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"I.O.U. ad infinitum" by Rev. Charles Hoffman

September 8, 2002 16th Sunday After Pentecost
Romans 13:8-14 Matthew 18:15-20

The 19^th century English novelist, Charles Dickens, told about an experience he once had with some leaders of the church. I don't know the details but the meeting wasn't much of a success. It was a long meeting characterized by stodgy churchmen droning on about unimportant subjects. And the whole thing was devoid of passion. Finally, Dickens interrupted the scene by making a suggestion. "Why don't we all move to a table," he said, "and sit around holding hands to see if we can make contact with the living."

Maybe you've been to a meeting like that. The point it illustrates is that the church is prone to go off on meaningless tangents. It forgets its calling. The whole world can be going to hell in a hand basket and the church is busy debating theological trivia. Sometimes it's tragic. In fact, I know that's what much of the church has done in the face of the AIDS/HIV crisis that has settled on the world like a plague from the dark ages.

Christian charity does not exhaust its energy asking the sufferer whose fault it is. Christian charity asks how it can alleviate the suffering and then moves to deeds of compassion.

Over the course of its history the church has had to face many emotionally charged issues. I'm sure it will face many more in the years to come. Some of the called-for changes have altered the face of the church. But in the midst of it all one thing has remained constant: It is the call to love. Spiritual leaders remind us of it every Sunday. Saint Paul said it to the church of his time.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another. That's what we hear in the text from Paul's letter to the church in Rome. But ever since Paul said that the church has had trouble taking it seriously. We think it naïve. It's too simple, has to be more to it than that. But we are wrong.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another. That's the topic today. It's not an easy subject because the meaning of that little word is so elusive in the English language. How did it happen that we have just one four letter word to cover so much? It is used to designate everything from the most profound to the most frivolous. It is used to describe everything from a committed relationship of 65 years to a casual one night stand. It may be sexual or spiritual; it may have to do with surface delights or soul-shaking depths.

So when we talk about love in the context of our faith we start by saying that it's not easy to define. Most of us, however, would say that it's easy to recognize. But not always because sometimes we have to engage in what has been called tough love. And tough love may not look like love at all.

I think the passage we read from the Romans letter can help us as we attempt to give shape and substance to our understanding of love. Most of the letter describes our relationship with God. It's good news. Says Paul, we stand before a God who loves us. It's a gift of God's grace. And he says that there isn't anything in the universe that can ultimately separate us from God's love. So there is much that is reassuring in the letter.

Now late in this long letter Paul begins to spell out the ramifications of this amazing grace and unending love. And basically what he says is that love is to define all of our relationships with others, including those we consider to be our enemies. Let love be genuine, says Paul, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection (12:9f).

Some of you may trip over the idea of loving with brotherly affection. I know that my brother and I didn't always have what could be called an affectionate relationship with each other. Maybe the NRSV is helpful when it renders this love as mutual affection.

Now I want to point out some specific things that Paul has to say about love. There are three words around which we can gather his thinking: incarnation, urgency, and obligation. The first is obligation.

Just prior to today's reading Paul has instructed the Christians in Rome to be good citizens. Taxes, revenue, respect, honor: these are all things that must be taken care of in a timely manner. These are all debts or obligations that have to be taken care of. But there is one debt that is always owed and never completely paid, i.e., the debt of love.

What does Paul say? He says, Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law (13:8 NRSV). To love another person is to fulfill the law. Love is something you owe to another person. According to Paul love is an obligation.

But you say that to reduce love to that level is to take away its spontaneity. Maybe so, but who says that spontaneity is the determining factor in love? Hollywood? We know that when two people come together to be married there is usually a lot of spontaneous excitement in the relationship. At least that's how it used to be before people started living together before the wedding.

But just because there's a lot of fireworks doesn't mean that it's love. Love is what you have left after the stars go out and the moon goes behind the clouds. Love is what happens when two people go through the worst of the worst together. A big part of marital love is prayerfully obligating yourself to your partner.

I know what some of you are saying. You are saying, Poor Sharon! But don't get me wrong. I'm all for romance. But I'm afraid we're asking too much of romance if we expect it alone to hold people, as it says, until death do us part.

It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said that just as love will hold the covenant of marriage together, so faithfulness to the covenant will make love last and give it meaning.

