LOVE ONE ANOTHER
“It is time for us to wake from sleep.” “The night is far gone, the day is near.” I don’t know about you, but I’m a snoozer. In other words, I set my alarm about 40 minutes before I absolutely have to get out of bed, and hit the snooze button every 10 minutes until I know that if I don’t get out of bed, I’m going to miss an appointment. Do you do that? Today’s scripture is a letter to the Roman church from Paul and he is insistent, that the time is now, that the morning is here, that we better get our kiesters out of bed and get busy with God’s business.
When Paul talks about waking from our sleep, it means opening our eyes and seeing what is happening all around us. Many of us pull the covers over our head to avoid the really difficult issues of the day. In my latest blog, I wrote about how the news makes me want to drink, and the advice I got from most folks was, “stop watching the news.” But I don’t know if that is practical advice for a Christian. Turning off the news, not reading a newspaper, not being aware of the happenings all around us is like pulling the cover over our heads, wrapping ourselves in a safe cocoon, and waiting for the crappy stuff to pass. We’ll get out of bed when it’s all clear.
You see, that’s a problem, because the time is now. Christ says the light of day has dawned and we must stop pushing the snooze button and get out of bed. And you know as well as I do that in the light of day we can’t ignore the harsh realities of the world. So what are we to do?
Well we go back to the first part of today’s reading. Out of all the laws listed in the ancient traditions, Christ and Paul lift up only two. If you abide by these two laws then you’ll fulfill all of God’s laws. They took the 600 + laws in the Torah and consolidated them to two simple ones: Love God. Love neighbor. When we abide in love we fulfill the law.
Now one doesn’t come before the other. It’s like breathing, inhale love God, exhale, love neighbor. There is no beginning or end to breathing; it’s just a constant flow of in and out. A Christian mystic said loving God and loving neighbor is like having two feet, you place one before the other, back and forth, again and again. He went on to say that it’s not that we have to love God first in order to love our neighbor, but that the love of God is simultaneously inseparable from the love of neighbor because God has become the neighbor.
So what is it to love? Is it that sentimental fuzzy feeling and emotion we have for certain people? No, the love that Paul is referring to is about behavior rather than feeling. Love defines our attitude and our behavior. Our neighbors will know or not know God’s love by how we treat them.
And who is our neighbor? Jesus defines “neighbor” to be anyone we interact with. We fulfill the law by acting in a loving way to our families, our enemies, our friends, our boss, the clerk at the store and every other human being you come in contact with each and every day. In other words, our neighbor is everyone all around us, driving by us on a freeway, or living in our own home.
None of this is new. The message is love God, love your neighbor now! Get out of bed, put on your armor of light and bring God’s grace out into the messed up crazy world that feels like it’s imploding all around us. And let’s be loud about it. Christians are called not to be subtle and secretive in their lived out compassion but we are to live this love out loud. Make it obvious. We must show people what compassion in action looks like and so that might mean we put ourselves out there to be judged and to be criticized. So what. Be compassionate, shower others with grace and forgiveness, help another in need, not so others can see how great we are, but so others can see how great God is.
Now with this life-giving love, we are free to obey and disobey when a law or authority violate the demands of love. So for example, in Europe, many people broke the law by hiding Jews in their homes. In the 1960’s many African American men and women broke the laws of sitting at lunch counters for whites only, or sitting in the front of the bus instead of the back. They broke the law because the law was not about love. Today many churches are acting as sanctuaries, protecting immigrants from being torn from their families and deported to a country they may never have known as an adult. Perhaps these sanctuary churches and sanctuary cities are breaking the law, but they’re following the only law that matters, they are loving their neighbor.
Staying awake is a struggle. Being aware of the disasters, the injustices, the wars, the oppression and racism are all so overwhelming, and like I said, it makes me want to drink. But pulling the cover over my head hoping the political hurricanes and literal hurricanes will pass over me is not what God put me on this earth to do. And He didn’t put you on this earth to do nothing either. Paul sees that the Christian movement will only be fulfilled if Christians begin with how they interact with their neighbor. We can’t interact with our neighbor if we stay in bed and slam the snooze button over and over.
So heed the call. “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. …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 love God and love our neighbor right now in all that we do and whomever we’re with.
Amen.