You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Sermon for September 4, 2005

1. Good Morning! Let’s Pray. O Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. Opening Comments: All of us have the disaster that has occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina scorched into our hearts and minds. Horrific images come to mind immediately when the words “New Orleans” are uttered. Randi and I have wept often over the last 7 days as we have spoken with our dear friends who are now homeless a result of this horrific disaster.

The proportions of this disaster are just beginning to come into focus. The body-count is mounting as each day passes and as our dear friends come out of their shocked states their tears are beginning to flow. The absolute horror of this disaster has marked us all!

One cannot stand off at a distance for long and view this tragedy with dispassionate objectivity! Its sounds and images begin to tear at your heart and so there are many of us who are asking the question – “What can we do?”

The Epistle reading for today seems terribly appropriate doesn’t it at a time like this. Let me read it for us once again:

Rom. 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. This is the great great debt of love – to love our neighbors as ourselves!

We’re all feeling a need to respond in some way to the needs of these desperate fellow human beings and today’s entire collection will be dedicated to the Hurricane relief efforts. Your contribution – all of it – will go directly to people in desperate need!

Our reading for today suggests that there is a debt of love - Rom. 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The debt of love is always outstanding isn’t it? It can never be paid off – it’s always needing our payment!

And so today we gather together in the Presence of God - before His Word written and His Word enfleshed - the Holy Sacrament, and we remember that a little more than 2,000 years ago Jesus, God incarnate, came to our rescue and in rescuing us surrendered His own life for us and established our debt of love!

For Christians there’s something “sacramental” in our response to disasters like these! Can you sense what I’m reaching for here? A sacrament is where the Spirit and the Flesh come together – and it’s in desperate times like these that the spirit of love demands to become enfleshed in charity – in life-giving action!

It’s not enough just to watch and grieve! One must act! One must enflesh one’s loving response to the tragedy! One must repay the debt of love!

It’s in disasters like these that we feel a tug upon our hearts to act, indeed, to even sacrifice for another. Many of us are feeling a compelling need to respond in some palpable way to the sufferings of these people!

Can you see how this response parallels Jesus’ response to our desperate need!

He came to us - a people destined to die the terrible death of a sinner – an eternal – an everlasting, an eternally lingering death! He came to our rescue driven by His heavenly love – the love found at the heart of the communion between the Persons of the Holy Trinity!

It seems that it takes disasters like this for some of us to get in touch with self-sacrificing love doesn’t it? Can you see the irony – the holy irony – emerging in all of this? What Satan meant for evil God will most assuredly turn into good! And our loving response, be it ever so meager, is proof of that emerging reality!

Do you want to see God in flesh? Do you want to see love enfleshed? Do you want to see Jesus with skin on today? Then go to New Orleans and look into the eyes of the men and women who are volunteering to rescue those stranded in their homes. Look into the eyes of your brother and sister this morning as we give of their limited resources to those in need in New Orleans. This is what love in action looks like! And this is what is so infinitely attractive about our Lord and those of us who follow Him in deeds and in words.

Look at the history of disasters throughout the history of our world and you’re looking at the growth pattern of God’s Kingdom here on earth.

With every tragedy there has been a loving response by some Christian and his or her friends.

Now please don’t misunderstand me – yes, others, who are not Christians, respond in love to the needs of others but I would argue that the seed of their love was planted in their very DNA by the Creator of all Creation – the greatest lover of all – God Himself – Father, Son and Holy Spirit! The only difference between them and us is simply that we know where the love comes from and desire, with all of our hearts, to give HIM all of the honor and all of the glory for it! To repay, in some meager way, our debt of love! Amen and Amen!

Illustration: This is love in flesh – His name is Don Leger and he lives in _________ Louisiana. Years ago he visited a half-way home for drug-addicted teenagers and befriended one of them by the name of Adam. He opened his home to Adam. And when Adam had finished his intensive rehabilitation program he invited Adam to stay in his home and live with him and his wife and two daughters in a two bedroom home for another 9 months while Adam finished high school.

Now fast forward 13 years and it’s the day after Katrina hit New Orleans. What does this man do? He awoke early, got into his car and drove 3 hours from Lafayette Louisiana to New Orleans and joined the dazed and bedraggled band of volunteers who were gathering to assist in the rescue of thousands of people stranded in their homes. He’s told not to bring back dead bodies but only alive ones! And he does just that!

Who is this man? He’s a man who has felt the deep and precious love of His beloved Lord Jesus Christ and now he must gladly and with great abandonment repay the great debt of this love for the rest of His entire life!

If you and I have been rescued from the torrential currents of our sins then we too owe a great debt of love! We too must enflesh this love in continuing acts of self-sacrificing love to all of those around us! We cannot do otherwise now can we? – for truly the debt of love to Jesus can never ever be fully paid for!

Do I hear an Amen? Now follows the Litany In Times of Disaster.