Sermon preached August 31, 2014
Texts: Romans
12:9-21
Romans 12:9-21: New Revised Standard Version and The
Message
Let love be genuine.
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it.
Hate what is evil, hold fast
to what is good.
Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to
good.
Love one another with mutual
affection.
Be good friends who love deeply.
Outdo one another in showing
honor.
Practice playing second fiddle.
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent
in spirit, serve the Lord.
Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and
aflame. Be alert servants of the Master.
Rejoice in hope, be patient
in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Be cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the
harder.
Contribute to the needs of
the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless those who persecute
you; bless and do not curse them.
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath.
Rejoice with those who
rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy;
share tears when they’re down.
Live in harmony with one
another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be
wiser than you are.
Get along with each other, don’t be stuck up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the
great somebody.
Do not repay anyone evil for
evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone.
If it is possible, so far as
it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;
for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to
do. “I’ll do the judging,” says
God. “I’ll take care of it.”
No, “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.”
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy
hungry, go buy that person lunch, of if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with
goodness.
Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good.
Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of
evil by doing good.
David
Bowie, “Changes” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3vxEudif8
In last week’s sermon, I spoke, in
part about the work of God in our lives and in our world as
“transformation.” We read the first part
of the twelfth chapter of Romans and zeroed in on the first part of verse
2. Do
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
minds (Romans 12:2a). We considered
some other renderings of this passage. Do not let the world around you squeeze you
into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within
(Phillips). Do not become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it
without even thinking. Instead fix your
attention on God. You’ll be changed from
the inside out (The Message).
Ch-ch-ch-changes. That’s what God is about. Jesus wants to take us higher. The Spirit wants to transform our hearts,
souls, lives. The Message version of Romans 12:2 uses yet another image. It begins, as noted, Do not become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit in without
even thinking. It goes on: Unlike the culture around you, always
dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you,
develops well-formed maturity in you.
Just this week in Time there
was a brief piece on “narcissism,” with the sub-title “We’re all born to adore
ourselves, but not all of us grow up.”
There is a lot in our culture that drags us down to immaturity. Ch-ch-ch-changes
– Jesus wants to take you higher. God
wants to develop well-formed maturity in us.
Last
week we considered one area in which we are to be transformed by the Spirit of
God. We all have gifts to be celebrated
and cultivated. It is not just those
with extraordinary talents who have gifts, we all do. If Romans 12 is our guide, however, we all
have gifts, but none of us has every gift, so we need each other in some
important and fundamental way. That
strikes at the very heart of why we need the church. We need the church because we need each
other. And if Romans 12 is our guide, we
are also to use our gifts for some larger good, not simply for our
self-aggrandizement.
Continuing
on in Romans 12, which is all about the kind of transformation the Spirit seeks
to nurture in us, we see a shift. We
begin with transformation. We focus on
our gifts, our uniqueness. But then
there is this change. Instead of
continuing to speak about unique gifts, Paul writes about qualities that we
should all be striving to nurture and cultivate in our lives. Here is what God is seeking to grow in
you. Here is how Jesus wants to take you
higher. Here is what the Spirit is up to
in you. This is well-formed maturity. Then we get wave upon wave of images and
ideas. It reminds me of a jazz musician
taking a theme and developing it, playing it just a little different each time
through. It reminds me of waves rolling
upon the shore, transforming the shore line a little each time. It is almost as if Paul is embodying
transformation in his writing about being transformed. You can feel it in the reading, and I hope you
felt that a bit when Geoff and I read.
So
how is God working in our lives? What
does this transforming presence of the Spirit seek to do in us?
Let
love be genuine – love from the center of who you are. You need to develop a solid center if you are
going to love from it. Love one another
with mutual affection – be good friends who love deeply.
Outdo
one another in showing honor – practice playing second fiddle. Don’t be the great somebody. It is not always easy, walking that fine line
between developing our center, celebrating our gifts, and not being the great
somebody.
Keep
yourselves fueled and aflame. Don’t quit
in hard times.
