Wise Neighbors

St. Patrick Presbyterian

Wise Neighbors

June 25, 2023 • Rev. Joshua Smith • 2 Kings 4:1–7

The house next to mine stands empty. The family who dwelt there for the past four or so years – with whom we shared meals and celebrations, tools and toys – will be replaced by another very soon. For us, neighbors are not easily interchangeable units, but a special relationship. Yet before we allow ourselves to hope or fear who may next reside at our east, we take stock: Were we good neighbors? Did we represent Christ well to them? Treat them with dignity and honor beyond what simple good manners and the HOA covenant might demand? I hope so. At least I believe their assessment of us would be generous, were we to hand them an exit survey. Still, I wish I’d loved them better.

Scripture’s command to love our neighbors does, of course, mean more than just the people you share fences and streets with – but it certainly doesn’t mean less than that! The way we treat the people whose properties touch our own is actually a pretty reliable indicator of the way we treat all other people. Not that we have to become friends, but that we’re intentional stewards of this great gift we have. I say gift, because to be a neighbor is to have almost endless opportunities to be dependable, useful, and kind to strangers over a sustained period of time, in such a way that a more intimate relationship is possible or even likely. Behavior like that will give you a reputation, for better or worse. Some neighbors know you’re the “friendly type” and avoid you at all costs. Sometimes a neighbor will even despise your kindness to someone they wish would just move away!

This week, I’ve spent every waking moment with 40 of our middle schoolers and leaders, surrounded by another few hundred similar such youth groups, on Lookout Mountain, TN. This new environment and its different rhythms have made me hyper aware of the way I interface with people I don’t have an intimate relationship with. I typically only interact with people I have a somewhat intimate relationship with – family, friends (even most of my neighbors end up in that category before too long). A few of those folks are here, but mostly I’m surrounded by strangers. For this brief week, I’ve had a far greater number of opportunities to love my neighbor than usual, and I’ve been learning that it doesn’t come very easily to me. I tend only to invest where I see the potential for lasting fruit. Wise in my own eyes, I’m afraid. Still, I trust that Jesus is teaching me in my weakness and that his grace is everything.

I hope you’ll join us this weekend as we talk about wise neighboring and how hard that can be in a world where it’s easier to drive into the garage and pull down the blinds.

- js

The Feast of Wisdom

July 30, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Proverbs 9

Over and over in the Bible, the idea of a great banquet or feast is used as a metaphor of the blessing, joy, and abundance of salvation. However, as we close out Proverbs, there are two feasts set before us—a feast of wisdom and a feast of folly. Both the architecture and ethos of the feasts almost immerse us in the taste, texture, and outcome of the tables we inhabit. Solomon ends his primer on wisdom with an either/or proposition: two ways, two feasts, two outcomes. It is interesting that the invitation to both is the same to the simple and unlearned. This should not surprise us—we all start out as fools and are placed in the drama of life either by the wisdom or the foolishness of others. We are needy creatures, and everyone is inviting us to a way of life that offers satisfaction. But, as Solomon points out, the paths part; and we are asked to look beyond the surface of things into the deeper meaning of reality and what it means to be human. Join us Sunday as we wrap up, The Book of Suburbs, and seek to subvert fast food values for a feast of good things!

Wise Money

July 23, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Proverbs 10:22

The church culture I grew up in was of the more legalistic branch. It is not that I am ungrateful —because of that experience, there has never been a day I didn’t know the gospel. However, it had its own set of proverbs and wisdom which could be summed up like this, “We don’t drink and we don’t chew and we don’t go with girls that do.” That is representative of how we tried to defeat sin in our lives. What we did was locate evil in a thing and abstain from it. We had long lists of them. As if lists and legalism can curb desire. The logic was simple—abused things like dancing, drinking, sex, money, and certain types of dress were put on a list of things that were sinful. You can see, we had no ascetic, no view of beauty or pleasure. Heck, if it was pleasurable, it must be sinful! But that was our view of holiness. Money was on the list. If you had too much, it must be ill-gotten gain. Which brings us to our subject matter for this Sunday—wealth and all things related to wealth. There are about 150 proverbs on money in book of Proverbs. About half the time money is spoken of in the negative, which means, the other half it is spoken of as a good thing. Money in the book of Proverbs is nuanced, and thus the need for wisdom. But yes, money in the book of Proverbs is called a blessing. In fact, when wisdom is personified in chapter 8 and is speaking of her blessings, wealth is one of them. However, money is also spoken of often as a bane, filled with temptations and the ability to blind you to larger issues in life, a corrupting influence that can ruin your life. There are reasons that money is singled out as fraught with pitfalls. So how do we live in this tension? How do we give thanks for wealth and yet not worship wealth? Good question, and one we will seek to answer this Sunday. I hope to see you there.

Wise Age

July 16, 2023 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 90

As I approach my fortieth birthday at the end of this summer, I’m haunted by Moses’ observation in Psalm 90, that a man is lucky to live to eighty. In the best scenario, that calculus puts me at midlife having officially missed my opportunity to get a tattoo without people assuming I’m suffering some sort of crisis. (Which I most certainly am, but I don’t want anyone to know, so please keep that between us.) It’s really not so much the tattoo. It’s that I ran out of time to outdo John Steinbeck’s writing The Grapes of Wrath before he was this age. I’ve been asking some friends and family at the more extreme ends of the journey a few questions as I reflect on what wisdom there is for folks contemplating their mortality. “What’s the best thing about being your age?” One teen said, “freedom and no bills” and I felt the envy rise in my increasingly lactose intolerant gut. From the more seasoned, I got answers like, “Seeing my kids become adults and getting to spoil grandkids. Finally having some perspective. Financial security. Not being afraid of what people think of me.” So, those are good things to look forward to. I also asked, “What’s the hardest thing about being your age?” My own eight-year-old said, “I’m too little to be on Wheel of Fortune.” Tragic injustice, indeed: another old soul imprisoned in the third grade. The elder participants shared things like, “Losing my physical endurance and metabolism. The urgency of the finish line. Watching my parents die. Fighting cynicism. Being treated like I’m irrelevant.” A much harder set of answers for meditation. So, this Sunday we’re going on a journey together, consulting Scripture and the wise counsel of others who’ve come before us on this path. We’ll consider the ways we might experience our own age gracefully, whatever the number happens to be.