May 22, 2016
Hoosier Neighbor?
- Romans 12:9-21
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
This is the last Sunday in our Hoosier Neighbor series and so I thought we’d take a look at this Romans passage because I think there are some important things about neighboring in the details of the passage. But also, like most epistles, there’s something to be learned by taking a step back and seeing the passage as a whole. But let’s dive into some of the details.
The first thing to see is that Paul is telling Christ-followers that their love must be genuine. It would be easy perhaps to think that this means we shouldn’t be loving toward someone unless it’s genuine, but actually what Paul is saying is that love, in order to be genuine, must be backed up by actually doing loving things. That’s why, must as he does in 1 Corinthians 13, he begins describing the things that love does. In other words, you can tell a friend or child or spouse that you love them until the cows come home, but if you aren’t actually acting in loving ways than it really doesn’t mean much because it’s clearly not genuine. This is why, when we’ve talked about our call to love our neighbor we have done more than just say “try to get your heart to feel warmly toward your neighbor.” No, we’ve asked you to walk around and pray for them, to learn their name, to make time for them, to open up your home to them, to invite them into your lives, because otherwise we are wasting our breath. It’s blunt to put it this way, but quite frankly it gets to the point, right? Love must be genuine.
Paul goes on to say that we should love one another with mutual affections and should “outdo one another in showing honor.” That is no small feat. The Message Bible puts it like this: practice playing second fiddle. There is something about the fact that true love will require sacrifice, which is what this is speaking to, I believe. There was a situation this week when we had a babysitter because Megan had one thing to go to and I had another thing to go to and at some point one of us needed to get home to relieve the babysitter and as we were on the phone deciding which one of us would go home first I could feel the tug between who of us was going to make the sacrifice and go home earlier than he or she wanted to. I could almost viscerally feel the tug between the first fiddle and the second fiddle.
Then Paul says don’t lag in zeal and to be ardent in the spirit. These are great, passionate words. One of the words is zeontes which literally means “boiling over” and, as someone has put it, can refer to a burning passion that simply bubbles up and pours out of one’s life. One of the great Church Fathers, John Chrysostom, says that love must be accompanied by zeal because it ensures that love does not stay in our minds, but works it way out through our hands. Much like love being genuine, it is speaking to the importance of our love being embodied if it is to be true.
We also should “rejoice in hope” which is this great way of saying that we should be looking forward with joyful expectancy, as Ben Witherington says, to what God is going to do next. I’m not sure that we fully realize how important that is in our lives and in the life of the church. One of the things that I love about ZPC is that with great frequency I feel as if I am surrounded by people who are expectant to see God do something great, and there is something incredibly attractive and joyful about that. We should not be surprised that those in the world don’t seem intrigued by the church if we are not full of hopeful people who expect God to be at work and alive in their midst. Every day of the week I would take 5 people who are looking forward to what God is going to do than 500 who don’t expect to see God at all. As an aside it’s part of the reason why children are so critical in the life of the church because their faith is almost always expecting God to do something new and fresh. They have much to teach those of us who have stopped expecting and who find hope difficult to come by.
Then Paul says that we are to extend hospitality to strangers. Now we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, so I won’t say much about that right now, but I do want to point out one interesting side note that won’t change your life, but I thought was interesting. Scholars see a bit of wordplay between the 2 phrases of extending hospitality and blessing those who persecute you because in the Greek it literally says, “pursue hospitality to strangers” and then “bless those who are pursuing you” in other words, those who are coming after you for one reason or the other. Like I said, that’s not going to change your life, but I liked it!
And then we’re called to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. I love that because implied in doing those things is that you will know who is rejoicing and you will know who is mourning. If you want to know who is rejoicing or mourning in your neighborhood then you need to actually know your neighbors. One of the stories that has bubbled out of our neighboring is someone discovering that one of their neighbors is an empty nester and so she now spends the vast majority of her time alone, usually with no more than her television to keep her company. But if the ZPCer had not reached out then she would never have known how her neighbor was mourning and lonely. Not just thinking about our neighbors, but reaching out to them.
