Things to Think About in the Art of Neighboring

Pope Francis On Loving God and Your Neighbor:

“In the middle of the thicket of rules and regulations – of the legalisms of yesterday and today – Jesus opens a gap that allows you to see two faces: the face of the Father and that of the brother,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

“He doesn’t deliver us two formulas or two precepts, but two faces, indeed one face, the face of God reflected in many faces, because in the face of each brother, especially in the smallest, the most fragile and the most helpless, the same image of God is present.”

The true novelty Jesus brings to these commandments is that he puts them together, revealing that they are inseparable and complementary, “(like) two sides of the same coin.”

One of the most visible signs of God’s love that a Christian can give is to love one’s neighbor, he said, noting how Jesus doesn’t put love of God at the top of the list of commandments, but rather “at the center, because it’s from the heart that everything begins and to which it must come back.”

“No longer can we divide prayer, the encounter with God in the sacraments, from listening to others, from closeness to their lives, especially to their wounds.”

Questions:
1) Loving God and loving your neighbor, Pope Francis suggests are inseparable and complementary – “like two sides of the same coin”. Many of us are inclined to flip this coin – operating either in the loving God space – or the loving your neighbor space. What would it look like to spin this coin of neighboring on its axis this week and be amidst the blur of both God and brother/sister?

2) Pope Francis highlights that God is evident in the smallest, the most fragile and the most helpless of our neighbors. Do you have neighbors that reflect this? How have your interactions been with these neighbors? Ask God to give you eyes and next steps for your neighbors in this vein.

Invitations:
1) Take a minute this week to pause and ask God to show you his face in your neighbors?

2) As you pray this week, as you take communion this week, as you confess & forgive this week – invite God to bring close the lives of your neighbors – that are on His heart and yours.

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Jeremiah 29:4-7 (MSG)

4 This is the Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, to all the exiles I’ve taken from Jerusalem to Babylon:

5 “Build houses and make yourselves at home. “Put in gardens and eat what grows in that country.

6 “Marry and have children. Encourage your children to marry and have children so that you’ll thrive in that country and not waste away.

7 “Make yourselves at home there and work for the country’s welfare.

“Pray for Babylon’s well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you.”

Questions:
Jeremiah is challenging the Hebrew people to not withdraw from the city around them and simply wait for God to deliver them. Despite being captured by their enemies and brought to this pagan city of Babylon – Jeremiah suggests that they:
– Make homes in the city.
– Get jobs in the city.
– Grow their families in the city.
– Do life in the city!

How has “doing life” in your community/city looked?
What have been the biggest hurdles to “doing life” in the way that Jeremiah suggests?
What have been exciting experiences or even inclinations of “doing life” in the way Jeremiah suggests?

Invitation:
Try “doing life” in your city via one of these fun events in the month of June:

Safer Homes, Safer Community – Gun Buy Back,
6/11: 9am – 12pm – [email protected]

Teacher Appreciation in Our Local Schools,
Coming up in June – [email protected]

Annual Iftar Dinner Fresh Pond Apts., 364 Rindge Ave.,
6/18: 12pm prep, 7:30 dinner – [email protected]

Soccer Nights Russell Field, 333 Rindge Ave.,
6/27 – 7/1, Evenings – [email protected]

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Jeremiah 29:4-7 (MSG)
7 “Make yourselves at home there and work for the country’s welfare.
“Pray for Babylon’s well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you.”

Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NLT)
7 And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile.
Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

Questions:
In the New Living Translation it says to work for the “peace and prosperity” of the city where you live. And in the Message translation it says “make yourselves at home”. I can wonder if a big piece of making ourselves at home – is infact sowing into the peace and prosperity of our lives and the collective lives that surround us.

As you think about working toward “peace and prosperity” or “making yourself at home” in your community – what comes to mind? Do either of these two phrases ring true to what you feel in your neighborhood?

In this verse of Jeremiah – it seems to suggest that there is a positive correlation between how “life” goes for our surrounding communities/neighborhoods and how our own life is experienced.

2) As you look around at the people in your neighborhood what picture of their welfare do you gain? How does this, if at all, reflect upon your own welfare?

