Dave's airplane story Back in a better time in airplane travel my friend Dave was settling into his comfortable American Airlines seat. The plane was filling up and as the last person was finding a seat the stewardess came on the speaker system and said something like this. ``We are happy that you have chosen to fly American today and we want to give a special welcome to our friends from United Airlines that are also flying with us today. Due to a mechanical problem a United flight has been cancelled, and the passengers from that plane are riding with us. However, we do have a problem. Due to the last minute arrival of the good United folks, we were not able to procure meals for all the United passengers. So, when it is time to serve the meal please indicate if you are American or United. American passengers will get their meal. For our United friends we can offer drinks and peanuts. Dave was now in turmoil. He was with American and assured of a meal, but what would he do if the passengers right next to him were with United. Should he share his meal? What does it mean to be a good neighbor on an airplane? The plane took off and eventually the meal was served. Dave received his American meal, and the people right next to him turned out to also be with American, so they received meals as well. But then he got to thinking, what about the people in the row behind me? What does it mean to be a good neighbor to them? He decided not to turn around to look. Which brings us to our Gospel text for the morning. We've already heard this morning the familiar words from Deuteronomy with the Godly instruction of what must be taught to the children. Theshema, HEAR, O Israel, you must love the Lord your God with all that you are. Our New Testament passage is from the book of Mark where Jesus, in chapter 12, is in dialogue with other religious people. A scribe, who is not out to set a trap but is more likely concerned about what is core, what is central, asks Jesus a question. Mark 12:28-34 goes like this: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ``Which commandment is the first of all?'' Jesus answered, ''The first is, `Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.'' Then the scribe said to him, ``You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that `he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and `to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and `to love one's neighbor as oneself,'this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.'' When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ``You are not far from the kingdom of God.'' After that no one dared to ask him any question. Jesus agrees with the scribe that there is something central, something fundamental, something core to the law. He puts it two ways. The first is that the Lord is one and that we are to love the Lord with all that we are. And the second is equally as important, that we are to love our neighbor as oneself. And the scribe gets it. The scribe repeats back to Jesus what he has just heard. Yes, the Lord is one, and we are to love him with all our strength; and secondly, he adds, we are to love our neighbor as oneself. Then the scribe goes even farther recognizing a critical distinction between the central commandments Jesus has just given and the place of important rules and regulations, sacrifices and rituals. Something very important is being understood here. The sacrifices and rituals may be very important but Jesus is pushing for more, for matters of the heart and relationships. He wants hearts in tune with God and relationships of all sorts controlled by love, not governed by tradition or long established ceremony. At the end of this encounter Jesus reflects on the wisdom of the scribe's response and states that ``you are not far from the kingdom of God.'' This is no critique but can rather be seen as an invitation to the Pharisee (and by implication, to us as well) to draw ever closer and closer to the practice and teaching of Jesus' kingdom ways. But still, who is my neighbor? And what is love, anyhow? If you are like me, even after all these beautiful words, even profound words, you are still asking the question, but exactly who is my neighbor? And what actually is the nature of love? Of course that first question, who is my neighbor?, is the one posed of Jesus in Luke 10, which then led to the parable of the good Samaritan. The Samaritan, the unlikely one, turns out to be the good neighborwho highlights by his very differentness that the neighbor can be very far away, very unlikely, very different. Let's go back to the story of Dave on the airplane. His neighbors are those who are sitting right beside him, eating their American meals. But his neighbor is also the person in the seat behind him, the one whose knees butt up against his seat, or maybe he has a disgusting cough, and all he has are some United peanuts and a plastic cup of 7-Up. It takes some effort to figure it out, since it's awkward to turn around in an airplane, but that guy is our neighbor too. We can say that turning around and checking out who is in the seat behind us, and whether or not they've got a meal, is kind of like what Bob talked about a few weeks ago, the idea of going down to the pool to see who needs some help. And it's a whole lot like going to the prison on a regular basis, like Pauline talked about last week. And these words of Jesus fit right within the great sweep of the biblical story. Let me just detour a little to say this about the Bible and how these few verses about Jesus' interaction with a scribe fit in. The Bible is a big, varied, wild, and crazy book. It's got all different kinds of literary styles in it: