Early in my pastoral career a nearby hospital released a 7-week-old baby to her homeless, drug-addicted mother even though the child was at severe risk of pulmonary arrest. The hospital provided the mother with an apnea monitor to warn her if the baby stopped breathing while asleep, and trained her in CPR. But on the very first night, the mother went out drinking and left the child at a friend's house -- without the monitor. Within seven hours, the baby was dead.
That was an exteme case. But for all too many parents during the crack epidemic of the 80s and the more recent meth epidemic - their chldren will not thrive. They don't know how to do life. All the good intentions in the world don't make up for not having any survival skills. In order for a family to be strong and stable, to protect and nurture its members, there have to be guidelines for behavior. You have to have a support network, people who you can count on to help carry your burdens. And in that way you learn to become the kind of person who will be there for others.
Healthy families have established, consistent patterns of behavior. Kids find out as they grow what's expected of them. By their parents' encouragement, example, and teaching they learn everything from "please" and "thank you" to advanced conflict resolution. Carlos learns to share his trucks with his little brother, Jenny learns that Daddy's more likely to read her a story if her toys are picked up.
Once upon a time I was visiting my godchildren, tripped on something and took a header into the coffee table. As I lay there feeling somethat dazed, not to mention stupid, my 4-year-old godson Teddy came over to me and patted my shoulder, asked if I was okay and did I need some ice. He did that because that's how it's done in his family. He didn't have to stop and think.
Have any of you ever had a foster child, or known someone who did? I had friends back in Minneapolis who adopted three Korean orphans ranging in age from six to ten. Two of them did just fine, but Robbie, their first, was never able to recover from the early trauma; after more than six years everything from running away to vandalism and theft they had to relinquish him to institutional care. Even under the best of circumstances it takes time for an abandoned or neglected child to adapt to the new family because he or she brings all the old behaviors with them - whether it's mistrust, or lying, or destructive behavior. It takes consistency and commitment from the established family to so surround the child with new patterns that gradually the old ways begin to change to new ones.
The people Paul is speaking to, the Christian community in Rome, are in a situation something like that, except that there aren’t any parents, and the adaptation has to go two ways, not just one. It's two sets - Jewish and Gentile - of brand new adopted daughters and sons of God trying to create a blended family. Paul, as the missionary expert in Jewish/ Gentile relations, is giving the Roman church a set of guidelines. This, he is saying, is the standard that both of you have to adapt to. The Jews don't have to become Gentiles, and the Gentiles don't have to become Jews; instead, both of you are to become Christians.
But what has this got to do with us? We don't have a Jewish/Gentile assimilation problem here, and many of us have been Christian long enough to see our grandchildren baptized. So how do Paul's words to the Roman church affect us?
Because all families have conflict. Conflict arises from differences between people; differences in temperament, in goals, in expectations and in habits. Conflict becomes even more likely when people of different backgrounds come together to try to form a new family. That's one of the things that makes marriage such a challenge, and which makes marriage of individuals who have children from previous marriages the most difficult of all. It doesn't have to be backgrounds as different as Gentile and Jew, either; ethnic and economic, generational and educational differences are all just as hard to overcome. And all families interact with the world around them, and members bring behaviors and attitudes learned from the people and cultures around them back into the family. The church is just like that, only more so.
Don't get me wrong. Conflict isn't bad. Conflict is part of life. But there are constructive ways of dealing with conflict, ways that destroy families and communities, and destructive ones.
It takes a strong, consistent, committed family to maintain a healthy, nurturing environment. But it doesn't do any good to be strong, consistent, and committed unless we are also informed. What are the standards of behavior that enable the Christian community not only to survive but to grow and thrive?
There are three essential habits that protect the family of God.
The first habit that we as Christians must make our own is a particular attitude of the heart. At the beginning of our passage, in v. 9, Paul says, "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."
The great commandment, the one from which everything else springs, is first to love God, and then to love one another. All people who claim to follow Christ must pay lip service, at least, to this principle. But Paul fleshes it out. Paul makes us stop and take a good, hard look at what is actually required of us. Love, he says, must be "without hypocrisy;” that is, it can't be put on from the outside like a mask. Christian love is a heart attitude that intentionally wills the good of the other person. Let me repeat that. Christian love is a heart attitude that intentionally wills the good of the other person. It is primarily a matter of intentions, not of feelings or emotions.