3) In the New Living Translation, Jeremiah encourages the people to “Pray to the Lord for it (peace and prosperity), and in the Message “to Pray for the city of Babylon”. What are the needs of your neighborhood and city? How can you pray into them this week?

Invitation:
Consider joining us as we pray for our neighbors, neighborhoods & cities:
24 Hours of Prayer Event: MAY 20 @ 8:00 PM – MAY 21 @ 8:00 PM
Reservoir Church in the Dome.

The first and final hour will be larger group events with some programming. For the rest of the hours we will rely on individuals to sign up. There will be a variety of tools available in the church Dome area to inspire your prayer.

You can sign up to be part of the 24 Hours of Prayer
http://www.24-7prayer.com/signup/b2f1e0 or contact Dorothy Hanna with any questions at [email protected].

Stories of Neighboring from our Reservoir Community!

Snapshots of Neighboring from the Reservoir Community!
Many of you have already communicated your experiences of neighboring to us – we thought it would be encouraging to share these as we all try to navigate our own efforts of neighboring.

“I’ve been trying to not feel pressure to do anything in this neighboring season that doesn’t resonate, and since my current neighborhood has never resonated (the fact I’m moving in July seemed to solidify that), I’ve been focusing my efforts on other “neighbors” (near the church, near my family, etc.). Tonight I was sitting in the backyard talking toa friend on the phone when I heard/saw my neighbor taking out the trash. We waved “hi” across the yard and then I made a game time decision and hung up on my friend and scrambled up the little embankment between our yards to say a proper hello. In our 15 minutes of talking, I learned her name!, we discovered common interests (yoga), I invited myself to her mindfulness workshop in the fall (she said yes :)), and we are scheduling dinner with this young Italian couple she was recently introduced to who are new to Boston. I’m so happy I said hello! I wish I had done it sooner! What an amazing neighbor I have!”

“My husband and I were out for a walk with our toddler. As we were walking our toddler stopped by some of the flowers and shrubbery of my neighbor. It was apparent that my neighbor was watching from her window, as she started pounding on her window and motioning for us to move away from her plants with a very mean expression. We were slightly shocked and a little offended. However, the next Sunday at church – I felt like God was suggesting I drop one of the “Dome Table” plants off at her door. I left the plant and a short note – expecting to hear nothing in return. A couple of days later – I receive a long typed letter from our neighbor – apologizing and acknowledging her crankiness and extending the offer for our toddler to pick flowers whenever she wanted.”

“I’m a middle-school teacher. This week I was walking my class back to our classroom from a different area of the school. A fellow teacher came out of her classroom extremely angry at the noise level of my class. She directed all of the anger at me and quickly stormed back into her own classroom. Instead of reacting in a retaliatory nature – I decided to email her and apologize for the noise. She immediately responded by coming to my room and hugging me!”

“I recently broke up with my boyfriend. A few days after the break-up, I decided to go to a morning Zumba class at my local gym that I’ve been going to for several years. Zumba isn’t a class I usually attend – but as soon as the music started I found myself being able to process some of the break-up through emotion. At the end – I told the class of 60 women how meaningful the time was with them. Many of these women came and hugged me and offered their phone numbers to me after this moment!”

“I took two plants from the Dome table to my neighbors in my apartment building and they both were wonderfully happy!”

“I was gardening out front in my yard this week and met a neighbor and his family – that I had never met before! They asked a simple question about one of my flowers and this spurred on a great conversation”.

Roots and Branches: Praying for “Our Six”

When I was becoming a member at Reservoir about ten years ago, I remember hearing a pastor talk about a commitment the church asked of every member. He asked us all to always have six people in mind who were local and who – best as we could tell – were not churchgoers and maybe not experiencing much connection to God. And he asked us to pray for them every day.

I thought that was an interesting habit to prioritize. It seemed a little quirky – why the number six, I wondered? And it didn’t sound especially strategic – weren’t there more significant things we could do that would grow the church or benefit the world more dramatically?

Despite my questions, I liked the church enough and figured I’d give it a shot.

One of the first six I chose was a student where I taught in the Boston Public Schools. I had him for high school English, but had met him several years earlier as a quiet seventh grader who seemed more interested in computers and construction than he did in his schoolwork. We had gotten to know each other over the years, and I had even hired him a couple of times to help me do some work on my home with me, and I thought I’d enjoy praying for him every day as he tried to graduate from high school and find his way forward.

