Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

When I was younger, I remember sitting through the church service and tuning out during mostly every reading, and most ESPECIALLY during the sermon. As I have gotten older, it has been a challenge of my faith to pay attention to each and every reading, and still at times zone out. But recently, I have found the diligence to be important. Maybe it is because as you get older you have more life experience, and those life experiences allow you to relate with the readings each week. And maybe when you are younger you can't relate- like the one reading, When you were a child you reasoned like a child. Everything about being a child is so simple, why complicate it with meditation and deep thought? But this one reading spoke incredibly loud to me this past weekend on many levels.

Romans 13:8-14
"Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet;" and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself". Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires".

This reading spoke to me on an incredible amount of levels. So often in life we reflect on the small black and white details of everything, and I feel the commandments are something that make that easy to do. If every day we focused on each and every commandment individually, we would feel worn out, exhausted, depleted. I mean, come on...who ISN'T gluttonous on a daily basis? But this reading shows us, if you LOVE each and every day, those small black and white details disappear and have already been taken care of. Love encompasses each and every thing we do.
The other part of this reading that particularly caught my attention was "Love does no wrong to a neighbor". I know that in the past few years of my life, I have made decisions that have done wrong to some of the people closest in my life.....each of which should and always will be considered a neighbor. So often we think the word "neighbor" refers to someone that lives next door physically. But I think the word neighbor in this reading reflects on those that live next door to us daily in our spiritual lives. And those people I have erred in the past few years. This reading showed me that I was not acting in the love that I was saying I had. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. I feel this reading allowed me to ask for forgiveness on many levels.
But beyond even my actions, I have found even deeper meaning in this statement. Being in the world of theatre, the life of an actor is drama, personal or on stage. I often find that when working on a show with other individuals, it is more than just "work". I find that in the process of creating an entire piece of art formed from a group of people, peoples' egos have the potential to be destroyed and people have the opportunity to forget why we do what we do. So often it becomes less and less about the love of theatre and more about the actor. A great person once said, "Love the art in yourself not yourself in the art". And even in this process, gossip ensues...oh, is it never ending and it is always surrounding you. And how easy it is to jump on board when everyone else around you is talking about someone you may already not have the strongest feelings for as a friend. But as a Christian, at that moment, that is when I realized in this reading that those are the moments when I must follow this verse: "Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light". Because how soon that person that everyone is talking about could end up being me, or them, or ANYONE. We are all human and everyone has things that make them difficult to get along with at times, but if we love our neighbor as ourselves, we may find we end up loving those flaws in that person instead of allowing them to bother us. And in the long run, we may end up with a new friend.

I think paying attention to the readings in church may be a step forward in the right direction, even if I did have a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast.