The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, September 5, 2021. The Bible verses used are Romans 12:9-21.
You know, if I’m really honest with you, I have
a problem with the Bible passage we read today. Don’t get me wrong, I
agree with it. I agree that these are things we should do. It’s
just--how do you make yourself do them?
I mean, let’s start with the
very first sentence. “Love must be sincere.” Okay, sure. That
makes sense. I certainly would not expect the Bible to encourage
insincere love. We know we’re supposed to love everyone, and of course,
our love should be sincere.
But--what about the people we
don’t feel love for? We may know we should love them but--we don’t.
How do we change that? How do we make ourselves feel sincere love for
someone whom we don’t currently feel love for? How do we make ourselves
feel something we don’t feel?
It’s a tough thing. It’s
something I’ve struggled with. Maybe you have, too. I feel guilty
about it, sometimes, but feeling guilty doesn’t change anything. It just
adds guilt to what I’m already struggling with. So, what do we do?
Well, as I was thinking about
this, I was reminded of something I’ve been told before--sometimes you have to
read the Bible differently from the way you read modern writing.
Remember, this is something that was written two thousand years ago or
more. Times have changed. Writing styles have changed.
Thought patterns have changed.
Now, in saying “read the Bible
differently”, I am not saying that we should change the meaning of the Bible to
suit our purposes. The Bible is still the word of God, and it still
contains timeless truths, just as it always has. We’re not allowed to
ignore parts of it, to read in other meanings, or to do anything that changes
what the Bible says.
But here’s what I mean.
Suppose, instead of starting with “love must be sincere”, we end with
that. And suppose we look at the rest of the passage as helping us figure
out how to feel sincere love for people. Maybe that will help us actually
put this passage into practice.
So let’s start with “Live in
harmony with one another...If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live
at peace with everyone.”
Okay, that sounds doable.
Basically, that’s “live and let live”, right? And we can do that.
Don’t go around stirring up trouble. If people disagree with us, that’s
fine. They have a right to their opinions, even if we think they’re
wrong. Try to find common ground with people. Try to find ways to
get along. Maybe there are even things we can work together on. And
if someone says or does something to upset you, just let it go. Live in
peace and harmony. That actually sounds pretty good. So maybe that’s
our first step right there.
Now notice, it says, to live in
peace with everyone “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you.” The
Apostle Paul, in writing this, recognized that sometimes people will simply not
allow us to live in peace with them, no matter how much we might want to.
And it tells us what to do in those situations. “Do not repay anyone evil
for evil...Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s
wrath, for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”
If someone refuses to allow us
to get along with them, we still don’t have to attack them. We don’t even
need to hold a grudge against them. We can simply leave it in God’s
hands. We can trust God to take care of it. We can let it go.
That sounds pretty good, too. It seems like, so far, these are things
that will help us live a lot better and a lot more peaceful lives.
Paul says, “Be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” That one’s a little tougher,
but it seems doable, too. Be faithful in prayer? We can do
that. We know we should pray regularly. And most of us, I think,
would agree that it helps us when we do pray regularly. Be joyful in
hope? That sometimes takes a little effort--it’s always easier to be a
pessimist than to be an optimist--but if we truly have faith in God, and if we
truly believe God is good, we should be able to have hope. Be patient in
affliction? Well, that can be hard, no question about it. But it also
goes along with what we just talked about--letting things go, leaving things in
God’s hands, and trusting God to take care of things. So, while it may be
a little harder, we can probably handle this one, too.
But the things we’ve talked
about so far really are all just about attitude. Our attitude is
important, no question about it. But some of these other things Paul says
actually require us to do things. Let’s look at some of those.
“Share with the Lord’s people
who are in need. Practice hospitality.” At this point, I start to
think, you know, maybe these things are not so hard after all. Because
most of us do share with people who are in need. Most of us do practice
hospitality. Not as often or to the extent we should, probably.
It’s probably something we could all work on and get better at. But at
least we’re not starting from zero. We just need to do more of what we’re
already doing. We just need to work on being more generous and trusting
God more. That’s not to say it’s an easy one--it can be hard to trust God
that much--but we can work on it, and we can get better.
But then come the hard
ones. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him
something to drink.” Yeah, I don’t know about that one. It was one
thing when Paul said just not to do evil to our enemies, to let God take care
of them. It’s another thing when Paul says we need to actively do good
things for our enemies. We need to actually take care of them. In
short, we need to act in loving ways toward our enemies. Do you want to
do that? Because, to be honest, I don’t.
But listen to what Paul goes on
to say. “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on [your enemy’s] head.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
If we act in loving ways toward
our enemies, what will happen? Well, let’s be honest. Some of them
will take advantage of us. Some of them will remain our enemies and will
treat us even worse. Life is not one of those cute little children’s
Sunday school stories I learned as a kid, where when the hero was nice to the
bully the bully always reformed. I wish life worked that way, but it does
not. At least much of the time it does not.
But it’s not a foregone
conclusion that our enemies will take advantage of us. At least
sometimes--once in a while--our enemies might think, why is this person being
nice to me? Why is this person helping me? Maybe, possibly, there’s
a chance that, by doing this, we can reach them for Christ.
And you know, that’s an awesome
feeling, to reach someone for Christ. For a Christian, it’s about the
best feeling we can have. I mean, it’s rare when anyone leads someone to
Christ all by themselves, and obviously the Lord is always involved in that
process. But to feel that you’ve at least played a part in leading
someone to Christ, to leading them to salvation and eternal life, that’s about
the most awesome feeling there is. And that just might be enough
incentive for us to treat even our enemies, even people we don’t like very
much, in loving ways.
And treating people that way
just might be the key to what we started out talking about--loving everyone,
and making that love sincere. Maybe if we treat people in loving ways,
we’ll actually start to feel love for them.
I’m reminded of a time when
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was having a crisis of faith. He
was preaching about faith in Christ, but he was not sure he felt it himself.
He asked a friend, Peter Bohler, what he should do. Bohler replied,
“Preach faith until you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach
faith.”
Maybe that sort of thing can
work for us. Maybe we can treat people in loving ways until we feel love,
and then, because we feel love, we will treat them in loving ways.
Because, while we cannot always control our feelings, we can control our
actions. And our actions influence our feelings. So if we act in
loving ways, and treat people in loving ways, our actions just might make us
actually feel the love we know we’re supposed to feel, and feel it sincerely.
It’s certainly worth a
try. Because we cannot just ignore the things the Bible tells us to do
just because they can be hard. That’s one of the ways Satan attacks
us--by telling us that our faith should be easy, that we should never have to
do hard things, that if we follow Christ all will be sweetness and light.
It’s not true. Earthly life was certainly not all sweetness and light for
Jesus. It was not all sweetness and light for the Apostle Paul, either.
Jesus told us to do a lot of
hard things. But Jesus would never tell us to do anything we cannot
do. And he would never tell us to do anything that he, himself, was not
willing to do.
Sincerely loving everyone, even
our enemies, is hard. But if we act in loving ways toward them, God’s
Holy Spirit will enable us to feel that sincere love we’re told to feel.
And we will be the people God wants us to be.
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