Why are we here?

Text: Romans 13:8-14

Sometimes I struggle with St. Paul, as no doubt he would have struggled with me. He might say I talk too much. I might say he’s awfully opinionated. As much as I respect him, we have our differences, I am sad to say, and so I generally prefer to talk about what Jesus said instead of blessed Paul. 

But as we come together to kick off a new program year here, a year in which we are using the tagline “We are St. James’s - you are St. James’s” as you will see on our program materials - Paul’s words offer us valuable guidance today for what it means to be, individually and communally, St. James’s.

Paul wrote to the Christian community in Rome, which was established only 20 years after Jesus’s death. Among other things, he wanted to offer to them his vision of what life in a Christian community ought to look like. Christian communities, of course, were a new thing in the first century. Paul was the founder of many of those communities, although not the one in Rome.

And so, Paul’s letter to the Romans is in some ways different from his other letters. For one thing, this letter seems to echo a lot of what Jesus did and said, which is often missing from the others. For another, most of the other letters were written with an eye toward teaching a Christian community how to live together as a community.

The letter to the Romans, though, is in part also about how to be a community among other communities. The Christian community was embedded in the great city of Rome, the capital of the Empire, home of not just the Christian community but the Jewish community and the pagan “Zeus and Venus” community, and, if there were such a thing back then, even the “dones” or the “nones” communities. 

And for the past few weeks we have been hearing from Paul about how to treat one another and also how to treat our neighbors. We have neighbors, too, people in other communities that live just down the street or across the alley or who are riding scooters down West Franklin Street on the way to class. Just as it was in Rome, our neighbors include institutions - a synagogue and a university - and folks who will only live in an apartment across the street for a year or two as well as folks who have owned lovely homes in the historic district for generations. Our neighbors bring their children to learn and be cared for in our preschool, and stop for coffee on the corner, and attend our music concerts, and come to support one another through anonymous groups. They drive by, walk by, listen to our steeple chimes tell them it’s time for lunch. They sit on our steps or in our memorial garden to take a break. And maybe they look at us and wonder who we are behind those big stone columns, wonder if we see them, wonder if we want to know them, wonder who they are to us, their neighbor.

Paul says live peaceably with your neighbors. Do not be snooty or think too highly of yourself but be humble like Jesus. For all your neighbors belong to God just the way that you do. The summary of all the commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself, he says, just like Jesus said. And because of that, he says, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Indeed, loving your neighbor as yourself means wishing for and working toward the well-being of your neighbor, no matter whether you know them or how you feel about them. Love in our tradition is not an emotion, it’s our work.

So this Jesus-infused Paul has some good counsel for us St. Jamesers as we come back together after summer breaks and travels to focus anew on how to follow Jesus right here in Richmond in 2023, not only on Sundays but on all days, not only as individuals but as a community among other communities. He invites us to ponder the question of who we are - what does it mean when we say “We are St. James’s?” in the midst of this city, and to wonder how we can and should work for the well-being of our neighbors here. He invites us to ponder how it is that the love we show to our neighbors will transform us all.

Last week, my colleague Doug Wigner gave us a beautiful image of how it is we take up our cross every day. He suggested we imagine that we have one of these wonderful processional crosses in our own room, and every morning we pick up that cross and carry it with both hands before us as we go about our day. Today St. Paul adds to that vision that we are also bearing the light of Christ as we go into the world, that we put on Jesus Christ as we remember our obligation, our debt that we owe our neighbor - to be the doers of God’s love in the world around us. 

It was always understood from the Old Testament writings that God intended Israel to be a light to the rest of the world - to show the rest of the world what God’s kingdom on earth should look like. And Jesus took up that theme when he taught his disciples that they were the light of the world - and so by extension as his disciples today, WE are the light of the world. And that means that we are to show the world what God’s kingdom on earth should look like, not just as individuals but as a community. Especially as a community among other communities. 

And we start by showing that to our our neighbors, by bearing God’s light among our neighbors, by wanting the best for them and loving them as we love ourselves. Why else are we here on West Franklin Street if it is not to love our neighbors?

My brothers and sisters, that is what it means to be St. James’s.