Lent - Do You Know Your Neighbor?

"Bo-Kaap Neighborhood" by D-Stanley is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

“Do You Know Your Neighbor” is a game I have been thinking about as Lent approaches. It is often played at summer camps and church lock-ins. I played it many times as a camp counselor and church youth worker. Here is how to play it:
Gather campers in a big circle, then ask for a volunteer to be “it.” The one who is it quickly approaches people in the circle, asking “do you know your neighbor?” Participants must call out the names of their neighbors before the person who is it can count to ten. Participants then claim they do not like their neighbors because of some made-up trait: “I don’t like my neighbor because they wear shorts during the winter!” Those who match this rush to claim another seat before it is too late and they are left in the middle.
The game is fun to play, provides a relief for nervous energy and shyness, and helps the players actually get to know their neighbors for the week. It is part of a series of games designed to build trust and cooperation. Camp, like anything in life, is much more enjoyable when a person understands and trusts those around them.
 
Do You Know Your Neighbor?
 
One of the big parts of the Christian life is serving our neighbors. Who are our neighbors, anyway? A scholar once asked Jesus that very question. I suspect this question of neighbors has become more difficult to answer in recent decades. Our world is only getting smaller, neighbors are drawing closer, yet harder to reach. People move more often and further away from home, wherever home might be. People from other cities, states, and nations come to new locales, looking for a new home. What does a person do when they recognize fewer faces in their community? Furthermore, anyone on the internet is a few clicks and taps away, regardless of where they reside. Everyone on the internet is a neighbor, even from behind a screen thousands of miles away. Neighbors can be everywhere. If that is not complex enough, people are able to self-select out of any “neighborhood” that might exist in modern American society. Anyone with differing ideological, theological, or philosophical views can simply be tuned out. A person hardly needs to cross paths with others who disagree with them, anymore.
 
Throughout the Bible, the identity of the neighbor is left intentionally vague. God cares about the neighbor, but does not care so much where the neighbor comes from. We too are expected to care. Six of the Ten Commandments are about how we relate to neighbors. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. From a Lutheran perspective, we believe we are freed in Christ to serve our neighbor. We look for our neighbors and look out for them because of Christ’s love pouring out through us. People are meant for community – with God and all people - and we are freed to pursue it.
 
Do I know my neighbor?
I knew so many neighbors over the years of playing “Do You Know Your Neighbor.” I cannot remember them all. Neighbors come and go from our lives. Over Lent, it is my prayer for you and me that we hear the call to know our neighbors once more. I pray we see our neighbors everywhere we go, whether we encounter them in our actual neighborhoods of residence, neighborhoods on the internet, hometowns, or simply wherever we happen to be at the time.

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Lent - Do You Know Your Neighbor? by Joshua Feala is licensed under CC BY 4.0