But emotions are part of us as human beings - and affect our intentions. What do we do when our emotions are pushing us away from following this commandment? Paul just told us that pretending doesn't cut it.
If for some reason you can't honestly bring yourself to will the good of the other person, do you suppose you can bring yourself to will your own good?
Well, yes, I hear you say, but how does that solve the problem of my attitude toward this other person?
Let me explain. Did you ever play with magnets when you were a kid? Remember that they had both positive and negative sides, called north and south poles? You know how when you put two north poles together you just can't make them touch, no matter how hard you push? But if you turn one of them around so that a North and South pole are next to each other they just smack together. If you try to hold them apart you can actually feel the pull. Magnetic attraction can be so strong that it's what they're using in new highspeed light rail technology to keep the wheels from touching the tracks so that friction doesn't slow the train down.
So what? Well, magnets are an illustration of what Paul means by "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." When he says "hate evil" he doesn't mean focus on it and engage in combat with it. Paul means reject it. Shun evil. Refuse to engage in it. Put it far away from you, like a magnet pushing away from a negative force. Instead, be attracted by the good. In fact, the Greek doesn't say "love good." One translation puts it, "cling to good." Literally, it means "glue yourself to good." It can be put less formally, too: "hang around good."
So if you can't positively will good for another person with whom you are in conflict, or whom you dislike or disapprove of, you can at least turn away, either mentally or physically, from whatever feelings of hostility, or resentment, or malice you are dealing with. Remember that conflict itself is not evil. Conflict is part of life. But resentment and hostility endanger your own spiritual well-being. To keep our own souls safe we must work at becoming become the kind of person who doesn't like those feelings and chooses not to harbor them. The simplest way to do this is to invest yourself in something good which is not part of the conflict Another good response is to cling to people who are a good influence on you - not necessarily the ones who are "on your side." And the most important and effective choice of all is to cling to Jesus Christ, who can actually change you. Did you know that a weak magnet, or a piece of iron with no magnetic field at all, can change its orientation by spending time in close proximity with a stronger magnet?
Avoidance isn't the ultimate goal, though. Avoidance is the shallow end of the spiritual pool. Avoidance delays destruction, but it doesn't cause healing or growth.Avoidance is for beginners. Real maturity in Christ comes when we can honestly, actively, and creatively will good to the person - as a brother or sister in Christ - even when we are grieved or offended by their actions.
Paul goes on to say in v 10, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love." What makes "brotherly love" different from other kinds of love? Have you ever noticed that how often people excuse or overlook behavior in themselves and their family members that they condemn in others? Have you ever noticed that people are readier to forgive their sons and daughters, their sisters and brothers? And when asked why, they say, "what else can I do? She's my little girl," or, "because he's my brother." Even when they are at odds over one thing they can still call on one another in other circumstances. A good friend of mine, who has left her brother's church because of its treatment of women, can still count on him for family stuff, and he can still count on her. They still love one another, even when they don't understand, or even disapprove.
The members of the church - both of this local body and all Christians everywhere - are our brothers and sisters. We can choose our friends, but God chooses our family. We may be closer to some than to others. But we all belong to one another, and we are all accountable to God, who is the father of us all, for the way we treat one another.
So how do we get from the shallow end of the spiritual pool - avoiding conflict because we have not grown strong enough to hold onto the good under stress - to the deep end, where we can enter into partnership with Jesus Christ in bringing good out of evil? We practice. We practice first with simple, practical things.
The second habit that safeguards the Christian community is the habit of helping one another. In v. 13 Paul goes on to say, "Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality."
In the Rome of Paul's day life was very precarious for members of the new church. We may think today that society in general is becoming increasingly hostile to Christians, but we have it a lot better than they did. At the time Paul was writing, Christianity was viewed just as another sect within Judaism, and Jews - even though they had certain privileges, like not having to worship the emperor, and some tax advantages - were looked on with suspicion by the Romans in general. In 51 AD the emperor Claudius revoked some of those privileges, and later on expelled them all from Rome. The expulsion didn't last long, and many of them returned later on, but it illustrates how uncertain life was for the Jewish community. And to make matters worse, the Jews themselves, the ones who had not acknowledged Jesus as Messiah, were also hostile to the new Christians. And many of the Gentile converts were slaves. Some people lost their employment, others lost their homes, some lost their families. Some never had families to begin with. First century Roman Christians had to help one another in order to survive.
