Castings: July 3, 2026
God and Neighbor
Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (For the Nation, The Book of Common Prayer, page 258)
As we celebrate the 250 anniversary of our nation, let us pray for our country and for each other. The collect for the nation asks God to help us have a zeal for justice, that we might use our liberty in accordance with God’s will. What is God’s will for us? What is God’s will for our country? Jesus makes clear that the greatest commandments are love God and love neighbor. Loving God and loving neighbor are clearly part of God’s will for humanity.
This week, at Camp Trinity, our youth spent time thinking, praying, learning and talking about what it means to be a neighbor and how we are to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves. I heard them describe the work of loving God and loving neighbor as having empathy, listening, being the Christ-light for another, and my favorite–to see love as a chain reaction. Our children hold deep wisdom for us. I wonder how you might answer the question for yourself. What does it mean to you to be a neighbor? What does loving your neighbor as yourself find expression in your life? How does it inform both who we are as both Americans and as Christians?
The author Wendell Berry writes that the wise “understand that if you love your neighbor as yourself, then you become a neighbor to your neighbor–that is, you help your neighbor. And then neighborliness is not just a virtue, not just a biblical requirement; it becomes an economic condition in which you and your neighbor thrive. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you want him over there on his farm doing well, and that means he’ll be able to come to you when you have a need. You get the spectrum of good; you’re not just going to Heaven. That’s a side effect, that’s incidental. What you have already is a neighborhood that’s heavenly enough.”
Entering the 250th year of this beautiful and imperfect union, it seems a good time to reflect anew on what it means to be a neighbor, and to remember that neighbor is not just about who lives next door to us. Neighbor and neighborliness is about how we choose to live, how we choose to love, and how we choose to embody Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself.