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Message from Pastor Marty

Neighborliness

By Pastor Peter W. Marty

Bill McKibben is a good guy — a very good guy. He writes about important subjects, he thinks deeply about matters of consequence, and he is not afraid to address critical problems in our time. As scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, McKibben has a wide open platform for looking at the environmental, economic, and community challenges we face in this country and around the world.

“We don’t need each other for anything anymore,” says McKibben. As provocative as such a statement may sound, we have to admit that it is mostly true. How much do you really need your neighbor, at least in some kind of dependent fashion? You can probably survive, or get along physically well, just fine without that next-door neighbor of yours. We have enough income in our lives, enough amenities, and enough technological hook-ups that we’re no longer dependent on our neighbors. We’re largely insulated from them.

Just think of how many of your own immediate neighbors you know really well. If you’re like 75% of Americans, you don’t know them at all. Or, if you do, your knowledge is apt to be scant and superficial at best.

McKibben turns to an oral history of upstate New York farming to deepen his point. Said one old-time farmer: “It’s all changed … [we used to] pitch in and go help. Everybody wasn’t so busy then … Now they got so damn much going on, you’re going so far and so fast and so furious that everybody is going with their shirttail straight out and don’t have time to say hello. You don’t have any neighbors. You don’t have any neighbors now.”

Another local farmer has similar impressions since farming has moved to big and efficient machinery. “You hardly ever see your neighbors any more. Just like the Bakers over here — their land joins on ours. We wave when we go by and they wave when they go by. We’re lucky if we talk to them once or twice a year … I don’t think anyone has anything against anyone. You just don’t have any need to be there.”

“Need” is the key word here. We don’t need our neighbors for economic purposes; we need them for meaning. When Jesus reasoned that we should “love our neighbors as ourselves,” it wasn’t a suggestion based on whether or not we need them for economic viability or utilitarian purposes. It was a commandment grounded in the understanding that our very happiness is dependent on neighborliness. The world’s well-being is reliant on neighborliness. As human beings, we are divinely-wired for community.

Neighborliness is a top priority at St. Paul Luth-eran these days. Not only must we find new ways to be neighbor to one another within the congregation — which, by the way, requires the energy and initiative of all of us — but we also want to discover fresh ways to be an even better neighbor to the city dwellers around us.

Our member, Clayton Lloyd, is leading a team of people in the ambitious effort to explore opportunities for deeper St. Paul involvement in our central city. Some exciting plans are in the works to better connect with area children and youth. Among the many goals of this Central City Commitment Team is to make sure that we love our neighbors as much as, and as well as, we happen to love ourselves. It’s an effort that could well warm the heart of Jesus.

Pastor Peter W. Marty,

Growing neighborliness

A few years ago in Portland, Oregon, residents of one neighborhood decided that they didn’t really know each other. So the residents decided to reclaim a local intersection as their own public square. They didn’t stop traffic, but they cobblestoned the crossing, painted it bright red and blue and yellow, and put up a “tea station” on one corner where neighbors could have a free cup of hot tea any time, day or night. Soon there were message boards and benches on the corners, and people were planting butterfly gardens at the edge of their yards to offer more color and life… Cars had to slow down at this redesigned inter-section. Efficiency was compromised. But something was gained — and it’s impossible to say whether the result is liberal or conservative. It’s neighborly. — Bill McKibben in Deep Economy

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