Love One Another

“The commandments … 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.”

Last month, the actor Robin Williams hanged himself. He was only sixty-three. Six months ago, the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose. He was only forty-six. Both men were richly talented, highly acclaimed actors. Robin Williams excelled at both zany comedy and moving drama. Who can forget his portrayal of the cross-dressing Mrs. Doubtfire, or of Patch Adams, the physician who healed his patients through deft use of comedy? Philip Seymour Hoffman gave us men of fierce intelligence, whose lives tended to end in crime or tragedy. His portrayal of Günther Bachmann, the brooding German intelligence officer in his last film, “A Man Most Wanted,” is truly riveting. Yet both of these men, at the peak of success, were also depressed and addicted to drugs. Both died at their own hands.

Writer Daniel Clendenin suggests that both suffered from what he calls “spiritual poverty.” “’The biggest disease today,’ Mother Teresa once said, is more spiritual than physical. It’s not ‘leprosy or tuberculosis,’ she observed, ‘but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference toward one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease.’”1

Do we, as followers of the Risen One, have any responsibility for Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and for others like them? Should we care about those who, despite, or perhaps because, of their great professional success, are so disconnected from God, themselves, and those around them that the path of self-destruction seems the only viable option? And what about those closer to us, our neighbors on this piece of the planet, who may also be lonely, sick, or grieving; must we be concerned about them?

Our passage this morning from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome clearly – at least to me – calls us to care for both those like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and those closer to us. We’ve been hearing passages from this long letter for several weeks. It is the last letter that Paul wrote, and, in some respects, the entire letter is about how to love. In the first eleven chapters, Paul explores the question of loving God, trying to get his arms around all that God has done for us in Christ. Now, in chapters twelve through fourteen, he deals with what was a more difficult task for many early Christians: how to love other people, especially those of other ethnicities, social class, or gender.

As a Jew, Paul understood God’s covenant with the Jews, which now, through Christ, included the Gentiles. Paul understood that a covenant is a two-way agreement: God has made promises to humanity, and humans have responsibilities in turn. Paul understood that keeping the law was the way that Jews, and now Christians, uphold their part of the covenant. Initially, of course, the covenant included only Ten Commandments, the ten which had been given on Mount Sinai during the forty years’ trek in the desert. As the community pondered how to apply the commandments to specific and changing situations, the laws multiplied. By the time of the compilation of the book of Leviticus, there were 613 of them. And, actually, the process has continued to the present day, as the rabbis continue to figure out how to apply the law to the circumstances in which Jews now live. Needless to say, the same process is at work in secular law.

Despite the pondering and the multiplying of the law to cover new circumstances, the underlying principle of the law is always the same: loving our neighbor is the way we show our love for God. In laying out the Jews’ obligations toward God, Leviticus clearly states this principle: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (19:18). We hear its echo in Jesus’ statement of the great commandment in the gospel of Mark: “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (12:29-31), or as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer put it, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

The charge to love our neighbors is a constant theme in Scripture. Paul restates it in his letter to the Galatian Christians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (5:13-14). The writer of the letter of James reminds us, “You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (2:8). The writer of the first letter of John tells us clearly, “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And even beyond Scripture, early Christian writers continued to remind us of our obligation to love others. Writing in the sixth century, for example, Maximus the Confessor declared, “Blessed is the one who can love all people equally, thinking good of everyone.”

Is “loving our neighbor” easy to do? If it were, all would have haloes! In some ways, the 613 commandments were easier to keep. At least they were concrete and told pious Jews what to do and not do. Loving their neighbors as themselves was much more difficult. No wonder the gospel of Luke depicts the scribe asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In writing to the Roman Christians, Paul was perfectly aware of how difficult it was for them to give up their self-absorption and focus on the concerns others. Having been a pious Jew himself, he knew perfectly well how difficult it was for them to not look down on, condemn, or enslave those who differed from them in social class, gender, faith community, or ethnicity. And he knew well how difficult it was to compromise and to forgive old sins and hurts.

BUT here’s Paul’s good news: the Roman Christians could love their neighbors as themselves, because of God’s great self-giving love for them, because a new day was already dawning through the death and resurrection of Christ, because through the Holy Spirit working on them from within, God was already transforming them. And what should their response be? To dress appropriately, i.e., to lean on God, and to fix their intentions on following God’s call, rather than automatically succumbing to the demands of their own egos or of the surrounding culture.

My sisters and brothers, this is still our call, to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” And the good news stands: we too are empowered to follow God’s commandment. We too are called to give up our absorption with self and fix our intentions on the needs of others. And, by virtue of our baptism and our inclusion into Christ’s Body, God’s transformation of us has already begun. We too have been created and are sustained by God’s continual self-giving. We too have a true model of self-giving love in Jesus’ death on the Cross. We too are included in his resurrection. We too can rely on his promise that the Holy Spirit is now at work in us.

Does loving our neighbor require heroic deeds of us? Scottish writer Tom Gordon tells the story of the “red letter day,” when the Queen visited a factory. He ends the story with a poem entitled, “Special.”

“I always knew it was a special day
when my neighbour baked a cake.
I knew she’d baked a cake
because she always brought me a piece –
well, living alone,
and never having baked anything in my life,
she knew I appreciated home baking.
And I would always ask her,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?’
And, over the years,
I’d had a share in family occasions,
and anniversaries,
and homecomings,
and leavings,
and celebrations for coming back again,
and big birthdays,
and little birthdays,
and retirements,
and babies being born,
and Scotland winning the grand-slam at rugby,
and Labour winning an election.
I would always ask her.
And I always got my share.
And I always enjoyed my cake.
Then, one day, my neighbour baked a cake
and brought me a piece,
and I asked her, as usual,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?
And she said, ‘Nothing.’
And I asked, ‘Nothing?’
And she said, ‘Well, nothing
really ...’
And I said she’d have to explain.
And she said that she’d just felt
she should bake a cake and share it with me,
because she liked being my friend –
and it was good to be alive!
And I said, ‘Oh!’
So we shared my neighbour’s cake –
and we both agreed it was a very nice cake,
because it was shared by friends
on a
very
special day.”2

In the end, loving our neighbor does not require heroic deeds. Mother Teresa reminds us that, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." Love God, love your neighbor. God asks no more of us – and no less.

1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml, For Sunday, September 7,2014.
2. "A Red-Letter Day,” Welcoming Each Wonder (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publication, 2010), 243-44.