It’s not always easy to navigate the shock for how much companies will spend for 60 seconds on television to sell a product, while also recognizing that in that one minute of time amidst one of the most watched events for the whole year, can come a soul-reaching message that many of us worship leaders cannot always pull off in much more time allotted than that. And it happened again this past Sunday, not only amidst most of America’s favorite game, but also amidst the larger backdrop of uneasiness, fear, uncertainty, worry, and an unwavering wish-could-do-more but not-willing-to-risk-it-ness.
Rocket and Redfin, a mortgage and digital brokerage powerhouse, managed to pull at hundreds of millions of heartstrings, as they showed a typical distrust and well…uneasiness of two different skin-color families moving into neighboring houses with minimal neighborliness exchanged no matter how many hand-waving and ice-breaking verbal attempts are made. And then the loss of one family’s dog in the middle of an evening storm (perhaps some present-reality symbolism can be imagined with that as well), leads the other family to simply doing the right thing no matter the uneasiness, no matter how carefully treading this problematic living and social terrain, no matter how much the overall not-so-neighborly world seems to promote divisiveness and almost okay-ing us to tear each other apart.
Of course, plenty of parallels could be made to the need of the church to play a role in such neighborly exchanges of love and grace and hope and keep-on-trying-to-do-better not for our own personal gain (whether warm-and-fuzzy feelings in the earthly realm or soul-saving for the eternal scope), but because our neighbor is a child of God, too. Granted, that same church has had its fair share of times amongst its own individual congregation membership stories that generated uneasiness, fear, uncertainty, worry, and an unwavering wish-could-do-more but not-willing-to-risk-it-ness, to say the least. We recognize and confess it and then God insists that we rise and try to do better.
We try to do better in creating these neighborly exchanges of love and grace and hope in our own sanctuaries and fellowship halls and Sunday schools and random hallway interactions, but also for it to spill out into the parking lot and where we gather for outreach ministries and wherever we go where we may not necessarily be under the auspice of Divinity Lutheran Church, necessarily; but we are still children of God amidst a treasured collection of other children of God amidst backdrops of uneasy and fear-filled stories, some past, some still on-going. And through it all, we are set free to bring to life a message that may not rival that of a 60-second tv spot for hundreds of millions to see, but a still just-as-heartstring-pulling message in the Gospel to even one precious child of God, who may need just a little more reassurance that they are more than worthy of even God being their neighbor throughout this life and for all eternity. Thanks be to God, indeed!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad
To view “America Needs Neighbors Like You” (Redfin x Rocket Mortgage), please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvEFiLqsCDw