September 4, 2005
Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year A
Title: The Rule To End All Rules
So much of the past week has reminded me a little bit of the situation
immediately following the terrorist attacks on September 11: the personal
tension within me, the panic among others, even the flurry of activity
around the gas pumps. I’m sure all of us have stories from that moment
in time, the “where were you at” type of stories, moments captured
forever in memory, as forever tangible and real as the very moment we’
re experiencing right now—maybe those moments are more real
because this particular moment, right here, is likely to be forgotten—
where we were when 9/11 happened is, for most of us, like Kennedy’s
assassination, the Challenger explosion, those moments remain forever
eternal.
But this crisis hasn’t had that same effect for me, in terms of creating
eternal moments. Unlike the moments I just mentioned, the gravity of the
situation didn’t hit me, and I think many others, until days later. With
events like 9/11, the impact and the horror was instantaneous, even for
those of us watching from far away on our televisions. And so, just like
the flood waters slowly rose and filled the city of New Orleans, and just
like the slowly arriving images of devastation from Biloxi and Gulfport, our
experience of horror and disbelief of this moment seemed slow in
coming, at least it was for me. All of sudden, almost days after the event,
the enormity of what had happened suddenly came into view—the
Superdome, the flooded streets, the stranded people of New Orleans,
the devastated casinos in Biloxi that our own youth passed by in our
vans no less than 3 months ago, in late June, when we were working on
a house through Back Bay Mission.
And now we find ourselves directly affected here in Houston, with the
refugees from New Orleans coming here to start their lives over, more
than likely, and us trying to find a way to respond. So much of this past
week has been trying to figure out ways that we can respond to this
situation, and perhaps unlike most of the nation, we find ourselves with
opportunities to directly serve those who have been devastated by
Hurricane Katrina. And that is the opportunity, to serve, to give away our
time, our money, even small piece of our lives to help another human
being, a stranger, someone who we do not yet know. And I have no
doubt that each of us, in whatever ways we can manage, will help the
people of this disaster recover and get on with the rest of their lives.
And I think the people of Houston will rise to the occasion and we will be
there, one way or another for months to come. And I also think we will
take up the burden of caring for others, we will add to the many
responsibilities already in our lives a new responsibility, working to help
others rebuild their own lives. But I do think it will be something we are
involved in for quite awhile—as people have said, when the media moves
from this disaster to the next disaster, we in Houston and Dallas and
Baton Rouge and San Antonio will still be working with our new
neighbors. It is a new burden, a new responsibility, for many of us,
though it is certainly a light one compared to the burden carried by those
who are suffering directly because of this hurricane.
But you know, it’s amazing how much our lives have changed since the
last time we met for worship last Sunday—we’ve been given a new work,
since the last time we met. And our lives will be different, and more will
be required from us than even a week ago, and something else has
been placed on our shoulders, but in the end, it is the only burden God
has ever asked us to carry—the debt we owe each other, which to love
one another. Earlier in this chapter, Paul asks his Roman readers to be
subject to the law of the land, and to be good citizens, and to pay their
taxes, to pay their debts—to owe nothing to anyone, to be free of any
burdens in this world. He wants his readers, his listeners to be free of
responsibility, of burdens, to owe nothing to anyone, to owe nothing to
the state, to lenders, to owe nothing to other human beings or the
entities of this world---well, to owe nothing to other human beings,
EXCEPT for one thing, a debt Paul thinks we owe everyone and one that
cannot be paid off, that cannot ever be discharged or dismissed or
forgiven. It is what is owed other human beings, the ONLY debt we are
asked by God to carry in our lives, and perhaps the only debt we should
carry in our lives—and that is the debt of love that we owe each other,
that we are asked to carry for the rest of our lives, the sweet and terrible
burden of love. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another” Paul
writes, and then he simply goes onto list out some of the 10
commandments and says that everyone of them, every one of these
rules can be summed up in this rule, this command to love. Its nothing
new, really, what Paul says—Jesus says something similar in the
Gospels, and there are many instances when the rabbis in Jesus’ day
essentially say the same thing.
