September 10, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
This is a season of change – in the weather of course – I mean what is up with this late summer thunderstorm surge? Change in our daily lives – a new school year for the kids, a return from summer vacations. And… change in the church – the choir is back (yea!!!), and lots of parish programming starts up again after a summer lull. Fall describes what happens to the leaves, but for the rest of us, it is more like a season of get-up-and-go! I look forward to what the next few weeks has in store for this church, and I hope you do as well. And it is living as a faith community that we hear a lot about in the Epistle and Gospel today.
Jesus, in the passage from Matthew this week speaks about the importance of working to reconcile our differences, and that he is there among us whenever two or three are gathered in his name.
Why would Jesus tell his followers this?
Perhaps it is because he knows that they will need to figure out how to get along with one another if they are to love and serve him in the world as members of a larger community of faith. And those communities, the church, well – it’s being part of a family, and families don’t always get along with all members all the time. Just think about any gathering for Thanksgiving or a wedding. Churches aren’t excluded from that, to be sure.
It is sometimes joked that, rather than what we heard in this passage this morning, it is more like “whenever two or three are gathered in his name, there will be a disagreement.”
And so, when we hear Jesus talk about how to live in community, at a time when a group of diverse folks living, loving, and serving others seems counter cultural with the world, we can wonder if it is a bit of a pipe dream, this beloved community of the faithful.
After all, our nation is being torn at the seams by conflict, cruelty, and violence. Of course racism, sexism, heterosexism, political divides, and the rest are not new. But, post-pandemic, it seems like itching powder has been tossed around the country, really around the world. People have less tolerance for one another, we are quicker to violence than to discourse, we share disinformation on social media without regard to truth because it makes us feel better about whatever position we have, we fly off an angry email faster, accuse one another more readily, forgive less often, and fear even more what or who we don’t understand. It is difficult then for many to imagine that people living across such divisions could possibly find a way to become a community.
But there is good news, at least with regard to the church. A recent article in the Washington Post and other news outlets noted a statistical report that showed that post-pandemic there has been an overall reduction of conflict within Christian congregations, an increase in giving, an increase in new people attending, and an increase in feeling positive about the future of the church. Sadly, the rate of clergy thinking about leaving a church, or even ministry altogether, has continued to rise, which is true for many of those in serving vocations.
But wait! There’s more! There has been, post-pandemic, another increase according to this report. It is in the number of people seeking – the number of people coming to a church for the first time is up to16%, an increase of 5% from pre-2020. People seem to be yearning for another way, sensing something at work in the world larger than themselves, larger than the pettiness of humanity’s capacity to hurt, wanting to be a part of a community of faith, perhaps because they feel it will be different from the secular.
And it is, or at least it can be, if we live as Jesus calls us to do in the gospel. But this reconciliation he describes is difficult if we also don’t understand something very fundamental about how we are to live as followers of Jesus. Which is why the epistle from St. Paul that we heard a part of this morning is so valuable for us as we seek to be the community of faith Jesus is talking about here.
St. Paul writes: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 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.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Or for short, “Payback the love God gives to you early and often.”
Think about that for a moment.
For most of us, debt is something we understand far too well, it overwhelms us sometimes – student loans, mortgages, credit card bills… Owing something isn’t good, but a burden.
And love, well that is something we feel, a gift we give another, not owe, right? I mean, I watch the Hallmark channel – sooooo….
But, here’s a thought – what if St. Paul is right?
What if love was something we owed…what if there is a kind of debt that isn’t bad for us?
What if we started every day owing love?
Imagine waking up and looking at debt in a whole new way.
Imagine getting out of bed in the morning and thinking…how do I pay my debt of love to the world today?
What would that look like?
Well – something like what we have here – a place where everyone is welcome, all are included, and love is abundant. We are a very diverse family – people of many nations, cultures, languages, identities, ways of loving, being, thinking, and believing. A living example of the Beloved Community in action. It doesn’t mean we don’t have our differences. Of course we do. I mean, if you are looking for a church, office, family…well any regular gathering of folks that have no differences ever…good luck with that!
