“You have reached your destination.”
Or not.
A few years ago, when my phone first became a GPS navigator, it made mistakes. Occasionally, after navigating for a while, it would announce in a cheery voice, “You have reached your destination.” Only, I hadn’t. Somehow the phone’s map was off. And what it thought was my destination was really not my destination.
The same thing has happened with us, the people of God. And it’s happened with the simplest of destinations, one that seems the easiest to get to: love, specifically, love of neighbor.
Jesus, the ultimate spiritual cartographer, says that love of neighbor is central to our journey (Matt. 22:40). Our life map cannot merely list “love God” as its endpoint. It must also list “love neighbor” as its endpoint. Survey almost any Christian or church and they’ll agree wholeheartedly that our pilgrimage must, indeed, wind up right there. We paint these lines on murals. We stitch them on t-shirts. We put them on our coffee cups. We love the idea of loving our neighbor.
But far too many churches and Christians believe they’ve arrived at that destination when, in fact, what they’ve reached is not that destination at all.
Jesus pulled out the map and showed this tremendous course misdirection when he preached his Sermon on the Mount:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ (Matt. 5:43 ESV)
This comes in a context where Jesus is quoting different Scriptures and showing how far off course we’ve gotten in our approach to living out those Scriptures. Jesus saves this one for the end. It’s the last and most important one he addresses.
Every listener that day could pull out their life-map, hold it up to Jesus, and, as a primary goal, it would list “You shall love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). And, down to the last person, they could fold that map back up and stuff it in their pocket, with a sense of self-satisfaction.
But what they meant by “You shall love your neighbor,” and what Scripture and Jesus meant by “You shall love your neighbor” were two very different things. If you charted them on a map they would be miles apart…worlds apart.
The destination toward which Jesus’ listeners were progressing was a love of neighbor that was limited rather than limitless, exclusive rather than inclusive, bordered rather than bountiful. We know this because their love of neighbor permitted them to “hate their enemy”:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ (Matt. 5:43 ESV)
In other words, the place inhabited by these worshipers of God was one where you could define what neighbors you loved and what neighbors you loathed. It’s clear from Jesus’ interaction in Lk. 10 that this spot on the map was a place where godly people could justify hating people who differed from them in race or in religion, because Jesus defines neighbor-love there as one that embraces those of different race and religion.
Sadly, this location is where too many churches and Christians live today. Placing personal freedoms above public good, we engage in behavior and enact policies that are harmful to people of color and our society’s most marginalized during COVID-19. We tolerate (and applaud) our nation’s highest leaders calling immigrants “animals” and labelling people of color “dogs.” We watch a young black man murdered by two white men and then justify his death by painting him as a criminal. We spit on and push Asian-Americans, blaming them for the pandemic. When people who have been shot and oppressed say “Black Lives Matter” we push back saying “But, all lives matter,” discounting and downplaying the inhumane mistreatment they have suffered. The deafening silence in our pulpits when it comes to sexism, ageism, classism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia is testimony that we’ve set down roots in the toxic place Jesus identified when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” (Matt. 5:43 ESV)
What Jesus calls for is a place on the map that is fundamentally different. Jesus’ love of neighbor is limitless, not limited; inclusive rather than exclusive; bountiful rather than bordered. It’s a love, Paul says, that tears down every “dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14). It’s a love that speaks up and stands with all who are oppressed. It’s a love that befriends all who don’t seem to belong.
It’s a love that, in the words of one of our greatest contemporary cartographers, embraces rather than excludes. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Miraslov Volf writes that exclusion is the dominant movement of most cultures, including today’s Christian culture. In the name of God, we discriminate, isolate and exclude “the other” based on race, religion and other factors. But the Christian call is to embrace. This is the single most unique feature of the ministry of Jesus. Embrace, according to Volf, takes four steps:
1 – opening the arms, a “gesture of invitation,” which communicates “desire for the other” and “the pain of the other’s absence and the joy of the other’s anticipated presence.”
2 – waiting, a posture that respects the other and watches for “desire to arise in the other and for the arms of the other to open.”
3 – closing the arms, so that “each is both holding and being held by the other”
4 – opening the arms again, so that the “end of [the] embrace is, in a sense, already a beginning of an embrace” and others can continue to be invited in.
This image of embrace, the opening of arms around all who need and desire our love, is what lies behind Jesus’ vision for our voyage. Let’s keep walking, keep marching in step with the Spirit, until we live consistently in that space.