But what is new, I think, is this idea of love being a burden, a debt, that
we are asked to take on, though it is the only burden we are asked to
forever live with, one that we are asked not to try pay off. The idea of
love as being a burden, as being something heavy that sometimes
weighs us down, a debt that forever remains on our shoulders—that is
something new, especially for Paul, who thinks that even the burden of
sin has been lifted from our shoulders, but oddly, not the burden of love,
that remains with us—we have been freed from the burden of sin, but not
freed from the burden of love.
Wendell Berry, a name you’ve heard from me a couple of times, tells a
story about the burden of loving and being loved, of how heavy it can be
for those unwilling to bear it, and how miraculous it can be for those who
are willing to hear Paul’s words and who take on this bittersweet burden,
this debt, upon their shoulders. The story goes that Thad Coulter kills
his best friend, Ben Feltner, in a drunken rage, and Ben’s widow tells the
reader the story of how a horrible misunderstanding came about that led
to this murder. Ben’s widow tells of how Thad Coulter is sitting in his jail
cell, sobering up and coming to a realization of what he has done, of how
he has killed Ben, his best friend, his most loyal and generous friend,
and the shame becomes too much for him to bear. Thad’s daughter
comes to visit him in jail, and her quiet, steady presence, her acceptance
of her father, even in this moment, her willingness to stay in that jail cell,
with her father turned away from her as he lays in his cot, his hands
covering his face in shame. Ben’s widow says this, in describing this
moment: “People sometime talk of God’s love as if its pleasant thing. But
it is terrible, in a way. Think of all it includes. It included Thad Coulter,
drunk and mean and foolish, before he killed Mr. Feltner, and it included
him afterwards.” She goes onto to say what she thinks Thad was
experiencing in that moment, what the man who killed her husband was
seeing: “That’s what Thad saw. He saw his guilt. He had killed his
friend. He had done what he couldn’t undo; he had destroyed what he
couldn’t make. But in the same moment he saw his guilt included in love
that stood as near him as his daughter and that moment wore her flesh.
It was surely weak and wrong of him to kill himself—to sit in judgment that
way over himself. But surely God’s love includes the people who can’t
bear it.” And in perhaps her most poignant insight, she says this to say
about the burden of love—“If God loves the ones we can’t, then finally
maybe we can. All these years I’ve thought of Thad sitting in those
shadows, with his daughter standing there, and his work-sore hands
over his face.”
This story has always been a touchstone for me, a reminder that the
burden of love is more difficult than we think, and yet it is the one debt
we are asked to carry, and the one burden we are told we cannot be
freed from. Ben’s widow has chosen love, love for the man who killed
her husband, because she knows that God’s love even included Thad,
as much as it includes her, a truth that was difficult for her to accept at
times. If God’s love includes all of us, you, me, everyone, even those
who cannot bear it or who do not want it, or those who even refuse to
acknowledge that they are loved, if God includes all of us, then surely it
is what we owe to everyone else…and, in fact, it is the only thing we are
asked to give to God in return for that love given to us without condition,
in the first place, to give away what we have first been given. And when
I say it is difficult to bear, when I say that the debt we owe to others, to
our friends, to our loved ones and to our enemies, and to the strangers
now among us, here in Houston, when I say that it is difficult, the reality is
that the burden of hate or indifference is a much greater burden to
bear—it is the burden that is disguised as freedom from our
responsibility for others, it is that lie that not caring about others sets us
free. But that isn’t freedom—freedom is knowing that love includes us,
you, me, the ones I know and the ones I don’t know and that it has freed
me to serve you, others, friends, enemies, even strangers—love is the
owed response to the truth that all of us are loved.
So, we are now asked to love, to love the stranger who will soon enough
become one of our neighbors, and we are asked to express that love in
works, in action, in whatever ways we can tend to the new face of Christ
among us, the refugees from this disaster who have come here and will
be living here. I don’t think there is any doubt that we will be up to the
challenge, that we will find that this new work to be done easy enough,
because the burden, the debt, which we have been given is one that is
light, easy to carry, more than do-able, and maybe a gift, a chance to
give back all the gifts we have been given by God in our lives. I know I
have said nothing new in this sermon—there are some times in which
there are no new things to say, but this moment is probably not a
moment where a lot of words are needed. Mother Teresa once said
this: “Enough words. Let them see what we do.” I think that pretty much
says it all for us in the coming weeks, months and years. Amen.