We had our ups and downs that year in our teacher-student relationship, he moved out of town, and I replaced him on my prayer list. It was a rather undramatic end of story.

Until it wasn’t.

A couple of years later, a local pastor I knew reached out and said she had connected to a former student of mine, who was now active in their church. It turns out that the whole year I was praying for my student, he was stopping by church on occasion, especially when I would fill in and preach. He’d sit in the back row where no one would see him, and he’d leave before the service would end, so I wouldn’t know he was there. And that was the beginning of a circuitous journey to the faith he credits for changing his life for the better.

How about that?

I’ve been praying for my 6, more or less daily, for the last decade now. I’ve enjoyed praying for neighbors and colleagues and parents of my kids’ friends and sometimes an acquaintance I meet through a chance encounter. Usually, I let people know I’m praying for them, and sometimes they tell me how I can do that. One friend wants prayer for their child with special needs, another wants prayer to move past a recent tragedy, and another says (awkwardly) that he’d love to not get hit by a truck, or have some other accident befall him. So I pray for those things.

Sometimes I see answers to my prayers, sometimes not. Usually, though not always, the friendship or connection grows a little warmer. Nothing bad ever happens. And I like knowing that sometimes I’ve been the only person to ever pray for someone, and other times, I might be the twenty-eighth person to be praying for someone, and I almost never know.

I think this is actually one of the most important things our church ever started doing. Over the past 18 years, many, many hundreds of us have prayed for many, many thousands of folks in Greater Boston. We just pray that God would be good to our friends and acquaintances, that life would go well for them, and that they would enjoy the best possible connection they could have to themselves and their lives and their friends, and perhaps even to God.

This is one our habits I really hope to continue long into the future. By praying for our six, we take our cue from a faith community from over 2,500 years ago. Jewish exiles in Babylonia were living very different lives than we are, but they were asking questions people of faith might ask today.

-How do we relate to the majority of people around us who don’t share our faith?

-Should we withdraw from our surrounding culture, or should we try to fight and change it?

-And when the present looks bleak sometimes, do we live in a romanticized past, or a fantasized future?

To all this, these exiles are told to settle down, make themselves at home, and, ^“And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7)

Love the people around you, and seek their good. Live in the present, and make the best of the moment you’re living in. And pray for your city’s welfare, for it will determine your welfare.

Let’s pray for the people that rent us our apartments and educate our kids. Let’s pray for our bosses and colleagues, for the neighbor we love to chat with and one whose too-loud music gives us grief. One by one, or actually six by six, a church can ask God to remember and bless whole swaths of our city. And as that happens, we’ll have a win-win on our hands: good for them, good for us, and maybe even good for God as well.

Week 4 – Things to Think About in the Art of Neighboring

Ephesians 2:7-10 The Message (MSG)

7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

“The great Commandment is a matter of obedience to those who know and follow Jesus. We don’t love our neighbors so they will know Jesus; we love our neighbors because we already love Jesus and trust him. We are called to love our neighbors, even if our neighbors never show any interest in Jesus, because we have made Jesus our highest priority. Again, we are not supposed to love our neighbors to convert them. We love our neighbors because we have been converted.” (Pathak & Runyon, The Art of Neighboring)

Questions & Invitations:

What if our work in neighboring and partnering with God is to allow him the realm of “both the making and the saving”? Perhaps this reality promotes our own realm of work to be aware – to love and to show up as much as we can with our neighbors.

Ask God this week to show you where he might already be working through you and in your neighborhood. Also ask God to show you where it is more of your work of seeing and loving is needed in your neighborhood.

Psalm 90:12 says: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” – Ask God to guide you in prioritizing your days within it’s limitations and to the edges of it’s capacity. Ask God to show you where and how neighboring fits within your days.

