Love Does No Wrong

Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

So as I mentioned earlier, Jamie is back in the hospital and is starting to present with symptoms of his previous 5 week stay. This means that I’m back in the hospital, too, spending shifts sitting at Jamie’s bedside, watching him battle a nameless condition. It’s hard to watch and feel like there’s nothing I can do. Lately, I’ve offered to spend a few nights at the hospital, just to help make sure his mother doesn’t burn out from care and worry. Night is when things slow down, devices are turned off, lights are dimmed, sounds are silenced…not so at a hospital.

The hospital is full of noises. There are sounds of machines—beeps and boops and clicks and whirs—each signifying something requiring the attention of a nurse or doctor. This beep means the IV needs to be replaced, that boop means the patient’s temperature has been read, an alarm might signify a low heart rate, or the intercom calls a nurse to attend to a situation in room 403.

There are also the sounds of patients—coughs, and cries, and gasps, and moans—also signifying a person or situation in need of attention. Some cries mean pain, other moans mean grief, some gasps signify trouble breathing, while other sighs simply mean that someone is feeling lonely.

This got me thinking about the noises that call our attention to things. Not simply in the hospital, but throughout the world.

The world is full of noises. Cries for help, sounds of war, the howl of hurricanes, the rumble of earthquakes, moans of hunger, shrieks of pain, gasps of fear, the clamor of arguments, protests and counter-protests. Each of these noises speaks to people, places, or situations in need of attention.

It’s also overwhelming because our own lives are already overwhelming enough as is.

Our lives are full of noises. Leaky faucets and squeaky doors needing to be fixed, that chugging noise that means the car probably needs to be taken in, bills and taxes begging to be paid (oh, and the kids need money, too), and then there’s the persistent hum of our own hurt, the sounds of our own suffering, the ring of worries, the pleading voice of our vices and addictions.

So many noises, and they all signify something that needs fixing, or replacing, or healing, or comforting. It is a chaotic cacophony.

It’s hard to listen to and feel like there’s nothing we can do. It’s hard to feel called to shower compassion and care on the woes of the world when we can’t even seem to muster compassion and care for ourselves. Sometimes charities or churches spend money or time to turn up the volume on specific cries to make us feel as though we owe attention to one cause above all the others, as if there aren’t any others.

Paul’s words to the congregation in Rome speak to similarly overwhelmed people. They’re pulled in all sorts of directions by the commands of the Empire, cries of the community, echoes of their traditions, needs of their families. In the midst of this, Paul is introducing them to a new Gospel with its own commands. If not shared with gentleness and respect, even this Good News can become an overwhelming addition to these already busy and burdened disciples.

So here’s how Paul does it. Earlier in the 13th chapter he acknowledges that they are busy and called in many directions as citizens of Rome. Becoming Christians will not sever you from your obligations to the state, in fact good citizenship is part of good Christian conduct. Did you catch that? Our citizenship is a part of the practice of our faith. Not the other way around. Our citizenship is enhanced by our faith, not our faith by our citizenship. Our belonging to Christ guides our belonging to anything else. And then Paul speaks to what we’ve just called the “chaotic cacophony” of cries and shouts that make us feel like we owe attention to more than we can possibly manage. “You owe no one anything,” he says, “except love.”

This doesn’t let them, or us, off the hook. But it does give us something to listen to which lightens the load, because our obligation to love is inseparable from our own beloved-ness. 1 John 4:7 sums it up nicely, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.” The obligation to love is inseparable from this reminder that God has first loved us. And for Paul, God’s love for us is inseparable. God’s love for us reminds us that God listens to us, and with us. We do not face the woes of the world alone. We are not called to show compassion to the cries of the chaotic cacophony without also having been the capacity to care.

The capacity to care is found when we remember that we are not alone, we are beloved and part of a beloved community: the Body of Christ. We can uphold the obligation to love because we have been made a part of the Body of Christ, the incarnation of God, and God is love. It’s a bit complicated, perhaps, so let’s try to wrap our heads around this. In Christ we are only obligated to love our neighbor, and in Christ we belong to our neighbor (we and our neighbor are members of the Body of Christ), and in Christ we belong to the incarnate love of God, therefore in Christ we are inseparable from the source of the solution to our only obligation.

