"The Law of Love" | Rev. Sarah Bird Kneff preaching | 09.06.26

"The Law of Love" | Rev. Sarah Bird Kneff preaching | 09.06.26

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Your reading this morning comes to us from Paul's letter to the Romans, the 13th chapter, verses 8 through 14. Hear the word of God. Our ears are open. 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. You shall 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 already 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 throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk decently as in the day, not reveling in drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but instead put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. And now, O Lord, open my mouth that I might speak your living word to your people this day. Open our ears that we might hear and understand. And God, open each one of our hearts that we might be changed. Changed by your power through your grace and love. Amen. There are some seasons of life where you might spend an inordinate amount of time ruminating over one particular issue or decision or choice. It could be something about a difficult relationship, a situation at work, something you just need to decide upon. For me, lately, it has been real estate. Many of you know that my husband Michael and I have been heroically navigating the Nashville real estate market as we plan to relocate from Spring Hill somewhere closer here to the church. Which means that these days I spend a surprising amount of time thinking about houses and interest rates and mortgages and down payments and refinancing and closing costs. So when I came to this passage, uh I was reading Paul's opening words, owe no one anything. And I thought, well, Paul, that's gonna be a problem in this economic climate. But of course, that's not at all what Paul is getting at. Because he immediately tells us, oh no one anything except for what? Except to love one another. One thing we will never be able to check off the list as complete. Yes, I've done it. I have loved everyone. Because love is a debt we can never pay off. Love is not just another item on a long list of things that Christians ought to do. Love is the whole list. The commandments don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't murder, don't covet. All of them are summed up in this love your neighbor as yourself. It's that simple. It's that complicated. Here's the good news: the Christian life, it does not begin with our own ability to conjure up some feelings of love for others. It all begins with God's unfailing love for us. And that distinction matters immensely. Because if all of this is simply a command to love from Paul, then that is just one more thing we are gonna feel guilty about because we're never going to measure up. But Paul is not saying to us here, try harder to love each other. Paul is reminding us how very loved we are by our Creator God. How the living God has lavished grace and love and mercy upon us. And if we receive it, truly receive it, then it will in fact transform our lives. We will be different. Paul is saying, because of what God has already done in Jesus Christ, we have nothing more to do but to respond with gratitude. Love your neighbor as yourself. I think we tend to rush past those last two words sometimes. As yourself. But we shouldn't. I think there are many of us who find it very easy to love everyone except for ourselves. Some of us who are remarkably gracious to other people and yet surprisingly cruel to ourselves. We would never speak to a friend the way we find ourselves speaking to ourselves. We would never say, she is a failure, she is not enough, she is unworthy. And yet we say these things to ourselves all the time. Perhaps one of the first steps in learning to love our neighbors begins with learning to receive God's love for ourselves, not the inflated self-love that our culture is pawning off on us, and not believing that we are perfect, not making ourselves the center of the universe, but the quiet, astonishing realization that you belong to God. And so does the person sitting next to you in the pew. And so does the person with whom you disagree, and the person you have written off, and the person who has hurt you. And that may all describe the same person. This week, author and poet Wendell Barry passed away. And if you've not heard that name before, um, I encourage you to run home and read his poem Manifesto, The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front. I was first introduced to Barry's writing in college as we were assigned to read one of his novels, Jaber Crow. And one of my favorite lines in that book is from the title character. This is what he has to say about love. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child, whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. Love is in the world, but it's not altogether of it, because it is of eternity. And it takes us there when it most holds us right here. I think Barry is trying to say something very similar to what Paul is saying: that we cannot manufacture love, but only receive it. And then when we do, that is what transforms us. It holds us, it includes us and takes us somewhere we could never have gotten all on our own. Because the more love we receive, the more we realize there is to give. The more grace that we know, the more we have to offer to everyone else around us. The more deeply we understand that we belong to God, the less interested we are in trying to figure out who's in, who's out, who's right, who's wrong. Love your neighbor as yourself. It is only possible with Jesus, which is why Paul encourages us to put on Christ. Put on his compassion and his patience and his willingness to cross boundaries. Put on his refusal to give up on people and his capacity to forgive. Paul isn't simply saying, all right, go out there and be nicer. He is saying, put on Christ and let his life become your life. His way of seeing become your way of seeing and of being in this world. And all of that, we don't have to put it off until tomorrow. We can start today. Wake up. You know what time it is. Something is happening. The dawn is coming. Many of you know I have a four-year-old named Grace, but you probably don't know that she has this adorably inconvenient habit of uh waking me up in the morning when she's getting out of bed, and she'll come and shake me awake. And usually what I do is I crack one eye open and scan the blinds to see if I can see light. So if it's dark, I guide her gently back to bed. And if it's dim, I'll invite her in to puddle for a little bit. And if it's shining sunshine, I usually just bolt up in bed and panic that I didn't hear the alarm. The night is far gone, the dawn is near. Paul is talking about that first light of day, the one that lights up the horizon. The one you see hit the trees before you can even see the sun itself. Wake up because the world is not defined by darkness, though it may seem to be the case. Wake up because Christ is coming and God's future is already piercing the present. Wake up because there are already signs all around us that day, that light, that goodness and truth and freedom are on their way. And perhaps the church is meant to be one of those signs. Not because we're perfect or because we've mastered all the rules or have gotten all the right answers, but because we have learned to love. Every time we welcome someone who expects to be rejected, a little light comes into the world. Every time we refuse to dehumanize someone with whom we disagree, a little light comes into the world. The dawn is coming. We are called to live as if we can already see it. Now, here I want to just take a moment to pause and acknowledge Ashley's amazing reading of that text from Exodus. That was a lot. Um that was a doozy. Uh seemingly out of place, doozy, if you don't mind me saying so. What does that dense and difficult passage about Lamb's blood and the death of the firstborn and the Passover have to do with what we find in Romans today? How does it all fit together? There's of course a method to the lectionary creator's madness here, but we can acknowledge that the thrust of Exodus chapter 12 and of Exodus as a book is the people's movement from slavery into freedom. People's movement from darkness into light, from the misery that the Israelites knew so well into the mystery they did not. And Paul is inviting the church into freedom as well. He's urging us to wake up because we are no longer slaves to sin. We are no longer bound by darkness. We are people of light. And Paul is telling us act like it. The best way to do that is through love. If you look at the cover of your bulletin, I chose a piece of art this morning from artist Scott Erickson, another person you should run home and look up after church. The words on the hands, fear, trusts, scarcity. You have these clenched fists. Fear, trusts, scarcity, but love with open hands trusts abundance. We live in a society that seeks to cultivate fear and then swoop in as a false savior to rescue us from imagined scarcity. We who have plenty can begin to believe there's not enough to go around, that we must clench our fists around whatever we have. But our real Savior, Jesus Christ, gives us a different narrative and invites us to loosen our grip on that which we think we must have. We must have comfort, pleasure, security. Jesus invites us to let go and to embrace the love he just can't wait to lavish upon us. Think about the abundance of God's love we see over and over again in Scripture. Jesus feeds five thousand people. Why? Not because they have earned their dinner or have passed some kind of theological examination. He feeds them because they are hungry. And somehow there's enough. Jesus tells a story about a shepherd who goes looking for one lost sheep, not because 99% is a bad return, but because love does not abandon anyone. No, he runs and embraces and welcomes. This is reckless love. This is God's love spilling over, and if we can begin to comprehend even just a little bit of how deeply we are loved by God, then love begins to flow out of us, not as an obligation, but as a grateful response. We love because he first loved us. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We make room because room has been made for us. Christ came that we would have life abundant. That means a life of love, and there is always enough. To taste and see that the Lord is indeed good. And it's time to share that goodness of love with our neighbors through Christ our Lord.