Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Thursday, March 12, 2009
Psalms 128, 146; Jeremiah 4:9-10, 19-28; Romans 2:12-24; John 5:19-29
Meditation: I finished my Doctor of Ministry dissertation and project about ten years ago. My diploma, I see, was given in 1999. It was quite a thrill to go through the graduation ceremony and have the attention. A friend described the thrill as “a pig’s tail.” A Doctor of Ministry is a cake walk compared to a Ph.D. So my friend’s description of the degree being “a pig’s tail” was quite hilarious: “just enough to tickle the ham.”
Actually, my dissertation was quite antithetical to ceremoniousness. Its title is “Neighbor Language.” It was about how we have gotten away from speaking about one another as neighbors in our much more individualistic society. So, I did some Bible study, looking at how the Israelites and the early church spoke a language to one another as “neighbors,” not as “individuals” in order to investigate whether the church today could help folks return to a more communal way of living, where we now tend more towards “doing my own thing,” or to imagining ourselves “self-reliant.”
Neighborliness has a strong element of egalitarianism in it. This is what attracted me to the subject. No one is better than another. Even if we might be gifted or talented in some special way (which we all should be), nevertheless, in God’s eyes, every one has equal value and worth. And life should be lived out that way.
I see such “neighbor language” in our texts for today. Psalm 146 has the Jubilee proclamation in it – prisoners set free, the blind seeing, strangers, orphans and widows watched over – these are all presented as essential members of the community. In Jeremiah, the Israelites are told that their failure to love their neighbors has weakened the social and spiritual fabric of their national life. The consequences of their broken social networks make them fragile and unable to ready them to defend against an enemy. In Romans, Paul asks us to relieve ourselves of spiritual pride, saying that our standing as God’s children comes by God’s gift of dignity, not by our accomplishments. In John, Jesus stands ready to claim the dead as well as the living as those ready to hear his Gospel. (I like how one person put it: valuing tradition, he said true democracy gave place for the voices of the living and the dead!)
The faith which we seek to encourage in Lent doesn’t leave us a stranger to those who cross our paths. Finding the goodness of God in Jesus Christ also finds us with an open heart and hand for the neighbor. Try living some of this out today. I’d be glad for a report if you find God in that. It might still tickle this ham!
Prayer: Spirit of the living God, as you fall afresh on us this new day, go also before so that we might have open our eyes for our neighbor’s value and well being (whoever the neighbor may be and become!). Let your breath be upon us as we pass another in the grocery store aisle. Give us a kinship with the other poor soul stuck in the traffic jam. Stretch our imagination to see neighbors in strangers. Teach us that our language of neighborliness isn’t quite too well practiced. May you lead us to a more spiritual egalitarianism so that we might better be numbered among your beloved. Amen.
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