An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Love – reaching for the impossible

A sermon on Romans 13:8-14 & Matthew 18:15-20  by Nathan Nettleton

We sometime picture the early Church as all sweetness and light and faithfulness under persecution. We read words like those we heard from Paul’s letter to the Romans earlier: “Be under obligation to no one — the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has fulfilled the law.” We read words like that and we can get a nice warm feeling about the early church and the deep and sustaining love that characterised their shared life. But then we come to the gospel reading we heard and you just know that there’s another side to it. “If a brother or sister in the church sins against you, go alone and point out the problem to them. If they accept what you say you have won them back. But if they refuse to listen, go back with one or two others and if they still refuse to listen take the matter to the church.”

You can be absolutely sure that those words were not written in a church where the love and harmony was so perfect that they had never faced a situation in which they might need to take that kind of action. This was clearly written for a church that knew that unless it came up with a fair and grace-filled way of dealing with hurts and disputes in the church, then they were in danger of tearing themselves apart. And that is the reality within the church: it was then and it is now, in pretty much any church, and for that matter in any group of people who are bound together by common commitments to shared goals and visions. Individual tensions and clashes will flare up periodically, because although we are all committed to the ways of love, all of us still have a fair bit of growing to do before we can consistently live what Paul says here: “If you love others, you will never do them wrong.”

We do love one another, but we still do one another wrong because our love is still in its infancy. You don’t just become perfectly loving when you’re baptised – you grow into it gradually and often painfully as you continue to follow Jesus. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that although in my mind I’m committed to the ways of love, I easily find myself reverting to scrambling over the top of others to get my own way. For others among you it’s different. Your weaknesses are not the same as mine, but each of us have our own buttons which, when hit by someone, evoke responses in us that seem to override our desire to love.

Now all of this reality is very important when we gather to worship. We gather in expectation that Jesus Christ will be present among us; that we can come together into the presence of God and be welcomed at the table where all creation is nourished for fullness of life. But you heard the context in which Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” He has just described a step by step process for bringing about reconciliation when the love has broken down among us. It is in the spirit of reconciliation, in the restoration of unity among people that Jesus says our coming together guarantees his presence. This is hardly surprising since the scriptures repeatedly describe the community of faith as the body of Christ. So when Christ’s body comes together Christ is made present. But if we are busily dismembering the body of Christ, what sort of presence can we expect?

But as I’ve said, this side of the fulfilment of all things, the repeated failure of love and the consequent fracturing of communion in the body are inevitable human realities, and though we can work for their healing and continue to grow into the fullness of love, we cannot prevent ourselves from falling short of the ideal. And to pretend that it is otherwise would only add sin upon sin. And so in our worship we seek to take seriously these realities.

In the early gathering part of our liturgy we remind ourselves each week that we come to worship with all who trust in God, with all who walk in his grace, with all who hope for a world made new. We know that that includes people who we have trouble getting along with and whose ways of expressing or living out their faith we find discomforting and sometimes even deeply disturbing. But we acknowledge that when the Holy Spirit gathers up all the worship in all the world into one great offering to God, that theirs is gathered up with ours and both become one sacrifice of praise. In our prayers of inclusion we are reminded that we gather in solidarity with all who suffer in the tragedy of a world where the failure of love ranges all the way from sarcasm to genocide.

As we approach God, we are reminded each week that our freedom to do so is solely on the basis of the love and mercy of Christ. We confess that we are entangled in sin, that our love has failed again and again and we have wronged one another. But then we hear the assurance that our sins are forgiven, that we will not be cast out of the presence of God on the basis of what we have done. Instead we will be embraced in the loving communion of God on the basis of grace, on the basis of the extravagant love and mercy of God.

And then in a few moments we reach the point where this aspect of our worship comes closest to home. In some ways it’s easy and safe to acknowledge the unity of our prayers with those praying for peace in Ukraine, because our union with them is not being put to the test. Sometimes it is much harder to face our unity with that person just over there on the other side of the same table. Because we know how that person actually let us down last week. And now we have to face the fact that God is welcoming us both to the same table. We don’t get to veto the guest list. If we would come to the table we have to acknowledge that the reign of love is going to have to overrule whatever has come between us.

Because we are human and our love is compromised so often, it is not possible for us to always resolve every issue and restore every relationship before we gather at the table. But what we are doing when we approach the table together is declaring our willingness to be reconciled, our desire for reconciliation. It might still take quite a time and a lot of hard work to bring it to reality, but I come to this table knowing that God has called us both to follow Jesus together and that therefore we will have to work it out. And so now at this table we exchange a sign of peace together. We bless one another, wishing the gift of Christ’s peace each to the other.

And in our liturgy we precede that by saying together:

    “Though we are a company of strangers,”

for no matter how well we know one another, no matter how fully we have become brothers and sisters to one another, we are still to a greater or lesser extent strangers to each other. Every relationship we have is still a dance of repeated estrangement and reconciliation and groups that try to deny the stranger in one another are usually trying to impose an oppressive conformity on one another. That defeats love just as surely as any open division.

So,

    “Though we are a company of strangers,

    in approaching this table,

    we bind ourselves to one another

    to live in love and peace from this day forth.”

We don’t say it because it’s easy. We don’t say it because it is even close to being fulfilled among us. We don’t say it because we want to delude ourselves or others that everything is lovely in our little group. We say it because it is the hope to which we have committed ourselves, and we say it again and again, week after week, because if we don’t keep reminding ourselves how big the vision is, we very easily lapse back into a complacency that allows us to sweep problems under the carpet and settle for superficial fellowship and keeping things nice. We say it over and over to keep challenging ourselves out of the easy option of tolerating shallow familiarity rather than dealing with the pain of pushing beyond our comfort zones and out into the terrifying depths of love that lie beyond our past failures and hurts.

A few years ago, someone who is no longer in our congregation was angry with me, and rang me to say that although she was coming to worship that Sunday, I was not to talk to her or approach her, and especially not during the sharing of the peace. You can see the problem can’t you? I replied that that I would comply with her request, so long as she understood that that meant that neither of us could receive the bread and wine of communion that week. The capacity to pray for peace for the other is a prerequisite. Without it, we make a mockery of this table.

Our covenant says, almost before it says anything else, that having been called together by God, we commit ourselves to love one another. Sometimes the prayer for peace for another is the only step of love we are capable of, but when it is the only step you can take, take it. It is no easy thing to wish the peace of Christ to one who has wounded you. We might be able to say the words, but to act on them and to keep saying them until we push ourselves into active peacemaking is a tough road. But where two or three gather to take that road together, there is Christ in the midst of us. As we grow into those words and so can increasingly say them with a real desire to make them come true, so Christ is re-membered among us. And as Christ is re-membered among us, so healing is brought into our world, into creation. And so God’s plan is advanced towards fulfilment, the reconciliation of the entire universe through Christ.

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