Judgment And Community

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"The Neighbors"

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
March 6, 2011

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the
people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your
God am holy. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to
the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You
shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your
vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD
your God.

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one
another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of
your God: I am the LORD. You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall
not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until
morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the
blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. You shall not render an
unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great:
with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a
slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your
neighbor: I am the LORD. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your
kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You
shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but
you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

A few of you have noted the incident having to do with my alma mater
Alabama and our instate rivals, Auburn University, something that happened
a month or so ago. An Alabama fan—not an alumnus of the university,
thank goodness—was so incensed by Auburn having won a national
championship on the heels of our own championship the year before that he
decided to poison the oaks as Toomers Corner, near the Auburn campus.
Whenever Auburn wins an important victory fans and alumni gather at the
trees and throws rolls of toilet paper into the branches, creating quite a
visual effect, in many ways. Well, the idea of Auburn winning a national
championship unhinged this poor soul to such a degree that he bought some
powerful poison, and late in the night, poisoned the beautiful oak trees at
Toomers Corner. And then to compound his act of violence, he decided to
call into the most listened to sports talk radio show in the state and brag
about it, ending his call, with a “roll damn tide!” Clearly, he wasn’t the
brightest bulb in our Alabama fan base, on a lot of different levels.

When I first heard the story, my stomach literally turned, and I just felt
absolutely awful, along with many, many Alabama fans. In fact, almost
immediately there was a Facebook page created called Tide For Toomer’s
Corner, which expressed the outrage many Alabama fans felt that this
heinous act was done in their name, and the group actually raised over
$50,000 for the care and or/replacement of the trees. Still, my mind
immediately went to my UCC clergy colleague in Texas who graduated from
Auburn, and was one of the first people to email me when I was hired to be
the Associate Minister at First Congregational UCC in Houston. We’ve ribbed
each over this rivalry for years, and though it has always been an intense
rivalry, the most intense in college football, I would argue, I think it has
gotten out of control in many ways, and the vitriol spewed by neighbor
against neighbor in Alabama has worsened considerably since both me and
Ginny graduated.   I wrote her a note a few days after hearing about the
incident, offering an apology of sorts, but also doing some soul searching
about the state of our country, where an act so obviously mean spirited over
a football rivalry somehow seemed sane to someone. I wrote:

Listen, I wanted to touch bases with you about the whole Toomer's Corner
tree poisoning incident and just tell you how it really does sicken the hell
out of me. I know the rivalry is vigorous and fun, and we enjoy rooting
against each other (like you last year with Texas, I became a Ducks fan for
the night...), but this really...left me with an awfully bad taste in my
mouth. I can certainly blame it on a sick fan, but I'm haunted with the
idea that its gotten a little out of hand...I don't remember it being such a
big deal 15 years ago. I suspect as things continue to disintegrate
economically and maybe even spiritually, we become more tribal, in the
worse way, and stupid people can't help themselves, when it becomes too
serious.

All that is to say that this proud alumnus of Alabama, and a rabid Crimson
Tide football fan, is horrified by what happened...I suspect there are more
people like me that are sickened by it than those that take some sort of
ridiculous satisfaction from it...at least, I hope so...For all of our sakes.

And belated "congratulations" on the championship...that was hard to
type... ;)

Thankfully, after she came back from her vacation to India, she wrote me
back, writing:

Thank you so much for your support regarding our trees at Auburn. It hurts
so much when I think about what he did. Why would someone do this? It's
just so violent. Yuck. I wrote something this morning and posted it on
facebook. Thanks you for your love. I feel it!

