Lectionary 23A Proper 18A
Grace Lutheran Church
Lakeland, FL
September 6, 2020
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18: 15-20
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The text for our consideration today is from our second reading – Romans 13:8 – owe no one anything, except to love one another.
Love. This is a word that we use so very often. I just love my Subaru! Well most days at least. My husband, Earl, loved homemade banana ice cream. We fall in love. We fall out of love. Poets wax eloquent about love. Most bestsellers have some type of love plot or subplot. We remember our first loves and for those of us who are married we pray that we are living with our last love.
Whatever it is that is the object of our love, it produces warm and nice feelings within us. Our brain chemistry changes. When I love, I feel good. But each of us knows that love is not so simplistic as that. In the nitty gritty of everyday life, love isn’t all about good feelings, tender words, and butterflies.
We might see this first in our families. We love our family – our children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces, nephews. But in every single family that has ever existed, there are times… those times when we don’t feel loving or lovely for that matter. But we are still family and we are still connected. As the saying goes, “Blood is thicker than water.”
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus is speaking to his closest followers and disciples in the later months of Jesus’ earthly ministry. And he says to them literally, if your “brother” sins – Jesus draws on the close sibling familial relationship to describe the relationship of members of the church – Jesus sets out to tell them the best way to address things when a brother or sister in the church sins against them.
Now, I don’t know if those of us in the church or those outside the church are more surprised by the notion that things are not always hunky dory in the church on this side of Christ’s coming again.
A pastor once said this about the reality of Christian community: imagine the most frustrating person you know, the person with every possible personal habit you detest, the person whose presence is nearly like fingernails on a chalkboard to you. Now imagine that they are your next door neighbor. Forever.
That’s the Christian community. It is not everyone sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya all day long because the reality of the Christian community is that it is made up of people. People with annoying habits, people who are not as kind as we might like. People who grate our nerves. People who disappoint us. People whom we disappoint. People. A community. And it is this community – this family of faith – that is the frame of reference of Paul’s exhortation that we love one another.
One writer has defined “love” as the “unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for another.” Nothing in there about good feelings, tender words and butterflies. Rather, we are to interact with each other in a way that demonstrates benevolent concern for the other. Compassion and empathy come to mind.
Jesus intends that this community of the faithful, this family of faith, his Church, be knit together, permeated through and through, and wrapped up in love – this love to which Paul exhorts us. This love that is understood primarily as concern for the other. Yes, this family of faith experiences love, the love of Christ – agape as it has been called in the Greek and carried over into our language. This love born of water – the waters of baptism. These waters bring us into the family of faith and our remembrance of these waters unites us as we live in love for each other.
And, Jesus promises this – into the midst of this community – this family – even if only two or three are gathered together, Jesus promises to be there in the midst of them – in the midst of us. God was present with the Israelites in the wilderness as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God present, God visible. God leading. This presence is described in Hebrew as Shekinah – the Divine Presence. And it connotes God dwelling in that particular place – dwelling among God’s people.
Our country right now is experiencing deep division, mistrust, and animus. We think the worst of the “other” – those on the other end of the political continuum from where we put ourselves. We glibly spread sarcastic and hurtful “jokes” about the other. We swallow exaggerations, mistruths and outright lies as if they were lemon drops – they linger long in our mouths, we suck on them, and smack our lips on them. And when the sugary coating has dissolved we are left with the sour and the bitter which we swallow whole.
Scripture teaches us that it is not to be so among us as followers of Jesus. The call on our life is to love one another, to be honest with each other, to see the best in one another, to help each other when we go astray. This is to be our life together, even as we are in the midst of pandemic and cannot be together physically right now. We are a community of the faithful and God is present in our midst teaching and encouraging and caring and loving us all.
Yes, here in the Church, here among brothers and sisters in faith, here it is that we are to owe no one anything except to love one another. We love because Christ first loved us.
Amen. May it be so.
