How Are You 'Doing Life' with Your Neighbors?

In Luke 10, our primary Go Local text, the command to “eat what is set before you” is repeated. Recalling that "the seventy" had been sent to towns where there were likely many Gentiles, Jesus was instructing his followers to break the rules—to "leave behind" the policies and parameters of the religious institution and make a way for peace and reciprocity. I imagine this directive was mind-boggling for Jesus’ first followers. Perhaps it still is for many of us in the church today, both literally (we may be eating unfamiliar foods) and metaphorically: 

What might we need to embrace in our neighborhoods that makes us uncomfortable? 

For several Go Local participants, that "discomfort" began with the guilt they felt when they first said no to church activities in order to be with their neighbors. But Karl Barth asserts: "If I refuse to meet this neighbor, even though he may appear to be ungodly to me, I may deny the Christ living in me.”[1] 

For others, going to the local pub to hang out with their neighbors felt like a stretch. For another, saying yes to volunteering for the local casino fundraiser at the community hall was something that they would have previously never done. For one Go Local couple, "eating what was set before them" meant stepping out and having an apartment party. The woman shared: “We didn’t know where it was going to go, which was hard for [my husband] because he likes to have a plan and be in control.” 

All these "joining God in our neighborhood" stories demonstrate a shift from expecting people to come into our comfort zones (the church building, programs, events) to learning to "live among" like Jesus and his followers. 

How are you "doing life" with your diverse neighbors as they do it, where they live? 

How are you living among as a vulnerable one with the grace and humility to accept what your neighbors have to give—"eating" what is set before you? 

“It’s about honoring the customs of your neighbors joining in at Japanese tea times, Chinese art shows, Pilipino celebrations, and enjoying the gift of delicious but SPICY samosas," said one Go Local participant.

Could Jesus be saying that receiving hospitality is as crucial to participating in God’s mission as “healing the sick who are there?”

Scott Hagley explains: "In the framework of the instructions, eating, healing, proclaiming are all set alongside one another. The eating is just as direct an instruction as the other two. We catch additional glimpses of God’s mission depending upon the hospitality of the one to whom we are sent, in the Philip-Ethiopian and Peter-Cornelius interactions. I’m beginning to think that this is critical to any approach to missional ecclesiology: that the church necessarily depends upon the hospitality of its neighborhood for its very life." [2]

 As another Go Local participant reflected, discovering God at work in our neighbors is “a gift—from terror to joy, simple but so profound.”

“Discerning what God is doing is tied to entering and becoming present to the people of the neighborhoods and communities where we live. The way this entering is to be done is critical—invited to become like strangers, willing to enter the world of the other to receive hospitality from our neighbor.” [3]

Karen Wilk is Resonate's Go Local Catalyzer

[1]. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology, 146.
[2]. Scott Hagley, email message to author, April 21, 2015. Dr. Scott Hagley is a professor of missiology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author Eat What Is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context, Jan. 20 2019
[3].Alan Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God, 134.