Owe No One Anything, Except to Love One Another

Owe No One Anything, Except to Love One Another

(A Sermon Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Albertville, Alabama, September 7, 2014)

In his letter to the church at Rome (13:4-14) Paul gives us his summary of the law: “The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not murder, you shall not covet and any other commandment are summed up in this word, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

If we can live into this then perhaps we can learn from one another, even if we have different opinions or ideas or beliefs.  There is a prayer in the Marriage liturgy of the Episcopal Church which I believe applies to all relationships and should give is all hope: “Give them grace when they hurt one another to recognize and acknowledge their fault and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 429)  This Law of Love, this loving one’s neighbor as one’s self comes from the Book of Leviticus (19:18) and is one half of Jesus’ Great Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (LK 10:27-28)

We who are the church area connected to each other and bound together by our baptism and our love, by our need for the gifts and talents we all bring into the community.  We are not connected by constant or blind agreement. We will have disagreements, but if we allow these differences to separate us then the body of Christ and our witness in the world will be diminished.  All of us are the ministers of the church: not just the priest or pastor or the vestry or church council, but all of us.  If one of us is missing then the body is incomplete.  St. Paul points this out to the Church in Corinth at a time when they were fighting over whose gifts were more important.

For there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; varieties of services, but the same Lord, and varieties of activities, but the same God who activates all of them in every one.  Each of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, to another knowledge, to another faith by the Spirit, to another the gifts of healing, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits and to another various kinds of tongues and to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. (1 Cor. 12:4-13)

Yes, we are all in this together, bound together by baptism love and the Spirit!  We do not all think alike, act alike, believe alike, vote alike, understand the Bible alike, but we are brought together by God and made to drink of the one Spirit.  The gifts we have each been given by the Spirit are for the building up of the kingdom of God. 

Where we are in agreement we will rejoice, where we differ we will rejoice, where we have answers we will share them, where we have doubts we will honor them and where we have disagreements we will talk.  And where God leads us as a body, as the church, we will go together!