Loving one another is a call out of the system of the empire.
Epistle Reading: Romans 13:8-14
For Sunday, Sept. 4 , 2011: Year A—Ordinary 23
When it comes to the neighbor, love can seem so little—a tiny tidbit of concern or a shred of sallow regard.
Love that Withholds
Usually I think of loving my neighbor in terms of what I withhold or as some small concession. Like, I won’t flip him off when he cuts in front of me, or I won’t unleash all my vitriol on the world in response to the moronic pronouncements of confident, yet ill informed politicians.
I’ll offer some help if needed, sometime, or maybe I’ll just write a check. But, perhaps, that is a bit less than what is intended when Romans 13 says: owe no one anything, except to love one another.
The Meaning of “Owe”
It is tempting to read these seven verses simply as an admonishment against financial indebtedness and an encouragement to pure living. Well, I should say, it is not tempting for me to read them this way, but I imagine it is tempting to the confident, yet ill-informed politicians on whom I will not unleash my vitriol.
To understand the word owe in material terms is to shrink the gospel, to neuter its revolutionary trajectory.
Paul is not talking about debt he is talking about allegiance. He is calling the church in Rome out of the system of the empire and pointing to citizenship in the Kingdom of God where love is the law. Owe no one, no system, no party allegiance, rather owe any and all only according to the rule of love.
Barth says, love of one another ought to be undertaken as the protest against the course of this world.
Regime Change
During the coffee hour after worship at a small town church I visited while on vacation last week, an eighty-something man and I were chatting. It came up that he originally was from the Bay Area. I told him that I had gone to seminary in Berkeley. He said, your one of those liberals, then. I said, yes, I was. He smiled at me warmly and gave my arm a gentle squeeze and said, you’re all right, brother. A deeper allegiance connected us. It was nice, but does it rise to the level of protest against the course of this world?
It seems like there should be some upending, or regime change, or something bigger. Maybe in the same way that these verses are not really talking about material indebtedness they are not talking about political allegiance either.
The Hardest Question
If loving one another is a call out of the system of the empire and into the kingdom of God, what exactly does that look like?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
