On an ordinary Monday evening at my local Target, an employee faces off against a sheepish woman surrounded by stuffed plastic bags, a megapack of paper towels at her feet.
“I checked with the register. You didn’t go through,” the employee says.
“I paid on the machine,” the woman replies.
“Then where’s your receipt?”
“I paid cash.”
“The machine doesn’t take cash. Where’s your receipt?” The woman shrugs, handing over a receipt, which the Target employee eyes dismissively, and rejects. “This isn’t yours. This is for a blanket. You don’t have a blanket. This was from noon, it’s 6 PM.”
“I was here earlier,” the woman protests lamely, gesturing at her bags. Her face seems blank and bleak; it appears as though she has no fight left in her, no emoting at all.
The verdict is clear. “You aren’t taking this stuff without paying,” the employee announces. As if seeking reassurance from the audience of employees and shoppers. “She didn’t pay for this. She didn’t pay. She comes in here all the time and does this.”
The woman with the bags squirms. I calmly pick up my order and leave.
That same week, I attended an event at my kids’ school. I slid into the bleachers just in time for the show. Right in front of me, wearing the same outfit I’d seen her in at Target, is the woman who had been accused of stealing.
The Target thief is a fellow parent? A member of my community?
Suddenly, she seemed less like a hustler and more like a neighbor in need. Apparently, my neighbor was so desperate for home supplies she was willing to risk a scene. I don’t know how it feels to be unable to afford paper towels, but seeing her there at the school, showing up for her kid just like me, made me realize she was a neighbor that I am called to love, and I had failed to do so.
***
Lately, it has been far easier to despair than to love concretely. The Trump administration’s strategy of flooding the zone has made me feel powerless and overwhelmed — which is, as Adam Russell Taylor recently described it, precisely the point. Even while wrestling with lament, I’ve wanted to move toward contributing to addressing injustice to counter the pervasive injustice that occupies so much of our news. But I’ve just not known how. I’ve felt that nothing in my sphere of direct influence is grand enough to move any kind of needle.
But being a faithful follower of Christ is, in fact, less about giving a virtuoso solo performance and more often playing a small part in a great work we cannot fully comprehend.
The prescription for faithfulness, which generations of God’s people have clung to through countless challenging political situations — from exile to Roman occupation to modern dictators — is simple: “Love the Lord thy God and love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-40). Simple, but so small. Love thy neighbor, really? Is that all you got?
But as straightforward as this command seems, it is something I repeatedly fail to do — even as I wring my hands over all the big issues that plague our country.
I can’t even love one neighbor in a Target checkout, let alone my more distant neighbors whose situations I only know through the onslaught of headlines. Trying to love people in abstraction is paralyzing and feeds despair. What if small neighborly love is the beginning of moving out of despair and pushing the needle toward a more just world?
This was, after all, the way of Jesus. For those longing for political salvation — a longing I resonate with — I imagine Jesus’ simple commandment to his disciples was something of a disappointment (Acts 1:6). Jesus’ love was earthy, embodied, slow: quietly rescuing newlyweds from a shameful catering disaster, healing one sick woman, restoring a blind man’s sight. Jesus did not overthrow injustice in the way we or his disciples might have expected. If overturning Rome was the goal, then Jesus didn’t move the needle toward that end. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, is small like a mustard seed, like leaven; it is insignificant, unremarkable.
But mustard seeds grow and leaven expands. All these centuries later, his followers are still trying to follow his pattern of loving God and neighbor, and the Roman Empire is no more.
We do not love our neighbors in isolation, but as members of a great collective, sharing in each other’s small acts of love. Our individual acts are connected to the body of the church and the power of God at work in us. When I love my neighbor in Target, in some mysterious way, it is woven into the symphony that is God acting in the world. The renewing love of God acting in this world is made manifest in my own small acts, but it is not limited to them.
When we love our neighbors with God, the same power at work in Jesus is at work in us. God invites our participation —but let’s not kid ourselves about who is really doing the restoration. And while love thy neighbormay fulfill the whole of the law, that’s not why we do it. I think God could love my neighbors just fine without my help. It is for the sake of joy that we are invited to participate in God’s renewing, redemptive, boundary-crossing, expansive love. Who’s having more fun: the one hoarding his own lunch or the one who offers it up to share, then watches a few loaves feed thousands of people?
I think back to how I might have handled that situation at Target differently: What if I had paid more attention to the woman, read the distress in her eyes? I keep asking myself: How could I have shown her love? I never paused to find out. But if I had extended myself to see her, to care for her, would it have blessed us both?
A recent fire a few doors down leaves one woman dead and other neighbors temporarily homeless. I didn’t know the deceased, but when another neighbor shares links to fundraisers for those impacted, I recognize her face. I’d seen the deceased woman pass by my house before but I had never put in the effort to overcome our language barrier, even to just say hello. I realize, too late, the extent to which I had unconsciously put her in a box and labeled her as different. In the fundraiser, hosted by her faith community, I hear stories about her love, courage, humor, and joy. This neighbor I’d overlooked had helped organize her community. She was a full-fledged human, loving, and loved — not just different , not just a victim.
This neighbor is gone, but other neighbors remain, with hurts both visible and invisible. It isn’t too late to love.
Jeannie Rose Barksdale is an attorney and spiritual director who writes about finding what matters most in the ordinary. You can read more of her writing on her website.
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