Now, I know this is a trivial example about the sort of social disintegration we’
re starting to experience in this country, this sense that we really aren’t each
other neighbors anymore and the reality that so little can divide us so deeply
and so quickly nowadays, but it is the example that got me thinking about
this whole issue, about this loss of social connection, this sense of being
neighbors with each others, even when we are divided by experience, or race,
or sexual orientation, or economics or politics, or even, stupidly, our alma
maters. Even the recent recall of the Hagar township supervisors, whether
just or not, has surely polarized the township in ways that will probably take
years to mend—you only have to look at the vote to see how divided the
community really is, how divided the township was over this issue of whether
or not these three supervisors handled the “dogs on the beach” issue
correctly. Obviously, the issue is never the issue, and as I’ve said before
when talking about church fights, when churches go to war over trivial
things, like the color of the new carpet, the issue is never the issue, the color
of the carpet is not really what is being fought over. Certainly, even within
churches, overall, though not thankfully at this church, there has been a rise
in very toxic levels of conflict in the last thirty years. Certainly that should
show us that something is going badly wrong in our culture, as if we needed
even more evidence.

Now, I could go on for days about what I think the reasons are for this
disintegration of neighborliness, this sense of being connected to the person
next door, even if she doesn’t share my politics, my income, my stances on
inclusivity, my whatever. In my note to Ginny, my Auburn friend, I hinted at
the economic disintegration going on in the country, the growing gap
between the really rich, and the rest of us, who have had our incomes stalled
or gone backwards—I think that is certainly one of more obvious reasons.
But I don’t have time to go too deeply into that, and certainly my ideas
about the reasons are up for debate—but what we should have time for and
what should not be debated is the solution to this dis-ease in our country,
this lack of civility that has somehow overwhelmed us.

The answer I’m talking about is actually found in passages like the one before
us today, found oddly enough in a Biblical book full of laws about how to be
holy people, set apart by God as a beacon of goodness and righteousness to
the world. It does seem odd to find the answer here, because the church
actually very rarely looks at Leviticus since it often contains obscure, head
scratching laws that were obviously written for an ancient desert tribe, and
have so little relevance to us nowadays. It simply not rich material, for the
most part, and some of it, well, some of it is not worth paying attention to at
all, especially if you are woman, or a gay person, or a slave, or whatever. I
saw a parody of those Progressive Insurance commercials put on by a
fundamentalist church group, making fun of progressive churches for
selecting different parts of Bible to pay attention to while ignoring others
more difficult passages, ones that progressive disagree with. The parody
was actually very well done, but I had to chuckle to myself at the lack of self-
awareness exhibited by the folks who put this video together. They are right
that we religious progressives pick and choose what parts of the Bible are
worth paying attention to, but what they seem to miss is that they do the
very same thing, but are seemingly quite unaware that they do it, or are in
simple denial over it. For example, they don’t treat the passages endorsing
or condoning human slavery in both the New and Old Testaments with the
same reverence as the chapter on love found in 1 Corinthians. One side is
upfront about its use of Scripture, and the other side is simply in denial
about how it uses Scripture. Everyone chooses their own canon within the
canon, as I’ve said many times, and we choose to hear what speaks words of
life to us, and ignore what speaks words of death to us. That is certainly the
experience of African American slaves in the 19th century. The story of Israel’
s exodus from Egypt spoke to them, but Paul’s call to for slaves to be good
slaves, obedient slaves, didn’t quite have the same power for them, didn’t
quite speak to them.

But today, I do think the text before us clearly has something to say to us,
because, of course, Jesus tells us to do so much of what this passage asks
us to do: leave something for the poor, for the needy, the people who don’t
look like you or worship like you; be just in the ways you deal with people—
don’t steal, don’t lie, be fair with the people that work for you, help the
people that need your help, the blind, the poor, the down and out, and don’t
use my name as a way of making a profit, in vain, or use my name to defraud
another human beings—a stern warning indeed to those who use religion as
a way of taking advantage of others. And then the writer, or writers, come
down to the point, the heart of the matter, the underlying principle that will
make the people of Israel truly holy before God: you shall love your neighbor
as yourself: I am the LORD   so says the last line of our prescribed text
today. You are connected to each other, whether literally or figuratively, you
are in this thing together, and so you must love your neighbor by doing
good by your neighbor, because I am your God. To be a holy person, to be
a holy people, love must demonstrated by action, by treating each other well
and fairly, through generosity with the poor, leaving something for others,
making sure you do the right thing by both the somebodies in town and the
nobodies in town.

