Love Other People
Love Other People
Romans 13:8-10
“You shall love…” There are a lot of things that I love about summer. I love vacation in Ely—fishing and swimming and taking long, hot saunas with friends. I love Lake Bluff’s fun events: the 4th of July parade and watching the lawn mowers and the Lake Forest High School pom team mix it up in the church parking lot before the parade. I love the bike races and sitting outside at Inovasi for a nice dinner. I love worshiping outside together. Back in the day, I even loved taking the kids, when they were little, to the pool.
This summer, everything is different. We talked last week about how important it is to acknowledge these differences and then somehow let go of those frustrations. We have to forgive the summer for not being what we thought it was going to be. Then, we need to take up the task of asking ourselves, what can it be instead. If I can’t fish in Ely, where can I fish? You get my drift.
If we are to see the possibilities and not just the losses then we need to name what it is that those missing experiences contained for us us, what we loved about them. For example, the fishing really isn’t about catching the fish. It’s more about being out in nature, watching the birds, remembering how large and amazing nature really is. What are the other ways that I might find that connection to nature? A lot of what I love about summer is taking the time to laugh and enjoy life and relax with friends. How can that still happen, even in a pandemic? Summer is a time of renewal. It’s probably not a great plan to get to September and not have found some new ways to be renewed.
The most complex missing piece of summer for me is the missing work trip. Today is the day when I normally would be standing here, exhausted from the trip. The tools would be back in the shed. The vans would be returned. The back of the church would be full of all the sleeping bags and water bottles and sweatshirts and hats that the kids abandoned in their zombie-like walk from their vans to their parents’ cars. In my slightly crosseyed and wobbly state, I would work my way through worship and then go home and collapse—but I would be thinking, “I loved that trip!”
Of course, what I miss standing here today in the absence of a work trip is not the tiredness but the incredible sense of renewal that is always there. Everyone always makes fun out of me because I say the same things every year: that had to be the best group of kids ever; those adults were so committed and so much fun; the folks we met are people that I will never forget. My first work trip was in 1985—35 years ago. There was only one year when I didn’t go on a trip—Tracy was working in a church and I was in graduate school. For seven of the years, I did two trips a year. If I’m doing the math correctly, that means I’ve been on forty trips. I’ve said quite seriously that if I could go on work trip for a year, I would. That goal is getting closer to a reality every year. Some of those trips have been harder than others but I can honestly say that I have never come back not feeling like my faith had been renewed. I’d like to talk to you about why that’s the case.
Work trips don’t just happen. They start to get planned almost as soon as we return from the previous trip. Where should we go next year? How big will the group be? Who will are adults be and what’s their skill set? What kind of new projects would we like to take on? What would we do differently? What did we learn that we want to bring with us next year?
The work trip really gets rolling in April. Conversations will have happened prior to that with contacts wherever we are going about the kind of projects they might have and how those might fit with our skills. However, it’s when we put out the word to the adults about the scouting trip for picking work sites and we set those dates. that things get real. Will our contact have the sites ready for us to look at? How will the adults feel about the possibilities? How can I keep these folks happy on this trip and help them feel appreciated for giving us this time? People are committing.
What this early visit boils down to, though, is people meeting people, and not the people they usually meet. Last year was our first year in Kentucky. The person who I thought was going to be our contact, whom I had not met in person, turned out to not be all that on top of things. (He just had a lot on his plate.) However, the incredibly important thing that he did that never would have happened without him was that he introduced us to the guy we really needed to meet…who’s name was, “Guy!” He was a former Jesuit priest who was now married with kids and grandkids. He also happened to be the former head of Habitat for Humanity in the county! (Yahtzee!) And, he almost instantly became both a partner in a great theological conversation and a guide to meeting those in need. 40 work trips have told me that you have to always be ready to roll with things because eventually you will meet the guy who you need to meet and his name might just be Guy! There’s my plan for things and then there’s the way things are going to actually work. Always go with the way things are going to work!
Even at this point, amazing things are happening because strangers who have never met each other are making a shared commitment to do something good. People are starting to care about people they otherwise never would have met. You stand there and think, “I don’t really know you but, in my heart, of course, I know you because I can see how good hearted you are!” Trust gets built. Plans are created. Stories get traded. (In Missouri, where my colleague, Marsha, is our contact, we are so different that she always has a firearm along with her and, knowing how uncomfortable this makes me, she usually makes sure to flash it at me at some point in our day!) Even if the only thing we have in common is the desire to help someone else, that’s enough, that’s the foundation!
