So, this being Halloween, I feel it incumbent to tell a Halloween story. Not a spooky one, however. I have plenty of haint stories, but they can wait for some other time. What I want to talk about is my neighborhood on Halloween in the late sixties.
I grew up in a rural sort of suburb of Chattanooga – a place called Red Bank. It was a typical sixties suburb. Churches, shops, schools, restaurants, car-hops, a grocery, all lining the broad, straight Dayton Blvd. And spiking off of that busy street were an uncountable number of cul-de-sacs, all with new(ish), modern split-level and ranch homes going up. Modern appliances, TV antennas, car ports. Man had landed on the moon, and the country was just getting better and better, optimism abounding in spite of wars, protests, assassinations. Those were what we saw on our new color television sets. But nowhere close to home.
This was the world I was growing up in on 8 Holiday Lane, a cul-de-sac like so many others. And Holiday Lane was typical, that is to say about 50% retired couples and 50% new, modern families, with tons of kids roaming the neighborhood, falling off bikes, skinning knees on roller skates and skateboards, playing with hula hoops, new mitts, each other's dogs.
So Halloween was a chance for a large neighborhood kids' party. And we did it right. All the homes were decorated with those flat cardboard witches and skeletons. A few homes had fancy lights. Lots of orange and black. And buckets and buckets of candy were at every house. And we waited until dark to set off in our costumes, running up and down the street, squealing with friends, each of us just a tad bit jealous of each other's store-bought costumes and masks. You know the ones...the kind you can't get now because somebody finally figured out they can catch fire.
All well and good. Except...
Now that TV was prevalent, panicky news reports would occasionally seep through on Halloween about devil worshipers and drug dealers, messing with the Halloween treats, and occasionally snatching kids up to sell into slavery. And we had to remain vigilant.
And on Holiday Lane that meant one thing. DO NOT under any circumstances, when you are trick-or-treating, go over to Lamar Lane. You see, Lamar Lane had been there long before Holiday Lane and the great suburban sprawl, umm, sprawled. It wasn't even a cul-de-sac, no, it was windy and crooked, with old houses in need of paint. Cars on blocks. Laundry flapping in the breeze...IN THE FRONT YARD! People drank beer, cussed in public, wore tee-shirts and day dresses. Their dogs were on chains. And they worked in garages and factories, or worse yet, they were on the road crew.
Those kind of people.
The kind of people who would surely be the ones passing out apples with razor blades in them. Popcorn balls with shards of glass mixed into the caramel. Candy bars shot up with heroin. These were seriously bad people alright, and they were only one street down.
We might not have outright hated them, but we all knew when someone said they lived on Lamar. Oh, we knew, allright.
In our gospel reading today, the Sadducees are carrying on about something or other, and they are listening to Jesus, a dude from the Jewish world's version of Lamar Lane. And he's holding his own. He knows what it's like to be looked down on. He know what it's like to have people give him the side-eye. But this scribe, this lawyer, sees something in him and asks him, “What commandment is first of all?”
We know what Jesus responds, you've heard me say it enough: Love God and love your neighbor.
And when I first started thinking of what I wanted to say today, I just knew that this is where I'd go with this story. How the Holiday Lane-ers were not loving their neighbors in the shape of the Lamar Lane-ers. I would be very happy to say that we are still like that in this nation, and how we need to hunker down and get to some serious neighbor-loving and caring about others.
But just the other day, something caught my eye in this reading. The rest of it, as a matter of fact. After Jesus says this thing, the lawyer agrees with him and says Jesus is right and wise. And then Jesus says this thing – he says, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” I've always sorta skimmed over that, but now it's stuck with me, and I need to suss it out.
Jesus doesn't say, “The kingdom of God is coming soon.” He doesn't say, “You're beginning to understand what the kingdom of God with be like.” Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
“It is not soon; it is near. It is not far away; it is within your grasp. It is not somewhere over the horizon; you are looking at it right now. You are looking at me. And by looking at me, you see the kingdom of God.”
Because the kingdom of God isn't heaven. It's not a reward. It's not a bag of Halloween candy, even if the bag is filled with Sugar Babies and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups.
The kingdom of God is the sacrifice of God, the sacrifice of Jesus. It is near when you reach out to love. It is near when you reach out to fight for justice. It is near when you dig deep of yourself and give it willingly. It is near when you look at the person standing next to you and see a glimpse of Jesus, himself, even if that person standing next to you is from Lamar Lane.
But it's more than that, I think. The other day, I was talking over this passage with Fr. Brooks, and he mentioned a guy he knew who was skeptical of the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself.” Not because he didn't want to love certain people, but because he didn't really love himself. And he figured that loving others the way he loved himself was to not love them at all.
So, maybe the kingdom of God is near when we let our barriers down. When we let others love us, also. When we let Jesus love us also. It seems so easy, but man, it can be so hard.
One night, on Holiday Lane, the whole neighborhood was awakened by fire engines going up the hill to the top of the cul-de-sac. A house was burning. The husband didn't make it out, neither did one of the children. The mother and the two other children made it. The whole neighborhood watched. I watched. To this day, I have a low-grade fear and a healthy respect for fires.
The neighborhood was devastated. Like Zombies on Halloween. But the next street over, the women of Lamar Lane held a rummage sale. Then a bake sale. Then a candy drive. All to help the family. Folks sold their cars on blocks for a little cash. One family opened up a trailer on their property for the woman and kids. And the men of Lamar Lane helped clear out the debris of that family's home. The asked the churches they attended for donations.
The people of Lamar Lane loved God and loved their neighbors, even neighbor sthat didn't love them.
Until then.
The last time I was in Chattanooga, I drove by Holiday Lane. It's kinda run down and looks much like Lamar Lane now. But there's something new, at least something that is there that wasn't there when I was a kid.
There's a street now called Siris Street. And it connects Holiday and Lamar Lanes. And it's named after the family that lost so much. And there on that street I think I saw the Kingdom of God as near as I'll ever see it.