Not Enough Like Me

"Love your neighbor as yourself."  If you're Christian, and even if you're not, you're likely familiar with this command.  Jesus says that loving God with our entire being and loving our neighbor as ourselves pretty much covers it all.  Do these, and everything else falls into place.  And so as a pastor, I encourage people to love their neighbors, to love one another. But at the very same time, I have to admit that I often struggle to love some folks.

It's all their fault of course.  They are mean, or troublesome, or hateful, or manipulative, or controlling, or strange, or stupid, or hold political views I find repugnant, or some other thing that bothers me.  I'd be happy to love them, but they make it very difficult.  I'm all ready to love them, but their behavior, demeanor, beliefs, or plain oddness prevents me.

In today's passage from Acts, the Ethiopian eunuch asks a simple question.  "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" But in the time these words were written, most everyone who read them would have known precisely what. And they were huge barriers.  The man was a Gentile to begin with, a big obstacle though not necessarily an insurmountable one.  But he was also a eunuch, and Scripture was clear that eunuchs weren't allowed.

I have to think that the very first time the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch was read in a church gathering, some members got upset, maybe even thought about leaving. It had been one thing to hear about Jesus telling them to love their neighbor and even to love their enemy.  But that was all a bit esoteric.  This was a concrete example of reaching out to embrace someone who didn't fit, who didn't belong.  But the normal thinking that should have prevented Philip from loving this fellow didn't work as it was supposed to. Philip loved him even though he shouldn't have.

The other day I was thinking about the people I follow on Twitter, and the huge majority of the them are either folks I find entertaining, or that I find it easy to like. I don't follow many folks who are significantly different from me, whose politics I don't like, or who say things that upset me.  Nothing strange about that, I suppose. But this little, virtual community is a lot like real ones, a lot like many church  congregations.  Churches are often filled with people who find it easy to like or love one another.  And so churches are often segregated along political, economic, social, and racial lines.  Our unity is not in Christ, but in other things that make is easy for us to get along.  Often we form faith communities with people whose looks, politics, tastes, etc. don't prevent us from loving them.

American individualism combined with consumerism helps produce a religious climate where people of faith "church shop," looking of a community that fits their tastes, needs, wants, and desires.  We're so used to this that we scarcely think about it. But it is a bit hard to reconcile with "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

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