For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14
“The right way to inhabit one’s right place is as neighbor. The role of neighbor pertains not only to next-door folk with whom we may feel comfortable. It means also to recognize all the inhabitants of the community as companions in a common enterprise. It means to acknowledge gladly that they are entitled to respect, safety, and viability that are guaranteed by
common concern and common investment.
In a commoditized economy, there are no neighbors with whom we can make common cause. There are only isolated individuals who live private lives and who are at bottom rivals and competitors for scarce goods. Neighborliness refuses every part of that formulation: not isolated, not rivals, not competitors, and not scarce goods. The neighborhood depends on an expectation and practice of generosity and a readiness to share what one has for the sake of the common good.
Such generosity pertains not only to those whom we like and with whom we feel comfortable. Such sharing, moreover, consists not only in face-to-face generosity, but in sustainable transformative charity and, beyond that, in acceptance of taxation that is appropriate to the needs of the neighborhood.
The mandate to “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18; Mark 12:31) is defining for mature materiality. This commandment, Paul declares, is “the whole law [Torah] summed up” (Gal. 5:14). The biblical tradition, moreover, continues to expand the scope of “neighbor” until it includes all the vulnerable, for whom “widow, orphan, and immigrant” are representative persons.”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 72-73.
Though I did not know what the commoditized economy was, for many years it characterized my existence. I did not even know the name of my neighbors. Think about it. How can we live as neighbor if we don’t even know our neighbor’s names.
Perhaps today’s application for some people is to learn your neighbor’s name? For others it takes shape as growing participation in charity or including people you don’t like in your giving. For some it means accepting the paying of taxes for the common good.
As we near the end of our exploration of materiality as resistance, we discover that God wants us to live differently than the consumeristic culture and live generously toward our neighbor.
Sit with the Lord. Follow God’s leading in taking steps toward growing in neighborliness and generosity.
And pray for our team today. We travel from Bogotá to Armenia in the heart of the Coffee Triangle, to do a Palmful of Coffee launch event with 100+ pastors and ministry workers in the Quindio department tomorrow. Thanks.
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