Loving Your Neighbor
A Sermon in The Other Six Days Social Justice Series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 14, 2008
Isaiah 58:9b-12; Mark 12:28-34

Is. 58:9b If you remove the yoke from among you,
                  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10                   if you offer your food to the hungry
                                    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
                  then your light shall rise in the darkness
                                    and your gloom be like the noonday.
11                   The LORD will guide you continually,
                                    and satisfy your needs in parched places,
                                    and make your bones strong;
                  and you shall be like a watered garden,
                                    like a spring of water,
                                    whose waters never fail.
12                   Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
                  you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
                  you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
                                    the restorer of streets to live in.

Mark 12:28   One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"   29 Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;   30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'   31 The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."   32 Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other';   33 and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,'--this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."   34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

I. BEGINNING

I don't like driving to northern Virginia.   Traffic there is terrible and the roads are a confused and twisted mess of interlocking highways and parkways.   In fact, when I first moved to this area, it seemed that every time I drove into Northern Virginia and got lost, I wound up near the Pentagon.   Plus, the traffic in Arlington is ridiculous if you try to drive down there any time between 4 and 8pm.

And so, I was absolutely thrilled when I learned that there was going to be a Target built in Columbia Heights.   A mere couple miles from my house.   No more would I have to slog through the Route 1 traffic in Alexandria.   Nor would I have to consider the equally unpleasant alternative of driving into suburban Maryland.   There would be a Target in one of our neighborhoods.   Close by.   It was a great thing.

But this news was not received with universal acclaim. Many did not see it simply as the arrival of a convenience to the heart of our neighborhoods here in Washington.   Many saw it--and still do--as another wave in the steadily rising tide of gentrification here in the District.   A front in the economic war being waged against the poor, the working class, and the homeless of our city.

II. The PROBLEM

Our city has been undergoing a number of changes over the past decade and a half--and not all of them are being viewed favorably.   In the 17 years that I have lived in this city I have witnessed a number of remarkable changes.  

I have seen Chinatown turn from a fairly sketchy collection of streets with a few good restaurants, to a bustling center of nightlife centered around the Verizon Center, the movie theater, the Urban Outfitters, and a whole host of other retailers, restaurants, and shops.

I have seen Columbia Heights turn from a lower class neighborhood of row houses and vacant lots into a neighborhood of high-rise condominiums and mammoth stores including Target, Best Buy, Marshall's and a whole host of others.   The skyline there is barely recognizable.

I have seen lower Massachusetts Avenue turn from a barren stretch of land, littered with vacant lots and burned out brownstones remade into a strip of gleaming high-priced condominiums, casting shadows onto the avenue where only raw sunlight had fallen before.

And as these things have happened, the fortunes of the city itself have changed.   The District was in such financial trouble in the mid-90's that city bonds were awarded a "junk bond" rating.   We were in tremendous debt and the city was hemorrhaging population.

By the late 90's that situation was turning around.   People were beginning to move into Washington.   Property values started to go up.   Rents started to increase.   A friend of mine bought a one-bedroom condominium in Cleveland Park for $75,000 and turned around two years later and sold it for $175,000.   Gazing across the city, you'd see an increasing number of cranes as new office buildings, new condominium buildings, and commercial centers were erected.  

And by the middle of this decade, not only were we seeing higher population and more commerce--including a professional baseball team for the first time in 33 years--but tax revenues, always a weak spot for DC, were way up.   We were actually posting budget surpluses.   The City of Washington was doing well.

Unless you were poor.

If you were poor or working class, you suddenly discovered that you couldn't afford to live where you had been living.   Rents were going up.   Your property was worth more and being assessed at a higher tax rate.   People were being forced out of the neighborhoods as more affluent members were coming in.   The city was being "gentrified."

Gentrification is a term coined in 1964 and is "the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents." [1]  And it has often been true that the economic development of the neighborhoods has had an effect on the poor.

The closing of the Franklin Street Shelter in favor of what many fear will be a high priced hotel is a balatant example. But not all are quite as clearly visible.

Calvary Women's Services--a homeless women's shelter downtown where a number of our students have volunteered from time to time--is in the middle of that condominium boom on Massachusetts Avenue.   How long will shelters like that be able to serve the city's poor when they cannot afford the property taxes or the rents on the buildings they occupy?   As the neighborhoods grow more and more "respectable" those who live on the margins of society find themselves confronted by a wave of rising costs and of social pressures to eliminate elements of the community that no longer fit in with the aesthetic of the neighborhood.

Now, we might say to ourselves: but so what?   The city is doing better.   More business and more income earned here means more capital and more resources for our community as a whole.   And there is some truth to that.   But it is not the whole truth.   And we as Christians are called to a higher truth.

