The first dog Kate and I ever owned together was a rescued racing greyhound. His name was Babe’s Son, he raced 96 races in Daytona, FL. We called him Sonny. Here are some things you need to know about greyhounds:

They are known as the 60 mile-per-hour couch potatoes. They can reach full speed in three steps but spend most of their days sleeping. They are like high-end sports cars. They need pampered. They have sensitive stomachs, and need food specially designed with that in mind.

They are really easy to draw. Just put a triangle head on a stick dog, and that’s what Sonny looked like. He was a great dog.

Sonny took his retirement seriously. Once a day, he needed to zoom around the yard at top speed, and then he’d sleep. If we took a long walk, that would work too. He’d sleep the rest of the day.

Sonny was stoic. He would bark once when someone knocked at the door. Just. Once. No more. He was silent the rest of the day. He was smart. He would come up for pets and then after 5 minutes, he’d go lie down. It was like having the best parts of a cat and a dog. He was like a 70 pound, really friendly cat.

We loved Sonny. He did have one fault though. As with all other greyhounds, Sonny was incredibly racist.

At the dog park, he wouldn’t acknowledge dogs of other breeds. They would come up and want to play and he’d look right over their heads, sometimes even stepping over the shorter dogs to trot away. Yet when Sonny saw another greyhound, he’d freak out. The other greyhound would too. Then they would exchange a secret handshake and run around the dog park attached at the hip.

Racing greyhounds have identifying tattoos in their ears. The dogs must know this. They must be like former gang members meeting. They just know one another. Once Sonny met a young greyhound that had never been on the race track. Sonny became really aggressive with this dog, trying to bite it. Sonny must have thought the other dog was giving out the secrets of the greyhound or something… as the greyhounds say, “Snitches get stitches.”

Racing greyhounds spend their whole lives around their trainers, other greyhounds, and the track. That’s it. He had no exposure to anything else. His retirement was one big education to the wider world. So when Sonny came to live with us, he had to learn things like the differences in flooring. Sonny wouldn’t step on any surface that was different from what he came in on. If he came in on carpet, he wouldn’t go on tile and vice-versa. It took a couple years for him to get the knack of it. He even befriended my mom’s dog, a jittery little mutt dog.

They say dog owners take on the appearance and temperament of their dogs. This was true of Sonny and me. We looked into greyhounds because one of my customers had told me, “You remind me of someone…” A few weeks later he said, “I know now! You remind me of my dog! He’s a rescued greyhound. You’re long, lanky, relaxed but can move fast if you need to, and the big nose and beady eyes all remind me of my dog.”

I was offended at first, but I got over it pretty quickly. Dogs are the best! I love dogs, we’ve always had one growing up. My customer was very wise indeed!

I was raised in a very sheltered environment like Sonny, in the small town of Dennison, Ohio. I went to Catholic schools. I only knew three things: white, Catholic, and small-town people. I would only eat hot dogs, pizza, and hamburgers growing up. I wasn’t into ethnic foods… like tacos.

I liked my small town. All the comic books I read were set in the city where crime was so bad people needed superheroes to fight it. Who would want to visit, let alone live there?

In that small town of Dennison and its twin city Uhrichsville, there live around 5,000 people. When I was young my grandpa drove me around and showed me where the Italians lived. The Pollacks lived in this section. The Irish and the coloreds by the railroad tracks. The stuck-up people lived in the mansions on Main Street.

Now most things in our life are caught, not taught. How to live and love, how to treat one another and whom to hang out with… all of these things are caught not taught. It’s not normal for your parents to sit you down and say, “Here’s how love works.” No. You just watch how they love one another and that becomes like a blueprint for you.

That’s normal. That’s fine, well and good. It is as things should be. The problem is when our blueprint becomes THE blueprint for everything else. It took awhile for me to open up to other blueprints. It happened largely in high school. There I met my best friend Mo.

Mo, short for Mauricio, was Colombian. His mom was the first to immigrate here. She worked as a physical therapist. She sent for her son to come live with her away from the big city, away from the civil unrest the defined Colombia at that time. Mo attained his VISA and started living in the states in 8^th grade. He had to learn the language, adjust to a new school, and find new friends. I was happy to be one of them. We bonded quickly but I was a little nervous as he ate strange things like tacos and rice and beans. I liked hanging out with him, so I started to eat what he did. I was surprised to find I really liked this new food! It wasn’t spicy or weird tasting. It was really good.

He told me about growing up in the big city of Bogota, his country’s capital city of 8 million people. He told me of the art and culture and of his family there whom he would visit every summer.

What bonded me to Mo was our shared lack of a father. He had a stepdad who was in sales. They had a really nice apartment and could afford things. Mo and I were thick as thieves, we would finish one another’s sentences. We’d hang out and play basketball all day.

Once, my grandpa picked us up from basketball practice. He joked about Mo being from China. We laughed at that, as my grandpa was a jokester sometimes. We ended up going to my grandpa’s favorite family-owned store to get some lottery tickets. Upon entering the store, the owner told Mo that there were no wetbacks allowed.

My grandpa was troubled but told us to wait outside. Mo and I sat in the car and I saw that Mo was upset. “Mo, what just happened in there? What’s a wetback?”

“That was racism,” Mo said. “Wetbacks are what people call illegal immigrants. Mexicans.”

