In this pre-Lenten period we are thinking about the gaps in life - gaps between generations, between sexes, between races - in short, all of the separations that exist in our world, pulling us apart and rupturing relationships that were meant to be vital. Our thesis has been that there is in fact a God who is cncerned about gaps - who meets us in the midst of our separation, and who may enable us to bridge the gaps that exist.

Today we come to one of the most difficult of all - the neighborhood gap. When, a couple of months ago, I asked for some suggestions about subjects for sermons, one letter (which I feel summarizes the thoughts of a great many people) said this:

"when you live in a neighborhood such as ours, we would like to know,

- how to tell your kids they won’t go to hell if they don’t share their toys, as they have been told by others

- how to get along with your neighbors when one inch of ground can cause difficulty

- how many times to turn the other cheek and then ... get mad and stand up for your beliefs

- how to get along with the guy who cuts you out in traffic, or the serviceman who does shoddy work."

There is more but you get the flavor of it, and it raises a profound question - namely, does God speak and operate in the neighborhoods in which we live? Faced with a major crisis (a death in the family, a loss of a job), necessity, futility, or hopelessness sometimes thrusts us into a relationship with God, but in the day-to-day living in a neighborhood ... we wonder.

Well, I won’t be able to answer any of the specifics of that letter and, as a matter of fact, I’m the last person who should be preaching on the good neighbor policy. My introduction to my own neighborhood four and a half years ago came with an anonymous phone call the day we moved in to complain about our barking dog. While I figured out without too much difficulty who the caller was, relationships in that area were never too swift! Last Wednesday I met, for the first time, a woman who has lived in the neighborhood for a whole year, so it’s rather obvious that I don’t qualify as one who goes up and down the street spreading good cheer. But I think I do know something about the problems of neighborhoods, and maybe we can think about it together.

I

Perhaps that’s where we must begin: WE’VE GOT TO BE AWARE OF THE PROBLEM, which is to say, BE AWARE OF THE REALITIES OF THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE. Someone once said that "Man’s troubles began when he learned to make houses of two stories, for then cities were possible." Well, man’s troubles began a long time before two-story houses but I’m sure that the creation of cities was instrumental in increasing them. In the creation story in Genesis, we read:

"Cain went out from the presence of God and built a city."

I think that "out from the presence of God" is not merely a literary device and the reader is aware of the obvious intent of the contrast: It was God who created the first garden, and a murderer who created the first city!

Life does become complicated in direct ratio to the number of persons involved, and we live in a society where there are a number of people (AND DOGS ... which complicate the matter even further as the residents of Mt. Lebanon can attest these days!). So we have to be realistic and be aware that there are complications in relationships wherever there are people - and people, of course, are what make relationships in the first place!

The fact is, any neighborhood is a collection of individual people, each one with his own wants, needs, and desires - not the least of which is the desire for a sense of identity and worth. Because we are all a bit unsure about our own worth (we know our insecurities and our guilt more than anyone else), we tend to up our self-esteem by favorable comparison with our neighbor. Consequently, his success, becomes a threat. (Remember Aesop’s Fable about the man who asked Zeus to grant him one wish? He was offered anything he wanted, as long as his neighbor could have twice as much. After agonizing over this, the man finally made the wish that he would lose one eye!) We’re not quite that bad, but we’re not too far from it on occasion!

Maybe it’s not comparisons that are our real concern. "Keeping up with the Jones’s" may be not quite the hang-up for a lot of us that "Getting along with the Jones’s" is. It may be that we couldn’t care less what kind of a car Mr. Jones drives if he’d only keep his kids from running through our hedges, and his radio turned down in the summer! Okay. That’s the problem. We get annoyed with our neighbor because of the way he is, and let’s at least be realistic enough to realize that that’s how life is! We yearn for the small town neighborhood of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers, where everyone knew and loved everyone else, when such a world no longer exists ... if, in fact, it ever did. (One reason for the demise of that particular magazine may have been its appeal to a small town America that existed only in our imagination.)