The 18th verse goes on to say that, as far as it depends on us, we should live peaceably with all. This is probably especially pertinent as we look at our neighborhoods. Neighborhoods oftentimes have some sort of conflict because whenever people live close to one another for a certain amount of time differences are bound to occur. There’s always the neighbor who allows their dog to bark incessantly thinking that it won’t bother anyone (if you don’t believe me come to my neighborhood!). Or maybe it’s the person who keeps their trashcan on the curb all week and just brings out the trash and empties it there on trash day. Or the person who doesn’t mow their lawn often enough or who has the parties late at night or who keeps putting his things on our side of the lawn or doesn’t clean up after her dog. Now obviously, if you’re that person then the thing you can do to be peaceable is to stop being that person. But if you’re not that person, then what does it look like to love that person in the midst of the conflict he or she is causing. What does it look like to be the person of peace? Might there be a way to get to know him or her and perhaps in so doing begin to understand why they act like that. I don’t come up here with answers on this, but I am up here to say that these things offer real opportunities to those who are willing to see them as chances to love our neighbors rather than simply as annoyances.
Our passage ends with an interesting look at vengeance. On the one hand it seems to be saying that we should be willing to forgive and move past how someone may have done us wrong, but on the other hand it can certainly seem as if it’s saying, “Don’t worry about those who have done you wrong because God will get ‘em!” We don’t have time to delve into this too deeply, but one of the key parts to remember is that ultimately God is in control and will take care of bringing justice at the right time. That certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have laws and police and courts and scripture clearly points out the importance of these things, but it does mean that we rest ultimately in God and that, more often than not, our call is to continue to love even those who have hurt us. When it says that by doing this we are heaping burning coals on their heads it probably doesn’t mean that this is how we get people back as much as that, in so doing, we might help bring them to repentance, to a change of heart. Ultimately it is a move toward choosing love over revenge, which of course reflects in a much deeper way the love that Jesus has shown us.
Which is a great segue for us to take a step back from the details of this passage and look at the text more broadly as well as thinking a bit more about the neighborhood series that we’re wrapping up, because I think they’re connected. One of the difficulties of jumping halfway into a letter like this one is that we miss out on what has come before. And so it would be easy for us to miss out on what is a key part of understanding this passage. It’s something that we know, but have to be continually reminded of. Which is that previous to Paul telling the Romans in our passage how they are to act toward one another and the world that he has reminded them that Jesus loves them. He tells them earlier in the letter that God showed his love for them in the fact that even when they were still sinners, Christ died for them. Then again he tells them that nothing can separate them from the love of God.
In other words everything begins with our having experienced the love of God. It all starts there and if we forget that then we are in a heap of trouble. We experience God’s love and then, as we see at the beginning of our passage today, we begin asking how we can reflect that love amongst our faith community, here in the church. Paul is writing to the church community and he is telling them how they should reflect the love of Christ to one another. This is what we’ve talked about before which is that in here we are practicing. Practicing what it means to love, to forgive, to be generous, to be hospitable. Why do we need to practice? Because it helps to form us into a different people, into a people who look more like Jesus. And we can never forget how important that practice is in getting us there.
I’ve been reminded of that over the last couple of months since our 7-year-old, Shaughnessy, has begun playing softball. We got out in the yard to throw the ball and honestly my thinking was, well, just throw the ball. I mean it’s a natural thing to do, right? But she stands there and kind of awkwardly tosses it this way and that. Or she remembers what her coach has taught her and so in this incredibly mechanical, one step at a time way, she throws it. And I realized after a few minutes that what seems so natural to me was not actually natural, but having played baseball for quite a few years and practicing and practicing and practicing, it got to the point that it feels like second nature or that I’ve always known how to do it. And what we have to realize is that the church is a gift to us because it is the means through which Jesus has said we can practice and in so doing we can begin to reflect more naturally the love, grace, hospitality, generosity to one another and then of course, to the world. Sometimes we think that acting like Jesus will just sort of happen and if not, oh well, when in reality we are in this community in order to practice getting where God has called us to go.
