As it Depends on You

 

Sunday, August 31^st, 2008

Proper 17A/Ordinary 22A/Pentecost 16

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 12:9-21

Theme: ‘simple’ instructions

 

“⁹Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  

 

Scripture – the Bible – is nothing if not varied.  If you look, you can find all sorts of stuff in there.  There are stories, wisdom sayings, poems, songs, terrible, angry diatribes, soaring words of hope and encouragement; there is history, political intrigue, there are outright soap operas, and there are jokes.  There are passages that we accept as being part of scripture but which we leave at that.  We rarely go to them to study or to unwrap to see what is trying to be communicated through them.  There are others that are simply mysterious – convoluted and so specific to one place and one time that we are hard pressed, even the best scholars, when we try to come to terms with what they could POSSIBLY mean.

 

And then there are passages like today’s reading. 

 

Beginning in the later 1800’s, when a story would break in one city and a reporter got the story, he would generally be one of many.  Communications being somewhat more limited at the time, it would often be the case that several reporters would have to share a phone or telegraph line to communicate with their headquarters, so it was not unheard of for them to be given a specific amount of time on the telegraph or on the telephone to transmit as much information as they could in the allotted amount of time before the next reporter had his turn.  That was where the headline originated – it was the first line received from the reporter in the field, it contained the most critical information:  who, what and where.  As the story progressed, more detail was added to fill in the gaps.  But the headline said the most important stuff. 

 

It may seem a little long, but in many ways, this morning’s passage can be read as a headline for living the life of a follower of Christ. 

 

To begin with they are pastoral words from a pastor’s heart to his yet-to-be- known congregation.  In a way, Paul seems to be packaging what lies at the heart of the gospel to get at least THAT across to the folks at the church in Rome.  Yes, this is not exactly at the beginning of the book – it may be more accurate to call it a summary, but it is one that more or less condenses the rest of the letter into these few sentences.            

 

“Let love be genuine” – simple enough, right?  Mean it when you tell someone you love them.  Express it in the way you talk about them, think about them, work beside them.  It CAN get a little harder, can’t it?  We can say we love someone all day, but when it comes down to sitting at the table together, or working on a committee, or sitting through a business meeting when we know we deeply disagree – THAT is certainly more of a challenge, isn’t it?   And yet, there it is:  the first thing Paul lists.   

 

Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good – it would seem to be an obvious choice.  But what is the first thing we lose when we get caught up in the throes of our emotions?  Perspective – or in another word – objectivity.  I don’t actually want to argue for complete objectivity.  We live in a world of individuals, and each of us HAS a subjective point of view.  I happen to believe that there is value in that.  I DO believe there IS an objective, value-neutral truth – that is, with any given occurrence there is a reality to the events that took place that would be a series of points of fact, that do not lend themselves to be spun one way or the other.  But the THING of it is, we are none of us value neutral observers.  To any given day, to any given comment, motion or action we each bring our respective understanding, experience, and shade of glasses, if you will.  So when we climb up on our soapboxes, or ride away on our white horses, wearing our white cowboy hats, we need to be reminded, there indeed IS good and evil in this world, but it is very DEFINITELY something that we need to check with others on before we call something good that, in different circumstances and from another perspective is most certainly evil.  That is part of the reason Christ called us to live in community.  It is the genius behind the concept of checks and balances.  If we keep in mind that we are not infallible, and that we ARE prone to misunderstandings, and jumping to conclusions, making fast, unfounded assumptions, as long as we KNOW that about each other and ADMIT it about ourselves, we’ll be able to extend grace to each other on those occasions when we go off and DON’T listen to our better judgment – that that comes from holding counsel.  That’s why Paul says “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” Because it is IN that mutual affection and showing honor that we find we are not so different, we are not so distant from each other, we are not so far apart in our ideas and ideals.

 

The next set of instructions just seem to run together so well –

 

¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

            

In cooking, there is a term:  reduction.  It is the name of a process whereby you begin with a large amount of something, usually liquid – a soup, or the drippings from a piece of meat or a bird that has been cooked, and you boil it down – you cook off some of the excess liquid – until what is left is full of concentrated flavor.  

