April 17, 2016
Hoosier Neighbor? | Fear
- 1 Peter 3:14-16
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
Last week when we discussed the sending out of the 70 we mentioned how important it is that we recognize that they went out in pairs because this highlights the fact that we do these things in community. Community serves as a way of strengthening us, of giving us courage of comforting us and of holding us accountable. I felt that accountability this past Thursday. We were doing our homework of going out and walking and praying for our neighborhood and we were turning into the walkway to our front door when I saw a neighbor on the other side of the street and three houses down doing some yard work. He looked up at me and I waved to him and my feet were continuing toward my front door when I heard this annoying voice in my head. It was, of course, my own voice that said last Sunday, “If you’re praying for your neighborhood and someone walks out to the road with their trash can, that’s God answering your prayer. And so, knowing that I told the community that this was what we were supposed to be doing and knowing that I would have to talk to my home group about whether I had done this I turned my feet and walked down to talk to him. I hadn’t met him before and so I introduced myself to him, to which he said, “You’re the preacher, right?” which is always kind of strange because you don’t know whether for that person that’s a good or bad thing. The point is we had a great chat and I began to get to know him in a way I wouldn’t have, quite honestly, if I had decided to just be friendly and wave and walk in my house. Which, of course, I wouldn’t have done had I not felt a sense of community and accountability.
But the other thing that I began to see this week as a result of this experience and some discussion we had in my home group is the fact that most of us, if not all of us, are actually pretty good at being neighborly, at loving our neighbors. Most of us are not opening up our doors slightly and screaming out, “Get off my lawn!” Most of us, if someone comes to our door and asks for something are going to give it to them. Most of us are going to wave to a neighbor. Loving our neighbor comes fairly easily, but I might suggest, in a passive way. In other words, if loving our neighbor means treating them kindly when they come to us then we are all on board. That’s pretty comfortable for us, it isn’t all that scary.
However, what we’re talking about is something different which is how to more actively love our neighbor. One of the striking things about the text in 1st Peter that I read is the 13th verse which says, “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” It’s easy in thinking about that verse to overlook look the word eager a word which can also be translated as “zealous.” That is a very active word, not something you sit back in the comfort of your own home or church building and wait for, but something you actively go out and do. That is the call to which we are speaking about in this series. Because as Christ-followers we are called not to simply wait around for someone to love, but to actively go out and seek those to whom we can do good, to whom we can love. But, if we’re honest, that’s a bit more scary. It makes us more vulnerable.
So, what is it that makes that a bit scarier? In the book we’re using during this series, The Art of Neighboring, the authors suggest several things that oftentimes give us fear when it comes to being actively loving in our neighborhoods. One is simply not knowing if we might encounter something that could physically hurt us. In many ways our culture cultivates this kind of fear. If you turn on the television or radio or open the newspaper there are reports of violence that seem to flood our ears or advertisements about security which reinforce the thought that we should be scared of something. And while certainly there are things happening around us that should give us pause, the reality is that focusing on those things will typically distorts our perception of the odds of that happening to us.
There’s also the simple fear of rejection and though as adults we like to think that we left that fear back in the hallways and cafeterias of our middle and high schools, the reality is that most of us are still afraid to be rejected if we put ourselves out on the limb and try to actively love our neighbor. If we just stay in our homes or merely wave, our odds for rejection diminish dramatically. Perhaps an even greater fear is the simple fact that we really don’t want to be seen as the “weird” neighbor, the one who doesn’t act like most other neighbors and wait for people to reach out to him or her. People are suspicious of those who reach out in this way. “What are they trying to sell me” or “What do they want from me” or “Why doesn’t that goofy pastor just mind his own business?”
And so, if you have some of those fears I want to say to you first of all, they are probably well-founded. Now look, the odds of something violent happening to you is fairly slim, however, yes, as I just said the odds of you being rejected or being looked at as odd, certainly increase dramatically if you try and go out and love your neighbor rather than waiting to love them when they come to you. There’s no reason to try and sugarcoat that. Now, my guess is that the rejection and you being looked at as strange is probably not as great as you think it will be, but I’m here to tell you that it probably will happen. However, rather than allowing that fear to keep us from going out or waiting for the fear to subside (which may never happen), in the 15th verse Peter invites us to see that the way past this fear is actually to fear Christ instead. What that means is that rather than focusing on the natural fears that everyone else focuses on, we should fear missing out on the opportunity to experience God and his kingdom, the opportunity, as we often say, to see God at work, to be a part of what God is doing. Don’t be fearful of violence or rejection or being labeled as odd, be afraid of missing out on experiencing God.
As you know, and as Jon Graybeal reminded us a couple of weeks ago, baseball season has begun. Now Jon is a big fan of the Chicago Cubs and so that got me thinking of the hallowed grounds of Wrigley Field. As a quick aside, isn’t it funny that a ballpark that has been around as long as it has (since 1914) still has not seen a World Series winner whereas one that is as new as the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis has already seen two. That’s neither here nor there, but I thought it interesting.
Anyway, the first time I went to Wrigley was when a friend of mine was visiting and we decided to go. With the horrible record of the Cubs I figured it would be easy to get tickets at the ballpark, and so was amazed that the game was sold out. How could a team that many games under .500 be sold out?! The good news though was that there were a lot of friendly gentlemen milling about who had apparently bought a few too many tickets, actually about 20 or 30 too many tickets and who were willing to give us those tickets for a good price.