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“Look Up” – Mark Erelli (album – For a Song)

All day long they shuffle through
Sneakers, sandals, high heel shoes
Scraps of paper, wads of gum
My work here is never done
They exit now in single file
I sweep the floors and scrub the tiles
Til dying echoes quiet the room
And leave me leaning on my broom

Above me now the fall of man
But it all depends on where you stand
Is He letting go or reaching out for Adam’s hand

(Chorus)
Look up, look up
There are angels flying low enough to see
Look up, oh look up

Four long years I’ve bent my back
Painting every plaster crack
The hand of God and Adam’s sin
Rain down in brush drops thick and thin
I ache with shame and head for home
Through the darkened streets of Rome
The night girls calling out to me
And drunkards praying on their knees

Above me now the canopy
The stars in all their majesty
Remind me of the master I will never be

(Chorus)

High above the blessed and cursed
Like ants they scurry on the Earth
Debauchery and daily chores
Always hungry, wanting more
I’ve sent them plague and flood and fire
Tried so hard to stay inspired
And somehow solve the mystery
Of what they ever saw in me

If I could only kneel before
The man who sweeps the chapel floor
Show him he’s as holy as the angels
Maybe more

(chorus)

Mark Erelli is a local singer/songwriter who has played with many well-known artists such as Josh Ritter, Paula Cole and Zachariah Hickman – as well as the father and son collaboration of Taylor and Jake Armerding in Barnstar!

In this song, Look Up – Mark Erelli reminds us to be aware of who and what surrounds us. The mundane, the dirty, the messy and at the same time the beauty, wonder, and the joy – often, as he points out – found in the same space.

Questions & Invitations:

In the context of neighboring where is it that you experience or notice beauty, wonder and joy? Where is it that you notice the dirty, the messy and the mundane? Which tends to take the spotlight most in your scope?

Ask God to give you equal sights for the beauty as the mess.

2. If we were to take the title of this song, literally and Look Up – how would this affect your neighboring efforts? What would it look like this week to be more intentional about looking up as you commute to the train, stand at the bus stop, walk down your apartment hallway, cross the park to your house?

Ask God to give you a shift in perspective this week – starting with a tilt upward of your chin.

3. The last stanza of this song seems to suggest that people in front of us might behold the same reverence and beauty that we would ascribe to angels. What might it look like in your week to see others around you with this lens?

Ask God for his Holy Spirit to illuminate the “angels” in your midst this week.

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Invitation:
In this week’s sermon we heard the invitation to make “praying for your 6” a lifestyle. As you feel led this week – use this neighboring map as a mode to pray for your 6. Ask God to help you craft this into a lifestyle as you think about your neighborhoods and people who dwell next to you.

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Romans 12:11-13 The Message (MSG)
11-13 Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

“Good neighboring is not about doing charity work. It’s not simply about doing for others and looking ways to give and give and give. Rather, good neighboring is about helping to create a sense of community within your neighborhood. It’s about empowering people and breaking down walls. It’s about everybody doing something together for the common good. As you might imagine, this is much easier said than done. Receiving can be a challenge for a number of reasons. Great neighborhoods are built on reciprocal relationships … no one wants to feel like a project. If we don’t allow people to meet any of our needs, we limit what God wants to do in our neighborhood and our life”.
(Pathak & Runyon, The Art of Neighboring)

Questions & Invitations:

Have there been instances where you have burnt out in your neighboring efforts? Where needs, energy and time started to trump your own extension of love for your neighbors?

Ask God to refuel and set aflame your desire to be present to your neighbors. Ask God for a picture of reciprocal relationship as you enter into this.

Where have you noticed opportunities for the common good and empowerment to break through in your own community?

Pray for more pictures of where there is a common need that would result in a common good in your neighborhood. Pray that your own walls of self-sufficiency and fear be metered as you look to partner in ways that could draw together members of your community.

Stories of Neighboring from our Reservoir Community

“Every year there is a block party on our street. Every year my family and I hide inside of our house. But this year I decided to go to the Block Party planning meeting. I immediately sign up to do the pinata, the compost bag, the bubbles….etc. I do think that’s how to get to know my neighbors more, by “giving”. I am very protective of my time, so taking this step is a big step for me to go and do something for the block party, I kept saying “no” every year and this year actually I have a perfect excuse to say “no” with a newborn, but I said “yes” to myself.”

“I brought a spinach plant to my Bangladesh neighbor. I was hoping her mom would be home because she likes to garden – but it was the daughter who answered the door. Neither of us speak each other’s language – but it was fun to bring the pot of spinach without this obvious ease of communication.”

