Year C, Pentecost 2, Galatians 3.23-29, Freedom

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans, the thirteenth chapter:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 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, "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Could it really be just that simple?

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

That’s it.  That simple.

Nothing else matters.  Nothing.

But,  .   .  .

But.

We always feel compelled to put a “but” on the end of any statement of the Gospel.

It’s not enough that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

The Gospel message is about faith, a simple trust in the unconditional love of God—

Yet we say “but”.

The Gospel message is about God doing for us everything that needed to be done for our salvation—

Yet we say “but”.

The Gospel sets is free from the law, free to love God in response to his first loving us, free to act in loving ways regardless what anyone’s “law” says—

Yet we say “but”.

There are no “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts” about it.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

That’s it.  That simple.

Nothing else matters.  Nothing.

Yet we say but.

But

                People have to repent!!!

But

                People have to obey the law!!!

But

                People have to conform to a “biblical lifestyle”.

But

                We must be obedient!!!!

OK, take a deep breath.  Exhale slowly.

Now, just stop that.

There are no buts.

There are no ifs.

There are no ands.

God loves you.

Jesus gave his life for you.

The Holy Spirit has claimed you.

And you???

Just love as you have been loved.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

Paul writes in Galatians 3:

23Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

If you must put a “but” at the end of the Gospel, this is the only “but” you can put.

Why all those laws in the Bible?

Because God gave us the law to act as a disciplinarian until such time as we matured in faith enough to live freely according to the Gospel.

God gave us the law, because some people simply are unwilling or incapable of doing the one thing we are to do, which is to "Love your neighbor as yourself."

If you have love in your heart you can do anything you want, for you will not desire to do any wrong to a neighbor.

But if we are not yet mature enough in our faith to simply do the ‘loving thing’, God will help us out.

The law then becomes our ‘how to’ manual.

Our teacher.

Our baby sitter.

For example:

The only requirement of marriage, really, is that you love your spouse.  Just love them.  That’s it.  And if you do that, everything will be just fine.

But sometimes we need help understanding what is loving, so we are given guidance.

Husbands, if you love your wives, you shall put the toilet seat down.

Now, me, I was a slow learner.  It took about 14 years of my wife screaming at me in the middle of the night for me to learn to put the dang toilet seat down.

Now that I’m more mature, I recognize without being screamed at, that putting the toilet seat down is a loving thing to do.

The Law is our teacher.

The Law is our baby sitter.

But the Law is not our Lord.

We do something else with the Law that is pure evil.

We use it to condemn other people.  In spite of Jesus telling us repeatedly not to judge others, we use the law to condemn.

Evil.

We are commanded to love our neighbor, and instead we condemn them.

That’s evil.

What particularly makes that evil is that when I am prone to condemn, instead of love, it is usually people different from myself that I am most likely to condemn.

Paul writes:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

We are different.

But those differences are to be celebrated, not condemned.

We are to welcome, not exclude.

I’ve had a dream over the course of the last few years.

Alcoholics Anonymous was incredibly important in my personal recovery from alcoholism, and I learned much there.

In AA the “only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking”.

I’d love to start a Church whose organizing principle is that the “only requirement for membership is a desire to be reconciled to God and one another.”

Or perhaps better, “the only requirement for membership is that we “love our neighbor as ourselves”.

It would be a place of gathering for all the misfits of the world like me. We’d make it a point to celebrate our weirdness.

It’d be a novel new idea if only Jesus hadn’t done it first.

That’s really what the Church is intended to be.

A gathering of all God’s children, bound together in love in spite of all their differences.

Quit worrying about who is right and who is wrong,

                About who is sinful and who is not,

And concern yourselves instead with the simple question “who is my neighbor?” and also then “how might I love them?”

It’s that simple.

A couple of days ago my brother Arden texted me a picture of a church back east that he’d seen.

It was of Bailey’s Island Union Church.

On the steps were a summary of the faith journey:

The first step was “Prepare”.

And then “Repent” was on the second.

Then “Believe, Redemption, Salvation, Praise, Do Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly, and finally Eternal Life.”

OK, so that’s someone’s summary of the faith journey, the steps we take.

But what I got a huge kick out of was that at the top of the stairway leading to this church, there were two doors.  One set of doors off to the right.  One set of doors off to the left.

Likely in the old days, women entered on one side, men on the other.

That to me, was a humorous summary of our struggle as Christians.

We all agree that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

We all agree that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

And we all agree that we are to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”.

But the devil’s in the details.

We disagree about the nature of God’s love.

We disagree about how we are to love God and how we are to love our neighbor.

And then we end up divided.

“Just quit that!” is the word for today. 

Just love one another.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

All of you, not some of you, but “all of you” are one in Christ Jesus. 

Let it be so.

Amen