“The Law of Love”

Pentecost 13 – 7 September 2014

                                                                                                                           Liz Gordon

Readings:

Romans 13:8-14 – Love for the day is near

Matthew 18:15-20 - A brother who sins against you

‘The commandments... are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbour as yourself” Love does no harm to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’

In his letter to the Christians in Rome Paul is teaching about keeping the law. But whose law?  Well this isn’t a lesson in ‘how to be a model Roman citizen’. Nor is it a lesson in ‘how to keep the Jewish law’ although, as a once zealous Pharisee, Paul would have been well equipped to give advice on that. No Paul‘s talking about God’s law as revealed to him by the risen Jesus. This is the law of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of Heaven which begins in the here and now.

Paul reiterates what Jesus taught, i.e. that keeping God’s law is not about abiding by a list of rules and regulations or  ‘thou shalt nots’.  No it’s actually all about love.

I can see the attraction of rules and regulations. After all they help create order and ensure life runs smoothly and, if we keep them we can tick off all the boxes, give ourselves a pat on the back and claim the moral high ground. The Pharisees had taken rule keeping to a whole new dimension with hundreds of minor regulations to be observed and they certainly took the moral high ground. Remember how they criticized Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath? The thing is they had missed the point. And Jesus had harsh words for them, likening them to whitewashed tombs - beautiful on the outside but inside full of death and decay.

God’s concerned with what‘s in our hearts.  In the words of the psalmist ‘O  Lord... you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings, the sacrifices of God are a broken  spirit, a broken and a contrite heart O God you will not despise.’  These words were written by David, after he had broken the commandments big-time by sleeping with Bathsheba and then arranging for her husband to be murdered. He realised that what God required from him wasn’t a religious ritual but a fundamental change of heart.

So what does it mean to love your neighbour as yourself? Isn’t it a bit vague and woolly compared to the clear no nonsense laws laid down in the Ten Commandments?  Well whatever words we might use to describe Paul, vague and woolly certainly don’t spring to my mind.

You see, Paul had experienced a fundamental change of his heart and he had become as passionate about this new interpretation of the law as he’d previously been about the keeping of rules as a good Pharisee.

Indeed his passionate belief in this law of love inspires one of the most eloquent passages in the whole of Scripture - one that’s frequently used at weddings, funerals and other special services. In chapter 13 of his first letter to the church in Corinth, he describes the qualities of love and claims its supremacy over all other virtues. And reading his words we realise that love is certainly not a soft option.  Let’s just remind ourselves of those qualities of love.

‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

Imagine a society in which people lived by that rule of love. War, poverty, cruelty and neglect couldn’t survive in such a climate. But such love is a tough ask -much more demanding than attending church on Sundays and refraining from murder, theft and adultery. So how can we begin to love like this?

The apostle John writes ‘we love because He first loved us’. God not only loves us, he IS love. His love is unconditional. He loves us as we are. Sometimes our life experience gives us a different view of love. If we’ve been neglected or abused we may grow up feeling we’re unlovable. Even if we’ve had loving parents we may still have grown up to believe that we are loved for being good or being successful.

Accepting the truth that God loves us as we are and really taking that truth into our hearts can be a liberating experience. If we can see ourselves as loveable then we can begin to see others as loveable too. The more we allow God to love us the easier it’ll be to share the gift of his love with our neighbours.

Of course we know that neighbour in this context extends way beyond the people who live in our street and is used by Jesus to refer to the whole of humanity and to those of different creeds and beliefs to our own. 

Amidst all the horror of recent news stories I came across two inspiring examples of love for one’s neighbour.

The first is the nurse, William Pooley, aged just 29 who went off to work with the dying in a hospice in Sierra Leone. While he was out there, he volunteered to work with victims of Ebola and ended up contracting the virus himself. His boss, the director of the hospice, in a television interview, summed him up in these words ‘He’s truly compassionate he really loves people’.

Another example which I read about in The Times is the unnamed (for obvious reasons) Sunni Muslim woman who has been risking her life to take food to Iraqui Christian families, who are in hiding in Quaraqosh. For her the law of love transcends any other that might be imposed on her.

Paul tells us that, without love, our best actions are worthless. God wants to use us as agents of his love in a troubled world and he wants us Christians to so love each other that, as Jesus says, the world will know that we are his disciples. Keeping the law of love isn’t easy. However, it’s not an option. It’s a requirement.