Where is the love?
This past week, I was about struggling to write this sermon.
I mentioned this to my spouse, and so, he asked me what the scriptures were.
“Well… there’s the first Passover in Exodus”—the beginning of the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt.
Then there’s Jesus teaching the disciples about reconciliation.
And then there’s Paul going on and on about love…
Ames, responded wryly… “Yeah. Nothing good there.”
Of course… we was joking… there is A LOT OF GOOD THERE.
The liberation of an oppressed people.
Reconciliation within relationships.
And love… love… love.
I think this particular bout of writers block had less to do with what I was seeing in the readings, and more to do with what I was seeing in the world.
This past week, I have been deeply troubled by the story of Pierre Damas Bel.
Bel was a 20-year-old Haitian immigrant living in Springfield, Ohio. He was a varsity soccer player, and a member of the Marine Corps Junior ROTC, who graduated with honors from Springfield High School. He had just begun his first semester at Wright State University.
In July, Bel was captured by ICE and his ankle-shackled with a GPS monitor while his immigration case remained pending.
Overwhelmed by despairing and humiliated, this past Monday morning, Pierre walked into highway traffic. Dead by suicide.
He was 20 years old.
Shortly before taking his own life, Bel wrote on social media,
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone…Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better [life,] not to be treated like a criminal. So now, how am I supposed to play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?”
Bel’s pastor, Rev. Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church, said “I wish President Trump could hear the mom’s wails. The family wants people to know that this was a suicide and they want people to know that President Trump, (Stephen) Miller, and Markwayne Mullin’s inhumane immigration policies made this happen.”
In Romans, Paul recounts Christ’s own teachings: “Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
There is no love in these policies.
No love in this procedure.
No love in this “law and order.”
Where is the love that fulfills the law?
The cruelty is not just limited to the policies.
For the last two years, Trump has done nothing but dehumanize Haitian refugees in America in the most degrading and cruel ways. He has promises voters that he would treat these brothers and sisters — in many cases, actual siblings in Christian faith — as animals and criminals.
His campaign spread false rumors about what was happening in Springfield, Ohio, Bel’s own hometown. Vice President JD Vance even admitted that they concocted this story to get attention, and that he would do it again. It was all just a campaign strategy.
These were lies told about real people—about Bel’s neighbors—about Bel, himself.
We know that of the first things we have to do in order to treat another human being cruelly is to stop seeing them as fully human. We have to stop listening to cries for mercy.
There passover story arises from a similar context of cruelty and dehumanization.
In the chapters preceding our reading today, a great struggle has unfolded between Pharaoh and Moses—or, really, between Pharaoh and God.
Again and again, Moses goes before Pharaoh and demands that he release the Israelites from slavery.
And again and again, Pharaoh hardens his heart. He refuses to listen to Moses.. He closes his ears to the people’s cries for mercy. And he refuses to let the people go.
And so, plague after plague descends upon Egypt.
The water turns to blood.Swarms of frogs, gnats, and flies fill the land. Disease strikes the livestock, and boils break out on the people.Hail and fire rain down from the sky. And finally, locusts devour all that remains.
And yet each time, Pharaoh’s heart remained hard as stone.
At several points, he is ready to relent, only to change his mind as soon as the plague passes and the danger subsides.
Phaoroh refuses to listen to Moses—the Israelite boy who had grown up in his own palace, raised by his daughter, and who perhaps had once been like a grandson to him.
Pharaoh’s hardened heart has made him incapable of compassion, or mercy, or love.
And so, because he cannot hear Moses, he cannot hear the voice of the God who speaks through him.
Pharaoh’s hardened heart illustrates, in mythic proportions, the exact opposite of how we are called to live.
For as Paul writes, God calls us to: “Love our neighbor as ourselves. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Now, I think the direct challenge to this community today comes not from Exodus, and not from Romans, but from the Gospel of Matthew.
We can believe that God is on the side of the marginalized. That God hears the cries of the oppressed. That God acts to liberate those who are suffering and lift up those who have been brought low.
And we can try our best to “love our neighbors”—by voting for compassionate leaders, advocating for just policies, resisting dehumanizing rhetoric, and speaking up when we witness injustice.
We can love our neighbors as faithfully as we know how….and yet we still mess up.
And often, it is not some distant neighbor who we hurt. It is our friends. Our families. Our church community. The people closest to us, with whom we share our lives and our deepest relationships.
