On the Death of a Neighbor

On the Death of a Neighbor--July 2, 2019

[Paul said to the Athenians] "The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps find him--though indeed he is not far from each of us. For 'in him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stoen, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals." [Acts 17:24-29]

I don't know a better way to word this, so I will just say it.  A man died this afternoon, just behind the church building where I work.  

In fact, mere yards away from the office desk at which I sit and write, even though a wall blocks my line of sight to have seen it happen. I don't know that much detail will be very helpful or necessary, other than to say he was a pedestrian apparently walking down the back alley of our town, as many people do, and that by chance a member of the church stopped by on an errand, saw the gentleman, noticed that he did not respond to a greeting, and from there we called 911 but were too late to be of any help.  He was out of my view when he stopped, and he was gone before any bystander or first responder could be of assistance.

It is difficult, in a moment like this, to make sense of what seems to be the cruelty of chance and the way something so sad can happen in a place and time that seem random and wrong.  There is never a good time, perhaps, to witness death.  But the years teach us at least to be more prepared for it to happen in hospitals, or surrounded by loved ones, or on battlefields.  It is no less sorrowful when death comes to those places, but we learn at least not to be caught off guard by it in those places.  The sunny back alley of a quiet town under blue skies seems like the kind of place that should be safe from the touch of death.

As a follower of Jesus, I cannot help in this moment, so soon after such a jarring turn of events, to hear the echo of the story we call the Good Samaritan, about a man laying at the side of the road who is in need.  And while I know that there is no "fault" here--that no one walked past our neighbor and ignored him like the priest and the Levite in Jesus' parable--there is some part of me that cannot shake the feeling that there should have been a way to make this story end happily.  I wish for there to have been a way I could have known to look out a different window and see this passing pedestrian, so that I could have offered a bottle of water, or at least said hello, and then seen his need.  I wish I might have been pulling in to the church an hour later than I had, so that I might have been outside as he was passing by.  I wish for any of a hundred different ways this could have played out, and the man at the side of the road might have been made well.  

But I do not have that power.  And I think one of the most humbling things that faith in Jesus does to us is to bring us face to face with how little control we have over the world, ourselves included.  We are tempted, I think, by the limited number of stories we have in our Scriptures, to think that there is always a way for things to work out with a happy ending.  We want to think, because a kind-hearted migrant foreigner shows up in Jesus' story to save the day, that in every situation, there will be a solution so that there are no tears.  But that was never the promise.  And that was never the point of Jesus' story.  There are times, indeed, in which all we can do is to lament--to grieve the loss of any life, to honor the inherent value of each person, and to commend every human being into the hands of a God who is known for surprising mercy.

The man who died behind the church today was a stranger to me, but Jesus has taught me that he is also a neighbor, because all people are my neighbors.  And even though my professional life regularly requires me to speak out loud the stories and memories of those whom I have known at the time of their deaths, on this day, I am brought face to face with the death of someone whose story I do not know... and yet to grieve his passing from this life nevertheless.

Like the old poem of John Donne's observes, "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.  Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."  Donne, of course, is only rephrasing what the Scriptures have been telling us for thousands of years, and what even more ancient voices were saying in other cultures, too.  We share something in our common humanity that makes each of us, every last one of us, precious and worthy of honor, dignity, and respect.  Anyone's death, Donne reminds us, diminishes each of us.  And as Paul put it, speaking to his audience in Athens, all humanity is endowed with life and breath by God, and in fact each of us lives and moves and has our being within the presence and being of God.  Every nation, every people, every nationality, every language, every social status, political leaning, gender, race, sexuality, and tax bracket is a part of the whole of humanity which God so loves.

That means, among other things, that every life is worthy of honoring, of grieving, and of regarding as precious.  Our neighbor walking behind the church--he was and is precious to the living God.  The father and daughter who drowned trying to cross the southern border into the United States late last week--they were and are precious to the living God.  The baby who is delivered without breath and buried by grieving parents--is precious to the living God.  Those whom I know and hold dear personally, and those who are strangers to me but are beloved by the living God--these are all precious.  Even those I most despise, those I most fear, and those I most regard as enemies, they are precious in the sight of God.  

Sometimes there is nothing more I can do with that preciousness than to honor a life, whether I knew the person or not, and commend into God's hand the stranger I could not save or help or heal.  Sometimes there are things I can do with my time and my energy and my voice and my resources, so that others who are beloved of God will be treated with respect and dignity and love.  And in those moments, to do nothing is to disregard the Scriptures' clear teaching that all of us are made by God and of infinite worth.  The fact that sometimes I can do nothing does not let me off the hook for the times I can do something; and the fact that sometimes I can be of help to a neighbor does not let me off the hook for facing the times when I could have done nothing to make a difference.  This is the world we live in--where we can be of aid to a neighbor, we are called to be.  And where we can only grieve for neighbors we could not help, we are called to honor their lives, whether we knew them or not, whether they were "like us" enough or not, and whether it is easy or not.

Today, I am resolved to keep my eyes open, to look around corners I would not otherwise have paid attention to, and to keep my attention from getting tethered to small screens or stuck in my own little world.  That is because God has filled my world with neighbors, and it is the least I can do in this world God has made to see and to love the neighbors God has put in my path.  Each one, after all, is precious.

Lord God, open my eyes to see and to honor and to love the neighbors around me, for we all bear your likeness.