It’s easy to feel as though we are competing with the noises around us for attention. It’s easy to feel as though we’re alone, or at least that we are pitted against others. With all the noise around us, it’s easy to feel silenced, even wronged. But love does no wrong.

Love is like the conductor’s baton waved above the woes of the world, setting order above the noises of need, the sounds of suffering, the cries for compassion, the groans of grief, the din of disaster, and the cacophony of chaos. A good conductor lets his musicians know that they are heard, a great conductor teaches the musicians how to listen to one another, how to follow the movement of the melody, how to hear the harmony of hope, and how to make music together.

Love reminds us that we aren’t competing, even if we’re playing in different sections of the orchestra. Love helps us become less concerned with blasting our own part and more concerned with blending it. We’re making music together, that’s our only obligation.

But there are real threats to the music we make, aren’t there? What if, say, an entire section of the orchestra becomes irreconcilably convinced that they are competing, that they are the only section that matters. Nothing ruins a symphony orchestra like a case of trombone supremacy. Convinced that no one wants to listen to flutes or cellos, they begin to rewrite their own music giving all the parts to themselves, they stop following the conductor and start leading themselves by their own whims and wishes (Paul alludes to this type of selfishness in the second portion of today’s passage). Then the trombones begin to sing their own song over and against the song of love everyone else is working on together. Every time the symphony members gather to try and create something beautiful, the trombones show up. What do we do when this happens, what do we do when a member of the orchestra sings against us?

That’s what Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 are getting at, what do we do when we are sinned against? What do we do when there is an actual threat to our unity in the task of living and loving under the direction of God? First, try to address the issue to them one-on-one, if they refuse to listen, bring a few more members along with you, if they continue to refuse to listen bring it before the whole church, and if that member continues to refuse to participate with the mission of the church, then they have no place in the church. In the troubling case of the trombonists who have a proven track record of disinterest and opposition to the mission and melody of the symphony, they, then, have no place in the symphony. Those who refuse to follow the conductor, respect the other musicians, and participate in the same piece of music do not get to claim that they are a part of the symphony, nor should they have any claim to a stage.

There are real threats to the mission and ministry of Christ. There are those who claim to be Christian but refuse to follow the lead of love, those who harmonize with hatred as they seek to silence all other sounds. That’s one response to the noises that overwhelm us. And it’s the wrong response. In one of my music history classes in college I learned about a time at which the church actually banned a specific combination of notes from being played because the dissonance they created was believed to be the sound of pure evil. The particular combination is a tritone, an augmented fourth, or for those of you who weren’t music majors: check this out. They called this “diabolus en musica” or “the devil in the music,” and it was forbidden from being used in music.

The thing about this tritone, however, is that while it might sound dissonant to our ears, it actually sets up one of the most satisfying musical resolutions. Listen to this (ah, so satisfying). Sometimes the things that seem dissonant or threatening are simply setups for resolution, part of the journey towards reconciliation and harmony.

It’s hard to sit amidst the beeps and boops and clicks and whirs of Jamie’s room and feel like there’s nothing I can do. I suppose I feel like there’s nothing I can do because I think that being a doctor and providing a diagnosis and a cure is the primary obligation. It’s easy to feel like the part we play is insignificant. But don’t let the trombones keep you down. Their hatred will not win out, it cannot win out; Christ, our leader has seen to that. Keep singing the song of love, and you will do no wrong. The obligation to love reminds us that there is more to the music, and that there is something we can do. Lately, I’ve been bringing my guitar to Jamie’s room and singing some of his favorite songs with him. Sometimes the spasms subside, his face softens, and he’ll even perk up enough to sing along, filling in the gaps I leave in the lyrics.

Friends, we belong to the song of love. Sing your part with pride. Follow the leader, let love conduct your life, and learn to listen to how lovely we sound when we begin to sing together. Amen.