The Law: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 10, 2023 at Saint Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Romans 13:8-14.

One night when I was in my early 20s, I was out with a couple of people at a pub. One of them was the man whom I was dating at the time, and at some point in the evening we must have held hands or in some other way indicated that we were together. I got up to use the restroom, and as I was washing my hands, I suddenly heard a group of people who had assembled outside the bathroom door; it was clear that they were talking about me and that they were unhappy with my presence in their midst. As I opened the door, a group of about 8 people, men and women, surrounded me and started yelling at me. They called me names and said a number of things that were very hard to hear, but the thing I heard that has stuck with me in the years since is when one of the women yelled, “you’re breaking God’s law! You’re breaking God’s law!”

I was able to make my way through them somehow and I made a beeline for the front door. The people I was with followed me out and we quickly put some distance between ourselves and that place. Thankfully no one followed us.

Later that night after walking around and calming our nerves a bit, we paused by the river. The city we were in was near the coast, the air was warm and still, and as we rested and watched the moon reflecting upon the water, suddenly out of nowhere we saw a dolphin leaping out of the water, glistening in the dim light. 

It was so perfect, so surreal, that it felt like a dream, and we fell silent with awe. And what struck me was how strange it was that a vision of such perfect beauty and an experience of such shame and fear could all exist in the span of one evening. And I knew, in a way that I couldn’t quite explain, that whatever God’s law was, whatever it meant to follow that law, it had more to do with this moment of silent wonder and unexpected beauty than it did with whatever those people had been screaming at me about inside. 

I share that story with you not out of a sense of self-pity nor to vilify anyone. We all have our harms and our hurts to account for, and so I’ve tried my best to let that experience in the pub be an instructive one. And what it has taught me, what I fiercely believe because of it and because of other stories I’ve heard from people who are different in one way or another, is that we must continue to wrestle with the meaning and the purpose of the law recorded in Scripture as it has been received in Christian tradition. We must continue to ask ourselves what the Judeo-Christian law is meant to look like and sound like and the fruits that it is meant to bear in our own lives and in our world. 

Because although it might be tempting sometimes, when confronted with the violence or prejudice perpetuated in its name, we cannot ignore the law or dismiss it as irrelevant to modern life. Because we are followers of Jesus, and earlier in Matthew’s gospel he says quite clearly: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” 

Such a conundrum: how do we honor what the Law represents—God’s eternal, unchanging desires for how we are to live—while also recognizing that the original writers of the Law were speaking to the needs and concerns of a highly particular culture and geography and context?

How do we arrive at a place where the Law by which we pattern our lives is both substantive and kind, both a defense against harm and yet also a gateway to liberation? How do we conceive of the Law in a way that guards against our most dehumanizing tendencies and yet is as beautiful and elemental and free as that dolphin cresting the shimmering water? Can such a Law be found and followed? 

Yes.

Owe no one anything, Paul says this morning, owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The 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.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Love is the fulfilling of the Law. If you take nothing else away from this sermon, I hope you will take that. Love is the fulfilling of the Law. 

Or another way of saying it: the only true measure of the Law is love. The only true measure of whether we are obeying God’s Law is how well, how deeply, how broadly we are embodying love. 

And so if you have, in your life, ever been told that you are unworthy, or if you have ever felt lost or forgotten, or if you have ever struggled to figure out how to be good enough, how to to be strong enough, how to simply be enough in a world that too often fixates on how we fall short, I want you to remember: love is the fulfilling of the Law.

And if you have witnessed the endless debates about what makes a person truly Christian, what makes a church truly Christian, what it means to follow God’s Law, then I want you to remember, love is the fulfilling of the Law. 

And, yes, we can study the history and the context of Scripture to understand how and why the Law took the form it did in that time and place where it was first recorded. But we can also honor the truth that love takes on new contours, new understandings to meet the realities and the revelations of our present moment. And this is not weak or permissive-on the contrary, to love unreservedly is the bravest thing we can do. 

Because if love is the true fulfillment of the law, well, love is scary. Love is risky and strange and it doesn’t always go the way you planned, it doesn’t always look the way you expected. And love demands things of you, it demands you to bend and grow and weep and dance. It requires you to sit beneath the moon and hold pain and beauty alongside one another and still say yes, yes, I will still believe in love, even when the world is ugly and cruel. I will still believe in Love Incarnate, even though he was crucified. And I will still believe that love endures, that it persists beneath the surface of life, cresting unexpectedly to dazzle us, to save us, to remind us of what is true. 

How will love show up for us this year at Saint Anne? How will we discover it amidst the pain and promise of our own lives? How will be give ourselves over to its invitation as we begin a new season of ministry and worship and community? I urge you to listen to how God is stirring your heart into action. 

Whether it is offering a word of support to someone who is struggling with grief, or a word of hope to a society struggling with injustice; whether it is tending the lawn or tending to the shattered fragments of someone’s spirit; whether it is learning to sing or helping others find their own voice; studying Scripture or simply sitting in awe beneath the moon—no matter what you do, if it is offered in love, then it is one more indication of the coming Kingdom, and it is one more revelation of the unchanging truth that will guide us and sustain us in any age:

Love is the fulfilling of the law. And love is the one thing that can never truly be broken.