Good Debt and Wonderful Obligation
Nick Owens, October 20, 2024
Intro:
This is an incredibly encouraging season for our church. If you’re new to Trinity or visiting, what’s happened here today is not something that happens every week or even every year. Today we’ve ordained and installed new elders, and in the coming weeks we will be ordaining and installing a new deacon as well as commissioning members of the diaconal team and a new member of the women’s shepherding team. And all of this is so encouraging.
It’s also sobering as many of us in this room have made promises and vows before God and we were reminded in our confession of faith – making vows like this is a weighty and significant thing.
This occasion and where we have come in our study of Romans this morning I believe would have us think about two pairings that don’t normally go together in our minds. And those two parings are – Good debt and wonderful obligation.
There are probably many things we think of as good or wonderful – Hobbies and things we love to do, vacations, delicious food, the beauty of the fall season with crisp mornings, and leaves changing colors. But debt and obligation are not concepts that we tend to think – ahh I love debt. Mmmmm isn’t obligation wonderful….
Transition: Here’s what I’d like us to think about together this morning – (1st) – Debt and Obligation – How can that be good and wonderful? Then 2nd – how does the story of God’s love shape our – How does the story of God’s love bring us into this good debt?….. and then finally – how are we to live into this story together?
(First) Debt and Obligation – how can that be good and wonderful?
Let’s start where most of us are coming from –
Debt is a bad word – anyone ever tell you how excited they are about debt? Even if we can conceive of some debt as better than others – you might not want credit card debt, but school debt – at least that was for training and education that would help you, or house debt – well it’s appreciating debt, it’s an asset at least – even still we don’t want debt.
If you’re someone who’s retired, think back to your working years. For many of us in this room, we’re either in the midst of working and careers, or we haven’t even started yet. When you dream about the good life – where you hope to be some day, what you hope life will look like for you….. It’s probably a life where the debts are paid, where you don’t have to do things unless you really feel like it – there’s not obligations, there’s not debt….
Let’s think about this in connection with vows. The majority of us in this room just took vows. We’ve made promises that bind us to certain actions, commitments, attitudes – whether we feel like it or not, we have obligated ourselves. Why on earth would anyone want to do this?
(ILLUST) – A few years ago a number of us on staff read book by author Jake Meador called “What are Christians For?” – He begins the first chapter by telling a story about himself.
It was winter night, New Years Eve 2009, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Jake was just months away from graduating college. He had a lot on his mind and so just wanted to get away from everything, from people, and enjoy the beauty of silence, stars, and the winter night – it was one of those cold midwest winter nights, about 2 degrees outside when he left.
He took a drive about 20 miles outside of town, pulled over on a quiet country road, and went for a short walk, smoking his pipe, looking at the stars and taking in the beauty as New Year came in. As he came back to his car, he noticed his tries had sunk deep down into the snow on the side of the road. He started his car and tried to get it back on the road, but the tires just spun. He grabbed a shovel from his trunk and tried to dig himself out, no luck. Called roommates at school – no answer. Thankfully, his parents lived in Lincoln. With few options, he called his parents in the middle of the night.
Mom answered, half asleep, but became more alert when she realized who was calling and what was going on. Eventually the phone was given to dad, who said, “I’m on my way.”
45 mins later, dad was on the scene. He helped shovel out the car. He pushed and rocked the car and helped Jake steer it back on the road. He led the way back into town. Before Jake and his dad parted ways, now 2 in the morning, sub-zero weather, Jake thanked his dad and apologized for the 4th or 5th time. “Don’t do that again,” his dad said. “I won’t” he said. Then dad gave a little laugh and said, “I had an old truck when I was your age, you should’ve seen the ways I got it stuck. My dad always came to get me.”
Writing about the experience, Jake comments,
“Behind that simple story of a father going out into the dark and cold to rescue his child is a profound truth, at least if you understand the story as my dad did. Responding to this situation was not difficult for him, at least in one sense. There was no question for him of what he needed to do as soon as he heard about my situation. He needed to go out there and find me and get me out of the ditch and get me safely home. There could be no other choice. It was simply the “right” thing to do.
How did he know this? Well, there are many ways that he knew it, but the reason he gave that night when we were standing out in the cold was simple: his dad did the same thing for him. One generation’s patient kindness and care for the next creates a sort of debt, but unlike the financialized forms of debt that most of us know so well today, this is good debt. The idea of good debt might sound strange. We are mostly familiar these days with student loan debt, or credit card debt, or perhaps the exorbitant and unjust debt foisted on the poor by payday loan companies…. The normative assumption across much of the United States today is that debt is bad and living free of debt is good…
What this ignores, however, is that living completely free of debt is to live completely free of relationships, or at least to live free of formalized relationships that have defined expectations of what is given and received between the two parties. To live without debt is to live without dependencies, and dependencies are a central part of the good life….”
He goes on to comment that while “dependent relationships can, like all things, be twisted and perverted…The solution to this problem is not to eradicate dependence but to establish better grounds for our relationships…”
You see there’s a difference between a financial debt – like you might have to the bank where you want to pay off your car or house and when you do, great, now you don’t owe….. there’s a difference between that and a relational debt, like a Father and a son, or a husband and a wife – where the point is never to pay it back, or pay it down, but rather that debt is a way of speaking of the deep bond of love and relationship.
A life without relationships, without debt, is not a good life – And the best ground for our relationships, is the Love of God, which puts us in a debt of love.
Perhaps strange to our ears – in God’s plan, our indebtedness to his love, is not the sort of debt and financial burden you seek to pay down and pay off to free yourself from, but this indebtedness to his love is what connects our lives, what deepens our relationships, and even what brings healing to our world.
Look at the text in your bulletin – v. 8. You see….there are debts, like financial debts, that we should seek to be faithful to pay down and pay off.
v. 8 – Owe no one anything
Paul writes…..
But then there is the debt of love – as Paul goes on to say….. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
And here is a debt we can never pay off – an eternal indebtedness to love – But again, the point is not to pay it off. It is rather to grow into people transformed by God’s love such that we love others.
v. 8 of ch. 13, takes us back to the central point from the previous section of ch,. 12, which was all about the call to love.
This is the kind of love Paul has already described in depth in ch. 12 v. 9 ff. This is love toward other Christians as Paul writes in v. 10 – the love of brotherly affection; outdoing each other in showing honor. V. 13 caring for people’s needs in the church.
But this is not just love for other Christians as we saw when we looked deeply at this text 2 weeks ago. This is love toward enemies. It is love toward those outside the church – love that expresses itself in rejoicing with others when good things happen and they have joy in their life; and love that expresses itself in weeping and sharing in the grief and sorrows of the brokenness and suffering of the world. It is love that doesn’t take vengeance but leaves it to the God to put things right. It is love that overcomes evil with good.
Wouldn’t our lives be better if we recognized and lived out relationships like this, indebted to love? This is how debt and obligation can be good and wonderful.
The story of God’s love is what makes sense of all this…
2nd – The Story of God’s love
Many people may feel that love is important, perhaps even centrally important to life. The Bible actually tells us why this is the case – and it is because love is at the center of reality. The Bible tells us that despite all the brokenness and suffering and tragedy in the world, in the end we don’t live in a cosmic tragedy, a dark and meaningless world, a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” No we live in a story of love.
Before anything existed, God was – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this God, the fountain of being and love, made the world and human beings out of his fullness that we might share in and reflect his love in the world. We exist not because of chaos, random events, or violence…. We exist because the God of love made us.
But we sinned and turned from God. And this is the problem that Paul described in the earlier chapters of Romans in our turning away from God we not only lost the relationship we were meant to have with God, but we lost what we were meant to have with each other. And so much misery and suffering and sorrow has resulted from this….
And yet, even when we had turned from God, God loved us. God loved us and called us to be his, to belong to him. God demonstrated his love for us, while we were sinners, while we were his enemies Christ died for us. Through his Son, God has loved us and made us his adopted children. By his Holy Spirit, God has poured his love into our hearts. In love, God has made us to be part of a new humanity – made like Jesus, to grow up together into the fullness of Jesus – to grow up into love.
When I’ve had the honor of baptizing someone, I’ve always used words from the Church of Scotland baptism liturgy, beautiful words a good friend shared with me years ago, words that proclaim and remind us that we live in a story of love. This is our story and this is the story the good news of Jesus calls us into – in the words of this liturgy…
“For you Jesus Christ came into the world. For you he lived and showed God’s love. For you he suffered the darkness of Calvary, and cried at the last, ‘It is accomplished’. For you he triumphed over death and raised to new life. For you, he reigns at God’s right hand. All this he did for you, before you knew anything of it. And so the word of Scripture is fulfilled: ‘We love because he first loved us.’”