 

These verses are a wonderful reduction of whole chapters that Paul has written before or of which Jesus spoke during his ministry.  To rejoice in hope is to stand in the face of what would be a hopeless situation and say “this will not kill the hope that I have found in Christ my Lord.”  To be patient in suffering is to understand that there is something to be learned through suffering.  Whether the lesson is for the one suffering or for the ones who surround the one who is suffering, there is something to be gained through the experience.  Admittedly, it can sometimes SEEM a senseless suffering, but we must stand on the promise that we read just a few chapters back, in Romans 8:28, where Paul writes “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  This is part of that thought – a distillation of it. 

 

“Persevere in prayer.”  In simple words, Paul is saying “KEEP PRAYING!”  The WAY you pray – the words you use, the way they are put together, the flow, the expressiveness, the beauty of the way the words come together, that is ALL secondary.  It is the act of prayer – the engagement of the Spirit – the coming into the presence of the Lord with a humble, troubled, aching, yearning, thankful, pleading, longing heart that makes the difference, that begins to effect the change in our spirits that results in a change in our lives. 

 

Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers.  Bless those who persecute you: bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.   

 

Now he’s beginning to move outside of the individual, into the community.  These instructions provide us with an image of how we are to be in fellowship with each other.  They truly are simple instructions for living the life of faith.  Live in harmony with one another.  We ALL want to do that, but sometimes we don’t want to accept what needs to happen in order to DO that – so Paul goes the next step and spells OUT at least two ways TO do it: 1. Don’t be haughty – don’t be stuck up, conceited, and 2. don’t respond in kind when someone does something bad to you.  It ties in with Christ’s enjoining us to be ‘in the world but not of it’ that we find in John 17.  The world functions on hierarchies and on retaliation and revenge.  They are so caught up in worrying about appearing weak that the last thing that comes to mind when we are attacked is to do something GOOD in return.  There are chains of command, lines of responsibility, due processes, and pecking orders.  Jesus spoke of one head – him, and one body – us.  We work together.  This – the church – is NOT to be another example of one person ordering everyone else around.  This – this living in community, in fellowship, in communion with each other is a study in self-giving, in mutual support and encouragement, in being subject each to the other under the Lordship of Christ.  This is not a place where power is to be wielded over others, but a place to live out our service of love for each other.  

 

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  It means that living out our service of love doesn’t stop with those names on our rolls or the families pictured or named in our directory.  It extends beyond the walls of this building, beyond the borders of this county, this commonwealth, and this nation.  That is why Jesus said Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.              

 

The last section of the passage speaks to how that service of love for each other will unfold in the world at large.  And that, in and of itself, presents a challenge of a whole different sort from the one we deal with when we are trying to love the person we’ve grown to know and appreciate over the years, sitting beside them in worship, praying next to them at family night suppers, standing next to each other at baptisms and funerals.  We have an understood and accepted commonality of experience when we talk about loving someone who lives three miles down the road from us.  To understand and accept that Jesus calls us to love and accept the one who lives 3 THOUSAND miles away across the ocean or across the continent CAN present a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one. 

 

Jesus sat across from and spoke to the most unlikely person a Hebrew man in good standing would have been expected to be seen with:  a Samaritan woman, and in the course of that conversation he spoke to her of a common thirst that crosses all barriers of race, and culture – even of religion:  it is the thirst for God – for the life of God that we all long for and try to fill so unsuccessfully with other things:  with noise, with things, with busyness, with gossip, with food, with any number of things that in no way and by no measure of success come even close to meeting our need for God in our lives!  THAT is the commonality of experience that we share with ALL of humanity – no matter WHERE we are, no matter where we live, no matter what language we speak or what culture we grew up in.  And THAT is the deepest bond that can draw us together into this understanding of mutual need that we ALL share with the rest of the world!  We are no less needy for having been raised in a society that provided a relatively safe haven for that need to be met.  We ARE, because of that, even MORE constrained to share that message and opportunity for that life with the world around us at every opportunity.

 

Let’s pray.