15“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
18Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Romans 13:8-14
8Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9The 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.” 10Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
11Besides 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; 12the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
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Paul gives us two very practical guidelines for faithful living in this short passage from Romans. The first is love and the second is living like it’s daytime. Paul says when we love each other we fulfill the law. That’s because real love demands a lot from us. Paul’s guidance is simple, but it is also challenging. It’s not that the commandments go away, but if we follow where love leads we won’t even have to think about the commandments.
Imagine love as a road we drive on. The law, the traditions, the rules we grow up with are the guard rail bordering the road. The guardrail will keep us on the road, and sometimes when it’s dark and the road is hard to see we need the guidance of the reflectors on the guardrail. But most of the time we don’t want to be close enough to the guardrail to count on it. We follow the road; not running into the rail comes naturally.
The commandment tells us not to commit adultery, but the fact that we love our neighbor and our spouse means we wouldn’t do it anyway. If we love our neighbor not only will we not violate their marriage, we’ll go out of our way to strengthen and support that marriage.
Love isn’t usually glamorous. It’s everyday stuff like changing tires and cleaning up after ourself. It’s making sure we do our fair share of the work and leave enough for others. Love starts with respect and honesty and sometimes includes self-sacrifice. Hailey gave a great example of sacrifice a couple of weeks ago, which is really an example of love. She talked about standing up for people being picked on and stepping in to break up a fight. Love sometimes means saying “no” to things that are wrong.
That’s where things get tricky in community. It’s easy enough to be a loving community when all that means is being friendly at coffee hour. Things get challenging when love demands questioning a brother or sister’s actions. Things get challenging when we think someone is following a self-destructive or immoral path. That’s where we move from Paul to Jesus in this morning’s readings.
We had a fascinating discussion last month at our session meeting about scripture and about church discipline. The idea of church discipline makes many of us very uncomfortable. We remember that Jesus teaches us not to judge each other, and we know that we are not perfect ourselves. Who are we to tell someone else what to do?
