sermonboy.com

Proper 18

Romans 13
13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
13:9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
13:11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;
13:12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;
13:13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.
13:14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.


I want to begin this morning with a quick look at hands. What do you see?

Assuming you see ten digits (if not, take off your shoes and try again) you will see the basis for a few important things. What are they? (Metric, mathematics) These, and of course, the Ten Commandments. I have little doubt that the number of commandments and those ten little memory aids you have on your hands line up perfectly. Wanna behave? Look at your hands. Wanna remember, number them off.

So let’s try:

No other gods
No idols
Don’t use God’s name in vain
Keep the Sabbath
Honour parents
No killing
No adultery
No stealing
No lying (false witness)
No coveting

Notice I didn’t put you on the spot. In one of the best bits of television I have seen in years, Stephen Colbert interviewed some Congressman who created one of those bills that would place the Ten Commandments in court houses and municipal buildings all over the U.S. A very earnest politician made his case for the importance of the Ten, and their place in the centre of American life. Then Colbert asked him to name them. He got three.

***

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

St. Paul lives in two worlds. First, he is a teacher of the Law, and an effective one, because he is given the task of persecuting Christian believers. As Saul, he brings his vast knowledge of the law to bear on those who would follow Jesus. As Paul, he does exactly the same thing, but this time he does it to bring these two worlds together. He is writing to Jewish Christians, the first step in the forging of a unique Christian identity.

And in bringing these two worlds together, he begins at the beginning:

The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

You might almost think Paul has forgotten use his fingers. Nevertheless, Paul is making a first attempt at creating a system of understanding, a way of bringing one world into another. The Ten Commandments remain the Ten Commandments, but somehow they have to fit into Jesus’ own summary of the law. Can you remember it? It’s found in Matthew 22:

36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

So we have ten and we have two. We have Jesus’ summary of the whole of the law and the prophets, and we still have ten fingers and ten toes. So Paul, wanting to make sense of all of this for his people, begins to put them together. And for Romans 13, he takes hand number two. He takes prohibitions regarding murder, adultery, stealing, lying and coveting and says this is what it means to love your neighbour. Five become one.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

So hand number one is all the ways we love the Lord our God with heart and mind and soul, and hand number two is loving your neighbour as yourself.

***

Now, there is certainly no conflict in this congregation, right? I’m new here, so tell the truth. Maybe a little? Let’s not spoil all our illusions just yet, as we bask in the glow of mutual self-discovery. Like all new relationships, we’ll live for a while in the assumption of near-perfection and them slowly learn otherwise. But by then our affection will have grown too, and whatever imperfection we find will be offset by all the good stuff we discover on the way.

Paul and Jesus lived without illusions. Maybe they were a product of the their times: living under Roman occupation, living at the crossroads of near-eastern conquest, they routinely say the worst of human life. They knew that sin was a predictable part of being human, and that eventually everyone falls into some sort of conflict. Paul coined the famous phrase “you stupid Galations” and Jesus predicted the cross long before he got to Jerusalem, both fully aware that sin and failure would turn up as soon as any project started. The church was no different.

It is for this reason that Matthew begins his famous summary of how to resolve conflict with these words:

If another member of the church sins against you…

Hold on, we have a problem. Matthew here is recounting Jesus’ words, words directed at the church, but there is a no church. Jesus is pre-church. Jesus is Jewish. Jesus hasn’t created a church: he has created a way for Jews to be better Jews. He is trying to reform something, not make something new. The teaching on conflict is all Jesus, but the words “member” and “church” are not. They didn’t exist yet.

So what are we to make of this? Matthew is speaking to someone with these words, and that someone is us. Whenever you see the words “member” or “church” in a place where they didn’t come into being yet, Matthew is speaking directly to us. We are the primary audience for this stuff, not the first century people that stood about listening to Jesus. They would be the ones with the puzzled look saying “church, what’s a church?” The church is us, and the conflict resolution strategy is a direct teaching to future generations of believers.

My favourite part of the passage from Matthew is the end: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Maybe this is the birth of the Christian church, hiding there at the end of the passage. He pronounced it, and it was so. We can take comfort knowing that the two or three or a hundred gathered here have a plan, a pre-arranged plan to deal with whatever conflict enters the life of this congregation.

***

Back to our friend Paul, he is anxious that not a moment be wasted in the project of loving our neighbour. He takes the second hand of commandments and he insists that we see these as the very first steps toward loving the people that surround us. He rounds out the list a little, maybe to make it more interesting, adding drunkenness, licentiousness, and jealousy. And he insists that the time is now:

Besides this, you know what time it is: how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.

I love the last part: salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. If you are a language geek like me, you’ll recognize something here called metonymy (meton-a-mee). If I said “Westminster deposed Edward II” or “Ottawa might cut taxes” you might not immediately see that Ottawa can’t actually do it, but Ottawa is symbolic for MP’s in Parliament who might. So, salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. And salvation is symbolic, it is metonymy. But what is salvation? Is it going to heaven? Is it liberation from slavery? Is it being “saved?”

I don’t think we know exactly what salvation is. But we do know that it’s near. Paul is very clear on this point. It is near like light before dawn, it is near like the moment before waking, when the sounds around us intrude on our dreams. Salvation is near whenever two or three people gather and become neighbours. Salvation is near whenever we follow Jesus’ simple code for overcoming strife, salvation is near whenever we extend our definition of neighbour to include the least and the last and the unloved. Salvation is near.

Jesus said “point out the fault when you are alone.” If that fails, bring a couple of friends, and maybe together you can solve it. If that doesn’t work, tell the church. And if they cannot listen to the church, then it is settled: that person becomes like a Gentile or a tax collector. Settled, or is it?

The best insult they could level on Jesus was this: “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Mt 11). Even at the end of conflict, even as we are ready to say “case closed,” there is one more appeal, one more reprieve, one more note of grace: he was a friend of tax collectors and sinners alike. Salvation is nearer to us now then when we became believers, thanks be to God. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 9:25 AM