EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

I saw a wonderful movie the other night. I missed it when it was in the theaters and it’s taken me a while to get to it on dvd, but I finally got around to seeing Lars and the Real Girl. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a young man who’s isolated and withdrawn and apparently very lonely, even though he lives in the midst of a tight-knit community.

Until one day Lars shows up at the door of his brother and sister-in-law’s house, unexpectedly, and asks if he might introduce them to his new girlfriend. And his brother and sister-in-law are delighted until they discover that Lars’ new ‘girlfriend’ is actually a life-size blow-up doll. Then they’re horrified, but Lars is acting like she’s real and not knowing what else to do, they go along with him.

And it spreads from there. The townspeople are taken aback, and they’re not sure how best to help Lars, but they love him, so they take his new ‘girlfriend’ on Lars’ terms. They welcome her and make a place for her in their community-to such an extent, in fact, that she begins to have a sort of life of her own. Various townsfolk arrive to take her with them to volunteer at the hospital, or to fix her hair, or for a girls’ night out. She goes to a party with Lars, and to church, and even gets a job modeling clothes in a store window.

None of them ever forgets that she’s a blow-up doll but nor do they forget Lars. That she’s not a real person is secondary because he is.

It’s a pity St. Paul didn’t have access to Lars and the Real Girl, but he didn’t, of course, so he had to make do with writing a letter to the Romans. He writes his letter to the church in Rome very early in its life as a church. It’s early enough, in fact, that Christians are still working out what it means to be Christian-which we’re still doing today, of course, but now we have such helpful things as the New Testament and a couple thousand years of church history to help us. This is before the Gospels are written down and there’s obviously not much church history to go by, so these folks are struggling to figure out exactly what it means that they’ve been called to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

Some of them have discovered an enormous freedom in what Paul’s proclaimed to them. “Wow, Jesus died for our sins, so whether we follow a particular set of rules and regulations has nothing to do with whether we’re saved. So, hooray! We’re free!”

Others of them hear the Gospel Paul has preached to them and it sounds really good and really inviting, but they’re still pretty sure they could violate God’s law and mess up their chance at salvation. So, among other things, they refrain from eating what they regard as unholy food.

The first group thinks that’s absurd. For Christians who have been set free, food’s not holy or unholy. It’s just food.

Paul, as it happens, agrees with them about the holiness and food issue. But, really, that’s not what counts in this new thing called church. What really counts is loving your neighbor as yourself and there, Paul says, you Romans are falling short.

“We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.”

Paul’s not confused about the reality of the freedom the Roman Christians have discovered, anymore than the townsfolk were confused about Lars’ girlfriend being a doll. One possibility might have been to have Lars committed, but that wouldn’t necessarily have persuaded him that their way was reality and his was delusion. Instead, the townsfolk walk with Lars. They offer him companionship by offering companionship to his friend. By making a place for her, they help him to begin to make a place for himself.

“Walk in love, as Christ loved us” we say at the offertory in the middle of our service. And that’s what Paul’s saying to the Romans. Yes, you are free, forgiven sinners, but if the way you live into that freedom causes offense to your brother or sister, cut it out! You may have every right to do something, but lording that over someone is not walking in love.

I love to have a glass of good wine with dinner. I’m of age and I drink responsibly, so I have every right to enjoy wine with my dinner. But if I am eating with someone who struggles with alcoholism, my right to drink alcohol isn’t relevant. I need to skip the wine. Yes, I’m free to drink whatever I want, but my freedom is less important than my neighbor’s need. My job, says Paul, isn’t to be right, but to love.

Of course, that’s easier with things like wine and dinner than it is with matters of faith and tradition. Take our own church for example: American Anglicans and Nigerian Anglicans believe in the same God. We’re all trying to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. And in the Episcopal Church, our understanding of what that means includes the possibility that a gay man can be a faithful bishop of the church. That’s our reality. For our brothers and sisters in the Nigerian church a gay bishop is simply not a possibilty. That is not reality as they know it. So how do we walk in love with one another?

And what about getting an ardent Republican and an ardent Democrat in an election year to walk in love? What if I disagree with a member of a different party with every fiber of my being? How do I walk in love with that person? Now, there’s a challenge.

And it’s a challenge for which I don’t have an easy answer, but that doesn’t excuse me-or us-from wrestling with it in all humility. It would help if the Bible were a rule book with handy case studies we could apply to sticky situations as they arose. But that’s not what God has given us. What He has given us is Jesus who tells Peter: “How often should you forgive? Seventy-seven times.” An impossible number of times. A limitless number of times. Because forgiveness has no limits and love has no boundaries.

That’s not an easy answer. But it is the right answer and it is true. And, paradoxically enough, the way to live into the boundless freedom and joy God offers us may be to accept boundaries on our neighbors’ behalf.

Towards the end of Lars and the Real Girl, Lars begins to make his way back from his reality to the reality of the people around him. And the way that happens is his life-size doll girlfriend gets sick and begins to die. Now, of course, she can’t really die because she’s not really alive. But that’s not what the townsfolk tell him. What they do is bring flowers and casseroles and jello salads. And when Lars comes downstairs from the sickroom, he finds a group of women sitting in the living room, knitting. They fix him a plate and sit him down and when he asks what they’re doing, they tell him, “We’re sitting with you. That’s what people do when there’s a tragedy.”

That’s what we’re called to do whether there’s a tragedy or not. For as Paul tells the Romans, “The judgment’s not up to you-we’re all going to be judged by God. So worry less about who’s right and who’s wrong and more about what you can do to welcome your neighbor. Because whatever else you may think is true, know this: Jesus Christ has died for you and all that’s left for us to do is to love another as he’s loved us. Walk in love, my brothers and my sisters, walk in love.” Amen.