Point 3 – how do we respond to this love? – how do we live together in the story of love? – one way of doing that is what we’ve done today – we make promises, we make vows, we bind ourselves to the way of love, following Jesus together, seeking to love each other and the world like Jesus did.
Members of Trinity – you live out this story of love as you live out the vows you made when you first became members –
You made vows and promised to follow Jesus, resting in him and receiving grace and help from God the Holy Spirit as you seek to grow as a believer and follower of Jesus;
You made vows to support the church: showing up and being involved in this body, giving, serving, and seeking the peace, wholeness, and health of this church.
You made vows to receive the leaders of this church and support them in their efforts.
This morning you have made a promise to Dave and Nathan – that you recognize them and receive them as your elders; that you would honor these men, that you would encourage them, and in all they do to help our church to follow Jesus and grow in Jesus, that you would receive their leadership and follow their lead.
That doesn’t mean you can’t raise questions or concerns or objections of your leaders whether that be Dave, Nathan, or me or Geoff or any of the other elders – because we won’t always get things right. And a healthy church that is growing into the fullness of Jesus is a church where everyone in the church and listen to one another, seek to understand, and follow Jesus together.
But as you live out these vows and promises you are participating in something truly beautiful. Receiving and supporting Dave and Nathan is for your own good, but it is so much more than just that. It’s not just good for you. If you’re someone who’s married and has kids at this church – it’s not just good for your family. Fulfilling your vows and promises is good for this whole church and everyone in it, and even beyond this church. It is good for this community. As we all play our part and live out our promises we grow more and more into Christ’s beautiful church for the good of the world. This church becomes a place of refuge and healing, a place of love, a place where God’s redemptive love in Jesus is worked out among broken people who experience God’s forgiveness, love, and grace and are more and more made like Jesus together.
Nathan and Dave – you also have taken vows, made promises this morning to serve Jesus faithfully serve as elders in his Church. (I’m going to say “we” a lot, because everything I’m saying to you are things I need to hear as well as our other elders who have made promises to serve this church.)
I remember a few years ago on our annual elder retreat – the elders spent some time looking at how the Bible along with our book of church order summarizes what God calls us to as elders.
it’s rare that we reference the book of church order in a sermon, but then today is a unique day.
To paraphrase a few parts of the book of order. Here’s how it defines the character qualities and calling of an elder:
We are called to set worthy example to the people in this church – in our passion to share the gospel with those who don’t yet know Jesus, as we seek to help people grow as followers of Jesus, in our hospitality – helping people to experience the welcome and friendship of Jesus through us.
We are called to pray with and for the people of this church.
We are to strive to be knowledgeable in the faith and able to help others understand riches of Christ and his word.
And then one my favorite summary of our call – it says – everything that Jesus calls an ordinary Christian to be and do as followers of him, this must be especially true of us who serve as elders in his Church.
I remember at that retreat as we read and considered what it means for us to be elders – we all felt an inadequacy. And while we should never be complacent, because God calls us to strive and seek to grow so we can serve well and faithfully in his church, there is something key to the feeling of inadequacy to serving in this office well.
And it is similar to the idea of the never ending debt of love. Just as we will never get to the place where we have loved enough – where we can say – ok, I’ve done it, I’ve fulfilled the obligation of love……. We never get to the place where we can look at the calling to which God has called us and say – Yep, done. I have perfectly checked all the boxes of my calling as an elder.
– But that’s not really the point.
A crucial part of you leading Jesus’ church is to feel deeply your own need for Jesus; for you to hunger and thirst for more of Jesus; for you to long to be more patient, more courageous, more able through your words and through your life to make Jesus known….
And this is so important because in that place of humility and dependence upon Jesus, not only will you lead with grace and gentleness….. but you will also help point the rest of us to see our need for Jesus.
To all of us here this morning – we don’t do this alone; we don’t do these things in our own strength. We are part of this story of love because of God’s love. We each play our part and participate in this story of love because of him who loves us – We love, because he first loved us.
As those needy and dependent upon God for grace and mercy and help – it is incredibly right for us now to turn to a time of prayer. We turn to the one who has loved us. And we come confessing our sins and asking for his help. Our Father loves us and delights to receive us, to hear our prayers, to renew us and give us lavish grace – everything we need to serve him and grow up in love – and so lets now turn to a time of silent prayer and confession – I’ll give us a few moments for silent prayer and then I will close our time in prayer.