Rector's Blog: Who Is My Neighbor?
Who is my neighbor?
What is happening in Madisonville?
Why does it matter to Church of the Redeemer?
What is your part in it?
When Jesus is asked who is my neighbor, his response, stripped down and made plain, is really, “Whoever is right in front of you.” That’s it. If you’re looking at someone – even if for the first time or possibly the last – you belong to each other, and your interaction is meant to be neighborly. It has the capacity to be holy.
Three years in, I’m still the new kid in Cincinnati, but I have noticed some things about the way people here understand who their neighbor is. This city has a history of thick lines between its distinct neighborhoods. Sometimes the neighborhoods are segregated by skin color, other times by socio-economic status; historically, some of the neighborhood distinctions have been religious. So, historically, the person right in front of you in Cincinnati probably looked like you, talked like you, acted like you, spent and saved like you, and probably prayed and voted like you.
This, of course, is still too often the case. We tend to be provincial, and we still do not resemble the vast diversity and harmonious interaction of God’s Kingdom. But it’s worth noting that the lines between the neighborhoods are not what they once were. While each is distinct, people live and move and have their being across many neighborhoods, having churches, jobs, friendships, and nights out across the whole city. Stripped down and made plain this means we are looking at different people and we are starting to have new neighbors.
Our church fits this pattern. Redeemer is the Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, and it carries with it the history and reputation that go with that. But a quick look at our membership points to people joining together from across a wide array of neighborhoods. We may be located in Hyde Park, but we are composed of people from Madisonville and Oakely, Norwood and Columbia Tusculum, Mt. Lookout and Mt. Washington, Clifton, Evendale, and Blue Ash. And I would be remiss if I did not mention our beloved in Kentucky. Who we call neighbor has shifted. It’s important that we acknowledge this and live more intentionally into that reality.
As I type this, I’m thinking in particular of the neighborhood of Madisonville. Redeemer often thinks of Madisonville as the location of specific mission and outreach partnerships - MEAC is chief among them. Sometimes I hear people talk about Madisonville as if it’s way out there or that our mission partnerships are a matter of us helping them rather than our shared work. And now we are all witnessing the gentrification of Madisonville. And we ask, “I wonder what they will do about that?"
If we are serious about obeying God’s command to Love our Neighbor – we will have to expand our understanding of who are neighbors are. We will have to redefine the borders of our friendships and lives. We will have to take seriously that we belong to the person right in front of us, that they belong to us. And we will have to re-frame our perspective of how we live into that belonging, in Jesus’ name.
Madisonville is our neighborhood. It’s not next to our neighborhood, it’s not down the street from our neighborhood: It is part of Redeemer, and Redeemer is part of Madisonville. What happens in Madisonville is happening to Redeemer. It is our intention that our life, love, mission, and ministry reflect that reality.
