Won't You Be My Neighbor? | The Meal Is The Method | Luke 7:34-50 | Week 3

Welcome.  You're here on week three of a four-week series called "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" How many of you have seen the Mr. Roger's documentary that they did?  Amazing documentary and tribute to an amazing man who really lived out the way of love, and did so in a compelling, breathtaking way.  Kelly and I saw the movie and I thought I really need to do a series on this because my heart's plea to Jesus is that our church would look a little bit more like Mr. Roger's neighborhood.  The first week we talked about the fact that God isn't calling us to identify or define our neighbor, that's sort of a low-level question.  In fact, He's asking us to become neighborly to whomever we might meet.  Last week we said that's not easy; as long as there's been hospitality, there's been complaining about offering it.  In 1 Peter 4:8-9, Peter writes to the church and says:  Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.  We typically grumble when we offer hospitality.....They're coming over again?  How long are they going to stay?  Are they going to jack up our house and eat up all our food?  My goodness!  We said we've got to build margin into our life if we're actually going to live out this way of Jesus, of not just offering hospitality but doing so without grumbling.  

I don't know about you, but as I've been wrestling with this topic more and more, and Jesus has been calling me to open my heart, my life, and my home, more and more, I've been seeing more opportunities to do that.  Anybody with me?  At the beginning of September, I was asked to be on a world religions panel at Kelly's high school, Mountain Vista.  I was there along with a Buddhist, a Hindu, and a Muslim imam.  They asked us a number of different questions.  At one point, the Muslim was explaining things we get wrong about Islam.  He asked the class a question:  How many of you guys have a Muslim friend?  A few of the students' hands went up.  I thought to myself, "I can't raise my hand to that.  I don't have a Muslim friend."  In that moment I thought, "But I want one."  After the panel, we all left and I was driving back to work thinking, "I really want....I would love a Muslim friend."  So I emailed him.  I said something like hi, this is Ryan from the panel.  Great job.  Really fun to meet you.  I don't have any Muslim friends and I would like one.  I felt like I was in middle school again....Will you be my friend?  Check 'yes' or 'no.'   He wrote back and said, "I'd love to be friends."  We started up this conversation via email and last Monday we went out for lunch together.  We got to talk about our faith.  We got to talk about our families. We got to talk about our upbringing.  We got to talk about Jesus.  It was as though as the table sort of turned into this altar, where something unique and something special started to happen...