Love Unconditional

Sermon

In our Scripture reading this morning, Paul is offering guidance to a budding Christian community still figuring out how to be faithful disciples. The community in Rome was a diverse community, containing both Jewish Christians and converts who were not originally from the Jewish tradition. They were struggling with how to reconcile those differences—whether these new Christians should be obligated to follow Torah law, and how people ought to be treated generally. Paul’s letter offers them advice on how to live well with one another, as well as with their non-Christian neighbors. He attempts to answer some of their most pressing questions: What does it mean to believe in Christ, to know him, and to follow him? What happens when we stray from God’s justice? Who exactly is included in God’s love—in His elect?

At first glance, some of the advice Paul gives can seem contrary to the message that he’s actually trying to convey. The language that Paul uses, or at least our translations of it, sometimes gets used as an excuse to exclude some people from God’s love, and thus our own love. The language of predestination and of God’s elect has been used to hold some people above others, as if God loves some people more than others. We are the special ones destined to fulfill God’s word—when Jesus said you all, he didn’t mean you all. If read uncritically, this language can paint a pretty harsh, even unjust, picture of our God. In the best case scenario, people take a “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach, which has led to cruelties like conversion therapy for our queer siblings. In the worst case, it leads to thinking that some groups of people are inferior to others. Thinking that if people aren’t having my specific brand of Christianity shoved down their throats, then they’re doing Christianity wrong.

If I had to hazard a guess, when I say the words “white Christian nationalist” the image that likely pops into your head is a MAGA-hat wearing, gun-toting Republican or maybe a masked and camo-clad Proud Boy. Thank goodness none of those people are in here. But in reality, some of them just wear suits. Some of them will smile and shake your hand and tell you that they’re trying to spread God’s love, just like you. “We love queer people, we just want to uphold ‘Biblical values.’” “We want a big-tent church with diverse views, that can hold space for both women and sexism, both gay people and homophobia, both people of color and white supremacy.”

White Christian Nationalists think that each of those words—white, Christian, and Nationalist—are synonyms. To be American means to be a white Christian, to be a Christian means to be a white American, and to be white means to be an American Christian. They want to remove, exclude, and deport everyone who doesn’t conform to their understanding of Christianity. They think that there are people who don’t deserve a seat at the table—that God makes exceptions to his all-encompassing love.

Frankly, it’s an insult to God to think He could look at any part of his creation and not think it was good—that He could look at any person and not love them. And Paul is unequivocally not exclusionary in his language. He is pretty clear when he says that all things work together for the good of God that he means all things. He says that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek and that God is the Lord of all. And when he says there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love, he means nothing.

But despite our best efforts, there will still be people who take the Lord’s name in vain to justify the hatred they spew towards their siblings. There will still be people who claim to spread Christ’s love while they secretly hold themselves above others, believing God’s elect to be an exclusive category. Paul readily acknowledges our tendency to sin but still offers us a path forward. When you’re lost, when you’re confused, when you don’t even know how to pray, he says, is when the Holy Spirit intercedes. If we open ourselves to it, if we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit, then we will do what is good in God’s eyes.

As many of you know, just last month I was at the General Assembly in Milwaukee as a Young Adult Advisory Delegate. It was an incredible experience—learning parliamentary procedure was almost as fun as I expected—and it was certainly on my mind as I read today’s passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans. One thing that stuck out to me was how much the passage from this morning seems to undergird the philosophy of our General Assembly. I had never heard the word “discern” so much in my life as I did at G.A., but that’s what we were there to do. When someone is commissioned to G.A. they are not acting as representatives of their Presbytery, like congresspeople represent their districts; they instead are there to be open to the Holy Spirit and help to discern the will of God. The problem is that people are prone to mistakes. We all delude ourselves sometimes into thinking that we’re acting justly when we’re not, and we rationalize our actions to ourselves rather than confronting our faults. But not all is lost, because, as Paul tells us, “all things work together for good.”

All things for good, work together; this is why Presbyterians love committees so much and why I had to sit through multiple eight-hour-long Zoom meetings for G.A. We trust that working together, collectively, we are more likely to faithfully discern the Holy Spirit. It’s a safety net against human error but also against authoritarianism and the abuse of power. No one person has authority over any other because we’re all flawed individuals, and no one is inherently superior to any other. As cool as the current Pope might be, we don’t have a Pope because we don’t think that he’s magically better at discerning the will of God than any of us—and certainly not better than when we discern together as the body of Christ. The belief that no one person has the right to dictate the will of God to anyone else, and that everyone has a right to discern God’s will for themselves, is at the very heart of our tradition.

In line with that tradition, one of the overtures that the General Assembly passed by an overwhelming majority of 96% was a repudiation of Christian Nationalism. It will soon be written in our Book of Order that “The church rejects any ideology that seeks to establish Christianity as a privileged or dominant force through the power of the state, or that conflates religious identity with national, racial, or ethnic supremacy. Such ideologies, in all their forms, are incompatible with the example and teachings of Jesus Christ, constitute a theological error, undermine the church’s faithful witness, and are contrary to the church.” We have reaffirmed as a denomination that hatred and exclusion have no place in our church. That any ideology that creates hierarchies and sets apart one people from another goes against our faith that says that nothing can separate anyone from the love of God through Jesus Christ.

I believe wholeheartedly in our commitment to collective discernment, and I believe in the power of faith to stand against oppression and authoritarianism. The early Christians lived under the boot of the Roman Empire, and throughout the Old Testament the people of Israel went from living under one empire to another. Consistently the Israelites were let down by their kings. The prophets that brought good times to the land of Israel didn’t do it through violence and domination but through spiritual guidance. The apostles didn’t spread Christianity by threats and condemnation but by sharing good news. Christ himself did not come to rule but to serve.

Other people who claim to be followers of Christ will appeal to the Bible or tradition in order to argue for the exclusion of others—in order to justify hatred and violence. But do not be fooled. Our rich historical and Biblical traditions are full of people working together to collectively discern the will of Christ—people who understand that loving the queer, the outcast, the refugee, means loving them as they are. Finding ways to be inclusive of the diversity of human experience is not a perversion of our tradition, but an extension of Christ’s love which has always rested at the heart of it. Sharing with everyone the good news that God loves you, and there’s nothing that you can do about—that’s a tradition worth preserving.