Here’s the thing: if you set out to help your neighbor, God will help you—sometimes in amazing ways! I remember when we were building a chapel in Missouri—the biggest project we ever took on. The building was designed by high school students in their architectural drawing class but they made a mess of the stairs going down to the basement. We needed a solution. My co-leader and I were driving across the Missouri countryside when we saw a set of circular steel stairs at a junkyard. We slammed on the brakes, ran inside, and asked the guy how much he wanted for them. He said, “They’re yours free if you can get them out of here.” The next day, the Missouri National Guard showed up, told us they loved what we were doing, and asked if we needed any help. “How do you guys feel about moving a circular stair case?” That’s how work trip works. Start doing loving thing for your neighbor and get ready for some jaw-dropping things to happen!
The next amazing moments are when we walk up to the folks whose homes we might work on. Remember, these are folks who don’t have much. They are also folks who have been taken advantage of in life many times over. If ever there were people who ought to be suspicious of some red faced, bald guy from Chicago walking up to them and offering help, these are the people. I learned from an amazing guy to ignore he awkwardness of that moment and walk up and look that person in the eye and extend my hand and say, “Hey there…I’m Mark.” (The hand thing was called a “hand shake,” something we used to do, back in the day.)
The amazing thing that happens in that moment almost every time, something which is at least as miraculous as finding a circular staircase, is that trust is built. Part of this trust is built on doing everything I can to show them that however humble their place might be, I recognize that it is their home. Part of that trust is usually built, too, in finding something to laugh about together. However, the moment when the person honestly shares how we can make their life a little better (an enclosed deck so her husband who has dementia issues can be outside but not escape) and we answer, “We can do that!” hope comes to life. Then, when we get back in the car the conversation starts that will continue for the next few months: “How the heck are we going to ever do that? What are the problems we could run into? What are the tools we need?”
When we meet those people, we are thinking about how strange they seem and how sad their place in the world is. The moment they meet us, they are thinking, “Who are these guys from Chicago? What’s their deal? Are they pulling something over on me?” Then, when respect and possibilities and plans begin to be made, all that discomfort is over. Everyone is led to care for people who are not like us. Everyone is invited to see that if you get close, you might even end up liking folks who, if you met them under other circumstances, you might not like at all or they might not really like you. The willingness to serve—to make yourself available—to love your neighbor—can lead to the most incredible relationships with people whom you otherwise never would have ever known!
What’s going on here? I think the work trip is this amazing experience of people doing their best to love one another. Someone I was reading this week said that, “The world has grown tired of Christians who love Jesus but don’t seem to love anyone else.” I think the world is only slightly less tired of Christians who love Jesus and are also only willing to love people who are exactly like themselves. Work trip is almost like throwing a dart at a map of the United States and saying, “Wherever it lands there will be needs and we’re going wherever those needs are. Here’s what I guarantee, by the time we leave, we will have made a few things better and we will have a whole new set of friends.” That’s how God works when we are willing to remember that wherever we go, God will already be there and whoever we meet, we’re there to help them and eventually come to love them as fellow children of God.
Of course, this happens inside the group, too. Youth who sort of know each other really get to know each other. People who might never spend time together at school spend a lot of time together and find out they not only like each other but they can depend on each other. The same thing is happening for the adults, too. People who occasionally said, “Hello” at coffee hour, are now saying, “How in the world did we ever get that beam in place?” Youth and adults make themselves available to help and all of a sudden, not only do they feel connected to each other, but being a part of the church makes sense in a much deeper way.
Here is the thing: work trip is not the only place for this to happen. It can happen any time people are willing to take the risk of trying to help someone else. It happens, in the words of our text, whenever we love our neighbors, though maybe it’s most likely to happen so strikingly when we break out of our bubbles and help the neighbors who are not like us or maybe don’t even like us all that much at the start. The bigger the risk, the bigger the return.
So, we take food and send money to Next Ministry in the city. We take hygiene products and send money to the west side in Garfield Park. We support the Cool Food Pantry and a Safe Place and The Christian Neighbors Church Food Boxes in the hope that without a work trip this year, what’s happening is the next, best thing! And in the back of our minds we think, “I can’t wait until it’s time for Work Trip 2021!