So let’s face it. Where people live and interact together, there will be conflicts. Some people like dogs; some don’t. Some like children; some don’t. Some like flowers; some don’t. The author of the Old Testament lesson today says,

"Better a neighbor who is near, than a friend who is far away,"

but many of us would opt for the far-off friend! With the mobility of the times, few lasting friendships are formed in the immediate neighborhood, where the only thing held in common is the street address. But for all of that, God does have a word for the neighborhood. If He’s really the "ground of all being" He speaks at this point as well as the crisis spots; He’s involved in the relationships of neighborhood as much as the relationships of family or deep friendship. J. D. Salinger says,

"All life is moving from one bit of holy ground to another,"

and if that is so, (and I think that it is), God does have a word for us. So be aware of the realities of life, which make conflicts inevitable wherever people live in proximity without common loyalties or goals, and then hear the word of God.

II

He has, I think, two words. The first one is LISTEN. If you read the latest issue of Presbyterian Life, perhaps you noticed the article on "The Killing of Time." If so, you will recall that it begins by suggesting that we all suffer from degrees of deafness, in that we find it very hard to hear what people are really saying to us. For example, when someone comes up and makes a remark about the weather, all that we hear - or allow ourselves to hear - is a remark about the weather. "Looks as though we might get some rain," is all that gets through, while perhaps the real message is, "I’m lonely. Be my friend, for Christ’s sake. Speak to me!" Our response is all too often, "Well, we could certainly use it," which is translated, rightly or wrongly as, "That takes care of that conversation. I’ve got my own work to get on with."

The article suggests that if you really listen, no matter what the apparent subject matter, most people are talking about themselves. They may be saying, "Love me," or "Pity me," or even "Hate me," but in one way or another they are asking to be noticed. They are asking to relate! I’m not naive enough to think that if you just listen better the neighborhood will blossom like a rose, but I’m suggesting that it is a place to begin.

Let’s take an example. I think that at one time or another someone has described to me just about every neighborhood in the entire township as a "Catholic neighborhood." I’ve lost trace of people who have confided that they and one or two other couples are just about the only Protestants on the street, and then they go on to relate how difficuIt the atmosphere is when "they" - meaning the Catholic families start "pushing" their faith.

With few exceptions the Protestant minority status is usually greatly exaggerated; Catholics simply being more visible with, perhaps, a religious symbol or statue in the car, and children either wearing parochial school uniform or appearing at the door on frequent occasions to solicit chances or funds for this or that church activity. Discounting this, what is your Catholic neighbor saying when he or she seems to be so vehement in defense of the faith?

One hardly has to be an expert on ecumenism to note that the Catholic Church is in a turmoil. (Protestants are too, of course, but we’re a bit more used to it; we never took our ministers and General Assembly quite as seriously as our Catholic neighbors once took their priests and pope!) Ever since Vatican II, though, the Catholic Church has seemed to its people to be shaking at its very foundations. In the undergoing of renewal - which I applaud as a fellow Christian - the Catholic Church is undergoing massive changes. The liturgy is in English, the priests are revolting, the pill has forced a crack in the facade of papal supremacy. Now, in the face of all that, if your Catholic neighbor sounds a bit defensive, maybe you ought to listen to what he’s saying. Perhaps he’s saying, "I’m not sure just what I’m supposed to believe any more, but if I don’t stand for something I won’t have anything left," so he makes what we translate as an anti-Protestant statement, but what is really a wistful yearning for something on which to hold.

If your children come running home with the tale that their Catholic playmates told them they’re going to hell because they’re Protestants, I can assure you they didn’t learn it at Saint Teresa’s! Long before the thaw in Catholic-Protestant relationships a priest in Boston was excummunicated for proclaiming just such a belief! Children’s theological statements are about as realistic as some of the misinformation about sex which they also banter about! What they’re saying, I think, is "Notice me! I’m making a statement about something I think I know something about because I want to be noticed!"

We want acclaim and though we choose the wrong way to get it it doesn’t change our need. The neighbor who objects to children running through his yard is a paradox. He wants a nice yard because it is his possession, of course, and who can blame him? It’s his; he pays taxes on it; he takes care of it. He wants this because he wants people to take the next step and look at him and say, "How nice!"