“Cambridge City Councilor dropped by today and asked me what we do to help our congregation be resilient and we got into a discussion about neighboring. He’s interested in possibly making “neighbor day” an official Cambridge thing.”

“The editor of the Scout Magazine emailed me back and we’re planning on getting dinner (she, her roommate, my husband, and me) to talk about some ideas of making our place more “neighborhood-y”. WOW. They are young renters and haven’t met anyone in the few months they’ve been here and have been missing the same things we have from their last community. I think a first step will be that they and we will create a facebook page.”

“I took a pansy plant over to my neighbor who I haven’t seen in 2 months – she was so happy she gave me a huge hug!”

“I started teaching a “Moving Meditation” yoga class at Reservoir Church in January. It’s a community group, so there’s no fee, but I suggested that people give whatever they felt it was worth. I promised that all proceeds would be donated to charity, in the spirit of loving our neighbors. I finally got around to counting it last night. This group raised $250, which I happily just sent to Samaritans”!

Roots and Branches: We Love to Pray!

At Reservoir Church, we have always loved to pray.

Yesterday, my friend Dorothy told me a story from her early years in the church. It was sometime just after around 2000, and she was part of an all night prayer meeting we were hosting in a Cambridge church building that had loaned us their space for the night. Back then, we were renting space on Sundays in the Morse School in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston University, where Dorothy was a new student. Dorothy had seen our T ads her first year there and found some friends to come visit the church with her the following year. She’s been with us ever since.

Dorothy remembers that all night prayer meeting vividly. Not because of what she prayed for, or how many people were there, or why the meeting was even called. She remembers that during prayer, though, another participant prayed words for her that seemed so good and so true they could only be from the mind of God. She cherishes these words to this day.

Today, Dorothy co-leads our intercession team. We’ve always had a small group of church members whose job is to pray for our pastors and our church. They pray every day on their own and take turns praying during our Sunday services together. It’s not a very efficient use of people’s times. We could have them doing other, more practical jobs for the church.

But we love to pray.

Prayer calms our busy minds and gives us peace. Prayer connects us to the needs of our lives and to our neighbors and friends and enemies with compassion. It leaves us with clarity and faith. And it energizes our work. Sometimes, we think our prayers even change the world, or at least some part of it.

How this works is a mystery. Why does it seem that some prayers are answered and others not? How could a single God listen when every second, so many people are praying for so many things, all around the world? What are we to think of the many prayers said for parking spaces and football games and test scores? And why would God want us to pray in the first place, instead of just doing the things God wants to do without putting us through the bother of asking?

Beats me – again, it’s a mystery.

But it does seem that there’s something about prayer that makes us God’s children. The talking, the asking, the waiting all create a bond and a hope that seems even more powerful when we do it together and that sometimes seems to move mountains in us and the things we pray for.

So we keep praying.

And this Sunday, I’m excited to announce an upcoming 24-hour event at our church. Non-stop, for a full day, our church will pray for our current Art of Neighboring campaign. We’ll ask God to do more than we can ask or imagine as our church members know and love our neighbors as ourselves, and as our church serves our neighborhood of North Cambridge this spring. We’ll pray big and bold prayers. We’ll enjoy the quiet and beauty of our church sanctuary dome. We’ll enjoy the company of friends and the sense that God is with us.

And some of us might just even hear God talk back to us, with words we’ll be remembering fifteen years from now.

Join us later this month. Read more, and sign up at: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/event/24-hours-prayer/

Neighboring Stories from Our Reservoir Community

Snapshots of Neighboring from the Reservoir Community!
Many of you have already communicated your experiences of neighboring to us – we thought it would be encouraging to share these as we all try to navigate our own efforts of neighboring.

“My husband and I love our local magazine, Scout Somerville, and so I finally decided to sink the money into a real subscription. When I put in the credit card info, it had a spot to write a note and I wrote that I hoped that my order would be processed in time to get the May/June issue. The editor in chief, responded with “absolutely” and she said that she lives on my street (like 10 houses down)! So I emailed her back and asked her to be better neighbors.”