Of course Paul is not singling out marital love when he says that we should owe no debts but love. Paul is being more general than that. He's talking about love in all our relationships. But you say, But you don't know some of the people I know. You don't know the guy I work for. You don't know my sister-in-law. And so on.

And my response to that is that I'm glad I don't know those people because I've already got enough of them in my own life. But the Bible says, Even them. Love them, too. It's an I.O.U. and it goes on forever.

If the first word is obligation then the second word is urgency.

Paul says, You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. . . the night is far gone. . .(13:11ff).

I'm sure you've noticed it, too. There are an awful lot of people out there who need to be loved. Without it many of them simply won't make it. Sharon and I saw the Alan Arkin movie, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. It's in the theaters now. Go and see it as it gives a cross section of life in New York City. It's brilliant. See it and then think about what Saint Paul is telling us to do. Consider the urgency of love.

In any big city you constantly hear the voices of emergency vehicles rushing to the rescue. What you don't hear are the silent cries for help: the loneliness, the fear, the hopelessness, the brokenness. They are all pleas for love, urgent cries for urgent care.

I don't know who said it but it's right on the mark: Life is short and we have not much time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love; make haste to be kind.

Remember, the longer you withhold your love the more that other person is deprived. And the sooner you offer your love the closer the world comes to the ideal of God's reign. So don't squander the opportunities; don't put it off until a convenient time. Love is not only an obligation, oftentimes it is an inconvenience.

The third word is incarnation. This is the most important because it suggests the source of love. Old Charles Dickens, bored to tears as the Anglican divines went on and on about nothing, knew that in order for love to flourish you had to have changed hearts. You can't get blood out of a stone. You can't get Christmas cheer out of Ebenezer Scrooge until you've changed Ebenezer Scrooge. So scare some sense into him with the ghosts. Bring it on strong until he takes on a new persona and learns how to love the human need around him.

When Paul mandates love he knows that he's asking for more than we can deliver. It's not as simple as readjusting our priorities and falling in step with a great band of lovers of humanity. What is required is a change at the core of our being. The way Paul puts it is that we are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to clothe ourselves with Christ, to put on Christ as we would a garment. In this sense Paul would agree with the old adage that the clothes make the person.

Paul has other ways of getting at the same thing, not because he can't make up his mind but because it's such a profound truth. Sometimes he says that we are to be in Christ; at other times Christ is to be in us. It's all part of his attempt to describe a relationship with God in Christ that changes us, transforms us, gets under our skin. Martin Luther got right to the point when he said that Christians are to be little Christs to each other. That is, we are to incarnate God's love.

Mark it down, there is a lot of obligation and inconvenience in love. And if we aren't careful they will defeat us. In truth, the only way to attempt the rigors of love is to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

A young man had spent years of his life fighting the demons of a debauched and depraved existence. Morally, intellectually and spiritually his life was running on empty. He knew he was wrong. He tried unsuccessfully to reform himself. One day he was sitting under a fig tree in a garden, overcome with the pain of his life. He was praying. And in the middle of his prayer he heard a child' voice. And the voice said, Take up and read. Take up and read. He wasn't sure what it meant. But he went back to a place in the garden where he had left a copy of Paul's letter to the Romans.

Take up and read, the voice had said and so that's what he did.

And his eyes fell upon the words we have read this morning, some sixteen centuries later. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. . . That's what he read and such was the critical turning point in the life of that great saint of the church, the man who became Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.

It was a critical turning point because out of that new relationship with Christ Augustine could finally begin the arduous work of incarnating Christ's love in the world.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another. . .

Even when the other person is unlovable. Even when the timing is impossible. Even when the task itself is unreasonable. Amen.

Postscript. It's relatively easy to talk about this love in the life of an individual person who calls himself/herself a Christian. But this morning I am challenged to know how to talk about it in the life of a nation that insists it be labeled as one nation under God. How does a nation love? Or can it? How does one nation under God love the poor of the world? How does it love the earth which it insists is the work of the Creator? Can a nation love its enemies? Could it be that if a nation found ways to love its enemies it would turn those enemies into friends?

This Wednesday, as we remember the year past, let us pray that not only as individuals but also as a nation we might do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Let us pray for that time when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.