The Table of Love

CEB Romans 13:8-14 Don’t be in debt to anyone, except for the obligation to love each other. Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law. 9 The commandments, Don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t desire what others have, and any other commandments, are all summed up in one word: You must love your neighbor as yourself. 10 Love doesn’t do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law. The day is near 11 As you do all this, you know what time it is. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep. Now our salvation is nearer than when we first had faith. 12 The night is almost over, and the day is near. So let’s get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light. 13 Let’s behave appropriately as people who live in the day, not in partying and getting drunk, not in sleeping around and obscene behavior, not in fighting and obsession. 14 Instead, dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t plan to indulge your selfish desires.

INTRO

This morning, we are continuing our sermon series called Come to the Table. Each week, we are exploring different aspects of the Eucharistic Table and our call to live out the theology of the table as we offer Christ to the World. Last week, we focused on the hospitality of God found at the table and our calling to embody the hospitality that we see and receive at Christ’s Table. This week, we will explore the love found at the Eucharistic Table.

Before we move into the text, we have to lay some groundwork. What is the law that Paul is speaking about? He is not talking about Roman law or civil law, but rather religious law, he is talking about the Laws of the Torah. When used and interpreted correctly, the law exposes our selfishness, our self-righteousness, and our need for God. The law can also be misconstrued to fit our narrative of what is good, holy, and acceptable in the sight of God. We have to do this, that, and this in order to inherit the kingdom of God.

Our text this morning has something to say about our understanding about the law. It is not about exclusion, judgment, or damnation. One does not have to live a perfect, sinless life; rather, “Whoever loves another person fulfills the law.” Paul is calling us to dismantle our understanding of the law as the means by which we exclude others and instead to view the law through the lens of love. Love, then, becomes the rule of Christian life, for it is the consummation of the law. But this begs the question, can you make love a rule? Can love be a command? Can you make love a part of the law? We certainly acknowledge that our emotions are not that easy to control. While we certainly can control the ways we express them, our feelings are our feelings; they are legitimate, valid, and are not easily overruled by love. To be told to love something or someone seems unrealistic. Either we will be forced to love someone we don't really like, or have those affections towards us which will frustrate us, or we pretend to love someone, which makes us nothing but hypocrites. What do we do with this new command, this new law of love?

Part of the problem is that we associate love with that warm, fuzzy feeling. We have this idea that true love is to always feel joy around the other. Yet, we know that God loves us not because of how God feels about us but rather because of what God has done for us. God sustains our very being, presence, and essence. Our ability to know love is through Christ, who first loved us; our knowledge of love ought to go beyond what feels nice, warm, and fuzzy. To love is both a common experience and an incomprehensible mystery; maybe that’s why the word often seems so difficult to define. The word love means many things, both personally and from a logical standpoint. I would argue that love in all its mystery can be briefly defined as “a fellowship between persons, based on acts of self-sacrifice. Such love is willed, deliberate kindness, extending even to enemies for whom one has no personal affection.”

Love, then, is to be in covenant with the other, committing oneself to the other. A mutual self-giving to the other. Love is joining God in a dance as we draw others into that dance and create a place for others to know and experience the joy of living more fully into who God has called and created us to be. The moment we move to exclude, we have moved outside the bounds and intention of God’s laws, for to love someone is to actively promote that person’s good.

If our text tells us that love fulfills the law, does that mean love is all we need? Are we good if we work to promote the good of the others? The truth is, we still need the law. Laws require that certain standards are followed. The law gives limits to behavior and offers ways of life that are acceptable for communal living. Our society would be in a terrible place if we did not have laws in place. At the same time, we acknowledge that attitude cannot be regulated by law. It is in this very place that we find the limits of the law. For example, the Law found in the 23rd Chapter of Leviticus says, “When you harvest your land’s produce, you must not harvest all the way to the edge of your field; and don’t gather every remaining bit of your harvest. Leave these items for the poor and the immigrant; I am the Lord your God.” One cannot regulate the attitude and treatment of the landowner towards the immigrant or widow. We see this every day here in the United States.

Where the law begins to fail, love shines through. If we are truly living into this commandment to love our neighbor, we don’t need to be monitored or policed. When we act from a place of love, a place of joyful obedience, we only do what is good for our neighbor. The call to love is not to escape from our duties and obligations we hold towards the other rather it is a call to live with more intentionality and attention to the needs of others.

