Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Romans 13:8-14
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.
Besides 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; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
A priest friend tells the story of a dog, a neighborhood, a dead cell phone and how God worked it all out for love’s sake.
This priest is a petite lady who owns a very large dog. On the evening of 12th of July, she took him for a short hike in a wooded area adjacent to her neighborhood. All was well until a firecracker went off. She had no idea, more than week after the 4th of July, that this might be an issue but it was. Her dog – a Great Dane mix – was terrified of loud noises and dropped to the ground crying and drooling. And she knew how this would go. He would not budge. Not an inch! Only the strong arms of her husband, a former college wrestler would be able to hoist Marmaduke up on his paws and get him home. She pulls out her cell phone only to find it is dead as a doornail. No bars. No charge. And it’s starting to get dark. And she’s about a half mile from her house.
She was hoping someone would be out taking a walk and would see her and have a fully charged cell phone she could borrow so she could call home and get the help she and Marmaduke needed. And who should walk by but a man she had seen walking around the neighborhood many, many times. She didn’t know his name but it was someone who she recognized and she thought must have recognized her and her dog. She thought surely this is someone who will stop and help. But he didn’t. So there she was, standing there now in the dark with her dog. Hoping someone else might come alone. It took awhile but eventually she sees a couple in the distance, who she didn’t recognize. Again, she waves and calls out to them. They did come over to her and she explained she just needed to borrow a cell phone to call her husband.
After they offered to take her home themselves, after they offered to stay with her – after they offered everything that they possibly could offer, they parted friends. They’d never known each other before that moment.
She was so moved by their kindness and generosity that the next morning my friend blogged about it. So this is more about what happened after the great dog caper than the night itself.
And when she published her blog there was an immediate response, a great outpouring of support. Calling, texting, messaging and asking are you OK? Giving advice, take my number, letting her know where they lived, their address so if it happened again to come and knock on their door so they could help. It was incredible how they looked out for her.
She says it is a friendly neighborhood – and very diverse: every race, every religion, young and old, the spectrum of God’s kingdom. They’re generally friendly. And the fact that someone in that neighborhood had behaved in a way that was less than friendly, less than helpful offended everyone around. So as a result, everyone was especially attentive to their neighbors. So now everyone stops everyone and asks “how are you doing, good to see you.” Everywhere she turns, folks stop her and ask how she’s doing.
She has folks accompany her on her walks. “How far as you going? I’ll walk that far with you.” Neighbors just want to stay in touch. It’s been amazing to see how everyone in her neighborhood responded to one little act of unfriendliness. It’s taken the whole idea of loving neighbor to a whole new level. Because everyone is really concerned about how everyone is doing all the time now. And that has been a beautiful gift that kept on giving long after an incident that wasn’t so wonderful.
This whole concept of loving neighbor sounds really easy. It sounds easy right up until that moment when we’re confronted with a neighbor that is different from us – who doesn’t look like us or maybe doesn’t speak the same language, or love the same people. And in that moment loving neighbor becomes challenging for us.
So I want to take a moment to point to both our epistle and our gospel lesson. Paul says something in the letter to the Romans that is a truism if ever there was one. And that truism is, that if you take the 6 of the 10 commandants that deal with how we are to live together with one another – and there are 6 of the 10 - and try to sum them up, the best way to sum them up is to say, “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Because if you really love your neighbor as yourself, then all of those things that God has commanded us not to do so that we live well with one another, we just wouldn’t do those things. Because our mindset is, “I love this person that is standing next to me as one of God’s beloved. This person who is made in the likeness and image of God just as I am is entitled to nothing but love from me.”
One of the things we promise in our own baptismal covenant -we renew that covenant periodically - is that we have committed our lives to respecting the dignity of every human being. With God’s help. There are days that this a lot easier than other days, there are times we fall short. But it is the commitment we’ve made.
How many times have seen a sister or brother being mistreated and not stopped to say “this isn’t okay with me.” We get in our own head, we get in a place of “O, I don’t want to upset someone, I don’t want make someone feel badly.” When what we are called to do is what Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel: we should say something. We should call them to task.
It’s unfortunate that the NRSV translation says what it says in the first sentence. It doesn’t give us the clearest picture of what Jesus says. The Greek word in that first sentence is “adelphos.” Which means “brother.” So if read that first sentence and we use brother, it sounds differently to us: “if our brother sins against us, then we are to go and take that person - just the two of us - and talk about it. If that doesn’t do any good, we are to get a couple more people to help talk about the issue and try to resolve it.
If those doesn’t do any good, then we come to the entire assembly and try to resolve it there. And if that still doesn’t do any good, we are to treat them as gentiles and tax collectors.
And that if is a little jarring, then we need to go back in Matthew and look at what’s gone on up to this point. Because even if Jesus wasn’t clear at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew’s account of his story about the persons to whom he has come to serve, it’s become clear as the story unfolds: he has welcomed Gentiles. And he’s brought healing and reconciliation, even to those who others would have called sinners and unclean, and not worthy of being in the presence of Christ.
And so now when Jesus says, treat them as a tax collector or Gentile, he’s not saying ostracize them. Jesus isn’t saying push them aside. Jesus is saying “bring them in! Bring in even the ones who you would push away. Bring them in and show them the path to love.”
One of my priest friend’s neighbors said to her in the days following the dog incident something that summed up what lots of the folks in that neighborhood were probably thinking, “what happens to you, happens to all of us.” Because we are one. We are one because we are all made in the likeness and image of God. We are one because we share God’s love as God’s beloved. And what happens to any one of us happens to all of us.
So when we try to convince ourselves in that moment when we’re not sure, “should I say something? Have I just witnessed an injustice and should I say something? Should I do something? Should I just not ruffle anyone’s feathers and just walk away?” We are called to remember that what happens to any of us happens to all of us.
We cannot afford, in our world today, to stay silent in the face of injustice. We cannot afford to walk away when there is suffering among us. Because we are one. And I will suggest that those who are called to lead in speaking out, are people of faith, are church people. Because if we are not raising our hands and raising our voices, then how on earth will those who don’t know God’s love ever know it? They see that love in us, see in us goodness and compassion and power and mercy of God. They see us come into a space pushing out darkness and filling it with light, filling it with love.
We are all God’s beloved. May we always remember that what happens to any of us happens to all of us. Amen.