Someone once said that we love things instead of people, and that leads to intense frustration because things can’t love us in return, and that is really our greatest need. That is probably an oversimplification, but we do get too hung up on things. It is things that cause the neighborhood problems - gardens, fences, property lines, and the like. But aren’t things really only means of calling attention to ourselves? So listen ... and realize what your neighbor is saying when he drives up in his new car and makes a point of leaving it out in his driveway for you to see. At least a part of it is, "I want you to be impressed; I want you to think I’m important; I want you to care about me." That his methodology is wrong is beside the point - just as the woman who thinks that clean windows will cause others to think she’s great is equally mistaken. People really want to be loved. Listen to them when they say it in a variety of ways. Listening won’t solve the problem but it might be a start.

III

There is one other thing, and this is the difficult one. We have to ACT. It was Samuel Butler, I think, who said,

"The average Christian would be equally amazed at hearing his religion doubted, or seeing it practiced!"

Practicing, of course, is the rub, and it entails a great deal more than listening. You may be saying, "It’s easy for you to preach about it; you don’t live in my neighborhood; you couldn’t possibly like the so and so’s that live on our street."

I don’t doubt it for a minute! I have more than my own share of resentments, annoyances, and downright mistrusts of people. Fred Speakman, in a powerful sermon titled, "Love is Something You Do," helped me a great deal by pointing out that Christian love was never meant to begin in the way we feel about people. Of course we won’t all be fond of the same people ... and the accident of real estate rarely makes us enamored of our neighbor.

We’re not expected to be enamored of him, or even to like him. There’s no virtue in naturally feeling fond of someone any more than there is any sin in not being fond of someone else. It’s what we do that counts. Anyone can say, "I’ll do good to my neighbor because, as a matter of emotion, I like him." It takes a Christian who is aware of the grace of God to say, "As a matter of emotion I dislike that man, but I will do good to him because as a matter of Christian principle, I love him."

It’s great to feel a warmth toward people, and if we took Christ seriously, we would probably feel warmth a great deal more than we do. The Christian faith isn’t primarily the way we feel - it is tied up in the way we act, the way we relate. Liking may follow loving; fondness may follow action; but it may not, and that’s not the point, anyhow. We are called to act in love. How? By meeting need wherever you see it, and your neighbor’s need is just like yours - it is to be cared for. You don’t have to play bridge with your neighbor but your call in Christ is to meet needs by being concerned for him, as a person. This doesn’t mean letting oneself be stepped on, any more than it means stepping all over the other person. It means seeing each person as a child of God - to whom you can relate by caring!

Those of us in the "Suffering" class - at least those of us who read the book - discovered an interesting fact about the Good Samaritan parable. The lawyer asks Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" and the answer is obviously the "Good Samaritan." Somehow, we’ve always translated that to mean that our neighbor is anyone in need, and we are to respond to that need wherever we find it. And so we are. But the parable makes the point a different way. The Good Samaritan is obviously meant to be God - the God who reveals himself in Christ. It is HE who is our neighbor! And because He is, He’s in the world with us. And because He loves us, and picks us up beyond any deserving on our part, we are enabled to love one another. We can’t do it on our own but we can if Christ is in the neighborhood with us.

A number of years ago a plane crashed on the runway in Philadelphia and caught fire. At the door the attractive 24 year old stewardess, Mary Frances Housley, took her place to help the passengers to the ground. Just as she was ready to jump, a passenger on the ground screamed, "My baby, my baby!" The stewardess turned back into the plane to find the baby, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive. When the debris cooled, they found Mary Frances’ body over the four-month old baby she tried to rescue. TIME MAGAZINE captioned her picture with the words, "She could have jumped."

All of us have that option. We can jump. We can jump away from our responsibility to our neighbors ... and frankly, it’s the course I usually take. And yet, if I take Christ seriously, I discover that I do have not just a responsibility on the street where I live - but some real power to be concerned, to care, to love.

Remember that old slogan:

"Love your enemy; it will drive him crazy!"

We might coin a new one:

"Love your neighbor as yourself; you might even like him!"