It Is Not What You Know

Text: Romans 13:8-14
Other texts: Matthew 24:36-44

Paul writes that we know what time it is. Matthew writes that we will never know when the time will come.

Paul writes that we know it is the end of the long dark night and the glimpse of a new day. The time is now to gather up the lose ends, to make amends to those we have harmed—willfully or not. That in light of the coming light, it is time to attend to the commandments God has given us: love one another, do no harm to others. The time is now.

Matthew writes that we—in good company with the angels and the Son of God—we cannot know when the new day will dawn. As with those caught in the waves of the flood that Noah escaped, our world might be changed in an instant. The message is the same as Paul’s: love one another, do no harm to others. The time might be now.

Paul and Matthew speak with the same urgency. Whether we know nothing of the time or know exactly what time it is. And if that is so, does what we know make a difference? What does it matter what we know? Does it matter at all?

The first reading today is from Paul’s letter to Romans. We are reading this book in Bible study after coffee hour, but we are not up to chapter 13 yet. The passage we heard is from verses 11 to 14. But these verses are a little out of context. They are the tail end of an argument that Paul makes about how to live a Christian life. The argument starts at verse 8. Here’s how it goes:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Then it goes on with the verses we heard: Besides this, you know what time it is, and so forth.

What Paul is saying is that the breaking dawn of a new age forcefully reminds us of the importance of the commandments—in the law and reinforced by Jesus—to love one another as oneself. And what that entails is to do no wrong to others. We are not doing what God said to do. We harm other people all the time, intentionally or more often otherwise, mindlessly. We should not. That’s what God said. Remember that that’s what God said. The urgency that Paul feels is not about what is going to happen next. The urgency is about what we should be doing right now. The end of the darkness means that there is not much time, in Paul’s thinking. But whether there is little time or a lot of time, our job is the same. Love our neighbors. Do no harm.

We don’t know, in spite of Paul’s energetic arguments, about the future. Being faithful Christians does not instantly make everything precisely clear. But what we do know about is now. We know how we are behaving right now. And we know how we should be behaving. Nothing is changed about that. That is not new. It is old. We do know what is right. That is something we are very good at. Not that we listen to what we know all the time. We are also good at denying things and excusing things. But that does not mean we don’t know better.

There are voices that advise us to do what is legal, or expedient, or prudent, even. Good for ourselves, our families, our companies. As if that were enough. Yet we know what is right. We are advised not to pay attention to what we know. We are told that as long as it is official and well-considered and does not hurt anyone directly, that it does not matter.

But it does. We are advised to lie to ourselves. It makes us sick. Lying to yourself about whether you are doing what is right makes you sick. Sick at heart. It is a corruption, a wound of sorts. Something ill and malfunctioning. Our bodies and our souls know this. It is another thing we know.

The word salvation means to heal. One purpose of the law—the commandments that Paul quotes from—one purpose of the law is to heal that sickness of heart. It is like a medicine, or an antidote. Loving one another, doing no harm to others, is a way to keep us from getting sick. And to make us better when we are sick. In the metaphoric darkness that Paul likes to write about, we are sick. He reminds us that we know what is right. It is written down in this book, the Bible, and, as Jeremiah later said, in our hearts.

Paul then summarizes the commandments the same way Jesus did: love one another. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul writes, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. It fulfills the law because it is identical to the law. That is, people who follow the law and people who love one another do the same thing. Exactly the same thing. There is no detectable difference.

What we do matters. When we do what is right—defined as we are talking about as loving one another and therefore doing no harm—it matters. It matters to the world. It matters to us. I’m not making this up. It is what Jesus taught. When you say to yourself, it doesn’t matter what I do, you are lying to yourself. When others tell you that it doesn’t matter, they are mistaken.

That what we do matters is a gift; it is not a burden. What could be worse than living a life in which what you did, did not matter. What kind of life would that be? Not a good one, I think.

Paul and Matthew talk about a new dawn, a new day, a new age. It sounds so sudden, but it is not. The day dawns slowly. Until that moment, we are in the dark. Until that moment, our faith gives us a way to measure a good life. Do we love one another? Do we do no harm?

Matthew is right. About that day, when all is resolved, about that hour, no one knows. And Paul is right too. We know what time it is now. And though we are in the night, let us lay aside the things of darkness. Let us put on the ways of the light. Let us live as if it were the day.