Build the wall? Absolutely not

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Oct. 25, 2020

Ex 22:20-26, 1 Thes 1:5C-10, Mt 22:34-40

Sorry, Robert Frost. In the crusty, taciturn New England of your era, good fences may have made good neighbors, but in today’s social climate, we can’t afford any more walls between ourselves.

Six feet, masks and plexiglass are intense enough as it is. We don’t need stone or steel. We definitely don’t need hearts of stone steeled against charity and justice.

We need Love.

Now, if any Gospel is self-explanatory, today’s is.

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Simple, elegant and the summit of wisdom.

Rock-solid.

Not a word out of place; not another word needed.

What we do need, though, is an action plan. Because “love” is an action verb. “Love” is a command, an order, a get-out-there-and-do-it.

And there’s no disobeying a command from God.

This love is more than warm fuzzies and huggy-huggies.

This love involves clear eyes and hearts that see, elbow grease and sweat and aching muscles and dirty fingernails, and a willingness to ignore filth and stench on many levels.

Physical and sensory.

Emotional and psychological.

Intellectual and opinionated. 

This love involves a whole new concept of what love is, because this love does not require our liking someone to love them as our neighbor. In fact, sometimes it’s 180 degrees the opposite. Sometimes, this love involves putting aside our intense dislike for someone to embrace them our neighbor.

This love is hard. This love is a challenge.

So must our action plan be.

Jesus used the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan to instruct the Israelites of his time about who their neighbor is. For us, identifying our neighbors, especially our neighbors in need, is a good start. But only a start.

Some of our neighbors in need among us are extremely visible — those who lost their jobs completely or partially because of the pandemic, those who are or have been chronically impoverished, those who have been pushed to the edges of society and shunned because of who they are, how they live or who they love. Yes, their needs are obvious.

How do we love these neighbors?

Donations of time and treasure to charities such as food banks and soup kitchens and home-restoring groups come to mind. Moreover, donations of presence — to share a little time and perhaps a caring ear — are deeper signs of obeying the Law of Love.

Charity goes only so far, however, when systems are unjust.

Which leads us to the next step in our action plan.

The Law of Love commands us to root out and correct the reasons why our neighbors may be in need.

We should inventory our skills and talents and interests and available resources — again, time and treasure — and connect with social justice agencies or activities where we can make a difference. Because we all can, and we all must. The answer to what and how and when and how much, of course, will be different for each of us, because God made us that way.

Thank God.

Thank God we live in a society that recognizes our right to stand up against oppression, and where diverse people of good conscience do exactly that. 

Thank God we live in a society that encourages neighbors to give neighbors a hand up more than a handout, so their dignity and hope are fed along with their bodies.

A society where unjust systems indeed can be undone.

Must be undone, for us to live up to everything we say we are.

Will be undone. By us.

But there’s another key step in our action plan, and it’s subtle and nuanced.

Because of the pandemic and the fences and walls it forced between us, we may not see the needs of our neighbors. Those needs may be in those walls’ figurative shadows. Or our neighbors may be hiding them. Even when something happens that’s totally out of someone’s control — like the shutdown of an entire industry or a mandatory lockdown to save lives from death by virus — people can feel embarrassment or even a degree of shame. It’s a very human reaction.

As good neighbors, we’re challenged to gently offer aid while respecting privacy, and while preparing for the answer to be no. But to offer it nonetheless.

The Law of Love is hard. It’s challenging. But so are these times. And for us to rise to the challenge of 2020 and beyond, our power is Love.

God is Love.

And God is always with us.