poetry and prose, history and wildly imaginative writings. It has a grand cast of characters: the noble and the disgusting, the strong and the weak. It doesn't always hang together; sometimes something you read in one place disagrees with what you read in another place. But through all the ups and downs it's a very real book, a very human book. It doesn't hide the raw stuff. It's not monolithic with just one opinion all the way through. But if anything it is that through it all there's God reaching out, hoping that people will get it, trying to bring wholeness, healing, and restoration to people. Then there's Jesus, God's supreme revelation of what it means, what it looks like to live in harmony with the universe, with the creation, and with others. Jesus, the lens through which we look at the entire biblical landscape. And what does Jesus say when he is asked what is central. He responds: the Lord is one. Love the Lord with all your heart and strength. And moreover, love your neighbor as oneself. From there, we've got to figure it out. We've got to come back to the Lord again and again, like we are doing today in word, prayer, and song, to express our desire to be one with the Lord with all that we are. And then we've got to figure out who the neighbor is, who the person or people are whom God is drawing our heart towards. We've got to dare to look around at our neighbors, and dare to turn around and check out who is in the seat behind us. We've got to have at least that much curiosity. Our neighbor can be the person sitting next to us with a meal, or the person in the row behind. And loving the neighbor means finding some way of linking meaningfully with both of their lives. Right now, we can challenge ourselves to think, who is it for me? It's like the person in the seat behind me in the airplane. I know she is there, and I mightily suspect that she is with United, and has only some peanuts. Will I make the effort to turn around? Think about where you work, or people near your house, or maybe someone right in our church. Will you make the effort to turn around, or will you be content to silently hold your breath and then exhale a sign of relief when you know that, thank goodness, the people right beside me both have a meal too. A global challenge for all of us I wish to conclude by moving beyond the personal to the more systemic, and really, jump off from an opinion piece written by Pakisa Tshmika in a recent edition of the Mennonite World Conference magazine, theCourier.
As we think about the neighbor, and the Jesus call to love our neighbor, we are prompted to think of the neighbor who is vastly different from us, or seen as the enemy. Our theology of being practitioners of God's shalom draws us in this direction, and certainly the arch-type story of the Good Samaritan, told in response to the question ``who is my neighbor?'' pushes the notion that we must reach out to the neighbor who is very different.
But we can also think about what it means to be a neighbor within our own context, and for us as Mennonites, right within the family of Mennonite churches in our world. This is like sitting on the airplane, receiving our American meal, and then hearing the person right next to us, whose shoulder we are rubbing say ``I'm United.'' Then the stewardess says to us, ``would you like the honey-glazed chicken and rice or would you like the sliced beef with mashed potatoes?'' And to the person next to us the words come, ``here are your peanuts, and would you like juice or a carbonated beverage?''
At the Mennonite World Conference meetings earlier this year in Pasadena Mennonites from around the world were able to sit together and talk about the vast economic disparity that exists among ourselves, and were able to lament the impact of racism, tribalism, and other systemic discrimination among us.'' And beyond that there was enough ease and grace in the room so that pointed advice could be given from the South to the North about advocacy work on behalf of issues like unfair trade, conflicts, immigration concerns, and more. And then some suggested steps were given for how we could communicate more, do more service together, and consult together more.
But then comes the practical question. This is all well and good, but how exactly are we going to make this happen, and how will we pay for it?
All of which leads Pakisa to conclude that it is easier for us to condemn unfair trade practices, wars, and immigration unfairness out there, and name it as sin. But what is harder to talk about is the economic disparity among us, right within our global Anabaptist family. His call is this, that somehow we need to move towards greater accountability among ourselves regarding our resources. I guess this means actually turning to the person next to us, the one with the peanuts and the 7-Up, looking down at our own honey-glazed chicken, and beginning a conversation.
A spirituality of justice We desire to be a church that practices a spirituality of justice. That's what we put at the top of our bulletin today. In our confession we acknowledged some of the gross inequities in our lives, and our own complicity. Justice, of course, is intricately related to love and grace. In the Bible justice is associated with having enough, with life's basic requirements being met, with serious social inequalities being rectified. As we explore day by day, deeper and deeper, the meaning of Jesus' words to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbor as oneselfwe will cultivate in our own selves and community this spirituality of justice. May God grant to us all the strength we need for the day as we continue on this incredible journey. --November 5, 2006