Which is where Paul goes in this passage. He speaks to the community, but then he expands it to the outside world. That we should offer hospitality to strangers and bless even those who hurt us. That we should feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty. In other words, we experience the love of God, we practice reflecting that love in the community so that it becomes more and more a part of who we are and then we reflect that love to the outside world which allows them to experience the love and grace of God. And our hope, of course, is that as they experience that love that they will want to reflect that love as well and will come and practice with us in our community, so that they then can go out and reflect that love to the world. Do you see that cycle, because it is the cycle of a healthy, thriving church. We experience God, we reflect that and practice it on one another (looking more and more like the image of Christ) and then we go out and help others to experience it.
As your pastor I want you to know that that is how I understand the way of the church and what I hope is the way of ZPC. It’s why when we talk about generosity I don’t just say, “C’mon, you gotta’ give so that we can keep this place going.” No, we always begin where? With the generosity of God. That, as we see throughout scripture, we serve a God who has been generous to his people-giving them breath and food and relationships. We see in Christ the one who has generously given us all that he could, his very life. And so we experienced that generosity are then called to reflect it which doesn’t always come easy and so we have to practice. We practice individually by giving of our time, talent and treasure. We practice communally by giving away over 20% of what we receive. We give sacrificially because we have experienced the love of God’s sacrificial grace.
But then, of course, as we are shaped more and more like our generous God, we practice that generosity to those outside the community. We oftentimes do so in real, practical ways. That’s why I keep bringing up things like tipping our waiters well, not because I’m in the waiters union, but because I think that is a habit of a generous, Christ-like person. And it’s why we talked about freeing up some of your time in order to love your neighbors because there are few things that reveal generosity as much as saying I have set apart this time for you. And we pray that in doing so our neighbors will experience God’s love and perhaps even begin to wonder how they can begin practicing that love in a community like this one. The point is we aren’t just generous because it’s a nice thing to do, we are generous because it is who God is, it is who we are becoming and it is what the world desperately needs.
It’s why when we talked about hospitality we talked about how it’s rooted in the trinity. Remember we looked at Rublev’s icon of the trinity and how God welcomes us at the table. And so then as we have experienced that welcome and hospitality we then practice it on one another. We practice it when we have communion each month. We practice it at our church brunches. We practice it when we welcome people in our Gathering Space. We practice it in our home groups. We’ve practiced it with our folks at Jeremiah House (show the pic). We practice so that it becomes second nature, or to put it another way, so that we look more and more like the new nature God has bestowed up us. And then as we’re becoming more shaped by our practicing hospitality we are able to show hospitality to others out there that they may experience God’s welcome.
Of course, that’s what we’ve been talking about for much of this series. What are the real, practical, tangible ways that we practice welcome and love in our neighborhoods, so that others can experience the welcome and love of Jesus that we have experienced? It’s been fun to hear stories about how this has happened over the last 7 weeks. Our children did it by making cookies that they handed out to folks in their neighborhoods (show pic). I got an email about someone who opened up his house to the neighborhood association and their place became an open place for community long after their business meeting was over. There was a ZPCer whose neighbor is going through a divorce and so when the neighbor came over to get his child he invited him in to simply listen and care for him. One of our staff members for whom admittedly reaching out does not come naturally told of how she did so and was surprised at just how enjoyable it was.
I love hearing stories about this, but I want you to know is that this whole “love your neighbor” thing is not a sermon series it is a way of life. It is the way of life for those of us who have experienced the love of Jesus, it is the way of the life of the church and it must be the way of the life of ZPC. I want you to know that we will not stop talking about it just because the series has ended. I have put the map in the bulletin for you to look at this week and to ask whether or not you can fill in more than you did 7 weeks ago (go over 3 questions). I will warn you now that you will see this again at the end of the summer. Why? Not because it’s something else to do, but because it is something that we are becoming. If you struggle with it, as many of us do, then begin by reflecting again on the love of God. Then find a teammate around here to practice with and then get out into your neighborhood and allow others to experience the life-changing love, welcome, grace and generosity of Jesus Christ. One neighbor at a time. In so doing, it will be a beautiful day in the kingdom of God and truly beautiful day in the neighborhood. [Play video]