Keeping Your Enemies Close

Jesu Juva

Romans 12:9-21                                                                 

August 30, 2020

Proper 17A                                  

 Dear saints of our Savior~ 

          I keep my friends close, but my enemies even closer.  I don’t know who first coined that phrase about friends and enemies.  But on the surface, it seems like a pretty good strategy—especially where enemies are concerned.  Keeping enemies close means you can keep an eye on them. It helps you anticipate their next move.  And it might enable you to launch a preemptive first-strike if necessary.  Keeping your enemies close is good advice.         

          Today’s reading from Romans 12 contains even more good reasons to keep your enemies close.  In fact, it’s a reminder that, while it’s good to have friends, it’s even better for the Christian to have enemies.  For Jesus never said, “Blessed is the man who is loved by his wife, cherished by his children, and admired by all.”  But Jesus did say, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matt. 5:11).  The fact is that enemies can be even more of a blessing than friends and family. And, if that’s true, then blessed are you, for your life has its fair share of enemies—and if not now, then soon.

          Romans chapter 12 isn’t only about enemies.  This section of Romans has to do with living out your Christian faith.  In last week’s reading from earlier in the same chapter, we were told to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.”  Today we get some straight talk on just how holy, sacrificial living is done. 

          And it’s done very simply.  Here as Paul expresses how we Christians are to live our lives, motivated by the mercies of God, it’s refreshingly sweet and simple.  He writes:  Let love be genuine.  Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints.  Show hospitality.  Overcome evil with good.  Short, sweet, and simple.  It’s all easier said than done, to be sure.  But there’s really no mystery—no great surprise in any of that.

          What is surprising here—what really goes against our every instinct—is what Paul writes concerning our enemies.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Repay no one evil for evil.  Never avenge yourselves.  Paul even quotes an old Proverb about enemies: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  For by doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.

          It’s good for you to have enemies because enemies provide you with the perfect opportunity to live out your Christian faith.  Your enemies provide the perfect opportunity for you to walk the walk and talk the talk—to be doers of the Word.  Thanks to your enemies, you can provide food and drink to those who wish that you would starve.  You can provide clothing for those who would like nothing better than to strip you of your possessions and your good reputation.  You can defend those who attack you.  Thanks to your enemies, you get plenty of practice at refraining from revenge and overcoming evil with good.  Thank God for enemies.  For without enemies, when would you ever have the chance to fulfill the law of Christian love?  This is why Christians keep their friends close, but their enemies even closer.  With enemies like these, who needs friends?

          There’s one other good reason for you to keep your enemies close:  they are a constant reminder of how much we admire ourselves.  It’s true.  We all think quite highly of ourselves—especially compared to our enemies.  We’re proud of our progress in virtuous living.  We’re amazed at how thoroughly we’ve cleaned up our act—confident that we’ve pretty well mastered the art of Christian living.  I thank thee, God, that I’m not like everybody else—abortionists and arsonists, rebels and rioters.

          When you catch yourself thinking along those lines, then do this:  Think about your enemies.  Take note of your thoughts and feelings toward that person who has wronged you—that person who has cursed you, twisted your words, lied about you, stolen from you, cheated you, cheated on you, treated you like excrement.  How do you feel about that person?  What you think and feel about your enemies tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth about just how far you’ve missed the mark—how uncharitable, how unchristian, how unloving and unforgiving we really are.  And without bona-fide, grade A enemies, we’d never know that terrible truth about ourselves.  It’s good to have enemies, for they are painful reminders of the sin and death that dwells deep within us.

          For you and me there’s to be no revenge, no retaliation, no retribution.  Repentance is what we need.  We need to repent of how much we love ourselves and for how much we hate our enemies.  You are never more alone than when you are alone with your sin.  But you never have a bigger cheering section than when you repent.  For if the angels of God rejoice over one sinner who repents, then surely the angels are rejoicing all around you—and you owe it all to your enemies!

