REFLECTION 3RD NOVEMBER 2024 

“IS IT ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR?” 

By Rev. Dr. Fei Taule’ale’ausumai  

Recently I’ve been pondering downsizing my house and I’ve been looking at townhouses and apartments but it’s all just hypothetical at this stage, in all honesty I really can’t be bothered moving again it is purely an academic exercise.  There are new builds all over the place and in Wainuiomata across from McDonalds there a whole new block of Town houses.  But I’m a snob, I asked the real estate agent.  Are some of these Kainga Ora houses?  They reply “not that I’m aware of”.  Is that rude of me?  When I was minister at Pt. Chevalier, I went to the new housing development of Kainga Ora in Waterview and I had morning tea with some of the tenants.  I said to one of the Samoan families there “you must be pleased to live in a brand-new home?  Her reply was abrupt, no I hate it, I hate my neighbours.  They argue and fight every day and drink and play loud music.  I don’t know how to get out of this situation, I’m stuck.  Maybe this is why I asked the question to the real estate agent about Kainga ora homes.  My mother used to be able to pick out state houses back in the day and I asked her how do you know if that is a state house and she replied because they all have the same letterboxes.  Today my sister-in-law who works for the fono as we drove past a new housing development, I asked do you know if these are private or Kainga ora.  She replied they are Kainga ora and I said “how do you know” and she replied all the curtains are the same.  Well, you learn something new every day.  So, I am a snob I’m the first to admit it and I’m sure you would all be too if you were to be really honest with yourselves. 

When the homeless sit to the right of the ATM machine as you withdraw money and asks for “any loose change” have we already decided as we place our money carefully in our wallets that “I am going to turn left” even though I really, really wanted to go the shop on the right.  Are we afraid to deny them or reject them, does it feel like we are being confronted with the reality of the Gospel imperative to “love your neighbour as you love yourself?” I personally find it hard to walk away from female homeless people need I remind you of my experience two Easter’s ago.   

I am a café buff unfortunately in Wainuiomata there is a portable coffee cart and a bakery with a couple of tables and chairs but there is not one single café in the whole of Wainuiomata.  If anyone wants to go into a partnership of setting one up, then that’s me for retirement.  In Auckland the café’s that I enjoyed and visited most weeks always had the same people walking past them week after week, you get to know the faces, and maybe a name or two.  They get to know the ones who they can bum a cigarette from or a few coins for a cup of coffee and so they make a bee-line for you as soon as they see you.  What do I do now?  Do I keep giving and giving week after week?  My gosh with all the coins I have given to date they could have built up their own café business?  The thought itself has already placed a “condition” on my giving, why should I care that their lifestyle (and perhaps even mine) is so predictable?  Why can’t they go out and get a job like everyone else?  Another assumption.   

Love is one of the most difficult and challenging emotions, especially when we are separated from our children, our grand children, our parents or grandparents the ones that we love so much by ocean and sky and sadly by death. I believe everyone in this church this morning has a love story to share, perhaps even a pain too often difficult to express in words when we remember our families in other parts of this world or husbands and wives, children who have passed on before us.  I know that at times it’s almost like Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane “please take this cup of suffering away from me” … 

What is it that the mystery some of us call God requires of us when we are to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, soul and body?  I believe that one of the main tasks of adult living is to grow into wholeness, to explore and embrace and integrate all the parts of who we are, mind and body and heart and soul.  It is only when all of who we are is honoured and balanced that we find the courage and skill and the creative spirit to work well and to love well.  Jesus makes it clear in Mark 12, that loving God and self and neighbour with all of who we are is the purpose of life.  And central to this calling of wholeness is the value of integrity.  We only have to look over at the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, then to Russia and Ukraine.  They are all neighbours, last week on the 6’oclock news some Israeli groups were celebrating facing the bombs devastion of the Gaza Strip and planning where they were going to build their new homeland once had the Gaza strip returned to them.  That simple Gospel imperative to love your neighbour as you love yourself is so very, very difficult to live out.   

Consider the question by one of the teachers of the Law “of all the commandments which is the most important?”  Jesus responds saying loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and with all your strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than this.  I wonder if we really know how to love ourselves?  Do you?  What does it look like for you?  Is it attention to detail physically, doing our daily ablutions, buying nice things for ourselves, keeping fit and healthy or the opposite sitting on the couch playing electronic games and eating lots of junk food.  People all have different perception around what it means to love oneself.  However, there are many who if asked that question “do you love yourself?  How do you love yourself”  they would probably not know how to answer that question.  Food for thought. Something to consider.   

Rev. Susan Andrews former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of the USA wrote: “The discipline of the body is engaged with the serendipity (or the destiny) of the heart.  The ecstasy of joy is in deep communion with the sadness of sorrow.  This life journey toward wholeness, toward integration of heart and mind and body and soul is not easy.  Integrity forces us to rely on a power greater than ourselves, the Spirit of God who weaves together and holds together the competing parts of who we are.   

Do we acknowledge our weaknesses?  Is it important for us to be seen to be competent and coping all the time or is it o.k. for us to have struggling days and not feel that we are being judged as incompetent parents or partners, children?  When we understand ourselves, when we are able to  acknowledge what is the weak part of ourselves, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in order to grow in balance and wholeness – it is then that we become healthier, mature and more completely the person we were created to be.   

Yesterday at Milson Combined Church in Palmerston North, Central Presbytery were invited to look at the possibility of becoming an Inclusive Church.  Apparently, Affirm the Evangelical Group of our Church rallied all the Affirm church to attend yesterdays meeting. So there were only a few of us who represented Inclusivity.   We made ground rules to work in within our small group work to consider the 14 different scenarios.  I’m not going to go into the detail right now overall the majority want to keep the church in the status quo that it is now.  I will make the discussion paper available.  I survived the forum but only just.  Our former moderator Very Rev Hamish Galloway asked me to pick him up from Karori to drive with me to Palmerston North, which I did and we prepped ourselves for the workshop off and on on our  2 hour drive up.  Love your neighbour as you love yourself, stop judging them, stop patrionising them as if they need you to save them from themselves and the list goes on.   

When the scribe asked Jesus “which commandment is first of all?” Jesus’ answer is almost a direct quote from Deuteronomy 6, with Mark’s unique addition of “and with all your mind”.  Jesus is calling for single-minded focus on ourselves.  Love calls us to invest our whole selves.   

In Ruth’s pledge to Naomi and in Mark’s recording what is “first of all,” we encounter love’s summons to “give it all we’ve got.” 

If, we are to speak about loving neighbour we must also speak about loving ourselves.  “Loving self does not mean we love others less; it means, we learn how to love others more.   

Can we be in a right relationship with God without loving neighbour?  Can we love God and neighbour without loving ourselves?   

Where do you feel the need to grow in love of God, neighbour, and self?  

Jesus calls us to love one another as he has loved us and to love our neighbour as ourselves.  Lets go then and give it a go.  Amen. 

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service