“How To Deal With An Annoying Neighbor”
Luke 10:25-37
July 15, 2007

Late on the evening of July Fourth Jacob Feichterner and his friends were celebrating Independence Day with fireworks in the driveway.

Ten minutes after midnight, Jacob's next-door neighbor and Cleveland firefighter Terrance Hough Jr. walked out of his house with a .40-caliber handgun and blasted away.  According to police, Hough shot Jacob in the chest. Hough shot Bruce Anderson and Katie Rosby in the back.  Bruce and Katie did not live there. They were just visiting.  Hough wounded two others.

Police had received a number of complaints in recent years about loud parties, fireworks and drag racing connected to the house where the victims were shot, police said.  Some complaint calls came from Hough's address, but no one called police about the party Thursday night.

How do you handle an annoying neighbor?  Not this way.  Not at all.  Mohandas Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.” 

If not through raw, vengeful violence, then how do you handle an annoying neighbor?  The question is absolutely legitimate because each and every one of us knows the annoyance of  living next to bad neighbors as well as the futility of trying to be good neighbors.  Whether it's the people upstairs who play their music too loud or clomp around as if they wear clogs on their feet, or the next door neighbor who refuses to pick up after her dog relieves itself on your lawn, or the neighbor down the street who defiantly puts up a Confederate flag above his front porch.  We can pound the ceiling with a broomstick, call the police non-emergency number, write our city councilperson only so many times before the frustration level peaks and we're thinking violent thoughts.

Please hear me out: there is nothing in what I say today that in any way, shape, or form excuses what Terrance Hough, Jr. did, for it was murder and there is never anything that excuses murder.  Never.

I do think that it is important for us to take what happened that evening and explore it more for two very good reasons.  First, because it touches a nerve in almost all of us who have had to live next to someone else.  Second, because the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to understand exactly who our neighbor is, and how we are to act towards her or him.

I swear I did not pick today's gospel reading out in order to pontificate on neighborliness.  The story of the Good Samaritan is the assigned gospel reading for today, Sunday, July 15, 2007.  I also swear by the belief that the Holy Spirit is active and clever in helping us to deepen our spiritual journeys… if we are but aware of the Spirit's presence and leading.

We know the story, told often and lifted up in song and stained glass window.  A man is on the road.  He is attacked and beaten by robbers.  Two persons who were not only capable of helping, but who were generally expected to be the helping kind, walked past the injured man.  Another person, generally not expected to offer help because of cultural and religious disparities, stopped and helped the man.  All of this within a conversation between Jesus and a religious lawyer who asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Now, we've studied parables enough around here to know that looking on the surface for answers is not what Jesus is calling us to do.  So, if we simply answer the lawyer's question with “Barb, Rick and their girls to the west… Bea to the north, and Jim to the east…” then we will be given a failing grade by the master.  Likewise, if we interpret this story as simply telling us to be nicer to people we pass on the street, we will be sent back to do the assignment again.  Rather, we must look deeper for truths that actually make a difference in our lives, and resound with the profound wisdom of God.

Who is your neighbor?  Who is my neighbor?  Over the summer I have been reading a fascinating book, “Sidewalks In The Kingdom: New Urbanism And The Christian Faith” by Eric O. Jacobsen.  In it, Jacobsen explores the power and potential of cities and how cities may or may not reflect the values we as people of faith promote.  I do not agree with every point the author makes, but I can assure you this book, along with the experience I had at the City Of God conference in Washington, D.C. earlier in June have had an intense and lasting affect on me and how I want to shape my ministry here at Franklin Circle Christian Church.  Which is another way of saying that I am acutely aware of the working of the Holy Spirit in my life this summer, and how God is transforming me into the leader God yearns for me to be.

The chapter I just finished this week was titled, “Strangers And Hospitality.”  In it, Jacobsen asserts that a city, and by this he means a healthy city, “is a place where it is acceptable to be a stranger.”  In an odd sort of way, his discussion of how we treat those who are unknown to us, those who are different from us, those who act in ways unfamiliar to us, is also a conversation about how we treat those who are known to us, similar to us, and act much like we do. (1)

Jacobsen offers three character traits that have been dulled in recent decades in our cities, and encourages us to nurture them so that we might again understand and appreciate how, in the words of a poster I had on my bedroom wall in high school, “A stranger is a friend you just haven't yet met!”

