I’ve been spoiled these last few weeks attending or celebrating Sunday eucharist because my favourite book of the Bible is the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, and we’ve been following that epistle on Sundays for the three months since Trinity Sunday, with Christians across the world, as decreed by the universal lectionary.
Why is Romans so exciting and important? I think because, unlike other letters, you really find the whole gospel within it, both in principle and in application.
You start in chapters 1 to 3 with the downward spiral of the human condition and its crying out for salvation summarised by Paul in chapter 7:19: ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’. You then move on in Chapters 5-11 from our need for help to the good news of Christianity of God’s loving provision in the accomplished work of Christ’s death and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit by which God’s love is poured into our hearts. After a little excursion in Chapters 9 to 11 on how the Christian good news is good news for the Jews as well the letter moves to its conclusion, like any good sermon, by turning to application.
This is the background to today’s reading from Chapter 12 I would entitle sincere love.
How should the good news of the gift of God’s love show out in the Christian life?
I want to look with you at our passage on Christian love under six headings: love, like Jesus himself, is warm-hearted, inspired, hospitable, humble, extravagant and lastly militant.
I invite you to turn to the passage if you can access it from your bible or your phone starting with verses 9 and 10 of Chapter 12.
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.
At the beginning of the hinge chapter 12 in Romans there is the key word: Therefore…
The first part of Romans reminds us that Jesus Christ is God’s gift of love covering our sins to be accepted by faith and sealed in baptism. ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’ Paul writes (1:16)
The second part of Romans teaches that since God has given us Christians salvation we need to live it out in love. Chapter 12 starts Therefore…I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship…it continues with our section from verse 9 Let love be genuine.
We pass from what Jesus has done for us to what Jesus wants to do with us and most of all he wants our sincere love – or in the Greek original our anhypokritos or literally unhypocritical love.
What is meant here? When I was a child I was accused of showing cupboard love, affection to my parents to get a biscuit out of the cupboard. Love that’s genuine has no pretensions. It comes from the heart. Later in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 when Paul says to give your body to be burned means nothing he’s saying love is to be warm-hearted if it's to be anything at all.
Christian love is, like Jesus himself, warm-hearted. Then secondly it is inspired - reading on in the passage.
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
If Christian love is from the heart it’s also inspired from beyond our situation. Earlier in Romans Chapter 5:5 Paul said ‘God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us’.
The spiritual fervour of Jesus is meant to reach right inside of us, deep down into our hearts. When I was an undergraduate fifty years ago up at Oxford I stumbled into St Mary Magdalene’s which unknown to me had a fervent priest called Fr. Hooper. I remember going to tea with him one Sunday. At length he asked me if I’d ever considered going to Confession. I had no good answer! Somehow the spiritual force of the man hit me – I had to go to Confession, the fervour, the warmth of the Spirit of Jesus Christ was in him and inspired me. I never looked back from then, although Confession has not always been so easy for me. By the way, if you ever want to make your Confession don’t be shy of approaching any of our visiting priests to make an appointment. The Anglican saying on confession is all may, none must, some should.
Let’s read on, what are verses 13 and 14 of Romans Chapter 12
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
In Romans Paul teaches Jesus the author of Love and how we might imitate him.
His love is warm-hearted, inspired and thirdly hospitable.
When Jesus comes to us he is in our lives but he mostly seeks not to get in the way of our lives.
He’s not like the lady C.S.Lewis once described as so wanting to do good to others you could tell the others by their hunted look!
When the warm-hearted love of Jesus inspires us it makes more space in our relationships. It is not a pushy love but a convivial love. Surely the church needs more natural, convivial living for it is there that Jesus finds himself in good company and there, in good company that Jesus can be found.
Christian love is a practising of hospitality which might mean not talking about God too much with not yet believers. More can be achieved to spread the faith by patient hospitable friendship coupled to intercessory prayer than we sometimes imagine. Let’s read on:
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
If love is warm-hearted, inspired and hospitable it’s also humble.
‘Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly’. One of my Christian heroes is Henri Nouwen who wrote books about the spiritual power that abounds in the community of the intellectually disabled.
Associating with the intellectually disabled like associating, living and working, with children is both a sign of loving - and a tonic to loving.
Both children and intellectually disabled people live in the present moment without the frustrating agendas and future plans that burden most of us. To love effectively we need to be free from the grip of past regret and future anxiety to live in the present moment. To love with Christ is to seek humility so that we see our lives as part of a whole and not the centre of things including what is going on around us and its timing.
In his many books Nouwen writes about the struggle to make himself present and vulnerable to other people in the L’Arche handicapped community when his preference was to run to his computer and write books! I know that feeling - I am a writer too!
So often though the world of computers can subtract from our loving by taking us away from people!
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’. No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed him; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads’.
How should the good news of the gift of God’s love show out in the Christian life?
With a love that is warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble and, fifthly, extravagant.
What extravagance to heap love on your enemy! As Paul reminds the Romans earlier in Chapter 5:8 ‘God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we still sinners – his enemies – Christ died for us.
At the heart of Christianity is a God who has no favourites, not even his friends, and who calls us to be similarly extravagant in love. The extravagance to an enemy that’s like heaping burning coals on his head!
Falling off her horse into the mud one day St. Teresa of Avila once shook her fist at God and said ‘God if that’s how you treat your friends it’s not surprising you have so few’. In a better state of mind, reflecting on God’s extravagant love for her and for all she wrote after years of Christian service: ‘We should forget the number of years we have served him. The more we serve him, the more deeply we fall into his debt.’
How many years have you served Christ? Are you more deeply in his debt? Does anything you have achieved do anything more than reflect back upon God who’s given you life and health and strength to do it – as well as the heart to do it with love?
He wants more extravagant service from you and I, believe me! The last verse.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Our love is to be warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble, extravagant and lastly militant.
Love is in battle for the soul of the world. The war has been won by the decisive battle on Calvary and our Sunday worship is a living memorial of this. We come as living sacrifices to eat the living Bread and be made afresh into living hope through offering the eucharist.
Since the world so lacks hope we come with a militant love! Isn’t that a contradiction? No - because Christ’s perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). All our Christian loving is meant to be militant overcoming evil with good. It raids the kingdom of fear, not least the fearfulness of those who oppose the church. We counter fear and apathy by good humour, warm-heartedness, God’s inspiration, hospitality, humility, extravagance and militancy.
Soldiers of Christ arise therefore and put your armour on this day! Armed with God’s word, united as a living sacrifice to Christ and fed by his living Bread go forth into battle knowing in the great words of the letter to the Romans that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (8:37).
No comments:
Post a Comment