“This week as I walked down the hall of my apartment building, I looked up and actually asked my neighbor what his name is. From now on – I look forward to engaging with him – by name – the next time I see him”

“The Mayor lives down the street from us. I decided to ask to partner with him in more efforts toward making our neighborhood feel like a community. I just put in the mailbox a letter addressed to ‘My Mayor and Neighbor’, asking him if my husband and I can partner with him to make Ten Hills (our little section of Somerville) into a more “neighbor-y” place.”

“I put together a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” bag – inclusive of the fun spinach plant I picked up at the Dome table last week!”

“This year, I’ve been praying for my kids’ teachers and school administrators as part of our churches “pray for your 6” practice. Recently, I gave four of them a thank you note with a $10 Starbucks gift card, reminding them that I pray for them regularly and am rooting for their joy and their success. All of them made a point of telling me, in person or in writing, how much it meant to them. One of them wrote me a thank you email, saying my card “brought tears to his eyes,” which has led to further conversation and a move from acquaintance toward friendship. It’s been really rewarding and really worth the $40 cost!”

“I dropped a swiss chard plant at my neighbor’s house this morning!”

Things to Think About in the Art of Neighboring – Week 3

Week 3 – 2016

Things to Think About In the Art of Neighboring

Mending Wall – Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Questions:
1. What have your own experiences of walls been? Are they walls that have been there for generations – long before you? Walls that you’ve created? Walls that have been set against you?

2. “Good fences make good neighbors” is a phrase that has come out of this poem. Although Robert Frost seems to challenge this sentiment. What’s your take on this phrase?

3. If “spring is the mischief” in you – what dialogues can you imagine as momentum in your neighboring?

Invitations:
1. Pray for God to illuminate where walls might exist in your own life.

2. Pray for the Holy Spirit to lead you to the wall(s) with wisdom and humility.

3. Where engagement at the wall seems static, pray for the Holy Spirit to be the force that moves and breaks down the walls.

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Acts 8:26-39 (NIV)

26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” [37] 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.

Questions:
1. As you read this scripture – where do you find yourself? Do you identify with the character of Philip? Do you identify with the Ethiopian Eunuch?

2. What do you glean from seeing Philip and the eunuch intersect at their walls? How can this help in your own navigation of neighboring around walls?

3. Philip baptizing the eunuch seems like a pivotal shift that will invoke change for generation of followers of Jesus to come. In your own neighboring where do you see the potential for pivotal shifts?

Invitations:
1. Look for ways this week to hear your neighbors stories and personal narratives.

2. In listening to these stories and narratives ask the Holy Spirit to show you opportunities to partner with your neighbors.

3. If it feels like “desert” in your efforts of neighboring – ask God to show you where the water is for “refreshment” and hope.

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Isaiah 53:10(b) MSG
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” – Jewish Talmud
Questions:
1. In Isaiah 53 we see that life, life and more life will extend through Jesus’ legacy in all of us. How does this resonate with you? Specifically as you consider neighboring this week?

2. How does the phrase from the Jewish Talmud, “Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now.”, look in your own neighboring relationships? Is this a challenge to consider? Do you feel like these elements are components currently?

3. How does being a partner with God’s great work in our neighboring – feel for you as you think about engaging with those around you?
Invitations:
1. This week ask Jesus to show you how his legacy of life will bring neighboring relationships that haven’t started or are lying dormant to life in your community!

2. Ask God for eyes of justice, mercy and humbleness in your interactions with neighbors.

3. Ask God to lead you to areas of your neighbors lives that may have been abandoned in the past. And ask Him to show you the best way to engage in the work of building this piece up.

*****************************************************************************Neighboring Map – Invitation:
The first week we used the Neighboring Map as a way to pray for Jesus’ generosity to drip into our neighborhoods. Last week we used the map as a way to learn neighbor’s names. *This week use the Neighboring Map to find out something more about your neighbor, beyond an observable fact. Ask God to break open opportunities for intersection and conversation.

