Neighbor to Neighbor

“ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? ”

Did you ever consider the phenomenon of neighbors? Think of the first time anyone moved right next to someone else. Somebody, that is, who wasn't their cousin or child. It was the 2 nd stage of civilization.

Civilization began with one man and one woman, married and living together, bringing children into the world. A home is a civilizing force. We take that for granted, but just go a ways out of Chico and you may run into people who don't live in conventional homes at all. A recent manhunt by the Chico Police beyond the tiny town of Cohasset took them through what used to be called a hobo village: a primitive campsite of trash and rude hovels, populated with occasional human beings. Without conventional families, people on the fringes of our world splinter off and there civilization ends.

But put people together in families and homes and you have something to build upon. Their joint needs for security and comfort create customers for construction, paving, utilities, food storage and preparation, and private entertainment. At one time, the need for a walled city to protect the population from marauding tribes kept people's homes near those walls to run inside at time of attack. This proximity gave rise to markets and textile industries, and specialized professions. And it put people living next to one another.

Our first notion of a neighbor is somebody living on the next plot over from us. In California, a fence demarks the property line between our neighbor and us. It surprises me to go to another state where neighbors have no fences. Robert Frost wrote of fences in his poem, Mending Wall :

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast… I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go… Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

If you think this fence just exists for fun, try moving your fence three inches onto your neighbor's property. If it stays there long enough, a lawsuit might concede your right to those three inches. People can be funny about their property, but after all, our homes are most often our largest investment, and our nest egg is inside that fence line.

A story tells of a successful businessman who was disenchanted with big city life. So he took his savings and purchased a large ranch in the middle of nowhere in Montana. After a couple of months of enjoying the solitude he heard hoof beats outside his cabin. Grabbing his rifle he challenged the man riding up on the horse. “Hold it neighbor,” the man said, “I'm your neighbor, I have a ranch only 6 miles from here, and I want to invite you to a Welcome Party I'm throwing for you next Saturday. There's going to be music, dancing, hugging, kissing, drinking, fighting.... We'll have a great time.” Not wanting to be unneighborly, the new rancher lowered his rifle and asked, “How should I dress?” “Aw, don't matter,” replied his new neighbor, “Ain't gonna be but the two of us.”

When Moses gave forth the Law of God, he stated the familiar maxim: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” With that, he laid out several things you don't do to a neighbor. When defining the term, neighbor , Moses said they were “the children of thy people,” meaning that they were your kind of people. The Law also established the punishments for certain acts of disobedience to God by casting the rebels out of the camp, exiling them and considering them Gentiles, not neighbors anymore.

By the 1 st century, Jewish rabbinic laws had further restricted the idea of neighbor as a Jew who strictly observed the Law . All others were to be hated as enemies. When Jesus entered this society, His words were revolutionary. “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:43-44 The enemy is your neighbor. Now who are you to love as yourself? And what does that love look like? St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “For this, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:9-10

When the Jews wandered from Egypt to the Promised Land, they were recreating civilization, the first ever to have the One True God at the center of everything. Their violations of His Law, in time, threatened not only their individual salvations, but also the whole security of the nation. In times of utter rebellion, God removed His Hand of protection from Israel, and the Assyrians and Babylonians took everything the Jews thought was theirs.

Civilization, after all, is not man's achievement. We may create our own world, perhaps, like Babel that rose high in the plains of today's Iraq. But cut one common link between those people—language in their case—and civilization ends. God showed those folks how fragile their civilization was without Him at the center.

I just read Brave New World , by Aldus Huxley. As an architecture student, I guess I missed reading that in college, where everyone else did. What a picture of a man-made world! Engineered human embryos born from test tubes— decanted —and brain washed from their unnatural birth toward a utility that fed the state and created no families. The notion of mother or father, marriage and childbirth were obscenities to the people of the Brave New World . If anyone questioned the system, they were sent away, or put on Soma, a drug dispensed by the state to keep everyone quiet and happy.

Civilization is God's doing among us, else He wouldn't command our love of the neighbor. Our readiness to get into cars and drive to the mall, buy things we need and bring them home assume on our common purpose and need to build a city. Threaten our city, with deadly mosquitoes, a diseased water supply, Mt. Lassen erupting, or hoards of unregistered aliens: and we call 9-1-1, the Marines, anybody to come help us survive. Having a Blockbuster Video or Trader Joe's is only convenience; losing Safeway and Raley's may mean a real crisis—life and death to us all.

So, why do we need our neighbor? Many reasons, but first we must define who that is, as the clever lawyer asked our Lord. Just who is my neighbor? My father-in-law is presently staying with Giti's brother in Folsom, a better living arrangement for him. His home is unoccupied, therefore, and we look in on it frequently. But last week, as I painted our home and Giti was in Folsom, we both got a series of phone calls. His front yard was awash with water because a busted water line to the sprinkler valves was flooding constantly. It took little time for several of his neighbors to call us, call Hignell Corp, the homeowner's management company, and call California Water Service to come shut off his water. After I came and checked it out, one call to his garden service and the leak got repaired. His neighbors were watching his home and didn't want him hurt. They made every effort to protect him, even in his absence. It's easy to define neighbors thus.

But Jesus said for us to treat those who would be called our enemies as we would neighbors. How is that? You haven't a thing in common with this person. Maybe she's Hmong and doesn't speak a word of English. But you see a need—something you can do to help her. Is she your neighbor? She isn't a Christian, and isn't interested in becoming like us. Her children interpret for you and help you aid the family. Would Christ smile on your charity?

Can we come to Church and sing our praises to God and deny other people a place in our civilization, a place in our neighborhood? King David sang, “ O Lord, who may abide in Thy tent? Who may dwell on Thy holy hill? He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, And speaks truth in his heart. He does not slander with his tongue, Nor does evil to his neighbor…” Psalm 15:1-3

When the clever lawyer in the Gospel thinks he is setting a legal trap for Jesus, our Lord turns the table and sets a requirement for his questioner. “ Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” The lawyer was trapped by the obvious moral. “The one who showed mercy on him.” Now Jesus' springs the trap. “Go and do thou likewise.” It isn't enough to choose who to be kind to. Be kind to all, and you will be their neighbor. In another place, Jesus said, “ Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12 We call that The Golden Rule.

And why? In His teaching on the final judgment, Jesus told of that last day when the King will gather all people before Him, and set the sheep on the right, the goats on the left. He addresses these sheep: “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.” Matthew 25:34-36 When they asked, wondering how this could be, Christ the King answered, “To the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” v 40 Conversely the goats are sent to hell because: “To the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” v 45-46

It's a matter of more than civilization. It is a matter of our salvation. How we treat others is a measure of how God will reward, or punish, us. When we see a brown face, or a yellow or black or red, or a white face: how is our heart moved? When we hear another language spoken, or see strange food, odd clothing, people much older or younger than we: are we moved to join them in generous fellowship or make fun of them, or flee? The people God gave us in our world, in our city, are those He intended for us to have as neighbors. Without them, anarchy is our only option. With them, a taste of heaven is come to earth.

PFH+