There is an Irish proverb that says “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
We forget that we belong to each other. Like Cain we say to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Seventeenth-century poet and minister John Donne once wrote that,
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Yet we continue to crow about our own rights, especially with regard to property and wealth, while too often ignoring the possibility that we might have obligations to others.
How can we claim to follow Christ in this manner?
Consider the following:
Exodus 23:10-11:
For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.
Leviticus 19:9-10:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 23:22:
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 23:24-25:
If you go into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain.
Deuteronomy 24:19-21:
When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.
In Matthew 22:36-40, a man asks Jesus,
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love here is more than a warm fuzzy feeling, it’s a prioritization of needs and wellbeing, sacrificially if necessary. So how do I express my self-love? When I’m hungry, I feed myself; when I’m thirsty, I drink clean water; I keep a roof over my head; I give myself an education and many other things; and when I’m sick, I go to the doctor. If this is how I love myself, shouldn’t I strive to secure the very same things for others? And love here is not contingent on who one’s neighbor is or whether we think they deserve it, Jesus makes it clear that we are to love without condition. Our rights and personal comfort are supposed to be second to the command to love one another. It’s a hard thing to do – I’m not very good at it – but it’s the work to which we are called.
It is in the shelter of one another that we are meant to live.
