“A Rainbow of Neighbors”
Rev. Laura Fitzpatrick-Nager
Text: Luke 10:25-37
I was taking a quick walk in my neighborhood last week when I met up with one of my neighbors. I had a slim margin of time in between my “to do” lists to get my steps in before heading on with my day…. As I speed walked, I saw a neighbor waving to me out of the corner of my eye. He was in his backyard, and I’d hoped to scoot past him…
This particular neighbor is really the watchman of our neighborhood. Retired, and managing some health issues, John (not his real name) sits outside throughout the day in all seasons of weather. Locally known, his friendly wave to everyone who passes by, is alert to every car full and every walker. Prior to this encounter, I’d never actually had a conversation with him and didn’t know my neighbor’s name. Waving from afar was just fine to me… On this intermittently rainy day, I heard a voice calling out to me,
“Hey, C’mere! He yelled, “Come here!!!!”
I looked up to see my neighbor’s persistent and energetic call to me and rushed across his front lawn. As I got closer John kept pointing up to the sky. “Look, look!” when I reached him and followed his exuberant pointing, there it was… “a rainbow! Indeed, this rainbow was a beauty. An impressionist’s arch painted across the sky. The Peace of Wild Things right before my eyes. My neighbor’s childlike delight shone in his whiskered face and smile. “Been awhile since I’ve seen one of those”, he exclaimed! I sat down with him for a minute and then we just took in this marvelous and fleeting sight together. Rainbows always take my breath away, but this one was wrapped in the kind beckoning of a neighbor. I saw him in a whole new light…and finally, learned his name.
John and I became real people to each other at that moment. As I said my goodbyes, I told him I’d walk a bit farther down the road and try to find that golden pot at the end of the rainbow … “Good luck”, he said with a grin.
Without my neighbor’s call, I’d have missed that glimpse of heaven on earth. How often does that happen? I wondered. Writes the poet, Joy Moore, “Will you open yourself to the exquisite tenderness of the stunning human who is your neighbor? Each one, a universe.”[1]
Thanks to the largesse and care of this congregation, my family and I have been the recipients of many rainbows, large and small, this summer. As most of you know, I’m recently back from a 12-week family leave in order to take care of my husband after his open-heart surgery and other family challenges. Thankfully, everyone at our house is doing quite well… (Paul is beating his own record on the treadmill at the cardiac gym!) and it feels like a great relief and a much-needed homecoming to be back in the fold here at FCCOL. I’m incredibly grateful to my ministry friends, Steve and Carleen, of course and to Gary Comstock and Becky Crosby for sharing their pastoral gifts this summer here at FCCOL. And to our caring staff in the office who keep everything humming. Whether we were connected or not this summer, I felt the FCCOL village, all of you, around us. And it brought more comfort than I can ever put into words.
Paul, Anna and I received so many gestures of kindness from cards in our mailbox to emails and texts, to tasty casseroles and healthy salads to watermelon gazpacho, Hallmark chocolate chip ice cream (my fav), and homemade focaccia bread… Friends dropped off books to read to add to my pile. And even spent time planting the pots of flowers in the garden for us.
I admit, it was uncomfortable for me at times to be on the receiving end of so much kindness and giving…and to feel so vulnerable in the face of so much uncertainty at midnight. There’s a point when all you can do is give yourself over, to the medical experts, to the surreal hours of hospital stays, to the kindness of strangers and the generosity of friends. Yes, was my mantra.
Truth be told, I’m more skilled at the one doing the visiting and the giving than the receiving. When a crisis hits, there’s nothing quite like a circle of care around you to remind one that you’re not alone in the whirlwind. Sometimes life can become so intense, and painful all we can do is say yes to help when it’s offered. That’s a spiritual practice, too. The grace of learning to say, “you shouldn’t have…”
Meister Eckart, that mystic from the 13th c, said it best, “if the only words I ever say are thank you, that will be enough.”
Thank you. For your compassionate care of me and my family…for reminding us all over again of what it means to be a part of this extraordinary church community. Your generous outpouring reminded me of what neighbors and friends do for one another. How community care is a life-saving act. Like “hope” it’s both a verb and a noun. (Especially precious as the world seems to spin more chaotically by the day with more division and violence). Please know, every prayer, every card, every loaf of bread, every soup dropped off mattered. Every cell phone message was a gift. Truly, a lifeline at times. A surprise rainbow at the end of a long, hard day.
After one terrible night of being in the ICU with Paul hooked up to more machines than I’d ever seen, I arrived home to find someone had left us a full dinner on our kitchen table. And to top it off, there was a container of freshly made, still warm chocolate pudding for dessert. Chocolate pudding! You can guess what I ate first?! It was communion in every bite.
Given our recent experience of being so compassionately tended and neighbored, I was drawn to this very famous passage of the Good Samaritan from Luke’s gospel. The questions Jesus and the testy lawyer in the crowd raised are worth our attention: What must I do to live? Who is my neighbor? What kind of neighbor am I? What does mercy look like?
I don’t know about you, but I have found myself identifying with many of the characters in the story over time, especially those too busy to stop for the wounded and left for dead by the side of the road.
In Hebrew, the word for neighbor and the word for friend (rea)Re’a (רֵעַ): Pronounced rey-ah, are often used interchangeably. The word comes from the root ra’ah, which means to shepherd or tend a flock. To stand by, to stand with, to be near.
Jesus makes clear in his storytelling, the doing of compassion, the doing of mercy, the showing up for one another. Whether it’s our turn in the ditch or we’re the ones walking on the roadside or the bearers of hospitality and healing.
For Jesus, the neighborhood includes everyone.
The neighborhood of the world lost a friend, poet and theologian this week. At 92, Wendell Berry’s poetry and writing has been a source of wisdom around here for a long time. Our call to worship is one of Berry’s poems and a familiar refrain for our liturgies and lives. How do you cope with the chaos of the world and find the grounding solace to go back out there… Berry invited us into his life and meditations on the gift of days spent in a beloved place; for him it was on his Kentucky farm… planting seeds, making hay, taking care of soil, water, one another. Tending the living things and loving the world, paying attention to the farm, the river, the meal, a rainbow and his neighbors. In one tribute I read, Berry spent his life asking “important questions about how we live on this Earth, how we treat each other, what our economies say about our values, and whether we can see creation as a gift instead of just a resource. Berry’s theology had dirt under its fingernails.”[2] For decades, our church, too, has been willing to get our hands into the dirt of tending and befriending the world…learning from neighbors, near and far. The gospel of Wendell Berry is one essential to our theology of practicing neighbor love and the doing of love and justice in the world. May we all find time this weekend to go down to go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
Yesterday, as I walked along the still waters of Rogers Lake, I stopped to visit John in his yard again. I’d seen him earlier in the week hours of the overcast morning flashing his flashlight to folks driving by. I was curious and asked him about it later. John simply said, “I want people to know I see them. That I’m here.”
Thank you all.
The Rev. Laura Fitzpatrick-Nager
[1] Joy Moore, Dear People of the Prairie, pg. 27.
[2] Cameron Trimble
