Rom 12:14-13:14
I know some of you are visitors to St Theos today, so let me just fill you in on what we’ve been looking at in our preaching for much of this year. We’ve spent most of the year working our way through the letter to the Romans. It’s a fairly complex letter so we’ve taken some time to get to ch12. We read the first few verses of this chapter last week and this week we finish the chapter and go on to ch 13. So it might be good to quickly look back at what we read last week before moving on.
What we read last week was an appeal to the reader to respond to God’s love and grace towards us by turning our lives over to God’s service. The picture that’s used is that of giving our bodies as living sacrifices. That’ll involve the way we think about ourselves and each other and it’ll result in us having an attitude to one another of love that’s different from the way we normally love. If we let God work on the way we think about ourselves and each other we might begin to love others the way God first loved us; that is, on the basis of who God is, not what we’d done for God. Now it’s important to begin there, because the passage we come to now begins and ends with this idea of love for one another as the sign of being the people of God.
As I said last week, the sorts of behaviour and attitudes that we’re exhorted to adopt in this passage don’t come naturally to us. We read here "Bless those who persecute you ... Do not repay anyone evil for evil. ... never avenge yourselves." Well, this past week we’ve seen events that make us long for vengeance, for justice, for evil to be visited on those who perpetrate this sort of evil. And so when we read this we’re brought up short. How should we respond when terrorism strikes at us? Does this mean we should just ignore such acts of violence against unsuspecting holiday makers? Does turning the other cheek extend to religious or nationalist extremists?
Well, let me suggest that there are actually 2 levels of response contemplated in this passage. There’s the level of personal relationships, where we have personal responsibility for the response and there’s the wider platform of civil and national, even international relationships.
The fact is that everyone of us can think of situations where we’ve been wronged by someone else, who, in our opinion at least, had no right to do whatever it was they did to us. It may be on the scale of the bombings in Bali last week or it might be on a much more local and hopefully less serious scale. But what we’re told here is that the way we respond to those sorts of wrongs should be informed by our understanding and experience of the gospel. So lets think about how an understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ might affect how we respond.
Personal Responsibility
The first type of injury is the personal insult or harm done to us by someone we know. In NT times the reality was that if you were a Christian you were likely to be the target for persecution of one sort or another. So how should a Christian respond to persecution, for example? Well, we’re told, don’t curse them, bless them. This of course is the same thing that Jesus said in the passage from Matt 5 that we read last week. "Turn the other cheek." "Go the extra mile." "If someone sues you for your coat, give them your cloak as well." This is radical stuff! This is not the way we’ve been taught to think. The world’s attitude is summed up by the phrase, "Do unto others before they do it to you." I think I first heard that on Hill Street Blues. Do you remember that show? But when you think about God’s mercy and grace shown to us when we least deserved it, you realise that if you believe the gospel, if you’re one who has received God’s forgiveness, all you can do is to respond to others the same way.
You may have seen a movie a year or so ago called "Pay it Forward." It was about a boy who decided for his social studies project he’d carry out an experiment where he did someone a favour and then asked them not to repay him but to do a favour for someone else. Rather than paying the favour back, they were to pay it forward. Well, it’s like that when we think of how God has loved us. We can never pay God back. His gift to us is beyond measure. But we can pay it forward in the way we show his love to others.
So, when those around us are rejoicing, we join them in their joy. If they’re suffering, we weep with them. So we join with others today in observing a national day of mourning.
And for Christians who find themselves in a hostile environment, as the first readers of this letter would have been, the instruction is this: live in harmony with one another. And don’t be haughty. Don’t look down on those who haven’t yet understood the grace of God. Don’t avoid those who are less well informed. Don’t turn away from those who are following pagan beliefs. Let’s face it, if we did that we’d be avoiding most of our fellow Australians wouldn’t we? No, be happy to associate with all people, knowing that all of us are God’s creatures, both great and small.
But of course the instruction here to live in harmony with others isn’t just referring to those who are opposed to us as Christians. It’s equally and perhaps even more importantly addressed to Christians living in harmony with other Christians.
Now I know this will come as a surprise to some of you, but Christians don’t always see eye to eye. Churches aren’t always the epitome of harmony like St Theodore’s is. In fact, dare I say that Churches can be the worst places for infighting, for factions, for people bearing grudges, seeking to take vengeance on those who have wronged them. Churches are places where people of all sorts are thrown together. And after all, we’re only human, aren’t we? So if someone does something that hurts us, our natural inclination is to get even.
So, how does that sort of attitude fit with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Well, as I said before, the central fact of the gospel is that Jesus came to die for us, and that he did it when we were totally opposed to his rule over our lives. Even as Jesus hung on the cross, what did he pray? He didn’t pray that God would avenge him for the injustice of his death. He prayed that God would forgive them. He prayed that the fruit of his death would be applied to the very people who were killing him.
So what do you think would be a Christ-like response to someone who does something to me? Well, it won’t be to take vengeance on them will it? It won’t be to save it up like what used to be called a Pepsi top to use at some later date when I’m arguing with them. No. It’ll be to forgive them. To seek, as far as it’s within my power, to live at peace with them. Obviously that won’t always be possible. Some people are impossible to live at peace with because they refuse to suspend hostilities. But that doesn’t mean that I have to continue the hostilities from my side, does it? Nor do I need to be negative in the way I think about them. Look at v17: "take thought for what is noble in the sight of all." What is it in the other person that’s noble, worthy of praise, good or honourable. Even your worst enemy has good qualities even if you have to look hard to find them. So we can concentrate on those rather than on the negatives we so often see at first.