But, my goodness, we think, if only the writer knew my neighbors, as the
cartoon on the cover of the bulletin points out today. Believe me, I struggle
with that truth daily, though not literally, of course—my actual neighbhors
seem to be fine people, though I don’t know them all that well. There are
people I struggle to love, and, frankly, it’s actually become harder and harder
to love them because of this polarized environment we live in, where if we are
not literally poisoning our neighbors trees, we are doing so metaphorically.
Our neighbors become enemies, and so then the call from Jesus becomes a
call to love our enemies, because that is what they, our former neighbors,
have become to us. The question, really, is whether or not we are going to
treat them right when the times comes when we will need to be, have to be,
actually neighbors to each other, when we will actually have to recognize the
God-given humanity of those we struggle to love. There is a humorous
story that illustrates that challenge that goes like this:

A man is in bed with his wife when there is a rat-a-tat-tat on the door. He
rolls over and looks at his clock, and it's half past three in the morning. "I'm
not getting out of bed at this time," he thinks, and rolls over. Then, a louder
knock follows. "Aren't you going to answer that?" says his wife. So, he
drags himself out of bed and goes downstairs. He opens the door and there
is a man standing at the door. It doesn't take the homeowner long to realize
the man is drunk. "Hi there," slurs the stranger. "Can you give me a push?"
"No, get lost! It's half past three! I was in bed!" screams the man as he
slams the door. He goes back up to bed and tells his wife what happened.
She remarks, "Dave, that wasn't very nice of you. Remember that night we
broke down in the pouring rain on the way to pick the kids up from the baby
sitter and you had to knock on that man's house to get us started again?
What would have happened if he'd told us to get lost?" "But the guy was
drunk," says the husband. "It doesn't matter," explains the wife. "He needs
our help and it would be nice to help him."   So, the husband gets out of bed
again, gets dressed and goes downstairs. He opens the door but he can't
see the stranger anywhere in the dark, so he shouts, "Hey, do you still want
a push?" He hears a voice cry out, "Yes, please." "Where are you?" shouts
the homeowner. The stranger calls back, "I'm over here, on your swing."

Of course, we all want to be selective in our choice of neighbors…we want to
move in to a good neighborhood with good people so we can feel good about
your neighbors, which makes it a whole lot easier to love them. The reality,
of course, to some degree, we don’t really get to choose our neighbors—
they just come with neighborhood …they’re just are our neighbors, and love
them we must, it seems. You know, the text today is crafted in such a way
as to imply certain things. One commentator wrote the following about the
way the text is actually arranged:   For example, the law of gleaning is
immediately followed by the law against stealing, implying that the
gleanings belong not to the landowners but to the poor and the alien.
Unbiased altruism is further underscored by the rabbinic tradition that
prohibits the owner from choosing which poor person he should grant the
privilege of gleaning. (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol 1 p 395)   Again,
the best of biblical tradition calls us to recognize that we ultimately don’t get
to choose our neighbors, or who ultimately gets our left-overs, because we
are all each other neighbors, and if we become enemies, if we move out of
the neighborhood in a huff, because there are too many Auburn fans, too
many Bama fans, too many MSU fans, or too many Michigan fans, or Notre
Dame fans, too many Democrats, too many Republicans, too many
Libertarians, or too many Socialists, well, we still don’t get away from the
obligation of love, of leaving the gleaning of our fields for them, or others.
We just can’t move away into a new neighborhood thinking we can leave the
old neighbors and the obligation, the command to love, behind. We are in
this together, and to be holy, to be set apart by God for the enrichment of
the world, as Israel was and is, then it ought to be clear to us that holiness
is always connected to neighborliness, to how we treat the person right next
door, or how we treat the person down the street, or even how we treat the
person on the other side of the world, wherever. Amen.