"god Is Our Neighbor"

“God Is Our Neighbor”

Romans 13:8-10

When the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa was a young boy, he had a life changing experience because of God’s love flowing to him through another person.

You see, in South Africa, at that time, if a black person and a white person met while walking on a path, the black person was expected to get off the path and allow the white person to pass by.

And as they were passing by, the black person was supposed to nod their head as a gesture of respect.

One day, Tutu and his mother were walking down the street when they noticed a tall white man, dressed in a black suit, walking toward them.

Before he and his mother could step off the sidewalk, this man stepped off and allowed Tutu and his mother to pass by.

As they passed by, the man tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to Tutu’s mother.

Tutu was shocked and asked his mother, “Why did the white man do that?”

His mother explained that the white man was an Anglican Priest.

That he was a man of God, and that’s why he did what he had done.

Tutu would later say: “I decided there and then that I wanted to be an Anglican Priest too.

And what is more, I wanted to be a man of God.”

If a follower of Christ had not shown young Tutu the love of God, would all that Bishop Tutu accomplished through his ministry ever have happened?

Love is powerful, to say the least.

Love changes us.

Love transforms.

Love saves.

And God is LOVE.

We don’t know the result of the love we allow to flow from God through us to others, but there will be a glorious unfolding of it someday.

Paul says: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.”

I just love that.

Paul has been instructing the Christians in Rome to pay taxes and to have no debts not only because of the possibility of punishment if they don’t pay, but as a matter of conscience…

…because it is the right thing to do.

But then, he says something really, really radical.

He says that if there is anything that followers of Jesus Christ owe to another person, it must be nothing other than love.

And this love, as the Christian mystics put it, “has two feet: Love of God and love of neighbor.”

One can’t go without the other because the love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor, and this is because God has become our neighbor.

At the food pantry there is only one rule.

Because Jesus said, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,” everyone who comes through the line at the food pantry is Jesus and we are to treat them as such.

Again, the only thing followers of Jesus Christ are to owe other human beings is love.

In 1st John Chapter 4 we are told, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

This is not rocket science!

But it’s also not easy.

And I think part of the reason is that love has gotten so confused for us that a lot of us are pretty much always thinking of ourselves…

…always in the mode of “what’s in it for me?”

But that’s not Jesus’ kind of love.

That’s not the agape or unconditional and unmerited love of God.

Think about it.

We owe God everything—from the water we drink to the air we breath, but God came to earth in the form of Jesus not as a collection agency.

Instead, God came to earth to give Himself completely for us.

And what God asks us to do in return, is to love other people.

It’s not something we do out of guilt.

It’s not a burden.

It’s done out of gratitude for the great love Christ has shown us.

“While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”

I suppose that is why God’s kind of love involves loving—even our enemies!

But in order to love others, we really have to be able to love ourselves.

Not too long ago, I had one of those little “aha” moments.

I had been thinking about how, as a young person, I did a lot of things that I knew I shouldn’t do—just to try and “fit-in.”

And when I thought about my motivation for doing these things, I realized: “Wow. I didn’t think very highly of myself.”

I mean, let’s face it.

At times, we can be pretty hard on ourselves.