Romans 12:9-21
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 honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 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. 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 them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. (Revised Standard Version)
I
Here are four words that you can take into your week, and your life, and which, I trust, will lead us into the packed passage from Romans, chapter 12: Kill ‘em with kindness.
These are the four words that I texted to someone recently. Kill ‘em with kindness. They were part of my counsel to a young man dealing with a hostile person in a difficult set of circumstances. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you have offered the same counsel to someone in the challenging situation of facing hatred, or aggression, or some form of antagonism as a way forward that would be pleasing to God, and effective. And I wouldn’t be surprised—in fact, I would be happy--if you embraced the same wisdom for yourself. If so, and I included myself in this, we would be following the wisdom of St. Paul put before us in the reading from Romans—my text today—which ends (wholly in line with the Sermon on The Mount, as you will have noticed), saying:
“If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink
Then he likely draws on an Egyptian habit of the time where penitent sinners would walk with coals on their heads (maybe the closet thing in our time is the practice of marking our foreheads with ashes on Ash Wednesday) to say that the moral force of kindness and gentleness and radical self giving that is agapé, would give aggressors something to think about, would stop them in their tracks, maybe even bring about their repentance. Such an unexpected response would be like placing coals, burning coals, on their heads. That’s his version of ‘Kill ‘em with kindness.’Then he concludes” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
You will know that this was the way of life that Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated and lived out in the struggle for civil rights. “Anger cannot drive out anger,’ he said, “only love can do that.” And he went on to say in his speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, “Non-violence is a powerful and great weapon which cuts without wounding…it is a sword that heals…and ennobles the one who wields it.” What a beautiful expression of a deep truth: the moral force of kindness and gentleness, of love— agapé — is the best chance we have to stop the escalation of violence, which dogs the human condition. We may think that it’s weak and passive, but it depends on the inner strength and courage that comes from the living God. And there is not a sphere of human life that doesn’t need this wisdom.
II
Well, we’re in the twelfth chapter of Romans, and up until this chapter agapé has been used to describe God’s love for us. It’s something that cannot be taken away. Nothing in all of creation will separate from this love; this is the great highpoint of the New Testament in Romans 8. It’s a love that was demonstrated on the Cross that reconciled us to God (Romans 5). It’s a love that has been poured into our hearts (Romans 5). And it’s a love that will not let us go. Maybe some of you will know the old hymn, ‘O Love that will not Let Me Go.’
O Love of God that will not let me go
I rest my soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depth it’s flow
[the flow of God’s love]
May richer, fuller be
Well, all of that is wonderful. And it’s the lead up to this passage which now speaks of agape in reference to how we are to live. This passage shows us the essence of the Christian life, the marks of a true disciple. Paul, I hope you have learned, almost always puts the character of God before his readers before he talks about behavior. Doctrine before ethics. This is why the little word therefore that he so often uses means so much: the shape of our lives is to flow from who God is and what God has done.
So, as you sit here today and take in this description of the Christian life and ask yourself, “Is this me?” and “Is this us>” think first of the flow of God’s love for you. Jesus Christ is your protector, your guardian, your sustainer. And the source of endless vitality.
If you accept this challenge that I will put before you, namely, to go home and sometime soon sit with this passage and ask “Is it me?” begin first with who God is. Begin first with the gospel truth that you have been united with Jesus like a branch that has been grafted into a tree, so that you know that there is a vitality, a strength, beyond what you or I can bring to the situations that make up our lives. The strength of the life of God flowing through you. “I am the vine.’ Jesus said, “you are the branches.” This will give you the courage to live in just such an extraordinary, counter-cultural way that we have seen in non-violent and in many fellow Christians. And if we do this, we will find ourselves being helped.
Zeal for discipleship
One of the things that the vitality of Christ working in is brings about is zeal. Zeal is mentioned early in the passage – and in my study I came across a reference to Origen. a theologian of the 3rd century who took issue with what he thought was a weak way of understanding verse 13. Our translation is: Extend hospitality to strangers. Translators are almost equally split, in three ways, here. It can be rendered Extend hospitality to strangers. Or Practice hospitality toward strangers. Or Pursue hospitality toward strangers. And Origen said this: “We are not just to receive the stranger when he comes to us, but actually to enquire after, and look carefully for, strangers, to pursue them and search them out everywhere, lest by chance they may sit in the streets or lie without a roof over their heads.” (Cited by John Stott in Romans: God’s Good News For The World, IVP,1994, page 332).
The zeal there is palpable. It’s unmistakable. Origen took just one of the virtues laid out here—needy strangers-- and said: “Get after it!” Find them, carefully look for them, pursue, and search for them. This is no passive approach to life. Be zealous, he says, right from the time you wake up in the morning, go for it.
Zeal is a matter of steady pursuit. We may attach the word, as we commonly say, ‘to religious zealots,” to people who are overbearing, who seek to dominate, in the name of God, or their religion, or their particular cause. But zeal properly understood isn’t about brashness or showiness. Note the deep humility and self-restraint in the portrait before us today in Romans: ‘‘’do not be haughty,’ ‘weep with those who weep,’ ‘do not pretend to be wiser than you are,’ (which my teenage children used to communicate to me when I was pontificating about something!),’ ‘associate with the lowly,’ and ‘live in harmony.’
These are all a movement away from self-assertion and domination., and toward the same kind of utter self-giving we see in Jesus. Properly understood, zeal doesn’t mean fanaticism but means constantly “setting our minds, hearts and will in a certain direction.” (John Webster, ‘On Endurance ‘in The Grace of Truth, 233). Today, I am being zealous for zeal! Not for it’s own sake but for the sake of the gospel and our souls. We’re to be zealous for each of those thing laid out in this astonishing portrait of the Christian life: zealous for ‘genuine love,’ for ‘goodness,’ for ‘showing honor,’ and for ‘mutual affection.’
Sustaining this kind of zeal will mean exercising constant vigilance over things within us, and things outside of us, that seek to distract us, or dissuade us, from this high calling.
It’s so easy to get knocked off course. Boy, don’t I know that. The tempter challenges and troubles me all the time, seeking to send me in the wrong direction, whispering to me in my thoughts: Mark, why don’t you just mellow, and go with the flow….the flow of the culture, of this flow of this season’s spiritual fad, quit swimming against these tides and just relax? Mark, why don’t you let go of the vision that individuals, and families, and nations, really do lose their way….and accept a more positive view that whatever is, is okay? Just chill.
And, Mark, why don’t you let go of this thing you just now said was a high calling…..a high calling, c’mon? You know, from years of life in the church, that if there really is such a high callings surely it’s for the saints, the few supermen and superwoman of faith, the genetically modified’ people (the phrase is from John Webster) sprinkled here and there but now everywhere, who are a different breed of Christians?
Well, the answer is that if Christ, who gave his life for us shares his life with us in the present, and—to return where I began—whose lovingkindness killed the old self in us, then zeal for his way (humble and needful of his courage) must be one of the first fruits of our love for him.
May it be so. Amen.