“Why would they call them wetback?” I asked.

“Because they swim across the Rio Grande, I guess.” Mo said.

“That doesn’t make any sense! You’re here legally. And your whole body gets wet, why do they focus on the back?” I was really puzzled.

“That’s not the point, man. Hateful terms like that aren’t supposed to make sense, they are just supposed to hurt.” We were silent on the ride home. Even my grandpa’s lame jokes couldn’t get us back to where we were.

That episode really opened my eyes. I have never forgotten it. I’m still puzzled with how we treat one another. How we treat those of different races and creeds and ethnic backgrounds.

Today’s scripture begins oddly and ends badly. Jesus’ disciples were traveling and they plucked grain as they went. You weren’t allowed to work on the Sabbath, so the Pharisees questioned this. They weren’t questioned about stealing the grain, you were allowed to take it due to the Levitical readings we read today, “leave a corner of your field and do not pick up the gleanings from the field… Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”

But the Pharisees were after something else. They had another motive.

We then meet the man with the withered hand. He was different, this man. We don’t know how this man was treated. Was he a full member of his community or was he barred from dating the women in the synagogue? Was he employed or was he the charity case? We don’t know. What we do know is the presence of the man stood out. And Jesus approached and asked, essentially, “Are we here to do God’s will or something else? To save a life or do harm?” [1]

The Pharisees knew full well that saving a life and doing good are lawful on the sabbath. It’s just that Jesus’ opponents had other motives. They weren’t in church to worship to the God of all of creation, they were there to worship the god they created. A small god who liked everything they liked. As Anne Lamott said, “’You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

The Pharisees are offended that Jesus is messing with what they know. He has a different reading of the tradition, he knows different parts of scripture, he has a wider view. A view where fishermen can be disciples. He believes Sabbath is for the people, not the people for the Sabbath. Earlier in this chapter, Jesus casts out demons. Jesus is more interested in casting out demonization, which is what the religious people were doing. Demonizing the demon-possessed. Demonizing those who break the rules. Demonizing those who are withered. Demonizing the poor, outcast, hungry, the immigrant, the different.

I liked my little kingdom growing up. Yet God has exposed me to the wideness of God’s creation. Different people, places, food, cultures, practices, and traditions. I wanted to be in my little world, but God has brought me to wider horizons, often times kicking and screaming. I was like my greyhound Sonny. I knew what I knew, I liked what I liked and I didn’t want to change. If I came in on tile, by God, I’m staying on tile. I’ll only like other working class white guys with single moms who read comic books and listen to Smashing Pumpkins. That means, in this room right now, I have like one friend… maybe?

People who do God’s will run afoul of all who are invested in another’s will—theirs, that of nationalistic fever, racial bigotry, or greed. The story of Jesus in the synagogue… we should have known it was going to end badly. This is chapter two, and the religious powers are already starting to plot Jesus’ death.

Is it God’s will for a 15-year-old boy to have to wait outside a store? Do you know how much 15-year-old boys eat?! Do you know how many bags of Doritos he would have bought? Is it God’s will for a Colombian here legally to be called a wetback? Is it God’s will for food only to be cooked a certain way? Is it God’s will that his children still worship in what Martin Luther King Jr called, “The most segregated hour?”

Is it God’s will that police are killed, that black folks are shot, that students continue to die in their schools?

Is it God’s will for you to be withered in your life? Maybe it’s not a hand for you… maybe it’s your spirit that’s withered due to that job that’s killing you? Or the words you were called. What was said about you. Or what happened. Or that diagnosis. Or that grief. Or that loss. Or that ailment. Is it God’s will for you to be withered or for you to thrive?

We live in the light of the resurrection of Easter. We can read this story in chapter two from here, now. All the plotting, the cheap conspiracies, the death threats have been burned away by the blaze of Easter. All that endures is the resurrection and the thriving of the one who made the sabbath for us, and not us for the sabbath. The one who seeks to heal and restore us.

The one who sums up the law by saying “Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”

I long for that day and I will live like it will one day come. I don’t have to understand my neighbor, I don’t even have to like my neighbor. I have to love my neighbor. That’s harder. That means not withering my neighbor. To pray for my neighbor’s thriving and health. To look after them and make sure they are fed, aren’t harassed, aren’t being called derogatory names.

So love your neighbor. Your black neighbor. Your Muslim Neighbor. Your Hindu Neighbor. Your Irish neighbor. Your Michigan neighbor. Your Steelers neighbor. Your gay neighbor. Your handicapped neighbor. Your homeless neighbor. Your Baptist Neighbor. Your Jewish neighbor. Your neighbor with a greyhound. Your young neighbor and your elderly neighbors and your in-between neighbors. Love people who you’re not even sure are your neighbors.

Do this now. For the Spirit is going to send them to you. No matter how strenuously we try to keep our pews filled with folk just like ourselves, the Spirit of Christ will always send in people who disrupt our norm, whose very presence provokes a rethinking of who we are and what we consider normal. For God’s kingdom is wider, broader, and deeper than we realize. It includes us, and our neighbors. All. Our. Neighbors. And God wants to make sure we’re seeing all of God’s creations and loving them as much as God does.

If my greyhound could learn how to love other dogs and learn new ways of living, in spite of his rearing… I have faith that we can too.

[1] Reflections on the Lectionary, Christian Century, May 9, 2018. Page 21.