The Narrowing of Neighbor Status

Below is a sermon preached on February 2, 2025 -- Scout Sunday at Messiah Lutheran Church in Park Ridge. Luke 4:21-30, 1 Corinthians 13.

Today’s second reading is among the most well-known passages in all of scripture. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he describes the gift of love beautifully, and poetically. Love is patient, love is kind, love is essential, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Here, Paul describes the kind of love that God has for you, for me, and for all humanity… and Paul describes the kind of love that we are called to have for one another.

I think this too, is well known and well established beyond just Christian circles. Jesus’ command to love our neighbor is foundational to how a Christian, a disciple of Christ, is called to live and be in the world. Love your neighbor as yourself is the foundation for the “golden rule” – treat others the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule is generally accepted in our society and our world and is understood well no matter if you’re Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, or agnostic. 

Very few folks, I think at least, would argue that God’s call to love others and treat them as you would want to be treated is wrongheaded, stupid, weak, or inappropriate. It’s a value, I think, that we can lift up universally. In a divided world and very divided nation, it’s a value and principle around which we can find some consensus. 

However… where we tend to break down… where consensus breaks and where we often find conflict and disagreement is in defining who is our neighbor. Which groups of people qualify as those we’re called to love, and which groups are okay for us to define as outside the universe of those worthy of our love? Worthy of God’s love, even.

I mean… Let’s make this easy… I’m a huge baseball fan, and my team is the San Francisco Giants. I grew up in the Bay Area in California and my bond with the Gigantes will never break. The Giants' most hated rival is, of course, the new evil empire, the Los Angeles Dodgers. And we hate that team with a white-hot fury. I mean, think about the Cubs/White Sox rivalry here in Chicago multiplied by a factor of ten. That’s how much we hate each other. 

So when I see someone walking down the street in a blue Dodgers cap, or driving around the city with a Dodgers bumper sticker, I immediately assign that person as someone who is outside the scope of those I’m called to love. They are my enemy, and I would rather destroy them than love them. 

Now, I’m not making excuses for myself… but this is among the most human of tendencies – to assign in-groups and out-groups. To define people as either worthy of our love, compassion, and care… or not. Most folks don’t draw such hard lines around silly things like sports allegiances as I do, but we all do this to some degree. Is a Dodger fan not still my neighbor who I am called to love? A love that is patient and kind? A love that believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things and endures all things?

I might ask a similar question about the Scout Law. To whom do scouts pledge to be helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind? Are there folks who do not deserve to be treated with kindness and compassion because of their sports allegiances, their race, their country of origin, their citizenship status, their sexuality, their gender, their religious affiliation, their criminal background, or their political beliefs? 

Does the Scout Law suggest that some people are unworthy of our love, our care, and our compassion?

Jesus knew that God’s call and command to love others, to love everyone, would be difficult for humanity. For example, in today’s gospel text, the people of Nazareth initially loved Jesus’ proclamation that through him God’s promise to uplift the poor, overturn injustice, and set right all that was wrong in the world was fulfilled. They were excited about his promises to the people they loved, to people within their in-group.

But, in today’s text, when Jesus dared to say that the good news of God’s love and grace and promise of restoration extended beyond their small circle… that God’s love is given to those they considered outsiders, the people in Jesus’ hometown had a swift change of heart. They were so appalled that the good news proclaimed to them by Jesus applied also to the foreigners, the outsiders, and to the Gentiles, that they turned on Jesus and tried to throw him off a mountain. 

Sometimes it's just offensive to hear that those we hate or fear are worthy of our love… of God’s love. But over and over and over and over again in scripture, we are challenged to define our neighbor – the people we’re called to love – as exactly those we despise or fear the most. The challenge of the Scout Law too is not found in being friendly, courteous, and kind to our close friends and family only… but instead to those that our world, our culture, and frankly now our government tell us are unworthy of such kindness, dignity, and respect.

So why is it so hard? Why does humanity universally struggle with the command to love our neighbor?

I think one reason we struggle to love our neighbor is that we misunderstand the quality and gift of God’s love. We think about God’s love as something that needs to be earned through good behavior, through right living, and obedience. Like a merit badge. We misunderstand God’s love and salvation as a prize to be won, rather than a gift to be received. When our faith tells us that we are loved by God only when we believe the right things and do the right things, we’ve created the ultimate in-group and out-group, haven’t we? We seemingly prescribe our human tendency to categorize people onto God, rather than receiving and freely sharing God’s unconditional love and grace with our neighbor, no matter who they are. 

You know, last week, Bishop Mariann Budde preached a sermon in which she begged the leaders of our nation to show mercy to those who find themselves targeted by the administration’s new policies. She spoke specifically about the out-groups we’ve created among immigrants and members of the LGBTQ+ community. She made no policy proposal, nor did she critique any of the administration's priorities – she simply proclaimed that God’s love was indeed for all, and asked for mercy. She asked that we love our neighbors and treat them with dignity and respect. She dared to proclaim that immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community are our neighbors. 

And the response to her sermon was… I would say… uneven? Among my community of pastors and faith leaders, she has received accolades and deep respect and admiration for her courage. 

But many others have responded not unlike the people of Narazeth to Jesus when he declared God’s love extended to the Gentiles, to those deemed unworthy. Bishop Budde has survived so far, I think, only because there was no mountain off of which to throw her. Sometimes it's just offensive to hear that those we hate or fear are worthy of God’s love, and therefore, are worthy to be called our neighbor.

And, I have to share… In a shocking interview this week, our new vice president proclaimed his understanding of Jesus’ neighbor love ethic by introducing the idea of an ordered, hierarchy of love. He believes that Jesus calls us to love family, friends, community, and country before the outsider. Essentially saying that God calls us to love our in-groups differently than the out-groups. And I have to tell you, there is simply no theological or scriptural defense for such a claim… Jesus himself answered the very direct question “Who is my neighbor?” by telling the story of the good Samaritan… the Samaritan was not just an outsider, he was a despised enemy. And the hated Samaritan is how Jesus described and defined our neighbor.

My beloved preaching professor at Wartburg Theological Seminary, Sam Giere, said the following this week in response to the attempts to strip neighbor status from the out-groups of this world… Sam said, ”Jesus’ correction of the narrowing of the meaning of neighbor with the clarification that “you shall love your enemy and pray for those that persecute you” (Mt 5.43f) is the prophetic edge of the gospel in this moment, as it reveals the expanse of God’s love (Rom 5.11) and calls the world and each of us in it to imitate this divine love for Christ’s sake.”

Our response to God’s command to love our neighbor shouldn’t drive us to try to strip neighbor status from those we find inconvenient to love. That is not how God’s love works. That is once again, our attempt to prescribe the very human tendency to create in-groups and out-groups onto God. It’s what drove the crowd to try to throw Jesus off the mountain, it’s what drives the vitriol towards Bishop Budde, and it’s the challenge and mission of the church in this very difficult time today. 

The late, great Rachel Held-Evans said “God has a really bad habit of using people we don’t approve of. What makes the gospel offensive is not who it keeps out, but who it lets in.”

May we remember that our tendency to create in-groups and out-groups is just that, our tendency, and not a reflection of how God’s love works. May we find peace, and rest, wholeness, and transformation in the universal belovedness, proclaimed by God and not earned by our virtue. And may we find the courage to love our neighbor today, in this difficult time, even when doing so risks our own place in the in-groups of this world.

God said love your neighbor the way I love you. May you trust that you are beloved by God, no matter who you are or what you’ve done. There are no in-groups or out-groups in the Kingdom of God. Just beloved children, freed to love one another by God’s amazing grace. Amen.