Yet, this is a place where differences are not spouted off in the parking lot, or in private meetings, but are resolved as best as possible with transparency and a willingness to prioritize loving relationship over end result.
Now to be clear, we are far from being perfect. We don’t get it all right all the time, and we have had conflict in our more distant past. We also have financial and building stresses that have escalated post-pandemic. And while we are growing again, we have far less people physically present here in church on Sundays than before the pandemic, and that weighs heavily on our hearts.
On top of all of that, we also know that Christ doesn’t call us to sit in our pews and congratulate ourselves for doing what we are supposed to do – for loving one another as Christ commanded us. Nourished by him in word and at this table we know that we are called to follow the Holy Spirit out into the world.
Still, Jesus was talking about living as a faith community, because he also knew that we have to get it right there first, before we can be the people he commanded us to be out in the world. That is where St. Paul’s epistle can really help us.
St. Paul was saying that to fulfill our debt is to love as Christ loved – to love as God loves us – to love our neighbor as ourself.
In other words, we fulfill our debt of love, by loving every single child of God, all the creatures God created, and the earth we inhabit by God’s grace. It isn’t reserved just for those we gather with as a parish family.
It seems like a lot when you think about it, doesn’t it? A burden too big to add to our already large pile. Perhaps then we need to take a closer look on the crosses we wear, or have in our pocket, or on our walls – to mediate on that image and remember what a real sacrifice of love truly is about, and how little we are really being asked.
Little, because paying this debt of love, well it isn’t like trying to free yourself from an obligation weighing you down. It is about recognizing some things about who we are, who our neighbor is, and especially who God is, and then responding to it all with love.
And we do, right? Not only within our walls, but when we serve the larger community through our mission and ministry.
But this debt of love can become harder when we remember that it isn’t meant only for some. Our debt of love is also owed to our immigrant neighbor, our LGBTQ+ and straight neighbor, our female and male neighbor, our Republican or Democrat neighbor, our Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist/or anything else neighbor, our Atheist or Agnostic neighbor, our rich and poor neighbor, our science loving or disbelieving neighbor…you get the idea. And that is not an easy thing, even for the most faithful among us.
Which is why what we do here, and from here, matters. When we walk through those doors, we learn how to love the way Jesus calls us to – that radical, over the top, all inclusive, unconditional kind of love, that frankly, isn’t abundant in the world. We learn this here not because of who we are, but because of who God is. We learn this because we cannot worship God and ourselves at the same time. Our liturgy is how we are given strength for our journey in Christ, because in reverence to that which is greater than ourselves, and in the sacraments, we come to know the grace humility has to offer us.
For humility is about truth, about being transparent with ourselves, and with others. It is a willingness to be vulnerable, to be cracked open and filled with the light of God’s grace, that allows us to model Jesus in our lives. And when we are truthful about ourselves, in the context of God’s unconditional grace and love for us, we can’t help but respond – not just to those we know, but to all of God’s creation.
We will see our own faults, and be more ready to forgive others.
We will seek to resolve conflicts in our communities, building bridges of reconciliation and hope, rather than walls that divide and exclude.
We will come to know that we have been given so much, and joyously seek opportunities to love our neighbor as ourself.
We will awaken to the knowledge that this debt of love isn’t really a debt at all. It is a gift – a gift that keeps on giving – to us, and through us – every single time we are willing to humbly receive it and give it freely to others.
And with Christ among us, cloaked in humility and the light of God’s grace, we will by our small acts of love, bring the Beloved Community out from within our doors to the world around us. And that, that my friends, will make all the difference – to us, to the world, and to God.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
September 10, 2023
Pentecost 18 – Track 1
1st Reading – Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149
2nd Reading – Romans 13:8-14
Gospel – Matthew 18:15-20