And so do we. Paul is urging the church in Rome to meet one another's most crucial needs. The needs may not be the same here as they were in Rome, but they are undoubtedly there. And the interesting thing about helping one another, is that you don't have to like someone in order to feed them. You don't even have to know them. You only have to think they matter because they have been chosen by God to be members of your family. That's part of what Paul means when he says "honor one another." It means, consider that other people are as important and valuable as you are. You may not be able to see it yourself, but God does, or they wouldn't be there, and God expects you to treat them as though they matter. Another important piece of Paul's instructions is to "be zealous." The word zealous comes from a Greek word meaning fiery. In means to be intense, not half-hearted. And Paul also says not to give up. "Keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord" is how he puts it. Remember that caring for one another is a spiritual activity which honors God, not just make-work.
Serving someone whose actions we dislike doesn't mean that we have abandoned our principles. It means that whatever is going on that has created disharmony can't prevent us from acting on a more important principle, that of preserving the unity of the church. Let me restate that. When we let someone's behavior prevent us from caring for them, we are the losers. But if we can serve someone with whom we differ, we have won. Caring for the well-being of someone doesn't mean you agree with them. But it does mean that you know what it's like to be lonely or hungry or scared, and to choose to acknowledge your common humanity by standing with them. You can stand with one another in joy as well as in adversity, at a new job, the birth of a grandchild, a recovery from illness.
That is what Paul means when he tells us to "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." He doesn't say "rejoice with the people you like, and mourn when your friends are unhappy." And you know? a funny thing happens when we reach out to one another in this way. As we care for each other, we begin to care about one another. The bonds between us strengthen. The kind of family feeling in which forgiveness is the expected response begins to take shape. The internal attitude of the heart that Paul sets before us as a goal begins to grow as we practice our new family behaviors.
It is as we learn to care for one another even through our differences that the third thing Paul asks of us begins to appear possible.
The third habit which sustains the Christian community is the habit of returning good for evil.
Paul is repeating Jesus' lesson in the sermon on the mount, to love your enemies. It doesn't come easily. In fact, it's one of the hardest things Jesus asks us to do. But it is possible, through intimate contact with the person of Jesus Christ and faithful practice of the habit of caring for each other.
This habit of returning good for evil begins with words. Verse 14 says to "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." Remember that words come out of the heart. It is out of a heart accustomed to blessing that blessings come spontaneously. The apostle James says, "Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?" [3:10-11] We must not will evil for our enemies. If we do this, they have won. The fresh water turns to salt. But if we will good to our enemies, the spring of our hearts remains sweet, and we have won. By this I do not mean that we are to will victory for our enemies. We are to will that our enemies cease to do evil.
Why am I spending any time on this part of Paul’s message? We here aren’t dealing either with internal conflict or with persecution. We don’t have any enemies we have to be careful to forgive, this can’t be for us, can it?
Yes, it can. Because even if we don’t recognize it, many of us respond to change as if it were an enemy. And the church changes every time we begin to consider a new activity or program; it changes, in fact, every time a new person comes in the door. The emotional dynamics shift, and our comfort zones may start feeling a little squeezed. And we often respond to change by hunkering down into emotional bunkers, so to speak, and hope for the threatening new stuff to go away so that everything can be the way it used to be.
This message is important one for us, then, because if we are going to grow - which I believe most of us want to do, each one of us has a responsibility to practice being family even with people who are strange to us. Instead of looking inward, protecting ourselves, Christ calls us to look outward, and with his help turn strangers - who may be very different from us in background and education and needs - and into sisters and brothers.
Many marriages - and churches - self-destruct when adversity strikes. Too often we see a prolonged illness, the loss of a job, or the death of a child destroy a family. Crisis and conflict can also destroy a church. This is tragic, when it happens, because crisis has the potential of making marriages - and churches - even stronger than they were before. Some churches - like this one - survive crises with flying colors, meeting adversity with energy and imagination and commitment. But even more marriages - and churches - die just because no one has taken the trouble to keep them alive. The challenge is to keep the level of energy and commitment high without the crisis to focus our attention.
Gal 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." I do not promise a corporate victory for this - or any - congregation. That is not what the verse means. But I can promise each of you who perseveres a personal victory in your Christian life. This is the promise of God.