Things to Think About In the Art of Neighboring – Week 2

Matthew 22: 34-40 (NIV)

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In the sermon this week – Ivy offered a visual representation of how the greatest commandment can be understood. She used an image of a 2-hinged door. One hinge being – Love the Lord your God. The second hinge being – love your neighbor as yourself. These two hinges working together allow a great arch and movement of love to go before us in our lives. This allows us great, wide expansive views of the landscape in front of us – inclusive of people who we can neighbor. If only one of the hinges is in motion – the other hinge likely gets overworked or overstressed. Often the overworked/overstressed hinge represents us – as we have to force and create our own extension of love – without connection to God.

Questions & Invitations:

Take stock of your neighboring efforts. How do you feel like they are operating? Are there some that feel in full swing – with two-hinges engaged? Are there some that feel more one-hinged? Can you identify the ones where you are doing the hard work of pushing the great big door of love open?

If the one-hinged approach to loving your neighbor resonates with you – invite God back into your neighboring relationships to connect you with His abundant resourcing.

Pray through verses of the greatest commandment – ask God to supernaturally expand your picture of love for Him as well as your neighbors – this week.

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Metaphorical vs. Literal Neighboring

In the book, The Art of Neighboring, by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon they talk a lot about taking the second half of the greatest commandment, “to love your neighbor as yourself” literally. This literal picture of neighboring, however, often proves to be a real challenge in the context of our own lives; our stages of life, our neighborhood configuration and perhaps our introverted tendencies.

This challenge of thinking of our actual neighbors can often move us into a place of metaphorical neighboring. And we can start to define our “neighbor” in the broadest of terms – as the “neighbor across town” or the organization we volunteer at and donate to, or anyone who’s in need. While this is perfectly true – it tends to take away from the importance of neighboring our immediate neighbors. And the end result is that we often love neither our nebulous neighbor or our literal neighbor well.

Dave and Jay put it this way:

“When we try to love everyone, we often end up loving no one. If we are not careful, we can end up having metaphorical love for our metaphorical neighbors and the end result is that we actually do nothing.”

Questions & Invitations

Where are your efforts of neighboring? In the metaphorical or literal realm?

What can you identify as your own reasons as to why metaphorical neighboring might be more your pulse right now?

If your metaphorical neighboring is a result of fear or busyness – ask God to help guide you into conversations and interactions with neighbors that will break down these hurdles.

Ask God to give you fresh eyes for the neighbors that surround you this week. Ask Him for a wide view with clear, peripheral vision.

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The Good Samaritan Parable

Luke 10:25-37 (NLT)

25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.

31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. 32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. 34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’

36 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

37 The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

Questions & Invitations

The parable of the Good Samaritan is often read that we should be more generous and compassionate to those in need and that everyone is ultimately our neighbor. This is a generative interpretation and one that can call out of us an inclination to take a good look at those around us and how we are interacting with them.
In addition, what can we learn about “loving our neighbor as our-self” – if we imagine the law expert as the robbed victim in the parable? What could Jesus be showing the law expert and us about this perspective?
The law expert asks Jesus after the discussion of the greatest commandment – “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells the law expert the story of the Good Samaritan and then he poses this question back to the law expert, “Now who was a neighbor?”
What does this question flip open up for the law expert in theory? What does it open up for us in our own way of thinking about neighboring?
If Jesus is suggesting that one of our first steps in thinking of neighboring well – is to imagine our neighbor as ourselves – what messages do you glean about your own neighboring if you do this?
In verse 33, the Good Samaritan after seeing the victim on the side of the road, then “feels compassion” for him and out of this seems to pour forth an abundance of resourcing – to powerfully meet the needs of this man on the side of the road.
- Ask God to help you step out, see and feel compassion for those around you. In addition ask Him to help you believe for the wealth of abundance He’ll provide for whatever your neighboring needs might look like as you do so.
If the road from Jerusalem to Jericho – can represent our own road of life – full of messiness, danger and real life needs… Take time to reflect and identify people in your own life who have represented the spirit of the Samaritan.
Thank God for them as you head out on this road today.

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Invitation:

Last week the invitation was to use the “Neighboring Map” as a visual prayer guide, for more of God’s generosity to drip into your neighborhood. This week – use this Neighboring Map to gain a visual representation of how many of your neighbor’s names you know. Use this map as indicator of where a natural lean might be in your own neighboring efforts.

