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 neighbour as yourself.”
Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the
law. (Romans 13:8-10)
That is the Epistle for next Sunday. I turned to it in hope, having been defeated
by the Gospel lesson in Matthew 18 – which I cannot think is authentic words of
Jesus. The many commentaries available
online similarly struggle with that passage.
Once upon a time I would have sweated over it until I had wrung
something more or less intelligible from it… but not any more. Part of grown-up faith is a keener sense of
what seems right… and what does not. So St
Paul came as a relief. Our only debt to
each other, he says, is the debt of love – love is the fulfilling of the law,
the commandments. Love does no wrong to
a neighbour.
I have just read what is called a graphic novel
trilogy… three volumes, all under the title “March”[1]. They tell the story of the United States
civil rights movement from the 1950s, through towards the Obama
presidency. It is done brilliantly in graphic
comic book format, but very much for adult understanding. These books tell of the early lunch counter
sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, the reactions of many white people who turned to
violence to preserve their segregated way of life. The principal author is John Lewis, a black
leader now a US congressman, who was in the movement from the beginning. He tells of the interminable and brutal
struggle simply to get black people registered to vote, the terrible
retaliations and injustices, corrupt courts, and hatred. From the beginning – and this is the point
this morning -- most of the civil rights movements adopted a strict discipline
of non-violence. So… they went to
hospital, they went to gaol, but they did not retaliate. Love does no wrong to a neighbour. Non-violence was personally very costly, and
some of them died, or were permanently injured.
Their determination to be non-violent was often severely tested.
We work out our discipleship, our personal response
to Jesus, in individually different ways.
No two Christians are the same, or necessarily agree with each other, or
experience the same things. But our differences
are not the problem – it is simply the way God has ordered creation. In mature discipleship we learn always to be
suspicious of uniformity and conformity.
But what we have in common through all the differences, in company with
Jesus, is the priority of love – rescuing that word, if we can, from the repellent
sentimentality the secular culture reduces it to. Love requires truth and it requires
courage. It does no wrong to another. Part of love therefore is that we have made
peace with ourselves, and this we seek in the prayer of silence, stillness,
simplicity – as Jesus said, Go into your
room and shut the door…
[1]
MARCH Books 1, 2 and 3 – John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (Top Shelf
Productions, 2013, 2015, 2016)
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