Jesus knew this.
In Matthew, Jesus is speaking to his inner circle when he provides them a process for resolving wrongdoing among them.
Jesus encourages the church to be a community that nurtures honest dialogue and refuses to keep silent in the face of behavior that harms others.
Jesus is giving us some universal, infallible, three-step formula for accountability. Human relationships are far too complicated for that.
But Jesus does model something about how we approach one another when harm has been done: honestly and respectfully, without immediately resorting to punishment, creating unnecessary drama, or causing even more harm.
The most important thing to Jesus seems to be open and honest communication.
Without it, we all know that small issues become big; and big issues become catastrophic.
But effective communication requires more than speaking. It requires listening.
And listening is hard.
Perhaps this is why Jesus repeats himself over and over again. Four times in the first three verses, Jesus makes reference to listening or refusing to listen.
“If the member listens to you…”
“If you are not listened to…”
“If the member refuses to listen…”
“If the offender refuses to listen even to the church…”
Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.
That Jesus repeats himself so much, suggests that listen closely to the truth of the other, is a vital component of a community grounded in the ways of Jesus.
Because more often then now, wrongdoing is not so clear cut. And so resolution requires more than proclaiming what wrong has been done.
Reconciliation requires that we remain open to hearing another person’s truth—even when it is uncomfortable, even when it challenges the story we have been telling ourselves, even when it asks something of us.
An open heart is the opposite of a hardened heart.
Jesus seems to be responding to a difficult situation among his disciples, for he concludes that:
“If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Now let's stop and think about what Jesus means by this.
It is possible that Jesus is simply using these terms to mean “outsider.” That is certainly how Gentiles and tax collectors would have been regarded by many within Jesus’ religious community.
In other words: if someone repeatedly refuses to listen, refuses accountability, refuses every attempt at reconciliation, then the the relationship changes. No longer do you consider them among your family or friends.
Some interpreters have understood Jesus to mean that such a person should no longer be considered part of the community of faith.
Ouch… but there are absolutely circumstances when separation is necessary, and perhaps the most merciful way forward.
Reconciliation cannot be demanded from someone who is still being harmed, or from someone who refuses to see their wrongdoing.
There was no reconciling the Israelites while they remained under the Egyptian taskmaster.
No reconciling enslaved Africans with their enslavers while they remained in chains.
No reconciling German Jews with Nazi leaders while the regime remained in power.
Not while the oppression continued. Not while the wounds were still being inflicted. Not while the hearts of those wielding power remained hard as stone.
Liberation must come before reconciliation.
But if we are honest, most of us encounter conflict far more often than we do outright oppression or abuse. Our families, friendships, and communities are not Pharaoh and Moses.
This is because we humans can be petty. We misunderstand, project, overreact, get defensive and bitter. We compete for attention, affection, honor, and praise as though there are scarce resources.
And frankly, that description sounds a lot more like the disciples, who are often much more caught up internal conflict rather than confronting their actual oppressors.
Just earlier in this very chapter, they come to Jesus with the question:
“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
So perhaps Jesus words invite a second look…
For while their communities readily considered tax collectors and Gentiles, “outsiders,” Jesus has been teaching something quiet different.
This is the Jesus who looked at a tax collector and said, “Follow me.”
This is the Jesus who regularly sat down and broke bread with tax collectors, much to the irritation of the self-righteous religious folks around him.
This is the Jesus who told those same religious leaders that the tax collectors they looked down upon were entering the kingdom of God ahead of them.
And throughout Matthew’s Gospel, the circle of Jesus’ ministry keeps stretching outward, eventually embracing the Gentiles as well.
So when Jesus says: “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” maybe the question is not simply, How did everyone else treat Gentiles and tax collectors?
Rather the question is: How did Jesus treat them?
Where is the love?
There are absolutely relationships that must change, in the short term at the very least. There are boundaries that must be drawn. At times, reconciliation is not possible.
But even in these extreme circumstances, Jesus does not give us permission to stop seeing another person as human. He does not give us permission to harden our hearts.
Immediately after Jesus finishes this teaching, Peter comes to him with a question.
“Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Seven probably sounded pretty generous to Peter.
But Jesus answers: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
In other words, reconciliation, especially in the short term, has its limits.
But Love and mercy do not. For love is the fulfilling of the law.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 9/6/26.
Comments