September 6, 2026

Pentecost 15A, Lectionary 23

Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

Epiphany, Winnipeg

So today I’m going to say two words in a sermon that I’ve never said in a sermon before.

Dolly Parton.

Now I know that if I preach on Dolly Parton today, there are some of you who will think that that’s just weird. But I also know that there is at least one of you out there who will think that it’s the best thing in the world to preach on Dolly, and you might even wonder why this pastor of yours hasn’t done that yet.

Dolly died about a week ago, and since then she’s been in the news and people have talked about her on talk shows and podcasts, and I’ve been reading articles about her in a great magazine called Christian Century. I was at a coffee house at Gloria Dei Lutheran in Charlsewood the other night – a birthday party for Pastor Tyler and a fundraiser for CLWR – and one of the bands played “Nine to Five.” A certain drummer we know sat in on drums….

Dolly’s everywhere these days.

There’s been a lot of talk about her generosity. When a region close to her childhood home was overrun by wildfires, she started a foundation to put money into the hands of people who need to rebuild. She donated millions to medical research during the COVID era, she’s funded scholarships and children’s hospitals. In 1995 she started the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which gives books to kids all over the world. Dolly wanted to make sure that kids whose families might not be able to afford books could get a chance to read and to have their imaginations sparked…and sparked imaginations can change communities. Since 1995, 332,411,218 books have been given to kids around the world. That’s as of 7:14 this morning. You and I might even know a few of those kids.

There’s been a lot of talk in some circles about Dolly’s faith, and about how that shaped that generosity of spirit that was so strong in her. She was raised in a Pentecostal home, and while she left behind whatever fear and punishment she might have heard about through the years, she held on to the things she had learned about the love of God and the love of Jesus for all the people around her. And that was a big part of what shaped her generous spirit.

Dolly once said that her way of living out her faith was pretty simple: “I want to be loved, and so I try to love everybody.”

It’s not complicated theology. It’s pretty simple. And anyone who’s ever tried to love everybody knows that it’s pretty complicated. But it’s worth a try.

One thing that has stuck with me this week as I’ve read all the Dolly stories is a comment by Jad Abumrad, who hosts a podcast called Radiolab. He’d never given Dolly much attention until he saw her at a concert in New York City in 2016, a time when divisions in the U.S. and throughout the world were growing deeper and deeper. He looked around at the crowd, and this is who he says he saw: ”drag queens, evangelical Christians, hipsters, and all kinds of people whose lives otherwise seemed unlikely to overlap, all waiting to see the same woman.”

Enough about Dolly. Now on to an apostle named Paul. Or maybe for now we’ll just call him Pauly. Some time around the year fifty-five, maybe two decades after the word about Jesus’ resurrection started to spread, Paul wrote to the young church in Rome, a small church that was made up of Jews and Gentiles; made up of some people who have thought of themselves for centuries as God’s chosen people, and other people who had only recently come to believe that God chooses them too.

Now if you’ve ever sat down and read this letter to the Romans, you will know that it is sometimes rich and clear, and sometimes it’s confusing and hard to follow. There’s a lot of important talk about law and faith and trusting in God and not trusting in our own good works, and there’s a lot of Paul trying to convince Jews that Gentiles belong and to get Gentiles to see that Jews belong too.

And then Paul switches gears with a really simple word that we heard today: “Don’t owe anybody anything, except to love one another. Whoever loves another has fulfilled all the law. All those commandments – don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t try to get someone else’s stuff, all of them – are summed up in this: love your neighbour as yourself.” It’s like Paul has been busy with all these important ideas – and they are important – and then he says here today, to remind whoever hears and maybe even to remind himself: “But remember – all this serious and important stuff is summed up in one commandment, and that is to love.

And even today, Paul speaks and seems to say, “Before you get all bogged down in getting all the theology just right, or having the right constitutions, committees, programs, and groups, and buildings, remember that love fulfils all the law. That’s all you need, and all you need to give.

And then a writer we’ve come to call Matthew sits down and writes about a conversation between Jesus and a few of his disciples. When Matthew puts pen to paper, the church is a young church, and all the creeds and confessions and doctrines and catechisms haven’t come to be yet. They’re still figuring out what they’re called to do, just like we are now. Jesus knows that troubles are coming soon, and he knows that troubles and jealousies and guilt and trauma might threaten to pull the little community of disciples apart.

So Jesus sits his disciples down and talks about forgiveness. If someone sins against you, go and tell them, so what has divided you will divide you no more. If they don’t listen, take them and tell two others, and maybe then your relationship will be healed. I that doesn’t work, then take them and tell the church, and then maybe your relationship will be healed. And if that doesn’t work, regard them as Gentiles and tax collectors….and we all know that Jesus loved Gentiles and tax collectors. Maybe even when they wouldn’t listen.

When a young church is trying to figure out who they are and what they’re called to do, Jesus puts forgiveness at the centre of the church’s life. He puts healing what is broken at the centre of our life together, in the fifty-nine year old church and in the two-thousand-year-old church where we all belong.

Think about all that for a minute, about what it might mean when loving one another is the main thing we’re called to do, and when forgiveness that heals what is broken is what we’re called to give and receive. How do we think of each other if loving and forgiving, healing what is broken, is the first and most important thing? How do we live in the world around us, in our neighbourhoods and our city and our world, when loving and forgiving, healing what is broken, is the first and most important thing??

It’s Labour Day tomorrow. What does our work life look like, what does the workplace look like, what do our offices and classrooms and shop floors look like if love and forgiveness are the first things on our minds? How do we think of wages and workers and the ones who labour among us and we ourselves as we go about whatever work we might do, when the first question is “How do we love one another?”

Or we’re in the Season of Creation now. What does our life as part of this whole created world look like if we have love and the healing of broken relationships in mind? What does our calling to love look like when we look at the land and the water and the air and everything that breathes?

In a world that is so divided and broken apart by so many things, Paul and Jesus and Dolly call us back to something else – simply to love. Not to like everyone all the time, or get along all the time, or just pretend nothing’s wrong. But to do the most important hard work of loving one another, and being committed to the hard work of repentance, forgiveness, and the healing of what is broken.

Here’s one last Dolly story: In 1984 Andy Warhol said to her in an interview, “You could be a great preacher.” And Dolly said, “What do you mean? I am a great preacher.”

When we love, we are being great preachers. When we forgive, we become great preachers. When we do that hard work of loving and forgiving - and it be such hard work - we are great preachers.

Go back for a minute to that little story about the Dolly concert that that writer went to. He said that he saw drag queens and evangelical Christians, hipsters and all kinds of people whose lives might never connect, coming together in that space.

Isn’t that kind of what Jesus is doing?

The love and forgiveness Jesus gives to us calls us together and makes us a bit like that crowd at a Dolly concert. If we were to draw together the whole church in every time and place, we would be like that crowd. We, the whole church, are drag queens and…not drag queens, we’re evangelical or some other brand, we’re hipsters and curmudgeons, we speak all kinds of languages with our mouths and hands and bodies, we’re on the right and on the left or nowhere in particular …. And we are brought together by this one who is devoted to the call to love and forgive…We’re brought together and made one people, by this one, Jesus, who is even willing to die for such beloved people, even us…and who lives again and will always just keep on giving that love and forgiveness that knows no end.