Romans 12: Words to live by:

· Love must be sincere: Remember the Red Skeleton show? Every show would end with the words, “Good Night and God Bless”. Kind words and a great way to end a show, but, what if that was the same way your spouse told you they loved you? Sincere love gets into the nitty gritty. Sincere love knows all about you and loves you anyway. Sincere love is there for the long haul in the ups and in the downs in life. Sincere love is the way God loves us.
· Hate what is evil: The trouble with this is that all too often we want to define what is evil. Sin is defined as that which separates you from God. Evil is what draws you into that separation. What is evil for you might not always be evil for someone else, in fact sometimes what is evil can be projecting what is evil for you onto someone else.
· Cling to what is good: There are times when we are so obsessed by what is evil that we forget to embrace that which is good. Embracing good is often the best antidote to evil. The difference between good and God is “o” which is sometimes written as a zero.
· Be devoted to one another in brotherly love: Erotic love, which drives so much of our entertainment industry, is here today and gone tomorrow. Brotherly love is willing to argue, fight, wrestle, tell the other when they stink, but it never gives up. It is here today and here tomorrow and has more to do with the other and the relationship than with the self.
· Honor one another above yourselves: To honor someone is to not only respect them, but to show them respect. We honor God by joining together in corporate worship. We honor our relationships by remaining loyal and faithful. Judges are called “Your Honor” not so much because they are honorable, but because they represent something honorable, the same with politicians.
· Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord: After a while the zeal just seems to drop away. It is akin to what happens in a marriage after the honeymoon phase is over. Also like a marriage, the way to keep up the zeal is in doing. In the beginning it is the love that sustains the marriage; in the long run it is the marriage that sustains the love. It is the move from receiving to giving. A long term relationship with the Lord is not about mountain top experiences, though they are nice, it is about down in the dirty street serving. I think that is what Christ had in mind when sent us out to announce that the Kingdom is near, dirty hands.
· Be joyful in hope: Hope looks at tomorrow with a smile on its face. Fear looks at the problems of yesterday and expects more of the same. Life does not always joyfully live up to our hopeful expectations, but fear always has a way of making its expectations come true.
· Patient in affliction: During the summer, things slow down pretty much at our church, they do not however slow down with me. Every late summer I consider putting in for another call, somewhere where people “get” the Gospel and consider church and God an important part of their life. Then the people start coming back, slowly, but coming back and I decide to give it another try. If one does not have the long view in life, life can give you some pretty nasty short term whacks upside the head. The long view allows us to live in hope, the short view allows us to live in fear. When teaching your children to ride a bike, one of the things to teach them is to look ahead. If they look down, they will fall over, if they look ahead, balance returns. Same with life, keep your eye on Jesus, on the Kingdom, especially when life seems to be a bit out of balance.
· Faithful in prayer: How do you pray? When do you pray? How often do you pray? What do you pray? A friend of mine tells me that everything we think, do and say is a prayer, we just have to ask ourselves if it is a prayer we want to be praying. If that is the case, then being faithful in prayer means keeping your eye on the Kingdom. Let Christ guide you in what you think, do and say so that indeed you will not only be faithful in prayer, but prayerful in life.
· Share with God's people who are in need: Is there any greater prayer than a cup of water, or bowl of food, or shelter from the elements, in the name of Christ. In the book of Matthew, Jesus #1 concern is for faith, Jesus #2 concern is for caring for the needy. In many of those instances, caring for the needy is the way one shows faith. Each Sunday we collect food for the Lutheran Social Service Food Bank, it has been a bit thin this summer. In the current economy there are many who depend on that food who are also getting a bit thin.
· Practice hospitality: Hospitality is welcoming people, most of us seem to get that. There is another part of hospitality that is a bit harder. The best way I have heard it expressed is in the book, “the Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire. To paraphrase the thought, to invite someone into a situation which must remain unchanged is an act of violence. Churches are often guilty of this. We invite in, we introduce the Gospel, but we refuse to let their experience of that Gospel shape "our" church. In the end we are left with a dead same old, rather than an organically alive sense of worship. Too often hospitality is killed by hanging on to what is rather than embracing what could be.
· Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse: When our focus is on what the other did to us and how we are going to get back at them, we are no longer in charge, the other is. In reacting to perceived injustice by fighting back, we become the very thing we are fighting against, we become that which we hate. Pogo said it best, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." We are rather called to bless those who persecute us. Just sit back and moment and think about that and name the persons in your life you should be praying for. Who are those you see on the news you should be praying for? Pray especially for our politicians.
· Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn: Be with others where they are at. It is easy to do that on the rejoicing side of things, but it is even more important to be with those who mourn. You don't need to fix anyone or anything, just be there. In those moments You Are the Kingdom of God, being there is enough.
· Live in harmony with one another: We have all met them. They walk into any situation and can find something to complain about. They can throw a wet blanket on any good mood and curdle milk from 30 feet. We have met others also. They walk into any situation and seem to bring a feeling of safety, comfort, and often a smile. They are not out to change you, they are out to be with you. That is the Kingdom to which we are called to be.
· Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position: In Paul's day, social status was of paramount importance. "Can anything good come from Nazareth" was not just a slam against Jesus, it was a common way of looking at, and coming to conclusions about, others. We are more sophisticated than that. We find new inventive ways of judging others. It is the common thing to do. It is absolutely against the Kingdom of God.
· Do not be conceited: You have heard of people with "I" trouble. You know, the ones who cannot get through any conversation without using the word "I" an exorbitant number of times. Now the trend is to start everything with a small "i", ipod, iResponse, i this and i that. e.e.commings in so many of his poems uses the small "i" as a way of downplaying the self. The Kingdom has an "i" in it, but it is not central or first. It is not iKingdom, it is God's Kingdom. It is only when we get that, that your "i" will fit into that Kingdom.
· Do not repay anyone evil for evil: This goes back to not becoming that which we hate. In repaying evil for evil, we have become the very thing we don't like in the other. I say that in the midst of a political season where all the major media pundits are almost begging for things to get nastier. Vitriol sells, but in the end you end up eating it yourself and your right it tastes like ……….
· Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody: OK Paul, now you have gone a bit overboard. If you can swing this one you are not being real. I think you can do what is loving in the eyes of almost everyone, but not what is right in the eyes of everyone. Even Jesus torqued off his fair share of people and ended up on the cross for it. Christ not only came to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comfortable.
· If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone: OK Paul, now we are making a bit more sense. We cannot control what others might do or say or think, but we do have control over how we choose to live. Living at peace, as far as it is possible, is to bring the presence of the Kingdom into the world. That peace extends to creation as well as to creature. For to not include creation in that equation is to not live at peace with those who are to follow you in this life, including our own great grandchildren. Not living at peace with creation is as easy as taking candy from a baby, it is also just as vile.
· Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay, “says the Lord: It is amazing how many get to this part of Paul list and think, Oh goody, at least in the end, "they" will get "theirs." But wait a minute; how does God avenge, how does God repay? The answer is by going to the cross and even when Peter suggested that there might be another way, Jesus responded "get behind me Satan, for you do not have the ways of God in mind, but the ways of humanity." The ways of God always seem to land on the side of grace.
· On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink: What if the thrust of dealing with our enemy was to give them food and water? What if, instead of bombers we used cargo planes to drop food and supplies to the hungry? What if instead of a mother holding her dead son she was holding her fed son? How would this affect how much we had to spend on bombs and guns in the long run? I think it would be a real money saver, as well as a world and a soul saver.
· In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." There you go with those thoughts of revenge again!! Two thoughts on this quote taken from Proverbs 25. A common way of carrying hot coals was in a container on your head. Thus you would be providing a means for the other to prepare food for themselves and their families. A second thought is that by bringing the enemy to remorse with one's generosity, you will bring about change. In late Egyptian texts, standing with coals of fire on one's head is a rite of penitence. Your enemy has thus been both punished and reinstated as a friend. I think both providing for the other and allowing for reinstatement into the community is what is called for in this text.
· Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good: The only way to overcome evil is with good. Any attempt to overcome evil with force simply strengthens the evil. Good does not work right away, nor does it always leave us in charge, but in the long run your children and their children will be thankful. Good, as hinted to earlier brings about repentance. The word for repentance means to turn around. If you turn evil around you get live. (I know it is cheesy, but it works)