I was a grad student at the time and so of course I went for the cheapest ticket possible. I knew we would be way up in the upper deck, but I just wanted to go and say I’d been there. It was shortly after we had walked through the gates that I looked at the ticket and said to my buddy, “What do you think ‘obstr view’ means?” Never having been to a stadium as old as Wrigley I truly had no idea what to expect.
But after climbing and climbing and climbing up the stairs we began to walk over to our seats and I began to see that “obstr view” meant obstructed view. And what was obstructing my view was one of those massive poles that was basically holding the place up [show slide]. And to say it was going to obstruct our view was to put it nicely. Here is what I had to do the whole game. I would lean over to the left to watch the guy pitch, then all the way over to the right to see if the hitter was going to make contact, and if so, quickly back to the left again to see where they ball went. It was like watching a tennis match, only you had to move your whole body left and right and left and right. I kept thinking to myself, why in the world would they ever sell a ticket like this? Apparently, because they knew someone would be foolish enough to buy it!
Fast forward many years later, and several baseball games later, I went to Wrigley with a different friend, but this time the seats did not have obstructed views nor were they in the upper deck, or even deep into the lower deck, but instead were around six rows behind the first base dugout. As we settled into our seats I couldn’t believe just how different it was. I wasn’t leaning to the left and right at every pitch, I wasn’t squinting to see the baseball. It was like I was actually in the game, not just watching it and, of course, with just the right foul ball I actually could be. Everything about that experience was different. Oh it was fine to be at the game when I was in the upper deck even when there was a pole in front of me, but from this vantage point a whole new world was opened up to me.
Now look, the truth is that it was genuinely more dangerous to be where we were. If, as happens every season, a ball or bat even were to come in our direction we would have hardly a moment to react. When we were in the upper deck we had about 5 minutes before a ball would get to us and even then the pole would have kept us very, very safe. But, was I thinking about that at all when I sat there in those ridiculously good seats? Yeah, for about a second or two when a ball would go near us, but that’s it because by and large I was willing to live with some of that fear because of the remarkable joy of seeing the game from that vantage point. There’s no way in God’s green earth I would have given up that ticket to the guy who was now sitting in the upper deck behind that pole. I would be way too scared that I’d miss out on this incredible opportunity. Yeah, there were brief glimpses of fear and yes, it cost A LOT more to see the game from that vantage point, but it was completely worth it because of what I got to experience on that day.
My point is that all too often I think we get caught up in our fears and so we end up settling for seats in the upper deck and with obstructed views of God’s kingdom when, if we were more afraid of what we were missing out on in God’s kingdom, we would be much more eager to look past those fears and actively go out and do things like actively love our neighbors. Now that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a time when you might get grazed by a ball and, it doesn’t mean it won’t cost you (no, there will be fear and cost), but it does mean that the cost will pale in comparison to the opportunities to be a part of God’s kingdom.
Last fall we had a group of ZPC’ers who decided to try this intentional neighboring before the rest of us did and during this series we want you to hear from a couple of them. One couple who did this was Mark and Mary K Purvis and I’d like to close by hearing a bit about their experience.
Let me just point out a couple of things. First, is how they had moved from the passive to the active. They actively invited people to watch a movie. Mark didn’t just wave when his lawn mower was on, but decided to turn it off and have a conversation. The second thing is that one of their fears was actually realized, in the fact that not many folks came to the movie they held. As I said, that’s going to happen and guess what? They survived! That didn’t mean the fears left though because as Mary K so succinctly put it before the couple came over, “I was scared.” And yet, they continued forward. They adapted and decided, despite the excuses that will always be there and despite the fear that will often be there that they wouldn’t let that keep them from actively loving their neighbor.
And because of that they were able to do what Jesus asks them, and us, to do. To get to know them. To discover that there were connecting points, like adoption, that they would never had known. Again, to simply begin being in relationship. Will there be other opportunities for the Purvis’ to show this couple love? I don’t know, but I suspect there will be. But what is most important is the fact they were faithful in actively loving their neighbors. We won’t all do it the same way, we don’t all have the same personalities (just like Mark and Mary K’s personality are not the same), but we all have been commissioned to figure out ways to actively love our neighbors, not because we are fearless, but because we are fearful of missing out on seeing God’s kingdom in ways we never would have had we simply waited for someone to enter our lives so we could love them.
Peter tells the church to be ready to respond to the question of why you have hope within you. To put it another way, be ready to respond to the question of why it is that you live the way you do. There’s an assumption in there, of course, which is that we actually will live in an odd way, a way that is different than those around us, which will precipitate that question. What if one of those ways, brothers and sisters, is the way we are actively loving our neighbors. One of the things you didn’t see in that video is that the Purvis’ have been going here for less than a couple of years. And do you know what got them going to church in the first place? When a couple of neighbors, a couple of ZPCer’s, who had been loving them for a while, who had developed relationships with them, invited them to church. And because of that invitation they started coming to church and because of that invitation, the Purvis’ began talking to other neighbors. That’s the way the kingdom works. You never know how, when you begin to love in the name of Christ, things might start changing, the kingdom of God might start breaking out. Don’t be afraid, brothers and sisters. Or better yet, be afraid. Be very afraid. Not of rejection or what others will think, but of missing out on opportunities to see Jesus work in your hearts, in your homes in your neighborhoods. May it be so. Amen.