First Lutheran Church
August 30, 2020 + The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 12:9-21 9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
“True Love”
Pastor Greg Ronning
Today I want to talk to you about “love.” In particular, “true love,” “real love,” “authentic love,” - “genuine love.” The Beatles were right when they proclaimed in song, “All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is love, love, - love is all you need.” But they were wrong when they added, “It’s easy.” The Beatles sang “All You Need is Love,” and then they broke up! It’s not easy.
We all know that love is the answer, we know that we need love, and that we need to love others; yet “true love,” “real love,” “authentic love,” - “genuine love,” is hard to find, and seemingly even harder to hold onto in a world that has hopelessly confused love. I believe it was Johnny Lee who sang, in the movie “Urban Cowboy,” “I’ve been lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”
And alas, we’ve all made the mistake of “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.” We’ve all been misled by something that looked like authentic love, but in the end proved to be anything but true love. Unfortunately, incomplete or disingenuous, misguided or malicious, false versions of “love,” abound all around us. We confuse love with narcissism, we confuse love with codependency, we confuse love with commercialism, we confuse love with pride, we confuse love with sex, we confuse love with safety, we even confuse love with hate.
“All you need is love,” we know it’s the truth, but too often we find ourselves, “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”
So, where do we find the love we so desperately want and need? Where do we find “true love,” “real love,” “authentic love,” - “genuine love?” St. John reminds us in First John, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16b) That’s where true love is found. And in today’s appointed epistle from the book of Romans, St. Paul unpacks for us, in very concrete and practical terms, what it means to “abide” in the “genuine” love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus. If you’re “lookin’ for love” St Paul has just what you need!
St. Paul begins by calling us to zealously pursue “genuine” love, and to avoid false love at all costs. “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” And then he provides us with a model of what this “genuine love” looks like in very practical ways, in an ever-widening circle of imperatives that when engaged, leads us ever and more deeply, into the great love of God that we share in - with - and through Christ Jesus.
This ever-widening circle of imperatives begins with one’s own faith community, for us it begins with our life together here at First Lutheran. St. Paul writes, “Love one another with mutual affection.” We begin the path towards true love by simply caring for “each other,” and allowing “each other” to care for us. Belong and participating, serving and being served, in the local faith community is the foundation of true love. Sometimes the biggest challenge here is not to serve others, but to let others serve us, love us, when we are in need.
From there, Paul begins to extend the circle of love, “Contribute to the needs of the saints.” Contextually this imperative is a plea to send resources to the church in Jerusalem that was suffering in poverty. Today we are reminded to remember our brothers and sisters in the faith that find themselves in that same condition, lacking resources for daily living. And that’s a relatively easy thing to do, they are family in Christ, and we’ve always been taught the old proverb that “charity begins at home.” So, we reach out to our brothers and sisters in need.
Yet Paul does not stop here, Paul does not stop in this relatively comfortable place, he takes it a step further. The next imperative challenges us to widen our circle of true love even further, “Extend hospitality to strangers.” While this is not something radically new, it has always been a part of the Judeo-Christian faith tradition, this command can be found way back in the book of Leviticus, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” “Extend hospitality to strangers,” it’s nothing new, but it is, and has always been, a challenge. Welcoming strangers does not come naturally to us in our fallen nature. Yet in practicing that kind of love - God abides, love is found. We are challenged to go deeper into love.
And then comes the next paragraph in today’s appointed reading about “genuine” love, where we discover that Paul is not yet done challenging us with the “ever-widening circle of true love.” Paul exhorts us, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them,” “Do not repay anyone evil for evil,” “never avenge yourselves,” “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.”
Yep, now Paul wants us to love our enemies! True love is truly pushing us to our limits - and beyond. Paul does add that in doing so we “will heap burning coals on their heads.” And perhaps that makes us feel a little better about “loving” our enemies. However, Theologian Mark Reasoner is quick to remind us that our “love for an enemy isn't ‘genuine’ if we are motivated by the idea that any kindness shown increases God's punishment on the person!” Paul, just like Jesus, wants us to truly love our enemies, and in doing so “authentically” proclaim the Gospel that “all” might know and experience the love of God.