          Well, not quite.  For behind every enemy you face and behind every cross you bear stands Jesus, the Son of the living God.  He knows about enemies.  And He knows about crosses.  In fact, as the nails went into His hands and feet, He prayed for His enemies:  “Father, forgive them.”  And we are, by nature, God’s enemies.  “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  But in Jesus Christ God shows us what it really means to love your enemies.  Enemies like us never had it so good.  God’s love in Jesus is the kind of love that feeds you when you’re hungry, gives you who are thirsty a drink, clothes you when you’ve got nothing, and keeps right on doing it even while we kick, and scream and fuss like immature little children.  But children—well, that’s what we are.  Children of God, holy and dearly loved, died-for, forgiven and redeemed—all with a resurrection promise.  That is what we are—we who know the love of Jesus.

          If you want to know what God is really like, look at Jesus.  Look at how Jesus lived while He was here on earth—what He said and did for those thirty-three years while living here in the enemy camp.  That shows us who God really is.  For Jesus was not overcome by evil; Jesus overcame evil with good.

          Jesus is the friend of sinners, but He was the enemy of so-called saints—Sadducees and Pharisees and teachers of the law who fought tooth and nail to bring Him down.  But Jesus shouldered it all, joyfully and willingly, so that He might have you as His own.  Jesus, who overcame evil with good, was overcome by evil men.  On Good Friday we see our Savior in the hands of angry sinners—spider-like men who wrapped Jesus in a web of their lies, nailed Him to the cross, and drained His blood.

          But that blood once drained from the corpse on the cross now fills the chalice.  And the resurrected Jesus—the living Christ—now offers you the blessings and benefits of His body and His blood in the Lord’s Supper.  “This is my body, given for you.  This cup is the New Testament in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  Here at this altar sinners get to eat and drink with the Friend of sinners.  In this holy meal Jesus overcomes all the evil in you with all the good He is.  And all that good—He gives away to you as a gift.  And when that happens, angels rejoice, and we are reminded again of the simple truth that God is love. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Earth Crammed with Heaven

Jesu Juva

Romans 12:1-8                                                                   

August 23, 2020

Proper 16A                                               

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          The poet, Elizabeth Barret Browning, once wrote this little verse: 

Earth’s crammed with heaven/ and every common bush afire with God/ but only he who sees takes off his shoes.  Do you see what she’s saying?  Earth is crammed with heaven.  God comes down from heaven and fills the earth with His glory.  But only those who see it take off their shoes.  That’s an allusion to the call of Moses.  You remember it.  Moses was tending the flocks of his father-in-law, when he noticed a bush that was burning, but was not consumed.  And from that burning bush the Lord spoke to Moses—told Moses to take off his sandals because the place where he was standing was holy ground. 

          I suspect you know a thing or two about holy ground.  Holy ground is where God has located Himself—where God speaks and acts to bless and forgive His people.  For most of us, this is holy ground.  This is sacred space.  There’s the font where God enlarges His family through the washing of Holy Baptism.  There’s the altar from which God feeds and nourishes His family with the Holy Supper.  Right here’s the pulpit from which the voice of God, spoken through His servants, calls sinners to repentance and comforts them with blood-bought absolution.  The flickering, flaming candles behind me aren’t there to set the mood, but to declare the bright holiness of God.  If your definition of holy ground is found within these four walls, your definition is correct; but your definition is also far too small.

          Hear again the poet:  Earth’s crammed with heaven/ and every common bush afire with God/ but only he who sees takes off his shoes.  Our readings this morning invite us to be among those who see and take off their shoes.  They invite us to see earth . . . crammed with heaven.  Consider the Old Testament reading.  Here we have a vision from Isaiah.  “Look,” he cries.  Look to Abraham and Sarah—a little old lady and a little old man, who didn’t have any children, who spent most of their lives worshipping the sun and the moon and the stars.  But then God called them and crammed their lives with descendants as numerous as the stars, and with heavenly blessings that now extend all the way to you, right here and now.  Consider today’s gospel reading, where a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth walks with His disciples through the region of Caesarea Philippi.  He walks and talks like an ordinary man.  But Peter is given eyes to see.  Peter sees earth crammed with heaven:  “You are the Christ,” he confesses, “the Son of the living God.”

          In today’s epistle reading, Paul turns his eyes to the church at Rome.  And when Paul looks at that little group of believers he sees earth crammed with heaven—a glorious and holy church, one body in Christ.  Now, the Roman Christians would not have been glorious to the world around them—much like us.  Not many of them were rich or powerful.  They gathered together in small house churches, their lives a far cry from the glories of Rome that fill our history books.  And yet, as Paul looks at these saints, he sees earth crammed with heaven. 

          Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  Here, notice what Paul says about sacrifice.  The sacrificial worship of the Old Testament has now been transformed.  No longer does the worshipper offer God the life of another creature; he gives God his own living self!  Your body is a living sacrifice—a living, breathing, walking, talking, loving, serving sacrifice of praise.  Since all people have bodies, all can sacrifice.  And since you’re never without your body, that means that your worshiping—your sacrificing—is happening all the time, constantly.  And since your body is visible, all of your worshiping and sacrificing becomes a witness to God—a proclamation of His praise.

          This is deep stuff.  Do you get it?  Do you see?  God in Christ has declared you (through faith) to be holy and acceptable; so that now your whole life lived in the flesh is a living sacrifice of praise.  Your work, your play, your vocations—at home, on campus, in the cubicle, mowing the lawn—all of it a living sacrifice, a thank-offering to God.  You could say that your whole life is worship.  Your whole body—baptized into Christ—has been crammed full of heaven so that everywhere you go is transformed into holy ground.   All the common places you visit are set afire with God.  That doesn’t mean that you’re quoting Bible verses all the time; but it does mean that God is using you to cram earth with heaven—to season the earth with holiness.

          This means that worship isn’t just about what happens here on Sunday morning.  Spiritual worship goes on in the body, in your day to day life, when you rise in the morning and when you lay down at night.  This is why the catechism reminds you to make the sign of the cross and speak the invocation at such times.  Every day a day of worship—not just Sunday.  Life is worship—being a living sacrifice.  This is more than just “doing good works,” which sounds like drudgery.  This means living large before God—embracing His gifts, putting them to use, serving others, taking a few risks, and giving yourself away because you have nothing to lose.

          Now, since your earthly body has been crammed full of heaven—this requires a new way of thinking.  Paul writes about this new way of thinking:  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Beloved in the Lord, this means that you don’t follow the crowd.  You may be in the world, but you’re not of the world.  You have an earthly body, but your body has been filled with heaven.  This means you use your body now in anticipation of the life of the world to come.  It means that you flee from all sexual immorality—all the jealousy and idolatry, all hatred and rage, all the violence and venom that would defile your body.  You don’t conform to that.  That’s not who you are, you baptized child of God.  Instead, you are transformed by the renewal of you mind.  You are given the mind of Christ, to discern the will of God and live it.

          “Earth’s crammed with heaven,” the poet once said.  “But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”  And there’s the trouble with you and me.  We don’t see how God is using us as His living sacrifices.  Paul, it seems, was a little concerned that some of the Roman Christians would take too much pride in how God was using them.  He warns them, “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought.”  But I think you and I have the opposite problem.  We may see God doing great things through others, but not in us—not in our hum-drum lives.  Too often we think that what we say and what we do are insignificant.  That nobody notices—nobody cares.  We think that our words don’t matter and that our witness to others is invisible.  So what do we do? We just go along to get along.  We start conforming to this dying world. 

          But God declares otherwise—declares your baptized body to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.  Earth is crammed with heaven—and you are the heaven—light of the world, salt of the earth.  Your work and your words and your witness have eternal significance.  And even if you can’t see that right now, then at least trust the words and promises of God.  God has brought about your salvation in Jesus Christ.  He offered the perfect sacrifice, on the cross, that takes away your sin—a sacrifice that forgives your blindness and opens your eyes to see the working of God.  He’s at work in your life . . . for others . . . in this world.  Earth’s crammed with heaven.  Do you see it?

          God is using you; but isn’t using only you. Spiritual worship is a team sport.  Think about the worship that happens here on Sunday morning and all the people who serve to make it happen.  Pastors, singers, ushers, elders, musicians, altar guild—a team working together as one.  Just like a body has many diverse members.  Not everyone is the same as the next.  We have different gifts, but we all are gifted in some way.  And God uses each of those gifts to accomplish His purposes.

          Our lives of worship begin right here in the divine service, in the congregation.  And among the members of this congregation I hope you can see what I see.  I see living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.  I see spiritual worship that continues long after we blow out the candles and turn off the lights and lock the doors.  I see earth crammed with heaven. We may not be a well-oiled machine; but we are the body of Christ and the baptized family of God.  And by His grace, wherever we go:  Earth is crammed with heaven/ and every common bush set afire with God. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.