Yes, But Do I have to Like Them?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 5, 2006
The 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Yes, But Do I have to Like Them?
Mark 12:28-34
Ruth 1:1-18

How many times have you heard the gospel text?
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
It is lesson we all have heard numerous times,
a passage that we are all familiar with.
It is a lesson that comes up so frequently that
by its very familiarity we risk overlooking
how radical the teaching is,
and how much it demands of us.

Did you hear the word that Jesus used with this lesson?
It is a “commandment”.
Do you remember how we talked about commandments
not that long ago?
Commandments are not suggestions,
not things put before us for our consideration,
for us to ponder, to think about.
No, a commandment means that Jesus expects us to do it,
to write the lesson on our hearts,
to live by it.

So this is a commandment:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Full stop.
No conditions.
Jesus doesn’t teach that you are to love your neighbor
as long as he’s a good person,
as long as she doesn’t have loud parties,
as long as he supports your team,
as long as she votes for your political party and candidate.

No: it is simple:
you must love your neighbor as yourself.
Period.

Of course, we humans are always looking for ways
to circumvent the absolutes that God imposes upon us.
So we try to define “neighbor” narrowly:
those who live near us,
those with whom we are in regular contact.
those with whom we have something in common.
We tend not to think that our neighbors are those people
who live in other parts of town,
who speak other languages,
or who look differently from you and me.

But of course Jesus won’t let us define the word so narrowly.
Our neighbors are all God’s children,
our neighbor is everyone:
yes, that’s convoluted English,
but still, our neighbor is everyone.
In this highly charged political season,
the neighbor of the most partisan Republican is a Democrat;
and the neighbor of the most partisan Democrat is a Republican.

Think about it: we are called to love,
and doesn’t love mean acceptance?
Doesn’t love mean tolerance?
Doesn’t love mean looking for commonality?
Doesn’t love mean that we should be working actively
to build bridges,
to build relationships,
to build community,
to look for those things we can like about another person,
those things that ARE there, if only we would look for them.

If we live according to the commandment,
how can we in good faith criticize another person?
Snipe or gossip about another?
Talk down, or be dismissive,
condescending, patronizing?
How can we say things that polarize?
That divide?

Living according to the commandment means
that we are called to look for the positive,
those things that are there inside every person,
every child of God.
They are there because God put them there,
put them there through the Holy Spirit,
and we are called to open our eyes to them.

When Jesus told the scribe that we are to love
our neighbors as ourselves,
he was quoting a law that was first given by God
through Moses more than a thousand years earlier.
God gave his children this law to help build community
to help strengthen the ties among his children,
ties that we always seem more eager to cut
than we are to strengthen.

The final verses of our lesson from the book of Ruth
are often used in weddings.
They make a very appropriate reading
as a man and a woman make their vows to one another
and become one.
But the book of Ruth is about friendship,
about commonality, about community.
Indeed the root of the word “Ruth” comes from
the Hebrew for “friend”.
Naomi and her husband Elimelech were Israelites
who left their land in Judah
and re-settled in Moab, a foreign land,
a land where they were the strangers, the outsiders,
the immigrants.
Ruth was a Moabite, a native;
She was not a follower of the Lord God.
Naomi was an Israelite, a foreigner,
and a follower of the Lord God.
Right there we have a huge gap
that in these divisive times
would lead both to retreat behind brick walls,
each calling the other an assortment of
nasty names.
Add in the fact that they were not blood relatives,
but mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,
and they had lost the one who brought them together,
Naomi’s son, Ruth’s husband,
and we have absolutely nothing to bind
these two women together.

But Ruth loved Naomi as she loved herself;
and Naomi loved Ruth as herself.
They loved each other, and liked each other
and built a bond that is still an extraordinary example to us,
some 3,000 years later.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed that
humanity is often like a disconnected, fractured family.
We feel safe retreating to our own communities,
our own groups, our own silos.
King wondered what we do if we learned that
we had collectively inherited a house.
He surmised that we would probably each say,
“there is no way I can live with those other people.
Let’s sell the house and divide the money
and then we can each live the way
we each want to.”
What Jesus teaches us, though, is that
we are already living in the house with one another
and selling it is not an option.
We cannot retreat behind brick walls,
retreat to our silos.
Jesus calls us to break down walls,
eliminate those forces that polarize and divide
as we build community;
build community as we live
the commandment of loving and liking our neighbor.

How much richer we are for having one another!
How much stronger we are for having one another!
How much more faithful we are for having one another,
in all our distinctions,
all our differences,
all our diversity.

As you come to this table,
I invite you to think about one neighbor,
just one neighbor,
a neighbor you know,
a neighbor you cannot honestly say you love.
It might be a colleague at work,
someone who lives on your street;
it could even be person in this church.
Make a commitment as you come to this table,
to work on learning to love that person,
learning to like that person.
Make a commit to building a relationship with that person
so that you can love him or her
as you love yourself.

For we come to this table, all of us, each of us
as brothers and sisters,
brothers and sisters in Christ,
and children of God.
We come to this table all of us equally,
all of us accepted, forgiven,
and loved.

Our Lord Jesus Christ invites us all to this table.
invites you to come share this meal
that he has prepared for us.
There are no seats of honor, seats for the preferred,
for we are all one in Jesus Christ.
Come to this table and commune with your neighbor.
and then renewed, refreshed,
strengthened by this meal
go out and live by our Lord’s teaching.
No: live by our Lord’s commandment.
AMEN