The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
November 28, 2004

How Shall We Mend It?
Romans 13:8-14

The renowned early 19^th century English painter John Constable (1776-1837) was admired for his large landscapes often shown under a brooding sky. Patchwork fields crossed by ancient hedges, old churches and mills, and other scenes particularly of the countryside around first Suffolk and later Salisbury are his best-known subjects. His paintings of the Stour River caused that area to become known as “Constable Country.” 

Constable saw beauty in the English countryside in situations where others found no magnificence at all. He said, “I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may—light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.” He went on to say, “The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things. These scenes made me a painter.” 

When venturing out hunting for new vistas, Constable often took some or all of his seven children with him. At night he painted the final canvases with his family still close at hand. Constable’s eldest son wrote a series of diaries, which give us insight into the man behind the large landscapes. 

Once when Constable was putting on an exhibit, he was to show one of a new “six-footer” as he called his big canvases. Art critics came to Suffolk to see the new works, including the latest, which would be unveiled at the start of the exhibit. 

With the crowd gathered round and anticipation at its height, the artist pulled back the cloth covering the painting.[1] No one spoke a word. Rather than an awed silence, it was an awkward one. The great painting’s most obvious feature was a rather large tear running from top to bottom of the outsized canvas. After the uncomfortable gathering finally ended, Constable was once more alone with his family. The oldest son tells that he was away, avoiding his father’s wrath. When the son finally returned home, his father asked, “Did you do this?” The boy answered that he had. He remembers that his father said the most amazing thing. “How shall we mend it, my dear?” 

“How shall we mend it, my dear?” This image of unbelievably understanding father of a mischievous son shows us something of God’s view of our world. The overarching story of the Bible is that of a perfect painting—the world as God created it—marred by the way we humans chose to use our freewill. Through our own actions, we have torn the canvas. But the story of scripture is not that of a vengeful God exacting retribution for our wrongdoings. Instead we meet in the Bible our loving creator who looks at the mess we make of our lives and says, “How shall we mend it my dear.” 

In today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul writes about the brokenness of the world, telling of the reveling and licentiousness, quarrelling and jealousy of his own day. To counter the brokenness of the world, Paul offers a one-word prescription for mending all that we have torn.  

In fact, Saint Paul distills the entire Bible to one word. This is no small task as there are 66 books which make up the Bible. The books of scripture contain stories, poetry, pithy sayings—a variety of styles of writing covering thousands of years of human history, or more to the point, thousands of years of humanity’s relationship with God. Paul says the essence of the whole story from Genesis to Revelation is “love.”  

Love. The one word that sums up the entire Bible. Love. A word so central to the Christian faith that Jesus’ good friend John told us “God is love.” 

The apostle Paul teaches that the way to mend the brokenness of the world is to love. For Paul this sums up all of God’s commandments. Now, Paul as a young man had been a very rigorous keeper of the Jewish faith and he knew all about the commandments found in the Law of Moses. The Jews had always taught that keeping the commands of the Torah was the way to stay right with God. Not the 10 Commandments mind you, but the 613 commandments found sprinkled throughout in the first five books of the Bible.  

These 613 rules were ethical commandments and ritual law, which served to order and enrich the rhythm of Jewish daily life, keeping it in accordance with God’s will. In addition to these 613 commandments, Jews developed an ongoing history of case law, helping to show how to keep these commandments in a changing world.  

There is much to know and remember in keeping this law. Paul knew all these commands backwards and forwards and prided himself on keeping all 613 commands to the letter. That was until he came to understand that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the promised Messiah. Then Paul came to understand that grace trumped the law. Grace—the favor God shows us though we don’t deserve it—matters most of all. This is God’s love for us. 

As Paul came to dwell on this, he understood that everything you need to know about God is comes through understanding and practicing love. Love. Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” It was just that simple for Paul, as love does no wrong to a neighbor, then love is the way to fulfill the entire law. 

The word Paul used in the Greek was, of course, “Agape.” Agape, the word for self-giving love. Love more concerned for the other person than oneself. The sort of love shown through Jesus’ own life, death and resurrection. That self-giving love is the love we are to have. Agape love is more than a feeling, it is foremost an action. You don’t have agape love as a warm fuzzy feeling alone. You do agape love as self-giving actions that show your love. 

To get just a glimpse of God’s love, imagine a mother looking at her newly born child, perfectly formed, wonderfully made. That gleam in her eyes that brings her to tears is love. But this image might be too small. Imagine the couple who has longed for a child, but remained childless for many years. Now imagine what they feel when holding their newborn child. Or perhaps better still, imagine the couple who did remain childless, and instead found a child unwanted by others and adopted him or her making this unwanted child perhaps the most wanted of all the children on earth. This is just a glimpse of God’s self-giving love, which is more concerned for you than for God. 

We as a church exist to celebrate this love and to spread this love. In doing so, it helps to recognize how precarious the whole endeavor is. God came and was made man and lived among us. This was not an act of will by a deity who made any and all bow down in worship. This was a uncertain act of love. For God could have been made human in Jesus of Nazareth and the whole world could have said, “Ho hum. Who cares?”  

In fact, many of the people Jesus met and taught did worse. They not only ignored him, they turned their backs on Jesus. In his ministry on earth, Jesus faced plenty of rejection, including the ultimate rejection as first his disciples fled when Jesus was arrested and then the religious and political leadership of Jerusalem conspired to put Jesus to death. It looked like God’s great project of love had ended in failure. But death and the grave were not the end. Love won out after all.  

It is that irrepressible love of God that this and every Christian Church exists to spread. We are not just to feel love, we are to act on that love. We are to show the self-giving agape love God has for all creation in our very lives. This comes with some risks. Great risks in fact. But we are not responsible for the results.  

The love we show to others is just as precarious as the love Jesus showed to the people he met. Many rejected the love Jesus offered. Many will reject the love we offer in his name. And yet we are not responsible for the results, but for the offering. For those of us who have received God’s love, we are called to owe no one anything but that same self-giving love we have received.  

This agape is the love that looks at masterpiece of art torn by your son and is more concerned about the son than the painting. The masterpiece was God’s creation which we have torn through looking out for number one. With our own self-serving agendas we destroyed the perfection of all that God made. But God has a plan to mend it. That plan came to fullness in the life and self-giving love of Jesus. Now those of us who follow him are to continue the work of redeeming a world torn by sin. We are not responsible for mending the brokenness—the results are not up to us. We are simply responsible for reaching out to others with the same love shown to us.  

Your Christmas debts to Visa and MasterCard notwithstanding, you owe no one anything but love. 

Amen.