foundations of the earth as witnesses. Creation itself is brought into the conversation. And what Micah does here is he he refuses to let injustice be hidden to be private. He places it in the open air and he places it before the oldest witnesses imaginable the earth ancient enduring observant. Here's the thing the earth has seen this story before. It has watched the cycles of oppression the bending of the vulnerable the forgetting of covenant promises. And nature is not a silent backdrop to this story. Creation is an active participant in the moral drama that Micah puts before us. And in Micah's vision the injustice against people it reverberates it reverberates to the world. What we do to one another it echoes in the soil in the air in the water.

And in this courtroom God speaks not so much with anger now there's a little bit of idea exchange among commentators but he speaks maybe with grief and maybe with a little sarcasm. Oh my people what have I done to you how have I wearied you. But what God's actually doing in this moment is he's appealing to memory. I brought you out of slavery. I made a way for you when there was no other way to get out. And here's the thing God's has stayed with his people and his remembering is not this reminder to remember is not about nostalgia it's about resistance. Because forgetting about injustice is how injustice survives. And that happens when we forget that our faith story is a liberation story. When we forget that we were once strangers. When we forget that God always moves out to the margins. And when we do that we begin to tolerate what got what love would never ever allow.

[Former] slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said we have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future. And Micah agrees with that because memory is meant to shape the way we live. The people respond with this question that might sound familiar. With what shall I come before the Lord. What do you want from us God more worship more sacrifice more religious effort. They offer a bigger and bigger acts of devotion as if holiness could be purchased or negotiated. But God interrupts him. He has told you Oh mortal what is good. Do justice love kindness walk humbly with your God. It's not hidden not complicated not reserved for the spiritually elite.

Justice kindness humility not just beliefs that we affirm but it's the way we live our lives. Justice not something that's neutral. Justice is an action. It's something that sets things right. It's the courage that confronts systems that harm and exclude people. It's refusing to spiritualize suffering that especially spot suffering from human causes. And kindness that covenantal love that love that's loyal and steadfast. It's a relational love that binds us together as community. It's a love that refuses to let people be disposable.

And that humility not to be confused with passivity. It's simply this. It's choosing to walk with God. And we choose to walk with God we choose to walk in the places that God's walking in. And God often walks among the targeted the suffering the displaced the afraid the poor. You know centuries later Jesus is asked to summarize the law out of all these commandments because there were a whole lot of them which one matters the most. And Jesus answers first with the love of God right love the Lord your God with all your heart strength soul mind. But immediately he says this and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Not instead of loving God but the truest expression of it.

And what Jesus does is he collapses he collapses the distance between devotion and ethics between worship and neighborliness between prayer and public life. Because at the end of the day we cannot claim the love of God while ignoring the suffering of our neighbors. We cannot separate faith from responsibility. And we can't walk humbly with God while stepping over those that are harmed by unjust systems. And that's where Micah and Jesus meet. Because to love your neighbor is to do justice. To love your neighbor is to practice kindness. To love your neighbor is to walk humbly with your God.

And that brings us all home here, to our streets, to Minneapolis, to our neighbors. Where fear has moved into our homes this family worry about who's gonna be taken, who will be returned. Who's safe, who's not safe. And we have seen ICE activity not as some sort of abstract idea but as a reality that affects real people: parents, workers, children, friends. It's personal; there are names and there are faces: Alex and Renee and Liam. Those that have been taken, those have been traumatized, it's a reality.

But there's something else. In the midst of all this chaos and disruption and violence, we've experienced something else: we have experienced the love of neighbors. Because neighbors have shown up, people have spoken out, community members have stood in the gap, and ordinary people have chosen courage over comfort. That is a reality of the moment that we're in right now. I also think those ordinary people all of you sit in this room are the quiet heroes, the faithful.

I saw a post recently and it said this in a world that often feels divided kindness is rebellion and the one who still choose to care they're the quiet heroes keeping everything together. And the post posted this quote from Mr. Rogers:

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility it's easy to say it's not my child not my community not my world not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and they respond. I consider those people my heroes.

When we respond, that's making Micah 6:8 visible. When we respond that's Jesus's commandment lived out. You know the table we we practice the ways of Jesus by creating space to all for all to belong and all to be loved, and that practice doesn't end at our door. It moves into the street and it shows up in neighborhoods and with neighbors that are threatened. It refuses silence when harm is happening. Here's the quiet grounding truth beneath all of this: God's not asking any one of us to be extraordinary, God's simply asking us to be faithful.

Those masked agents, those masked ICE agents that are grabbing all the headlines with their aggression…it's been horrible hasn't it? But we're answering those headlines we are people that are answering those headlines with a whole different story a story about people who fulfill God's commandment to love their neighbor. And you all and so many out there have been doing just that with your time, your money, your friendship. Because we are committed to being people that are gonna notice when others are hurting. We're gonna refuse indifference. We're gonna live like beloved people who believe in the belovedness of our neighbors.

You know it's a funny thing to say that it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood because it hasn't really felt like that has it it's felt really scary and heartbreaking and hard. But when I think about all you and how you've shown up driving kids to school, and helping find safe places for people to live, and driving people to their places of work in our community. Delivering groceries, paying for those groceries, standing out on corners in the freezing cold, whether it's a rally, a vigil, a protest, or as a legal bystander so that you could be a witness. Think about that, it's kind of a beautiful neighborhood, people showing up, people doing that. Yeah listen to this video. [Lady Gaga sings “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”]

Maybe it is that simple: would you be, could you be, please won't you be my neighbor? And we know just what being a good neighbor looks like because all we have to remember is Micah 6:8. We'll keep showing up, that's what we're called to do. We will keep showing up and we know what that includes all different levels of calling our legislators, and getting everyone out to vote next November, and and showing up at those rallies and those prayer vigils, and driving people to work.

I go back to where I started: I think about our kids. I think about what they're witnessing through all of you and it's a really beautiful thing. I think about what they're getting taught up there. When we were walking back from the lighting our candles last night at the corner I was walking with my granddaughter Sammy and I said oh Sammy Jesus just wants us to be good neighbors.” And she said—thank you Caitlin Schmidt, by the way—she said “I know Dede,” that's what they call me, Dede. “I know, Dede, we're supposed to welcome the strangers!”

This kid is six years old, this kid is the kid that a few days ago was do you guys who remember shrinky dinks she was making all these shrinky dinks and she brought them to school she's a very tender hearted kid and she came home and she told her mom you know I gave out all the shrinky dinks to my friends and there was a little concern and question about you know Sammy you don't have to give your friends things so that they love you and she goes oh no mom no I was giving my friends things I want them all to feel safe with what's going on and she did say with Donald Trump but we're working on that part like right? Every person created in the image of God. Still working on it. But all that to say our kids are watching and I am so grateful to be part of this community and the city and the state that are standing up and are being good good neighbors. Because the mountains still watch, creation still bearing witness, and the question before us is the same one that Micah had thousands of years ago. Now that you all know what love requires, how are you gonna live? What are you gonna do?

Please pray with me: Holy and gracious God, there's a lot going on right now. And in this moment, God, we hold both just the pain and the suffering and the fear and the heartache, the love of our neighbors and we also hold hope in you the God that calls us to love you with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. And the God who calls us to love our neighbor. The God who says you can't separate those two things. God fill us with your Spirit help us to step into the things right in front of us. Continue to remind us of our stories, continue to help us to love bigger and better and more deeply. We are so grateful. We're grateful that you love us and you call us to love one another. We pray in your name, Amen.