Untitled Episode

You should not be able to justify.

You shall not be part of the four or the first three.

With justice, you shall judge your neighbor.

You shall not go around slander among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor.

I am the Lord.

You shall not hate in your heart any one of your kin.

You shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

This is the word of God.

Until I lay my head, oh I will speak of the goodness of God.

Until my life you have been faithful.

Until my life you have been so so good with every breath that I am able, I will see of a goodness of God.

I love your voice.

You have led me through the fire, and in the darkest nights, you are ghosts like no other.

I've known you as a father, I've known you as a friend, and I have lived in the goodness of God And all my life you have been faithful and all my life you have been so so without the bathroom Oh I will sing of the goodness of God.

It's running after you're Godness with running after it's running after my God's run down to run enough to drawn enough to meet all my life you have been faithful Until my life you have been so gone with every breath that I am able Oh I will sing of the goodness of God Oh I will sing of the goodness of God's gospel lesson comes to us from Matthew Matthew the twenty-second verse beginning with the thirty twenty-second chapter beginning with the thirty-fourth verse.

Let us listen to the word of God.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test Jesus.

He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the greatest and first commandment.

And the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

This is the word of the Lord.

Our gospel text in Matthew, Jesus tells us the two greatest commandments.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

And the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, when I think about neighbors, often the first thing that comes to mind is Mr.

Rogers' neighborhood.

But since I talked about him last week, I decided I better think of some other neighbors.

Another interesting neighbor that came to mind was when I was in middle school.

Our family watched a 90s sitcom called Home Improvement.

It was with Tim Allen, who was known as Tim the Tool Man Taylor.

He was a family man with children my age and the host of a show called Tool Time.

Where he and his co-host Al did some home improvement projects.

And of course, he always wanted to upgrade things with more power.

Yes, he'd start grunting, ho ho ho ho.

And then everyone on the whole audience would grunt too, ho ho ho ho.

Now, Tim the toolman tailor wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

He'd always run into trouble, adding too much power.

Things would go awry with his wife or the kids.

And eventually, Tim would be in his backyard, and we'd hear from over the fence, Heidi Ho neighbor.

That's the neighbor I remember, Wilson.

Now, this Wilson is not to be confused with Dennis the Menace's neighbor, Mr.

Wilson, who was always cranky and upset and annoyed with Dennis.

This Wilson's face was always cleverly hidden by a fence or a plant or something.

The whole eight years, you never saw his face.

And Wilson was a good, kind, and thoughtful neighbor.

He'd listen to Tim's woes and share some wise philosophical advice.

There's this one time that Tim shared about his terrible day to Wilson.

I yelled at my wife, I insulted Al, his co-worker, I knocked a guest out on my show with a four by eight.

And the guest wasn't just any guest, it was Bob Vila, the pioneer of home repair.

And Tim asked, Why does everyone think he knows more about tools than I do?

Wilson helps him get to the root of the problem by asking, well, does he?

Yeah, Tim admits.

You see, Tim, a truly wise man always has more questions than answers.

Tim cleverly asks, so would that make me wiser than you, Wilson?

What do you think, Tim?

It's nice to have a good next door neighbor like Wilson.

But in our story, Jesus, religious leaders, neighbors are putting him to the test.

And he asks Jesus, which commandment in the law is the greatest?

It's a tricky question because there are so many laws.

After Jesus tells them that we're to love God with everything we've got, he gives them the second greatest commandment.

And it isn't any one of the Ten Commandments.

Instead, it's hidden in a long list of laws in Leviticus 19, the second half of verse 18.

Loving God, loving neighbor aren't paired in any of the laws until right now, when Jesus certainly surprises this lawyer.

And then Jesus closes by saying, On these two commandments, hang all the laws and the prophets.

Basically, Jesus summarizes the entire Old Testament laws into two.

To love God and to love neighborhood.

They don't always live next door.

Our neighbors are all around us in the comfortable places and the uncomfortable places.