If love extends past the limits of the law, then the Law must serve love. One theologian puts it this way: “Law must serve love of God and neighbor, not the other way around. Law must bow down to the demands of love; it must carry love’s desire for justice. With life-giving love as the measure of the law, love is free to obey and to disobey when law and authorities violate the demands of love.” If we are called to love our neighbors, then even the legal structure of society must be built around the requirements of loving our neighbors. The laws must exist to ensure that we are caring for our neighbors. When the law ceases to do that, love must prevail. Love is the lens through which God interprets and views the Law.

Our text this morning asks of us: How do we uphold the law? Matthew’s Gospel reading for this morning may not contain the word “love.” However, the passage demonstrates Jesus’ desire for how one should work to stay in love with another when there has been a breakdown in the covenantal relationship and how to recover one's relationship with the other. One commentary notes: “Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love, exercises that love in this passage by telling his disciples how they are to embody that love. Again, love consists in doing something for the good of others.” These actions towards reconciliation are how one places love above the law; it's how one honors the other and gives themselves to the other. This act of love is to choose hospitality and to draw one into the love of God.

Many of us have participated in unpleasant meals around the dinner table where we or others at the table are not in right relationship with another member of the family. When others have hurt us, and we never address how we have been hurt or sinned against, resentment starts to creep into our relationships. We further run the risk of attempting to address the wrong by sharing our anxiety with others rather than reaching out to the person causing the harm. In doing this, we triangulate someone and bring a third person into the conflict. Sometimes, this is inevitable in families. It’s hard to keep conflict contained, especially around the table. When an argument breaks out, it is normally as we gather together. And in so many ways, our church families are the same. Often, this kind of anxiety around conflict is compared to yeast. The more people get pulled into a conflict, the more it grows. In this space, love becomes suffocated, the law becomes a dividing line for exclusion, and we fail to live fully into the love of God. Yet, in God’s great love for us God calls us back into relationship with the other as the confessional liturgy found at the table reminds us that the “Law” never outshines God’s grace.

Church, we cannot fully live into God’s love or invite others into God’s love without confessing and forgiving our sins. In our confessional liturgy, we experience the love of God more fully as it prepares us to receive Christ and as we get ready to dine at the table. Our covenantal relationship comes out in the liturgy, both in confession and at the table. In the Great Thanksgiving, we proclaim that when our love failed, God’s love remained steadfast. In confessing our sins, we acknowledge these realities and acknowledge the ways in which God has continued to forgive us. It serves as a reminder as we are pulled into the narrative of salvific history that, for God, it is not about warm and fuzzy feelings. Rather, God chooses to continually love us. In confession and at the table, we offer ourselves our vulnerabilities to the other, we hear love proclaimed as others forgive us, and we see that love poured out and given for us. We then in union with Christ’s offering for us live into God’s love as we call others to experience God’s love. This means, as we talked about last week, we honor the other.

When Jesus instituted this meal, we are told to “do this in remembrance of me.” The Greek word translated as remembrance is a word that takes into account all of time. We proclaim at the table that in the past, in the present, and in the future, we remember what Christ has done for us and commit to carry it out in our lives in the future. We don’t just come to the table, but we begin to live out the eucharistic table by offering forgiveness, by offering ourselves for others as Christ has done for us. The beauty of only having two sacraments is recognizing that those are the two sacraments instituted by God, but it doesn’t stop something from being sacramental. When we live out the table in our daily lives, through God’s spirit, the church becomes sacramental as we embody the grace of God to others.

At the table, we are reminded that God has empowered us to be co-creators in the mission of God as we work to proclaim God’s love to the world. In the liturgy, after the forgiveness, there is the passing of the peace. This act of reconciliation is a solidification of the forgiveness we just proclaimed, “Peace of Christ be with you” is more than a reassurance it is actually a blessing. We are active participants in blessing others as we extend the peace of Christ to others. That blessedness can only be lived out where the spirit of forgiveness is found.

However, the call to bless in the name of God doesn’t stop there. The church is called to go out and proclaim that blessedness, that peace, that hope, that reconciliation, that love to the world. But it requires that we put love above what we perceive to be the law. Others can’t know God’s grace unless they experience God’s grace. The one thing that proclaims the grace and the love of God more than anything is the proclamation of forgiveness, which God calls the church to offer to the world. Why? Because according to Paul the law by which we live is not about who is in or out or who is included or excluded but it is about love. So go and offer Christ to the world! Go out and let people know they are blessed, loved, and forgiven.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.