But there are 2 more things we need to say on this issue of personal hurt. The first is that we don’t need to be afraid that the person will get away with whatever it is they’ve done to us. God sees everything that goes on in his world. He can be trusted to avenge us if vengeance is needed. He may not do it in this world, but people will be called to account in the next. He promises that he will repay. But secondly if you want to respond to someone who does evil to you, what is the Godly way to do it? It’s to do good to them. So if they’re hungry, feed them. If they’re thirsty give them something to drink. And do you see what that will do to them? It’ll heap burning coals on their heads. In other words it’ll shame them. Maybe even enough that they’ll stop being nasty to you and begin to respond in like kind. Maybe even to the point where they’ll turn to the good rather than to evil. And so evil will be overcome by the good that we do.
Now before we move on to think about the broader issue of civil wrongs, I need to ask you whether you are someone who’s responding to those who have hurt you like this. Do you have people against whom you’re holding a grudge? I remember talking to a minister friend of mine who’d taken a funeral for a man in his 80s and in the front row of the church was the man’s brother, in tears not just because his brother had died, but because he hadn’t spoken to him for 40 or more years and now it was too late. They’d had a bust up over some issue, that was probably long forgotten, but still the feud had continued until his brother’s death. So think to yourself, are there people who have done you some wrong that you’ve never forgiven? People with whom you’re not living in peace. Well, if that’s the case, then this message is for you. It’s a message for any of us who are holding a grudge against some other person or group. "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ... 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."
Government responsibility
But on the other hand, there are occasions when turning the other cheek is not the right thing to do. That’s when the wrongs being perpetrated are on a society wide level; when the perpetrator is offending not just an individual but the society as a whole. In that instance God has provided a means by which justice can be sought and evil doers dealt with.
Again, this is something we need to think carefully about. What we read here must have sounded almost unbelievable to those Christians reading it in Rome in about 56AD. How could Caesar be put there by God when he was so strongly opposing the growth of the Christian Church? So too, today, how can Christians in Communist or strongly Muslim countries understand these verses? How do we deal with them when we disagree with the policies of our government, when our government does things that we think are wrong, even immoral?
Jesus was faced with just such a dilemma when the Pharisees came to him to try and catch him out. They were hoping he might say that it wasn’t right to pay taxes to Caesar when the Romans were an occupying army. But what did he say? Well, first he asked them to show him a coin. "Whose head is on the coin?" he asked. "Well, Caesar’s of course." "Well then, if it’s Caesar who provides you with your coinage, with your economic system, you have a responsibility to pay your taxes, don’t you?" Now elsewhere he dealt one to one with Zacchaeus, the tax collector, about the way he collected tax. He wasn’t condoning corruption on the part of government officials. But he was saying that Governments have a rightful place in God’s plan for humanity. In our case we have a responsibility as citizens of a democracy to voice our desire for justice and equity in government policy. In other cases we need to remember that governments are responsible to God to protect citizens, to provide a means of bringing justice to people and so we might have to work towards ensuring that that happens.
Where it doesn’t happen, sometimes it’s the fault of the country’s citizens who allow unjust people to come to power, sometimes it’s the fault of other governments who support unjust regimes, or even set them up in the first place and sometimes it comes about through individuals or groups scheming to gain power. But in the end, governments are subject to God’s authority and he will deal with them in the end, the same way he’ll deal with individuals, even if sometimes we think he takes a bit too long to do it. And when it comes to groups like the terrorists responsible for the Bali bombing we hope that our governments will find the culprits and punish them appropriately. But if they don’t catch them, we can be sure that God will deal with them. They may think they’re heading for a paradise surrounded by 70 virgins, but the reality will be different. God will judge them, just as he’ll judge every one of us, according to how we respond to Jesus Christ.
In the mean time, as citizens, all we can do is to make sure that our own behaviour is an example to others of justice and right living; that when others look at our lives they see something that deserves their approval. So we make sure we pay our taxes, that we give honour where honour is due, that we pay our debts, that the only debt that remains outstanding is the debt we owe God to love others the way God first loved us.
And so we come back to where we started, to love as the sign of the gospel. In fact he echoes Jesus in saying that all of the commandments are summed up in this one commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Why? Because if you love your neighbour, you won’t do anything to harm them. On the contrary, you’ll be doing all you can to introduce them to the blessings of belonging to God’s kingdom.
You see there’s an urgency in this message. The day of Christ’s return is getting closer. The time for doing God’s work is running out. If you’ve been thinking there was no need to worry about the way you respond to what God has done for us in sending Jesus Christ to die for us, think again. The night is far gone, the day is near. The time to respond to Christ is now. There will never be a better time. And here’s how we should respond. Not by reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, by showing in our lives the love of Christ; a sacrificial love that shows itself by forgiving even at the moment when the worst injury is being inflicted, by bringing life to those who are in need, by offering healing, help, food, drink to those who are hurt, hungry or thirsty.
Those are the acts of people who live in the light, in the hope of the glory to be revealed when Christ returns.
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