The first trait is civility, which is defined as a formal politeness that results from observing social customs.  In short, civility is the art of being polite, and few of us could disagree that politeness is an all-but-lost art.  I would concur with Jacobsen that one of the chief culprits of this loss of civility is the automobile-oriented culture, which reduces the personal contact we have with neighbor and stranger alike, and the primary solution is walking.  He suggests, “while it may seem a laughably small place to start, one place to begin increasing the safety of our cities may be in the simple act of relearning the practice of civility.” (2)

The second trait we can practice that will enhance our interactions with neighbors and strangers is, simply, “neighborliness.”  “By getting to know our neighbors and being conscious of our role as neighbor,” Jacobsen writes, “we lessen the territory in which we are vulnerable to the potential danger posed by the stranger.” (3)  He stresses that we cannot be “polyannish” about this, nor should we do this strictly out of fear nor crass self-protection, but getting to know our neighbors is a fundamental step to treating the stranger in the way Christ would have us. 

The third trait the author encourages us to nurture is the desire and ability to see the inherent worth in every human being.  Our culture drives us to see people for their value in terms of market share and productive value.  What economic value does a person have.  This marginalizes many people, including those who are poor, young people, and old people.  One can see this in how many cities relegate these folks to the margins of the community, or concentrate them in the smallest possible area.  Rather, we absolutely must stand up and demand that our civic leaders value all people simply as sisters and brothers, and give them the dignity and respect all of us deserve.

Civility, neighborliness, and inherent worth are not magical qualities.  I cannot stand here before you and say to you that any one nor all three qualities would have kept Terrence Hough, Jr. from shooting his unruly neighbors the night of July 4th.  It would be ridiculous for me to imply that simply “being a good neighbor” would have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from going on a killing rampage at Virginia Tech on April 15 or stopped Mireille, the female suicide bomber who blew herself up in the middle of Baghdad in November of 2005.  I don't even want to imply that the Samaritan of biblical fame ascribed to these traits.  What I am trying to say is that it is a good and worthy place to start: to honor politeness, to get to know our neighbors, and to seek the best in all people we meet.  And aren't you desperate enough to want to start somewhere?

To close, I'd like to read to you a paraphrase of the Good Samaritan story.  That darn Holy Spirit, would you not believe that last night, while finishing this chapter in “Sidewalks In The Kingdom,” I came across this conclusion:

“I realize that encouraging such nostaligic concepts as neighborliness, civility, and inherent worth seems a little weak against such pressing problems as guns, drugs, and gang activity in our cities.  However, we must remember that Jesus' most clear teaching regarding our mandate toward the stranger came in response to the question of 'who is my neighbor.'  So, with this in mind, I will end this section with an attempt to retell the parable of the good Samaritan in a more contemporary context.
     “There once was a man who was driving his beat-up Toyota Corolla from the city of Jericho to the city of Jerusalem.  His car broke down and he didn't have a cell phone, so he had to walk to the next gas station.  Because he was in a low-density area and there were no residents around to provide the necessary 'eyes on the street' for safety, a band of latch-key suburban preadolescents attacked him (just like they had learned in the video game Street Fighter II) and left him for dead on the road.
     “First, a commuter from a nearby suburb drove by in his Jeep Cherokee.  But since he was traveling so fast and his eyes were focused on the garish signs of the box stores on the fringes of Jerusalem, he could not notice anything so small as a human being on the side of the road.  Next, a young person passed by in a Chevy Suburban.  She actually noticed the distressed condition of this man and wanted to help.  But since she was being driven to soccer practice by her dad (who was talking on his cell phone), and since she had never interacted with a  stranger in a public setting, she didn't really feel as if she could do anything about the situation.
     “But then a pedestrian transient, who was engaged in the shameless act of walking on this public road, literally stumbled across the wounded man.  He helped him get to the bus station, paid his fare, and took him to the Motel 6 adjacent to the 7-Eleven to buy aspirin and bandages (the nearest Now Care was fifteen miles away at another strip mall and impossible to get to on foot).  Since there was no innkeeper to speak of, the pedestrians stayed with this man and nursed him back to health with alternating meals at McDonald's , Subway, and Taco John's.”

“And who do you think acted as a neighbor to the man who was in distress?”(4)


(1.)     Sidewalks In The Kingdom: New Urbanism And The Christian Faith, Eric O. Jacobsen, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003), Page 138 ff
(2.)     Ibid, Page 144
(3.)     Ibid, Page 146
(4.)     Ibid, Pages 151-152


Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096