SUNDAY SERVICES:

Did you grow up on Sesame Street like I did?  Then perhaps you too know the song:

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day

It’s an outdated song because we don’t meet the people in our neighborhood each day.

At least I don’t.

I live in Winter Springs Village.  It has green spaces, a community pool and mailbox area, and front porches on every house.  My family has the smaller sized home—a bungalow—and our houses sits on a zero lot line.  That means I can almost reach out and touch my neighbor’s house.

And I still don’t know my neighbors.

We live in an age of looking down at our phones, electric garage door openers, and minding our own business.  Gone is the neighborhood economy (“May I borrow X?”) and the front porch leisure while kids play on the sidewalk.  With the pandemic, talking to strangers is more than odd—it’s hazardous.  

Is this a problem?  Not for some, but it is for me.

Because God tells me to love my neighbor.  

“And Who is my neighbor?”

WHY DOES HE DO IT?

Two days a week, our trash goes out to the side of the road. On one of those days the recyclable containers are added. Once the cans are out, they are forgotten, even if the big noisy collection truck is heard.

Later in the day, the emptied cans appear near our garage. Who brings them up?

It has to be one of our neighbors.

Resurrection reactions move from fright to frivolity, or we might say from fear to freedom, for the disciples.  The death of Jesus shattered the community of followers.  They were fearful.  

‘Strike the shepherd and the sheep scatter,’ as the prophet says.  

Hiding, gathering in secret places...in the minds of the disciples the death of Jesus not only ended his physical life but murdered the truth he believed in. 

In one final stroke the cross poses the ultimate religious question, which throughout his life Jesus had witnessed to!  

“Can the last power of life be gracious if this man is crucified?”  

Was the joyous confidence which characterized Jesus merely whistling in the dark?  

Was Jesus Wrong?

Was he wrong?  Does the sparrow fall and no one cares?  Are the hairs of our heads left uncounted?  What manner of love allows this? Pilate dies in his bed and Jesus is nailed to the wood?  

“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” is not only the taunt of the high priest but the deepest question of the disciples.