III. Neighbor

And that truth is that we are supposed to love our neighbor.

Now, the term "neighbor" is used a lot in very figurative terms.   This goes all the way back to Jesus, actually.   Jesus pushed the boundaries of the meaning of the word "neighbor" to include those one wasn't likely to view as members of one's community: Samaritans, for example.   Or tax collectors, prostitutes, and so on.   But so familiar have we become with this sense that Jesus was challenging us to embrace that we have lost sense of the plain meaning of the word: the one who lives "nigh" you--near you.   Right next door.  

You know, the people we step around sleeping on the heating grates of the subway.   The ones we try not to make eye contact with as we come out of the CVS.   The ones we brush past as they try to sell copies of Street Sense to us near the bus stations.   The ones we tell ourselves really just need to work harder and pick themselves up by their own bootstraps.

The poor.   Our neighbors.

Love of neighbor is equated by Jesus with love of God.   In fact the two are inextricably linked in his teaching.   As we heard read for us earlier from Mark's telling:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"   29 Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;   30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'   31 The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

What is so fascinating about this passage is that Jesus is asked by the scribe "Which commandment is first of all?"   Singular.   Which one.   And Jesus responds with two.   There is no hierarchy between them--they are both the great commandment.   Love of God and love of neighbor.   If one would truly love God, one has to truly love neighbor. As the old Shaker hymn says, "If ye love not each other in daily communion, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?"

As Christians, there can be no religion that does not take our neighbors into account--metaphoric or real.

IV. Community

And we as Christians are also committed to another fundamental truth beyond the rules of supply and demand.   We are committed to creating real communities, communities that reflect God's love and justice.

The vision for such a community is laid out so beautifully in the words of the book of Isaiah that we read earlier. Many scholars believe that the Book of Isaiah is a composite work with only the first 39 chapters being written by the prophet named Isaiah of Jerusalem.   Chapters 40-55 are written by a later scribe that scholars call "Second Isaiah" who wrote during the Babylonian Exile, offering words of hope and comfort to the people.   And chapters 56-66 were written by a third scribe--called "Third Isaiah" who wrote after the people came back to the land.  

When the people of Judah returned to the land from which they had been exiled two generations earlier, they did not find an empty land.   Only the best and brightest of Judah were carted off.   The poor were left there in a ruined and devastated country.   When the Exiles returned, they didn't return as impoverished masses.   Many had been relatively successful in Exile.   And this situation meant that a whole population of Jews was returning to Jerusalem and Judah and found themselves in tension with the poorer Jews who had been left behind. Judah was being Gentrified. It is for this situation that Third Isaiah is writing.   He writes about the creation of a Restored Community, a community with true peace and wholeness, where all the members of the community are included.   It has become the hallmark for what our role is meant to be as community builders.

It is a context that makes the words of that passage of scripture come alive for us as we consider our own wrestling with difficult issues.

Is. 58:9b If you remove the yoke from among you,
                  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10                   if you offer your food to the hungry
                                    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
                  then your light shall rise in the darkness
                                    and your gloom be like the noonday.
11                   The LORD will guide you continually,
                                    and satisfy your needs in parched places,
                                    and make your bones strong;
                  and you shall be like a watered garden,
                                    like a spring of water,
                                    whose waters never fail.
12                   Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
                  you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
                  you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
                                    the restorer of streets to live in.

If we offer food to the hungry of our city, if we satisfy the needs of the afflicted in our neighborhoods, then our light shall be a light rising in the darkness.   We shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.   We shall be called the repairers of the breach, the restorers of streets to live in.

V. END

The issues of gentrification are complex.   Economic development is a good thing.   And those who support it are right to say that without the wealth generated by commerce, it is difficult to do anything to solve many of our problems.

And we can still find the presence of a Target in our neighborhoods--offering jobs and increasing the tax base--a good thing.

But as Christians our calculus cannot end with the cost benefit analysis.   We cannot make decisions based solely on the interests of those who are doing well.   We are required to consider the interests of all God's children--especially the most vulnerable in society.   The poor.   The homeless.   The afflicted.   The voiceless and marginalized.

For we are driven not by the world's definition of community, but by Christ's.   A definition of community that included the lowly and the humble.   That included those on the fringes of respectable middle-class society: the shepherds, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the ordinary peasants.  

Christ's community is a community that embraces the needs of all members of the community, not just the powerful or the comfortable.   And when we embrace an expansive definition of community, when we truly seek to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and as we love God, then we find that we are not far from the Kingdom of God.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gentrification