September 10: "Marks of the Church: The Way of Love"

THE WORD IN SCRIPTURE

Romans 13:8-14

Don’t be in debt to anyone, except for the obligation to love each other. Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, Don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t desire what others have, and any other commandments, are all summed up in one word: You must love your neighbor as yourself. Love doesn’t do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.

As you do all this, you know what time it is. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep. Now our salvation is nearer than when we first had faith. The night is almost over, and the day is near. So let’s get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light. Let’s behave appropriately as people who live in the day, not in partying and getting drunk, not in sleeping around and obscene behavior, not in fighting and obsession. Instead, dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t plan to indulge your selfish desires.

MESSAGE

If you were to ask some random person out on the street, “What do you think of those people at Cobleskill United Methodist Church?” what answer do you think you’d get?

What are we known for? What are the marks or characteristics of our life together as a community of faith? What marks us as a faithful church?

Is it our Sunday worship? Is it our Sunday School or our Bible Studies? Is it the concern we show for our neighbors through our varied mission projects? Is it the many ways we seek to fulfill Jesus’ commandment to care for those who are hungry or poor or sick?

Different churches use different ways of assessing their faithfulness. For some churches, agreement with or profession of a certain creed or set of beliefs is the mark of faithfulness. For other churches, the celebration and proper understanding of sacraments such as holy communion and baptism is the marks of faithfulness. And for other churches, the size of the congregation or budget or building might be seen as a mark of faithfulness.

Certainly, our ministries, our worship, and our outreach projects are all marks of our faithfulness to Jesus.

But perhaps the most important “marks” of a faithful Christian community have less to do with what we DO and more to do with what we ARE as the Church.

A couple of years ago, I finished my doctoral dissertation, which focuses on the relationship between “church” and disability. As part of my research, I looked into different definitions or “marks” of “church.” One of the theologians I studied is John Howard Yoder. And his definition of “church” is my favorite. It’s a definition that resonates deeply with my faith and my experience, and that just makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Here’s Yoder’s definition of “church”:

The church is not simply the bearer of the message of reconciliation, in the way a newspaper or a telephone company can bear any message with which it is entrusted. The work of God through the church is the calling and gathering of people together into a new form of communal life and social wholeness that reveals reconciliation in that life.

In other words, according to Yoder, the church doesn’t HAVE a mission to carry out; it doesn’t HAVE a ministry to fulfill; it doesn’t HAVE a message to proclaim. Rather, the church IS the mission, it IS the ministry, and it IS the message. The way the people of the church live and work together is the message. Our life together IS the message and the mission.

Of course, we are the church when we gather on Sunday mornings, when we enjoy our times of fellowship, when we celebrate communion together, and when we spend many hours preparing for garage sales and quilt shows and other community events.

But we are the church most fully and most faithfully when our life together most closely resembles the way Jesus lived; when we, as a church, are marked and shaped by aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry and message.

For the next three weeks, I will be describing some of these “marks” of being the church.

Today’s mark of being the church is found in our reading from Romans. Listen again to the Apostle Paul’s words to the church in Rome:

“Don’t be in debt to anyone, except for the obligation to love each other. Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, Don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t desire what others have, and any other commandments, are all summed up in one word: You must love your neighbor as yourself. Love doesn’t do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.”

Love fulfills the law. One mark of the church, according to Paul, is choosing to live according to the rule of love, not the rule of law.

When Paul says law, of course he means the religious laws, which, like any laws, can be defined as “a system of rules which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior.”

I believe that too many Christians and too many churches let law be the guiding principle in their life together, and in their relationships with God and with others.

But in this letter to the Romans, Paul is saying that all of the law is fulfilled whenever we act out of love.

We need to remember that Jesus often took the religious leaders of his day to task because those leaders focused so much on the law that they lost sight of the loving choice. Relying on the rule of law to shape our life together can keep us from seeing the way of love. When we make law the basis of who we accept, who we welcome into our midst, who we deem “worthy” of our love or God’s love, then we have buried love under the burdens of the law.

We have a choice. The rule of law, or the way of love.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to choose the rule of law. Law is easy. Love is hard.

Law means you can control people . . . love means you can’t.

Law means you can reject and ignore people who aren’t like you or who don’t think the way you think or believe the things you believe . . . love means you can’t.

Law means you can judge others and decide who’s in and who’s out . . . love means you can’t.

Law means you can determine who is worthy of receiving help or support or love or forgiveness . . . love means you can’t.

Law means you look for the bad in people . . . love means you have to trust the good in people.

Law means you can measure other people and decide if they are as good as you are . . . love means you don’t think you’re better than anyone else.

Choosing the way of love is hard. It demands practice. It means taking risks.

Choosing love instead of law doesn’t mean that we believe the laws aren’t important. Indeed, laws are an important means of ensuring that any community can thrive and that people can be protected from being harmed by others.

But . . . laws can only define and, to a certain extent, control, BEHAVIOR. No laws can control ATTITUDES. For example, a person can follow laws that prohibit discrimination, but still harbor racist or oppressive attitudes in their hearts.

And that’s the core of Paul’s statement about love and law. We know that there are limits to the law. Too often, laws get broken and people get hurt.

John Wesley is the founding father of Methodism, our faith tradition. In 19^th century England, Wesley oversaw the growth of Methodism through small groups of people who met together to grow in faith and love. He laid out three simple, basic rules for the members of these groups to follow:

Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.

It’s interesting to note the order in which Wesley listed those rules. We might think that he’d put something about loving God first. But he didn’t. His first rule was, “do no harm.”

That sounds very similar to what Paul wrote: “Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Law.”

You see, where the law fails, love succeeds. Where our attempts to obey the law fall short, love fills the gap. What the law can’t accomplish, love can.

Because love does no harm, to anyone. And in this way, Love always fulfills the law.

So to Paul, to John Wesley, and to Jesus, one of the most important marks or signs of a faithful church is when we choose the way of love instead of the rule of law. When our life together is a celebration of expansive and generous love, rather than a rigid observance of law. When, by doing no harm to anyone, we show the world that we are marked by and filled with the merciful and gracious love of God.

Eugene Peterson is the author of the version of the Bible called The Message. And I like the way he interprets Paul’s words in this passage. He writes,

“You can’t go wrong when you love others. [Because] when you add up everything in the law, the sum total is love.” May it be so, here at CUMC. Amen.