Romans 13:8-14 (CEB)
8 Don’t be in debt to anyone, except for the obligation to love each other. Whoever loves another person has fulfilled the Law. 9 The commandments, Don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t desire what others have, and any other commandments, are all summed up in one word: You must love your neighbor as yourself. 10 Love doesn’t do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.
11 As you do all this, you know what time it is. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep. Now our salvation is nearer than when we first had faith.12 The night is almost over, and the day is near. So let’s get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light. 13 Let’s behave appropriately as people who live in the day, not in partying and getting drunk, not in sleeping around and obscene behavior, not in fighting and obsession. 14 Instead, dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t plan to indulge your selfish desires.
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Does anyone besides me get snail mail, emails, and phone calls offering to help you get into one of the many Student Loan forgiveness programs? The first thing I thought when I read this passage is how much I would love to tell the people I write that large Student Loan check to every month that the Bible says I can’t be in debt to anyone, so I don’t have to pay them.
Sadly for my checkbook, I am not one who interprets the Bible quite that literally. I did borrow the money in order to get two degrees. And I don’t regret a penny of it, because those two degrees brought me here, to this place, to this time in my life. That debt will eventually be paid off, at a rate of so much a month, because paying our debts is important as an adult and as a Christian. To do anything other than to pay those financial obligations is to steal, and as Paul notes, the commandments like the one that says, “Do not steal” are prescriptions for how to love one another.
There is another, deeper, interpretation for “Do not be in debt to anyone,” and that is the matter of forgiveness and atonement. Paul says, “Love doesn’t do anything wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is what fulfills the Law.” If you have done something wrong to another, that debt must be erased. If you owe another person an amends - that is to say, if you need to apologize for something you have done, or if you need to do something to make up for some damage you have caused another - that must be done. Obvious examples, of course, come from childhood. Like - the stereotypical baseball through a neighbor’s window. Either the parents of the child who hit the ball can pay for the window to be replaced, or the child can do chores for the neighbor until the debt is paid. Or both. So long as the child learns about responsibility and managing their own debts, whatever works to satisfy the debt to the neighbor is good. Teaching a child to be responsible for their own actions is teaching that child to love the neighbor, and that is what it means to be a Christian.
Hear the words of Jesus, as reported in the Gospel according to Matthew 25:23-24: “…when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
This, along with Jesus’ command to forgive, is one of the most difficult things to do. Paying student loans is difficult financially, but it is so much more difficult to go to someone we have wronged and apologize, or make amends. There was a TV commercial a while back about a group of kids playing ball. One hit a home run through the window of the old grumpy guy on the block and all the other kids bailed on him. No one wanted to face the old grumpy guy who lived there and own up to what had been done. One of the kids did come back and told the batter, “That’s what friends do”. In a perfect world - or the world of artist Norman Rockwell - the old grumpy guy would have invited those two kids in for lemonade and cookies, and told them amazing stories of when he was young and playing major league baseball. In a perfectly Christian world, all those other kids would have come along to take responsibility for what was, in fact, a team effort. Now, it would be totally understandable if the batter was seriously angry with his teammates and friends and wanted to hold a grudge. But that wouldn’t be loving his neighbor. He must forgive them for abandoning him, forgive himself for being angry at them (even though being angry was totally justifiable), and make amends for that - possibly by never abandoning a friend to take the blame for some misdeed alone.
In 12 Step Programs two of the most difficult Steps to take are Step 8, “Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all” and Step 9, “Made direct amends whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Admitting when we have harmed another is difficult enough. Going to someone we have injured in some way and admitting that, then doing whatever we can to make amends for that debt can be paralyzing. It’s easy to try to convince ourselves that what we did wasn’t that bad, they probably didn’t even know about it, and anyway, they did worse to us so we don’t really owe them anything. However, I’m pretty sure Jesus (and Paul) would say it doesn’t matter at all what the other guy did to me. It’s about my behavior, my relationship with the neighbor, and my relationship with God. If I would be right with God, I must also be right with my neighbor. That means if I hold a grudge, I must forgive. If I feel as if I have been wronged, I need to look at my own behavior, and be certain that I am totally innocent of wrongdoing in the matter. “Don’t be in debt to anyone.” “If … your brother or sister has something against you . . . go … be reconciled.” Nothing about “unless they have hurt you, in which case you don’t need to do anything”. Last week was “love your enemy” - even the Romans, even the people who mistreat you. And love includes forgiveness and the making of amends - owing no debt to anyone.
Another easy thing is to say to myself, “Well, I have plenty of time. I can do that next year, or the one after, or when I have become reconciled to the idea of forgiving.” But Paul says, “you know what time it is. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep. Now our salvation is nearer than when we first had faith. 12 The night is almost over, and the day is near.” Paul believed, all of the disciples believed, that Jesus was going to return any minute, in their lifetimes, next week or the one after. We know that didn’t happen. We know that Jesus told the disciples, “No one knows when that day will come, only the Father.” We know that eventually Paul stopped saying, “He’s coming next week” and started saying, “Maybe we need to live as if we’ll be here a while.”
And yet . . .
I attended the Selma Ministerial Alliance meeting this week, and the feeling among my colleagues seems to be that the end is near. That the signs and portents are all clearly in place, and the end of the world is coming any minute. The storms, the fires and floods and earthquakes, the wars and threats of wars… all of those things are happening, and so we must prepare ourselves and our flocks for the end of days. I’m not so sure about that, because of that whole “No one knows when that day will come, only the Father” thing. What I do know, however, is that we weren’t promised tomorrow. None of us. In his 1st letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says, “We don’t need to write to you about the timing and dates, brothers and sisters. 2 You know very well that the day of the Lord is going to come like a thief in the night.” We could have that 8.2 magnitude quake any minute, or an airplane could crash onto the sanctuary during worship, or we could be in a horrific accident on the way to work, or we could be shot and killed at age 15 while hanging out with friends. We have no idea how long we have. We have today. Probably.
Which means we need to do all this loving and forgiving stuff today. Right now. As soon as possible.
Easier said than done, I know. Loving your neighbor is really so much harder than it looks! Loving yourself is harder than it looks. “Behave appropriately as people who live in the day.” Paul names some pretty specific behaviors to avoid - getting drunk, sleeping around, fighting, and obsessions. These things can cause harm to others, but mostly, these kinds of behaviors cause damage to our own bodies and souls. Doing anything to excess, even ostensibly good things like exercise, can be damaging. I have several acquaintances who are body builders. Some work at being healthy, being careful about diet and not overdoing, living well balanced lives between family, work and exercise. Others are so focused on how they look that they pay little attention to their families or relationships outside of the gym, take steroids to increase their bulk and have become so over developed they can’t wash their own hair or tie their shoes. They are obsessed, and obsession of any kind is unhealthy for body and soul.
Clothe yourself in the Lord Jesus Christ. Be like him. At the end, he said to the Lord our God, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” At the very end, when his enemies had put him to death, he called upon God to forgive even them.
The Good News, my sisters and brothers, is that your loan is forgiven. All of the sins and debts that you might owe, are forgiven through God’s grace, and God’s faithful and steadfast love for each and every one of us. Now, you must go out and do the same. Go out and love one another, clearing away any debts you might owe to the other, for the only real debt you owe, the only real debt any one of us owes, is the debt of love.
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