In today’s reading from the Twelfth Chapter of Romans, St. Paul unpacks “true love,” “real love,” “authentic love,” - “genuine love.” He gets right to the heart of what “non-hypocritical love” looks like in the Christian community. He takes us on a journey, from the inside out, through the ever-widening, and ever challenging, extending circle of God’s love beginning with kinship in our own community, to the saints who are the extended family of our community, to the strangers we encounter, to the blessing or our enemies, until “everyone” can be found inside the circle that is the love of God, the circle that is - the God that is love.
This is the journey that leads us into the love of God that we so desperately want and need, the love of God that saves us, grants us peace, and sets us free. This is “all the love” we need, and thanks to Paul, we know exactly what it looks like and where it abides. There is no more need to be “lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”
Yet, just how do we do it? How do we make this challenging journey? How do we begin to widen the circles of love in our life? How do we start to practice this challenging love? It’s not easy!
The Good News is in the grammar! So often we read the words found in today’s lesson, and in our heads, we hear Paul addressing us - individually. It’s a Greek and English grammar thing. I hear Paul saying, “Greg let your love be genuine. Greg, you need to welcome strangers. Greg, you need to love your enemies.” And heard in this way, it comes off as judgement. But that’s not what Paul is saying, he’s not saying that at all. All the imperatives in today’s readings, all the challenges about love, all the action verbs, are written in the plural! Paul is addressing the faith community, the “plural you,” in Texas we would say “you all,” or if it’s a big group of people, “all you all.” But because in English grammar we don’t make that distinction clear, and because we tend to think and understand more individualistically, we don’t always pick that contextual clue up. So, here’s the good news, the imperative is not for the individual believer, but for the community of believers.
And that’s good news. Because I know I can’t do it by myself, and you know you can’t do it by yourself, but together - we can do it. Paul’s use of the plural form of the verb is his way of attaching a warning label to “true love,” He’s telling us, “Do not try to do this alone!” It can’t be done alone, it’s dangerous alone, it’s not meant to be done alone; true love is meant to be practiced by the faith community! Yes, it is true, we have been saved by grammar!
And I know this is truth, because my experience of true love, bears witness to it. When I abide with all of you, when we abide together, “true love,” “real love,” “authentic love,” - “genuine love,” happens! The love we share builds each of us up, it reminds us that we are the children of God. In our gathering, even our gathering online, I experience true love. And even though I am very passionate about serving the poor, by myself I cannot begin to do anything that makes a difference. But this past Tuesday I was able to helps serve 44 meals to our hungry neighbors, and some of them were complete strangers to me. And it was because a team of us gathered together to do it. And this past Wednesday, our faith community, supported by each of you in a variety of ways, giving of your time and resources, was able to feed over 100 families because of the Caring Hands Food Pantry.
Together, we are able to practice an ever-widening circle of true love. We are able to do something together that we could never do alone. And it places us in the place where God abides, it places us in the place where true love abides, and that makes a difference, a difference to everyone, it extends the circle of true love. And abiding in this love gives me joy, faith, hope, and peace.
The true love that we are all looking for, the kind of love that endures, the kind of love that won’t let us down, the kind of love that brings us joy, the kind of love that gives us meaning and purpose, the kind of love that is the salvation of God; the kind of love that will last forever, is found in our life together serving each other, serving those in need, serving the stranger, and even in serving the enemy. This is where God abides, this is where love abides, this is the journey that leads ever deeper into the depths of God’s love.
And this is the love of God that we have experienced in Christ; Who reached out to us when we were yet sinners, enemies of the cross; Who reached out to us when we were estranged and alone in this world; Who reached out to us when we were in need, in with and through a faith community; Who reached out to us in the chaotic waters of baptism, raising us up and into the very Body of Christ; Who will always and forever be reaching out to include us in God’s great ever-widening circle of love.
Gathered by Christ, empower by the Spirit, together we continue this great journey deeper into the love of God, unto abundant life here and now and forevermore, Amen.