Serving Our Neighbors
The prophet Micah famously wrote a simple description of the life of those who live in covenant with Yahweh: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
It is a life of deep relational connection and it is a life of loving action. Our shared outward practice during Epiphany is to take up this prophetic invitation and the example of Christ. As we study the ministry of Jesus on Sundays, we must live the ministry of Jesus in our lives. We are called to serve our neighbors in tangible actions of love and not merely lofty ideas or sentiment.
Make a plan for how each week or each day you can serve or show love to your neighbors, especially the poor among us. We will have several shared opportunities to do this as a church family, but pray as ask God how you in particular are called to join in.
This description from The Second Mountain by David Brooks is helpful and inspiring:
If you wanted to generalize a bit, you could say there are six layers of desire:
1. Material pleasure. Having nice food, a nice car, a nice house.
2. Ego pleasure. Becoming well-known or rich and successful. Winning victories and recognition.
3. Intellectual pleasure. Learning about things. Understanding the world around us.
4. Generativity. The pleasure we get in giving back to others and serving our communities.
5. Fulfilled love. Receiving and giving love. The rapturous union of souls.
6. Transcendence. The feeling we get when living in accordance with some ideal.Social science and much of our modern thinking tends to emphasize the first two desires. We often assume that self-interest—defined as material gain and status recognition—are the main desires of life and that service to others is the icing on the cake. And that’s because for centuries most of our social thinking has been shaped by men, who went out and competed in the world while women largely stayed home and did the caring.
These men didn’t even see the activity that undergirded the political and economic systems they spent their lives studying. But when you actually look around the world—parents looking after their kids, neighbors forming associations, colleagues helping one another, people meeting and encountering each other in coffee shops—you see that loving care is not on the fringe of society. It’s the foundation of society.
