This Sunday's readings put two
things side by side that I think belong together, and that a great deal of
American Christianity right now has managed to pull apart: love and honesty
about what love actually requires.
Jesus tells his disciples what
to do when someone has genuinely wronged them: go and correct him, between the
two of you alone. If that fails, bring one or two more. If that fails, bring it
to the church. And then this promise: where two or three are gathered together
in my name, there I am, in their midst.
Paul, in the same set of
readings, gives the summary underneath everything: love is the plenitude of the
law. Not one virtue among several. The whole of it, filled up, completed, made
entire.
The love of
neighbor does no harm. Therefore, love is the plenitude of the law. (Romans 13:10, CPDV)
Where
Two or Three Are Gathered
I want to say something about
that promise, because I think it gets sentimentalized into something smaller
than it actually is. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am, in
their midst is not primarily a comfort verse for small congregations. It comes
directly after Jesus describes the hard, unglamorous work of confronting harm
honestly and trying to restore what has been broken.
Christ's presence is promised in
the middle of that work. Not instead of it. Not as an escape from it. In the
actual, difficult process of naming a wrong, seeking correction, and trying to
restore relationship. That is where two or three gathered in his name are
promised his presence: in the hard conversation, not just the easy comfort.
Love
Means Forgiveness, Not a Doormat
I want to talk honestly about
forgiveness, because I think it gets misunderstood in two opposite directions,
and both of them are wrong.
Some people hear the command to
forgive and think it means never confronting wrong, never setting a boundary,
never saying that something someone did actually hurt you. That is not
forgiveness. That is avoidance, and it usually costs the person avoiding conflict
far more than it costs the person who caused the harm. Matthew 18 does not
describe a doormat. It describes someone who goes directly to the person who
wronged them and names it plainly. That is not weakness. That takes real
courage.
But other people hear the same
text and use it to justify permanent estrangement, refusing ever to forgive,
holding a wrong over someone's head indefinitely as leverage. That is not what
this text asks either. Forgiveness, in the shape Jesus describes here, is
neither passive endurance of harm nor permanent refusal to release it. It is
honest confrontation followed by a real, costly willingness to be reconciled
when reconciliation is actually possible.
Forgiveness is not the same
thing as pretending you were not hurt. And it is not the same thing as refusing
forgiveness forever. It is telling the truth about the wound, and then
choosing, when it is genuinely offered, not to let that wound have the final
word over the relationship.
Love
Does No Harm
I want to sit with Paul's
sentence for a moment, because I think it is the most important test available
to us right now for telling real love from something wearing its name: love
does no harm.
That is not a vague sentiment.
It is a specific, testable claim. If an action, a policy, a sermon, a political
movement causes real, documented harm to a real person, it does not matter how
loudly it claims to be love. By Paul's own definition, in this Sunday's second
reading, it is not love. It cannot be. Love does no harm. That is the whole
test.
I want to apply that test
directly to something I have watched grow more powerful and more dangerous in
this country, because I do not think faithfulness allows me to describe it in
generalities.
Christian
Nationalism Fails Its Own Test
Christian Nationalism, as it
currently operates in the United States, claims the name of Christ constantly.
It invokes scripture, waves crosses, and insists it is defending Christian
values. And by the measure Paul gives us this Sunday, it fails its own test
almost completely.
You cannot deport immigrants
back into danger, back into the violence and instability they fled in the first
place, and call that love of neighbor. Love does no harm. Sending a person back
to a place where their life is at risk is harm, full stop, and no amount of
biblical language draped over the policy changes that fact.
You cannot target LGBTQIA+
people, especially transgender people and especially children, with legislation
and rhetoric designed to erase their existence from public life, and call that
love. I have heard it described as love more times than I can count this year:
love that tells a queer teenager they are broken, love that tells a trans
person their own understanding of their body is a lie, love that strips away
healthcare and safety in the name of protecting children who are,
disproportionately, the very ones being harmed. That is not love with hard
edges. It is harm wearing love's name, and Romans 13 gives us the exact
language to say so plainly: love does no harm. If it harms, it was never love.
I am not interested in
relitigating whether Christian Nationalism has good intentions. Paul does not
ask about intentions. He gives a result-based test. Love does no harm. Judge
the fruit, not the claimed motive.
What
This Community Chooses Instead
This parish tries, imperfectly
but genuinely, to hold both halves of this Sunday's readings together. We
believe in honest confrontation: naming harm plainly, the way Matthew 18
describes, rather than pretending it is not happening. And we believe in the
test Paul gives us: love does no harm, which means our welcome to immigrants
and to LGBTQIA+ people is not a political position layered on top of our faith.
It is what faithfulness to this specific text requires.
Where two or three of us are
gathered in his name, seeking the hard, honest work of naming wrong and
choosing reconciliation over cheap comfort, Christ has promised to be present
in the middle of it. That is the work in front of us. Not because it is easy.
Because it is what love, tested by its actual fruit rather than its claimed
intentions, actually looks like.
Come Sunday. Let us do that
hard, honest work together.
Pax
et Bonum, Bishop Greer | 