Our neighbors are in the country club and in the beecher high rises.

They're millennials and boomers.

They're rich and poor.

Republicans and Democrats.

MAGA and liberal, religious and atheist.

And the challenging part is that we're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And while we get the concept, sometimes it's a bit hard to pull off.

Especially when things feel and are so divisive these days.

While Michael was writing music for his new solo album, he had the news on, and he was and he saw how gang violence in his own city was tearing people apart.

Not only did he say that music breaks all language barriers, but he decided to do something different for his 1983 Beat It music video.

He insisted on hiring members of rival Bloods and Crips Street Gangs.

And then when CBS refused to finance it, he paid for it.

It was filmed on Los Angeles' Skid Row, and his music brought together 80 rival gang members.

At the end of the music video, Jackson's presence and the shared focus of the choreography united opposing factions into a single circle for the final sequence.

No longer.

They were together.

And Michael and Jackson crew music and dance can bring neighbors of all time.

Opposing sides together.

Now our backpack tags don't say beat it.

Or they don't say heidi ho neighbor.

Instead they say you and me.

We're neighbors.

They're supposed to remind students and teachers, the people that we see in the halls or in class, that we're all neighbors.

One pastor explains how how we immense ourselves, how we immerse ourselves with our neighbors like divers.

Breaking the surface and peer into the wonders of a thriving coral reef.

He says, only so much can be gleamed by observing from the boat, and much of what is seen from that outsider vantage point is either veiled by indulating waters or distorted by refracted light at the surface and below.

But when divers plunge under the surface and join in the dance of marine life occurring everywhere above and within the jagged contours of the reef, they become not only observers, they become participant observers.

This means they enter into a posture of active absorption where the live data of their surroundings allow to soak into their awareness and they probe and they poke and they literally swim in the same water as the life forms that they're observing do.

We're not called to just be observers.

We're called to go deeper.

And in order to love our neighbors, we have to find ways to connect with them.

We need to enter into a posture of active absorption, poking, probing, literally swimming in the same water as our neighbors.

In the book Growing Local Missionaries, uh pastor gives a few tips on how to connect with our neighbors.

We found this makes a dramatic difference in the way people perceive our commitment to being in relationship with them.

It only takes a few times of saying no before people will stop inviting you because they think you're not interested.

Then he says another tip is to do a quick analysis of how much time we spend watching TV, surfing the internet, or reading.

And we give 30% of that time to be with or help another person.

Jesus tells us that loving God and loving neighbor is what all the laws hang on.

So that means they are important.

It's not just a church community, it's connecting with all of our neighbors.

So then these backpack tags actually are daily reminders that we need to be community.

When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, it means we have to get out of our house.

It means we have to get out of our comfort zone.

It means we have to find ways to make human connections.

It means if a student invites you to come to a game or to see their show, we need to say yes because they might not ask us again.

It's not just students, it might be a friend or a stranger who invites you to something.

So that's our challenge this upcoming school year to be creative and making connections and to help us love our neighbors.

And here's just a few ideas to get you started.

Spend some time with a friend who is having a rough week.

Take your kids to a park or a playground where there are other families to build friendships with.

Help a neighbor with a project or a tour.

Use a hobby or personal interest to find a way to make a new relationship.

Infine others to join a personal or family meal.

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Our phone is 217-245-4189.

You can contact our secretary there between the hours of 9 a.m.

and 4 p.m.

Monday through Friday.

Our email is office at firstfresjax.org.

That's office at F-I-R-S-T-P-R-E-S J A S.org.

Now our in-person church services start at 10 a.m.

on Sunday.

Access to our online church service starts at 9.55 a.m.

You can listen to these live services on our Facebook page, which is www.facebook.com slash first F I R S T P-R-E-S-JAX.

We have a choir that meets from 7 to 8 p.m.

every Thursday night, and we welcome all who are willing to sing.

We look forward to hearing from you either by email, mail, or phone.

God bless, and may you have a peaceful and safe year.