Love Fulfilled

“Paul wrote with a deep awareness that to “put Christ on” would often place the early Christians in deep conflict with the values of their culture and the values of the Empire.”

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (vs. 8)

W e have an adult baptism today, which is not unheard of in the Presbyterian Church, but still somewhat rare. We’ve been having a little fun with Joanne getting ready for today. Never having seen an adult baptized at Pilgrims, she wasn’t entirely sure how it all would work. I told her we would just hold her by the ankles and dip her head in the font. Ashley– clearly, the nicer of the two of us– explained that, actually, we would have her kneel next to the font, and that she would try to remember to bring a pillow so she wouldn’t hurt her knees. Joanne commented that in the olden days they probably didn’t kneel on a pillow. Which prompted me to note that in the real olden days, back in the 3^rd century, baptismal candidates would disrobe before stepping in to a baptismal pool. Joanne decided that perhaps it would be best if we stuck to our more contemporary Presbyterian ritual.

Disrobing before baptism was significant in the early church practice because it signified that you were putting off your old life. Then, when you had been baptized, you were clothed in a new white robe, signifying that you had put Christ on. We echo that practice in our baptisms when we place a white stole around the child’s neck and pronounce, “In your baptism, you have put Christ on.” The phrase comes from our passage this morning from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul writes:

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. (Rom. 13:11-14)

To our ears Paul’s words sound like some sort of angry, body-denying diatribe– “Make no provision for the flesh”– which sounds like he is saying something about sex. But I don’t think that’s what Paul is focusing on here. For Paul, the natural state of our lives is that we live focused on ourselves alone– our needs, our desires, our safety, our security. To put on Christ means to live a life that is centered not in the self but in your neighbor. Paul puts it as succinctly as possible: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Or, to turn Paul’s phrase around: “This is what you owe your neighbor– you owe them your love.”

Paul wasn’t talking about our emotions, of course, but our actions. The commandments were meant as guides to help us understand what loving our neighbor might mean. The purpose of the commandments is not to test how good we are at following rules, but to remind us what it means to love our neighbor in concrete ways. Adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness are violations of neighbor-love. So Paul summarizes the law in the same way that Jesus did: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” So love of neighbor– for Paul and for Jesus– is not about self-denial, but self-fulfillment. It is about discovering who we are most authentically called to be. Putting on Christ means to find our way to God and to our truest selves through our neighbor.

The good life is not simply one in which certain rules are kept–this is always at best a shorthand for the results of life together in the Body [of Christ]. The good life is one in which we have learned how to be for each other, and in so being to live fully as ourselves.

T here was the most curious poll recently. Conducted sometime last year, the poll asked people who did not attend church regularly to describe the values and characteristics they associated with Jesus. People used words like loving, welcoming, inclusive, caring. Then they asked what values or characteristics they associated with the word “Christian.” You can probably guess. A majority used words like “judgmental, narrow-minded, exclusive.” In other words, a large number of people had a very high view of Jesus while at the same time a rather low view of those who were out in the world in Jesus’ name. Somehow the church in the United States– deserved or not– has developed a reputation for violating Paul’s counsel to the Romans. We have a bunch of people running around focusing on following all the rules, but failing to express the fundamental value at the heart of Paul’s message: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

U nderstanding what Paul was trying to say is as difficult in our day as it was in Paul’s– and in some ways our worlds are not that far apart. Paul was writing in a diverse, pluralistic culture at a time of Empire. (Sound familiar?) So he wrote to the early Christians about matters large and small with a deep awareness that to “put Christ on” would often place them in deep conflict with the values of their culture and the values of the Empire. So much of Paul’s advice was practical– what you should eat, what you should wear, how you should worship– because Paul knew that being a Christian was not a philosophy but a way of life. His readers needed to know is specific ways what it meant to live as a follower of Jesus. In our passage this morning, Paul grounds that way of life in love of neighbor. All the rest is detail.

So we have chosen as our theme for this Homecoming season, “Living in God’s way.” Over the next several weeks we will listen in on Paul’s advice to the early Christians, while at the same time exploring what it means to live out the faith in our own time and place. Beginning next week, during worship we will hear from different members and friends of the congregation who will share about their own attempts to live out their faith by practicing such things as non-violence, care for the body, working for peace, care for the poor, prayer and celebration of the sacraments. Each storyteller has been asked to reflect on what difference this particular practice makes to their faith. How does it give shape to their understanding of what it means to live out God’s Way in the world?

Our stories will reveal that as a Pilgrim church, we are similar to those early followers who struggled to live out their faith in a complicated and powerful culture and society—an environment that didn’t necessary give space for the Christian faith. We live out our faith in a ritualistic way, going back to practices that remind us of God, that push us to grow and mature, and that connect us to the world, its brokenness and its ultimate healing and justice.

Paul writes about these matters with a sense of urgency that we often miss. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” We live in a world far different from Paul, yet the call to “put on Christ,” to live in the world in the way of Jesus, is as urgent now as it was for Paul. For Jesus still offers to the world a way of healing and wholeness that the world desperately needs.

Listen carefully to the first question our new members are asked this morning: Who is your Lord and Savior? We hear that question as about religious devotion, but in the first century it had a far different meaning. To say Jesus was your Lord and Savior meant that Caesar was not. We may no longer live under the authoritarian rule of a single individual, but we still have plenty of Caesars in the world that compete for our loyalty and allegiance. To say “yes” to Jesus as Lord and Savior means to say “no” to all those pretenders in our culture and their false promises of healing and wholeness. To say that Jesus is our Savior is to say that we are not saved by our wealth, by our possessions, by our national security state, by our work, by our status, by our race, by our celebrity-entertainment culture, by our political ideology, or even by our family, but by God in Jesus Christ who gave himself away so that we might live a new life.

That new life, Paul reminds us, begins by discovering the debt we owe our neighbors. For Paul, that debt is fulfilled in loving action. Here is how Eugene Peterson translates the conclusion of our passage in his translation called The Message:

Make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work God began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ– put Christ on– and be up and about!

I n just a moment we are going to move back to the font to receive new members and baptize Joanne. While we are there, we will read together an Affirmation of Faith from the Brief Statement of Faith of the Presbyterian Church. Because this is Homecoming Sunday, I thought it would also be helpful for us to reaffirm our Mission Statement at Pilgrims. It is printed on the front of our bulletin. Will you please stand and read with me?