If you know all of your neighbors names – then move to facts that you know of your neighbors by having conversations with them (versus facts you can obtain by observing).

Utilize this map as a way to pray for your six neighbors as you move through the rest of our neighboring series.

Snapshots of Neighboring from the Reservoir Community

Many of you have already communicated your experiences of neighboring to us – we thought it would be encouraging to share these as we all try to navigate our own efforts of neighboring!

“This week my son dragged my daughter and me out of the house early (even before my hair was done) and we all still had our pajamas on. I’m so glad he did though, because we met a neighbor whom we haven’t spoken to since we moved in 2 years ago. It turns out she’s 90 and she’s lonely. That was her primary word she used. She was out for her morning walk before the rain came. “

“Last night, I had a great dream about working side by side in a kitchen next to my grumpy neighbor across the street who I spy on all the time. In the dream he struck up a conversation with me as if we’d been talking forever. It was a great dream 🙂 Praying that it will be a reality.”

“This week I asked the little girl I was babysitting how she knew if someone was a neighbor. She answered, “Because they always say: “May I come in?” This was meaningful to me to think about neighboring as an invitation into something more – our lives, each other’s stories.”

“We had been told that Mrs L wasn’t very friendly, was actually rather grumpy. A year or two after moving in, we did some renovations at our place that required a big dumpster in our driveway. Mrs. L would be staring at that ugly dumpster for a few months, so I thought it would be neighborly to let her know ahead of time. I think she was surprised that anyone would reach out. She invited me in for a cup of tea and I got to hear her story. Turns out she isn’t grumpy or mean, she was grieving the death of her beloved husband. Neighboring reminds me that everyone has a story.”

“This week I looked up and made eye contact with my neighbor on the other side of the street – AND – I actually waved. This is a significant step in the context of our neighboring relationship”.

“For my five year-olds birthday party, recently, she invited a bunch of classmates including a girl we hadn’t spent much time with. Not tons of lines of difference between us, but I wanted to connect with the girl’s dad because his family is from Mexico and Amelia’s school tends to have outsized presence from white, upper-income families. As soon as we invite the girl, her family immediately sent an invitation to her own birthday, around the same time. We went and had a ball—just a few families, mostly their friends who had also immigrated from Mexico. So the party was a really new and valuable experience for Amelia—her first tres leches b-day cake, her first pinata—we loved it. I was really grateful Amelia had a chance to learn about the world and we got to build a bigger bridge.”

“God totally opened up play with our neighbors next door who although we have boys the same age they barely played for the first three years we lived here. We talked a few times with the other couple about putting a hole in the fence or removing it all together but it never happened. Finally our more extroverted 4 year old started talking to them over the fence more and more and we finally decided to build some sort of platform so that he would stop climbing on the bunny hutch to talk to them. The next day we came home from church, saw some wood on the street being put out for trash and thought we could use it to build a platform. Low and behold it is a castle play house that has been taken apart. We dragged it over and my husband put it back together and put it up against the fence and installed a door leading over the fence to our neighbors yard. They bought at cargo net and attached it to their side of the fence, since then the boys went from playing a few times a year to almost every day. We could have never built a castle that cool – God totally gave us the castle and opened up friendship where we were struggling.”

“Our neighborhood should be perfect for kids. We live on a dead end, and there’s a family across the street from us with boys the same age as ours. They’ve been living there as long as we have, but somehow the kids never felt free to just hang out together without adults involved. Then a couple years ago a new family moved in next door, also with kids the same age. Those kids weren’t at all shy about coming over and asking our boys or our other neighbors out to play, and their example catalyzed all the neighborhood kids to be more open and invitational; now they’re all outside together most afternoons. We feel so grateful to be living somewhere with such an old-school feel, and I hope next time we find ourselves in a situation where the community isn’t as open and welcoming as it could be, we could be the catalysts!”
“I’ve been praying about more opportunities to meet my neighbors – where there just hasn’t seemed like there are any natural/organic opportunities. Since I’ve been praying over the last 2 weeks – I’ve seen my neighbors across the street – more than I can remember. I’m not sure if I’m just more aware to see them now – or if God is orchestrating moments of intersection. Either way – I’m totally encouraged!” (Now to do something about it).

Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to share your experience of neighboring.