Love fulfills the law: 14th after pentecost a

Romans 13:8-14

⁸Owe no one anything,

      except to love one another;

            for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

⁹The 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.”

                        ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor;

                              therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹Besides 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;

            ¹²the night is far gone,

                  the day is near.

            Let us then lay aside the works of darkness

                  and put on the armor of light;

                  ¹³let us live honorably as in the day,

                        not in reveling and drunkenness,

                        not in debauchery and licentiousness,

                        not in quarreling and jealousy.

                              ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ,

                                    and make no provision for the flesh,

                                          to gratify its desires.

The other reading referenced is Matthew 18:15-20.

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Much of this week could be characterized as a failure to love.  Echoing Jesus’ words, Paul writes in Romans, “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”  If love is the fulfillment of the law, then a law ought to be judged on its enactment of love.

Committing adultery—cheating on someone else—is not loving because it neither respects nor honors that one.  Killing—the violent taking of life of another—is not love because it neither respects nor honors that one.  Stealing is not love because it neither respects nor honors that one.  Coveting—jealously wanting what is not ours—is not love because it neither respects nor honors that one above the things they possess.

Love does not mean that we cannot disagree, but it does frame our conversations differently.  Love does not permit dehumanizing another person or group of people through the use of name-calling and slurs.  Love does not say, “those people.”  Love challenges us when we say “those people.”  Love challenges us when we are cruel or careless.  Love talks about issues that matter, even at the risk of making us or others uncomfortable.  Oftentimes, love is shared in stories about and with the people we love.

Love talks about conflict, disappointment, and disagreement.  We wrestle together in disagreements because we do, in fact, love each other.  We tell each other when we are upset because we want to be in good, loving relationship with each other and we can’t when we’re not honest about things that matter.  Love brings us together to challenge and to be challenged.

When Paul says that the commandments “are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law,” he sets a different standard for us.  When love does no wrong and love fulfills the law, the conversations we have are different.

There is a lot of space for disagreement about policy, but the test of a law or policy, whether locally, nationally, or internationally is if it furthers love: honor, respect, dignity.

Does repealing DACA, a bill protecting and supporting those who came to this country as children without papers, further love?  How is it loving to send someone away from a country they call home?  You all know that there is nothing loving about deportation.  The fear and anxiety it causes are not love.  The families that will be broken apart lose out on love.

Love cares for others.  Love helps families stay together—stay in this country we call home.  Love respects and honors each person’s humanity.  Love provides and cares for each person, sheltering them when they are in danger.  Love challenges rhetoric and actions of hate and racial bias, even when it’s done by a neighbor or stranger here in town.

Love holds us to higher standards.  Love decries the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction because the lives of people in our country and in other countries matter and because the best way to keep troops and people safe is to not start a war.  Love does not kill.  Love does not bomb.

Paul, who is writing to followers of Christ in the powerful Roman Empire, writes, “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; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” 

Now is the time.  Love is the way.

Love is the fulfilling of the law, as Paul writes, and it is hard.  Love is not easy or quick or painless.  We know the pain of losing someone we love, whether through death or geography or through relationships broken beyond repair.

In baptism, Love digs deep into our hearts and lays down strong roots.  That’s why it can hurt so much to lose someone we love.  But that’s also how we get to live out the love that grows up and out of those roots, bearing good fruit, bearing love. 

Love is what we need right now.  We need the kind of love that brings compassion back into immigration policies, that keeps Dreamers and immigrants safe and in this country we call home, that puts human faces on policies and budgets and programs—humanizing those others try to demonize.  We need the kind of love that is appalled by war, violence, and threats of mass destruction.  We need the kind of love that values diversity in language, race, and culture.

Paul writes that “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”  Salvation is not for us individually; it is not a personal, private thing.  Salvation is communal.  Salvation is Love actually reigning over every part of life and every interaction.  Love gets us through the struggles together.  Love doesn’t leave people to fend for themselves.  Love isn’t neutral.  Love picks a side.  Love picks the side of love—of caring for humanity and creation, of dignity, of honor, of respect.

Love enacts salvation.

Thanks be to God.