Digging In

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Luke 10:25-37

Well, I warned you all last week about how important Methodism is to me. More specifically, Methodist history is a big part of who I am and what I do. Some of you may know that I currently serve as the chair of the Upper New York Commission on Archives and History, and as a board member of the General Commission on Archives and History. But you might not know that I also spent more than a year volunteering at the United Methodist Archives at Drew University, and I have co-taught a course for the Upper New York Local Pastor Licensing School on United Methodist History. So, if you’re not a history person…well, I’m not going to say that I’m sorry, but I will warn you now that I like to sprinkle in stories from our ancestors of faith every now and then. 

One of the stories that even the most devout and serious Methodists don’t always know is about a man named William Morgan. William Morgan was a member of the Holy Club, the student group led by John and Charles Wesley at Oxford that became the first Methodists. This group started out looking like many other campus ministries. The students would meet up frequently, study the scriptures, take communion as often as they could, talk about their faith, and fast regularly. Ok, so maybe the fasting part isn’t typical in a campus ministry nowadays, but the rest seems pretty standard. Anyway, William Morgan thought this was all great, but he wanted the Holy Club to do more for the community outside the university. So after weeks of prodding John and Charles, William Morgan was finally able to convince them to go with him to visit some people who were incarcerated in debtors’ prison. He dragged them along with him and…it went great. The Wesleys kept going back to visit the inmates at least once a week, and started raising funds to help those in debt get out of prison. Then, William Morgan realized he was onto something. So he took the Wesleys to visit a group of orphans that he had been educating and taking care of. And the Wesleys started to spend part of each week with the orphans—tutoring them, feeding them, and even hiring a caretaker for them. Her name was Mrs. Plat. 

It got to the point where the entire Holy Club, not just William and the Wesleys, was spending a good portion of their time together each week with those on the margins—the orphans, the incarcerated, the elderly shut-ins. This became an integral part of who the Methodists were and how they lived their theology. I touched on this last week, when I talked about social action as a part of the Methodist theology of connection. And it all started when this man, William Morgan, took John and Charles to meet the people who had been forgotten or ignored by the rest of their society. It all started when they stopped crossing the street, and started acting like neighbors to those lying beaten in the gutter.

That’s not always an easy thing to do. It takes a conscious effort on our part to go out and meet the marginalized in our communities, especially since we have been so deeply conditioned to avoid eye contact and to not respond when we notice people sitting on the sidewalk or walking towards us while we’re stopped at an intersection. We keep our eyes pointed straight ahead, keep our windows rolled up, and keep on minding our own business. And even if we do stop to give someone a dollar, do you ask them their name? The disconnection in the world feeds and is fed by the distance that we put between us and others. Distance going back decades, created by white flight, the interstate system, and the rise of individual transportation as a replacement for mass transportation.  We, as a society, have made it so much easier to cross the street, to keep our eyes fixed straight ahead, and to keep on walking—even while others lie bleeding in the gutter. 

But, we watch the news. We stay up to date on the issues, who’s doing what, what the statistics are. But if that’s all we’re doing, just watching from afar while asking God, “who will go and do it for us, who will cross the sea for us—who will dig in, get closer, and make a difference?” Then we’re only halfway there. While we’re looking far away for answers and solutions, God tells us that they’re right here. The way to fulfill God’s call for us to live out our love for God and neighbor, which is all one and the same, is to look closer and to step closer. Surely that’s not too hard for us, nor is it too far away. There are people right here in Fairport, right here in Rochester who have been left in the gutter, those whom the institutional leaders seem comfortable passing by. Our call is to be different. Our call is to see each person at the margins not as a project or a person that we can save, but as those for whom we can be neighbors. And that starts with getting closer.

Because that’s what Christ is. Christ, the divine incarnate, is the God made real to us by getting closer to us. By taking on a human body, talking with people—with women, children, lepers, with criminals, and even the imperial occupiers. By experiencing anger, love, exhaustion, and even grief at the loss of a friend. By sharing the experience of working really hard at something and feeling like no one is listening to you and you haven’t really accomplished anything. And, ultimately, by being stripped, publicly humiliated, beaten, and left for dead. Christ is God, our neighbor, whose love for us is so great that it moved God to see those in the gutter and cross over to help. And, in so doing, provided us with the moral example, and the clarification that to fulfill the ancient commandment to love God with all of our heart and soul is to love your neighbor, and to love your neighbor requires you to go and be a neighbor. It requires us to get in closer, to build relationships. Because “neighbor” isn’t just defined by proximity. But it’s not, not defined by proximity either. It’s about standing with. 

I would be remiss this morning if I did not mention Rochester Pride, which, as I mentioned in the announcements, is coming up this Saturday. As an aside, could someone explain to me after the service why Rochester Pride is in July and not June? Was there just a scheduling conflict with the entire month of June or is there some local history I’m not keyed into? I’d really appreciate that. While today Pride is largely seen as a celebration of community and identity, it has always been an act of neighborliness. It is an act of solidarity within the queer and trans communities, and also between allies and members of the community. It’s an organized way of showing up for those who have been and are currently being beaten, humiliated, and left lying in the gutter—whether by their family situations or by social and political violence. It’s a way for those who are queer, and especially those who are not, to break their stride and get down in the gutter. It’s a way for us to get closer, and to act a little more like neighbors.

So, how are you going to neighbor this week? How are you going to love your neighbor, to get to know your neighbor? How are you going to build those relationships, not as some salvific figure, but as one seeking true solidarity? Listen to the pestering of William Morgan—visit the incarcerated, the homebound, the orphaned. Connect with refugees and immigrants. Go to Pride! Allow yourself to be impacted by the hurt around you. Get in close, and dig deeper. As Christ has done for us, may we go and do likewise. Amen.