Loving Our Neighbor in 2020

Hello Church!

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of all of us. People of color in the United States feel overlooked and unheard and hundreds of years of injustice are manifesting right in front of us. Some of us are under a mountain of financial hardship following the events of the first half of 2020. Medical professionals among us are bombarded with opinions from cable news MD’s and Facebook pharmacists. Many American conservatives feel like their way of life is being threatened. Amid all the turmoil, I’ve simultaneously experienced hopelessness and hopefulness, grief and excitement, anger and compassion. It’s a complicated season and I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re finding that it’s hard to know just what to do from one day to the next, from one conversation to the next, in each of our unique lives.

I want to address these topics, but I want to first provide something of a backdrop for everything I hope to share in the coming days and weeks. In the midst of all these concerns, a question rises up and demands I answer it; “what does it mean for me to love and do relationships the way Jesus does?” Asking ourselves this question truly is at the core of who we are as Jesus lovers. I’ve been thinking about John 13:34-35;

“A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

What Jesus is saying here, is that for everything he instructed his disciples to do and for every bit of authority and power that was imparted to them, the time Jesus most distinctly states the defining characteristic for those who are to be his followers, he singles out their love. In other words, I am actually not allowed not to love! The moment I make worry, doubt, anger, hate, or conspiracy my focus, I’ve stepped out of my assignment and into something else! It’s against our nature not to love as followers of Jesus. It’s the key identifier for members in his body. 

If love is that serious of a thing, and I believe it is, we need a plan. Saying things like “we are led by the Spirit” or “we love everyone, regardless of race, class, sex, status, etc.” are actually overly simplex things to say when talking about complex practices to implement into our everyday lives. With this essay and the ones following it, I want to spend some time on the practical ways we enter into this work of loving one another. You and I can no longer afford to be, in any sense, people who pay lip service to this radical, self-sacrificial love. We need to figure out how to hold on to love and decisive action at the same time.

Loving our neighbor (Mark 12:30-31) is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Recently we read Jay Pathak’s “The Art of Neighboring” as a staff and it’s had a huge impact on how I’m thinking about my everyday life in terms of loving my neighbors. Watch for some of that content to start showing up on Sunday morning! These hard topics that face us every day are just the things I want to address in upcoming posts in light of what it looks like to figure out how we’re going to do the hard work of showing up and loving our neighbor in practical ways. I’m not talking about things we need to believe, I’m talking about things we need to do. 

Another verse I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is 1 Kings 20:11;

“...the one putting on his armor should not boast like the one who is taking it off.” 

We’re putting on armour and going into battle against spiritual principalities of racism, injustice, politicism, division, accusation, and anger. 

Keep your eyes peeled for the next post… While you’re doing so, I want to challenge all of us to listen more than we speak. A while back I wrote about revival. I think we’re seeing a time of upheaval that’s going to take us toward true revival if we cooperate with what God is doing and we listen for the story the Spirit is trying to tell us, instead of the story the world is trying to tell us (see Isaiah 8:11-14). This season may have felt long, but I actually hope it doesn’t go away soon. I think there is ugliness in the church being brought to the surface that Jesus wants to deal with, personally and on behalf of others, in order to accomplish what he has for us next. 

I’m filled with hope when I think about having the opportunity to run that race with my Oxford Vineyard family.