September 4, 2011
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordnary Time
Ez 33:7-9
Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Rom 13:8-10
Mt 18:15-20

My best friend, Steve, has no formal religion.  He is like many in my generation. Raised by semi-religious parents in the Christian faith, but without much grounding in a tradition other than democracy and consumerism.  Even after living together for two years and once spending a college summer galavanting around the southwestern national parks with him, Steve and I have talked about faith less than you would think.  Whenever religion did come up, as it often does for someone who works at a church, Steve would interject, "I believe you just have to be good to others."  That's his moral ethic and as close to a religion as he's come.

St. Paul gives us a different one word ethic in Sunday's epistle: love.  "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another,"  he tells us.  Sure, Paul is crafting an argument that has a more specific goal (includsion of gentiles in salvation) than simplifying religion to a word like Steve, but does this nonethless by borrowing Jesus' revised second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

What's odd for both Steve and St. Paul is that they both only tell half the story.  Being "good", whatever one self-defines that to be, is always "I" centered at its root.  The "good" ethic only calls you to be what you desire to be to the point it doesn't knowingly infrindge on others, maybe like non-interventionalist foreign policy.  Paul does more or less the same thing with his one-word-ethic of love.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is dependent on how you love yourself.  His "love" ethic relies on how you choose to love yourself - still an "I" centered activity. 

The broader scope of Christianity, however, calls for a different ethic. Yes, love is at its core, but a love centered first in and of God (see Christ's first great commandment or Thomas Aquinas on moral ethics). This love ethic should push us beyond ourself, beyond our space, to seek a justice-centered love.  The reading from Jewish scripture reminds us of this.  God says to Ezekiel:

You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel;
when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.

God goes on to say that if we do not speak out against injustice we will face the same punishment of the injust.  Depending on how you read Paul, this could fit his love ethic, but surely is not just being "good".  God's guide for how to live this week calls us to be prophets in the world, to live for others in all our actions, whether its what we buy, who we vote for, or the quality of how we listen to our neighbor.  God calls us to be men and women for others.  Goodness and love that is drawn from an ethic of "I" do not begin to encompass this calling.

Here's a small story: Andy is fixing some plaster in the church office for us.  He's the best plaster guy in Charlotte, so I'm told.  He's also dying.  He and cancer have been walking together for three years.  Chemo, radiation, chemo, surgerys, two times being told he was cancer free, and yet a month ago he started waking up every day with piercing headaches.  The doctors found 5 tumors in his brain.  They want to do the chemo, radiation, etc. dance all over again.  Andy refuses.  He'll die with dignity, he tells me.  He'll come to work everyday and do whatever his body and the painkillers will let him.  He says he's ready for heaven, for hell, for whatever death will bring, so long as he begins that journey with the dignity he deserves.

I know Andy's story because he asked me how I was doing.  I told him that I had a headache and he told me to get my coffee and take a seat.  Then he told me his story and called me to give him the dignity he deserved.  To listen, to reach out beyond mysef to be with someone who needs love, to be a man for another.  May God bless Andy, help him continue to call us to be for others, and help us to challenge others to be for the Andys we ignore.