15th Sunday after Pentecost (September 6, Fr. Guiliano)

Owe no one anything, except to love one another. Like St Paul, we live in a world of obligations. We owe things to one another. 

We might think in terms of honor. I should treat people with respect. We might think in terms of civic or moral duty: I should help out at the local school. I should cast my vote. I should help those in need. Most often, perhaps, we think of obligations in financial terms, such as taxes and credit due: I owe the government over $14,000 a year in property taxes; I owe my bank much more than that on my mortgage; I owe the federal government an extravagant amount of money for the few short semesters when I really needed a student loan. I wish I didn’t owe these things, but (with all apologies to Vera Lynn and the classic film Love Affair) “wishing will not make it so.” Debts remain.

St Paul and his contemporaries would have had a vivid sense of this truth; they were living in the wake of a Roman scandal over collecting taxes. And when the tax man comes knocking, you have to pay, whether it's 56 AD or 2026.

In these contexts, it feels remarkable for Paul to say, “Owe no one anything.” He seems to mean it in a certain way: fulfill your obligations, live without anything left in the account books. “Give to everyone their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due” (Rom 13:7). By giving freely, by giving everyone their due, you could eventually live justly and debt-free.

Now, if that’s all St Paul said in Romans 13, he would have been just another moral philosopher, like many who have written about ethics since ancient times. But he says more than “Owe no one anything.” He says, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”

The Christian life is a life of love and blessing, as I said last week. And it sets us up for endless obligations: to love our family, friends, and neighbors; to love all strangers, every persecutor, every enemy. And we must also love God.
But how can we owe love? And how can we owe it to an infinite degree? 

It may be easy to think about this, in terms of our love for God. Because of our creation and salvation, the debt we owe to God cannot be measured. We exist as a gift; we enjoy all things around us as a gift -- everything necessary for life. And by the precious blood of Christ, God has redeemed us, healed us, restored us to right relationship, purified our souls, put light into our minds, transferred us from a kingdom of darkness to a kingdom of light. We couldn’t do any of those things. But God could, and God did. 

We owe God our selves. How can we fail to love him?

To use the phrase of recent weeks from Romans 12: “Brethren, I exhort you, by the mercies of God to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” 

I guess that was easy to figure. We owe a debt to God, a love. But how could we owe our neighbor a similar debt? This seems to be a harder puzzle. After all, what has my neighbor done for me, that I should owe so much to them? 

We could answer that in a few ways. Practically speaking, no one is an island. We all rely on one another in ways we cannot fathom. But, more deeply, our obligation to love our neighbor flows from a multitude of deep realities.

As Scripture tells us, we were made for one another: to be in community. There is no me without you, without us. We were all made in the image of the living God, so the love we owe the Almighty must also be expressed towards those who are his image-bearers in the world, his children. 

It’s like with your friends: You’ve got to love their kids. It can be hard; some of them are total brats, but you look at them and you see the face of your beloved reflected back at you. It’s the same for humanity: every face, a reflection of the divine.

Recognize this debt to your neighbor: God tells you about it. He speaks through his apostle and says, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another… Love does no wrong to the neighbor … love is the fulling of the law.” 

This teaching in Romans 13 is wholly consistent with what Jesus himself taught, as we know from the Gospels. 

When people came to Jesus and asked him, what the greatest commandments were, and how they might inherit eternal life, he articulated a twofold love that has shaped the Church’s way of life ever sense. 

“Love God,” he said, “with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like it, namely this: You should love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Love God, love your neighbor. We believe this is our way of life in the Episcopal Church; it is woven into all our services. What do we say to God each week?

At 10:15, in the confession, we say these words, “We have not love you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

At 8’o clock, we say something different, “We plead to God in response to the summary of the Law I just recited amount ago. We hear each week: “Love God, love your neighbor.” And we pray: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord have mercy.” For sometimes we know we do not love him well, nor do we show love for our neighbor.

For many centuries in Anglican churches, the centrality of this twofold love was put before the eyes of the faithful by the display of the 10 Commandments. In place of an altarpiece, reredos, or statue, the words of God given to Moses were traced in golden letters in the sight of all, usually alongside the Lord’s Prayer and the Creeds. How to love in one place, how to pray in the next, how to believe, after that. 

The commandments would be shown in two tables, just as Moses is shown carrying them down the mountain: commandments 1-4 on one side, detailing our obligations in loving God; commandments 5-10, showing our obligations in loving our neighbor. If you go to many churches on the East Coast, they are still there behind the altar. If you go to many old parishes in England, they are there. They are living reminders of a good way of life. 

We may not have those commandments written on the walls of Emmanuel in shining letters. Our church was built in 1917 when different fashions prevailed. But we hold to the obligations all the same. Perhaps you can see them in another way, when you look at the rood screen. For there, we see the Son of God, by whom all things were made, and through whom our eternal salvation has come. When you look upon the cross, remember the love God has shown for all people, and let it build in you an echoing love for God and neighbor. When you see the altar and the stained glass, showing Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple, and old Simeon acclaiming him, remember how we are offering ourselves and presenting ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. Wherever you look, remember what God has done and what God calls you to be. 

Owe no one anything, except to love. … Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love is the fulfilling of the law.