America For Christ Offering 2021
A Biblical Reflection: On Being a Good Neighbor
Like many other children around the nation, my 8-year-old daughter is attending second grade virtually this fall because of the global pandemic. While this presents many challenges for her and for me, one upside is that I get a more thorough understanding of the gifts of her teacher and classmates, as I eavesdrop on their instructional interactions.
Sometimes these interactions are hilarious, like the Monday when I heard her classmate complain about the unfairness of having five days during the week and only two days for the weekend. At other times, their conversations alert me to matters more poignant than funny. Last week, I heard the teacher explaining a math lesson on place value with the following words: “Even if your classmate is in another room, they’re still a member of this class.” It is so clear to second graders: Belonging isn’t geographically bound.
Questions of belonging and geography were among the most salient matters for the early Christian community. In that instance, members were not in different rooms or even in different homes; they were in different countries and of different nationalities, language and cultural groups, and ethnicities. Yet God had made these disparate and disconnected people one holy community, one people and one body, through the grace and love of Jesus Christ exemplified in the cross. The letter to the Ephesians proclaims this cosmic reality, challenging the church then and now to live up to its meaning and to walk worthy of this high calling.
Further, Ephesians declares that the Creator of the cosmos, the Giver of life itself, has brought us redemption and has given us belonging in the body of Christ. And within that body, the Giver has placed particular charisms embodied in apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers, who equip the saints for the work of ministry and acts of service that build up the body, so that the community can be whole and growing. Ultimately, when the body of Christ functions as it ought, every part of the body nurtures and nourishes every other part. All of us—whatever kind of cell we are, in whatever part of the body we reside—build up and grow up until we reach the full measure of Christ’s maturity.
Throughout the New Testament, we learn that the earliest Christian congregations expressed their connectedness and community by means of mutual aid. The local church assisted individuals in need and so built the connection. Scattered congregations in one region assisted congregations in crisis in other regions and so strengthened the sense that there is one universal church, one body in Christ.
Through our gifts today, in a time of crisis and division, we, too, exhibit this core value. Mirroring the grace of the One who has called us to live lives filled with gratitude, we extend generosity and love in material and tangible ways to signify the common spiritual bond we enjoy. We incarnate the proclamation that we are one. We are in different rooms but no less a part of the same household—members, indeed, of the same body.
The Rev. Dr. Leslie D. Callahan is pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, Philadelphia.
Like many other children around the nation, my 8-year-old daughter is attending second grade virtually this fall because of the global pandemic. While this presents many challenges for her and for me, one upside is that I get a more thorough understanding of the gifts of her teacher and classmates, as I eavesdrop on their instructional interactions.
Sometimes these interactions are hilarious, like the Monday when I heard her classmate complain about the unfairness of having five days during the week and only two days for the weekend. At other times, their conversations alert me to matters more poignant than funny. Last week, I heard the teacher explaining a math lesson on place value with the following words: “Even if your classmate is in another room, they’re still a member of this class.” It is so clear to second graders: Belonging isn’t geographically bound.
Questions of belonging and geography were among the most salient matters for the early Christian community. In that instance, members were not in different rooms or even in different homes; they were in different countries and of different nationalities, language and cultural groups, and ethnicities. Yet God had made these disparate and disconnected people one holy community, one people and one body, through the grace and love of Jesus Christ exemplified in the cross. The letter to the Ephesians proclaims this cosmic reality, challenging the church then and now to live up to its meaning and to walk worthy of this high calling.
Further, Ephesians declares that the Creator of the cosmos, the Giver of life itself, has brought us redemption and has given us belonging in the body of Christ. And within that body, the Giver has placed particular charisms embodied in apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers, who equip the saints for the work of ministry and acts of service that build up the body, so that the community can be whole and growing. Ultimately, when the body of Christ functions as it ought, every part of the body nurtures and nourishes every other part. All of us—whatever kind of cell we are, in whatever part of the body we reside—build up and grow up until we reach the full measure of Christ’s maturity.
Throughout the New Testament, we learn that the earliest Christian congregations expressed their connectedness and community by means of mutual aid. The local church assisted individuals in need and so built the connection. Scattered congregations in one region assisted congregations in crisis in other regions and so strengthened the sense that there is one universal church, one body in Christ.
Through our gifts today, in a time of crisis and division, we, too, exhibit this core value. Mirroring the grace of the One who has called us to live lives filled with gratitude, we extend generosity and love in material and tangible ways to signify the common spiritual bond we enjoy. We incarnate the proclamation that we are one. We are in different rooms but no less a part of the same household—members, indeed, of the same body.
The Rev. Dr. Leslie D. Callahan is pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, Philadelphia.