Be
cheerfully expectant. I love Wendell
Berry here – “be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
Pray
– and pray again, and pray again.
Contribute
to the needs of the saints.
Extend
hospitality to strangers – be inventive in hospitality. Make friends with nobodies.
Bless
your enemies. If they are hungry, feed
them. If they are thirsty, give them
something to drink. Your generosity will
surprise him with goodness.
Laugh
with your friends when they are happy.
Share
tears – weep with those who weep.
Live
in harmony with each other, even with those who may not be a great e-harmony
match. It’s us, folks, we are who we
need to be in harmony with.
Do
not repay anyone evil for evil – don’t hit back. The lesson I remember learning was “don’t
start the fight, but if someone else starts it, make sure you win.”
Discover
beauty in everyone.
Live
peaceably with all, so far as it depend upon you.
Don’t
be overcome by evil, don’t let it get the best of you. Overcome evil with good. Hold on to dear life to the good and thereby
overcome evil.
Wow. A bit overwhelming, isn’t it? That’s what God’s Spirit is doing in us. This is well-formed maturity. This is the way Jesus wants to take us
higher. Ch-ch-ch-changes. Can our lives really look something like
this? Well, we are not at this by
ourselves. God is with us. We have each other.
And
it is here among ourselves that these qualities of character are to become
qualities of community. God’s
transforming work is meant for our families, for our church community.
As
this kind of transforming work is happening here, perhaps then we have a real
gift to share with the world. If we can
love genuinely, if we can practice playing second fiddle, if we can be
inventive in hospitality – welcoming the stranger and blessing our enemies, if
we can discover beauty in everyone, maybe we can be of more help in a world
torn by violence, revenge, racial tension, sexual exploitation, injustice and
oppression. Given what we have seen in
Ferguson, Missouri, our world needs to find creative and kinder ways forward. Given what we see in Israel-Palestine, our
world needs to find creative and kinder ways forward. I am not sure of the exact implications of
this Scripture for that situation, but revenge upon revenge doesn’t seem to be
getting us very far. Given what we see in Syria and Iraq, our world needs to
find creative and kinder ways forward.
Again, I am not sure what our text might mean for a situation where you
have people willing to behead others.
Sometimes evil has to be confronted forcefully, but not with vengeance
as its primary motive, I think. The
important point in all of this is that it is as we are being transformed, and
as our community is being transformed, we have creative gifts to share that can
perhaps also transform our world. We are
at our best when we love other things together.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
– God’s Spirit wants to transform you, transform us, transform our world. Ch-ch-ch-changes – Jesus wants to take you
higher.
Two
final thoughts. Marva Dawn is an
insightful writer and theologian, and one of the places she has been insightful
for me is in her work on Romans 12. She
wrote a book about it which was originally entitled “The Hilarity of
Community.” In Romans 12:8 Paul writes
about acting compassionately with “cheerfulness.” The Greek word he uses is hilarotes, from which we derive our word
hilarity. The word can carry the
connotation of one’s heart laughing, or of one’s eyes dancing. God’s transforming work is serious business,
but it is also to be filled with joy and hilarity. We are invited to a joyful journey of
transformation.
A
story (Anthony DeMillo, Taking Flight, 162). Once, in a village, there was a congregation
whose rabbi would disappear each week on the eve of the Sabbath. The members suspected that the rabbi was
stealing away to meet God in some secret place of prayer. They decided to have one of their members
follow him. This is what the man saw:
the rabbi disguised himself in peasant clothes and served a paralyzed Gentile
woman in her cottage, cleaning out the room and preparing a Sabbath meal for
her. When the congregational spy
returned, the congregation asked him, “Where did the rabbi go?
Did he ascend in to heaven?”
“No,” the spy replied, “he went even higher.”
Let
love be genuine – love from the center of who you are. Love one another with mutual affection – be
good friends who love deeply. Bless your
enemies. Be inventive in
hospitality. Discover beauty in
everyone. Overcome evil with good. Jesus wants to take you higher. Jesus wants to take us higher. Amen.
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