The Real Thing
a sermon based on Romans 12: 9-21
by David G. Rogne
The historian, Will Durant, once confessed that he had
sought happiness in knowledge, and found only disillusionment. He then looked
for happiness in travel and found weariness; in wealth, but found discord and
worry. He looked for happiness in his writing and was only fatigued. One day at
a train station he saw a woman waiting in a tiny car with a sleeping child in
her arms. A man descended from the train, gently kissed her, softly kissed the
baby, so as not to awaken him and they drove off happily together. Then it
struck him. Happiness is found in relationships.
This was also the conclusion of the Apostle Paul. In the scripture which was
read for us earlier, Paul suggests that life is found in love, and love is lived
out in relationships. Without any indication of pattern, Paul lays before his
readers a rather random list of the ways love is expressed in a variety of
relationships. He says, "Let love be genuine." If one wants to give expression
to the real thing, these are some of the ways genuine love is shown.
The first way love is expressed is in ethical actions. He says: "Hate what is
evil, hold fast to what is good." When Harry Emerson Fosdick was at the height
of his influence as the senior minister of the Riverside Church, New York City,
he was making a tour of the Holy Land and other countries of the Near East. He
was invited to give an address before the American University in Beirut,
Lebanon. Among the members of the student body were citizens of many countries
and representatives of some 16 different religions. What could he say, he
wondered, that would be relevant or even of interest to so mixed and varied a
group? He began by saying, "I do not ask any of you here to change your
religion; but I do ask all of you to face up to this question: 'What is your
religion doing to your character? And that is the bottom line in religion, isn't
it? How does what you believe affect your conduct?
When Abraham Lincoln was a young lawyer, he happened to witness a slave
auction during which a black family was being broken up, with members being sold
to different individuals. Witnessing the agony of the slaves, Lincoln commented
that slavery was an evil. "If I ever get the chance to hit this thing," he said,
"I'll hit it, and hit it hard." When he became president, that is exactly what
he did.
Love is expressed ethically by hating what is evil and holding fast to what
is right.
Paul next has advice for expressing love among fellow Christians. Show
affection as you would to your family, he says. The congregation of the Church
of the Savior in Oklahoma City received this letter from one of its members:
"Thank you, Church, for being there when I walked in the front door 7 years ago.
Thank you for believing in the goodness of humankind Thank you for reaching out
to me when I first came through your doors. Thank you for being just what you
were when I was alone, afraid, divorced, feeling somewhat guilty and not sure at
all who or what I was. You have touched my life, and I have grown as a result of
it. You have loved me in ways I didn't want to be loved. I thank God for you
every day. You told me I was okay, you invited me to stretch and grow. You
encouraged me to try. You gave me strength and courage to struggle and break
free of old chains. You taught me about the living God." There is a church that
knew how to be family to at least one of its members. May we reach out and do
the same.
"And outdo one another in showing honor," says Paul. A reporter once asked
Babe Ruth how it felt to be such an honored baseball player. In response, Ruth
said, "Most of the people who have really counted in my life were not famous.
Nobody ever heard of them, except those who knew and loved them. I knew an old
minister once. His hair was white, his face shone. I have written my name on
thousands of baseballs in my life.
The old minister wrote his name on just a few simple hearts. How I envy him.
He was not trying to please himself. Fame never came to him. I am listed as a
famous home-runner, yet beside that obscure minister, who was so good and so
wise, I never got to first base." That's what Paul meant. It does not detract
one iota from our position when we honor those who have contributed to our lives
and the life of the community. It is an expression of love.
Paul also has some things to say about our relationship with the Lord. "Do
not lag in zeal," he says, "be ardent in spirit." Claire Booth Luce was a
well-known playwright and later U.S. Ambassador to Italy. She became a Roman
Catholic late in life. Like many later converts, her enthusiasm and zeal for her
new faith knew no bounds. Once a reporter saw her in earnest conversation with
the Pope. The reporter crept closer, wondering what important issues they might
be discussing. Finally, he was close enough to hear the Pope saying to Mrs.
Luce, "But you don't understand, Mrs. Luce. I already AM a Catholic." You show
love for the Lord by telling others what your faith means to you.
Our love for the Lord is also shown by perseverance in prayer, says Paul. We
are not to lose heart when things don't quickly go our way. I remember reading
about a young prize fighter in Australia before there were many rules governing
boxing. He wrote to his parents that he was to face a tough opponent. After the
match he telegraphed his folks, "Won easily in 84 rounds." He persevered and
won. Sometimes, when the answers do not come, and our faith is sorely tested,
all we can do is hold on in prayer and persevere.
Holding on is what Paul seems to be suggesting when he reminds us that love
for God is expressed as patience in suffering. The career of Carson McCullers,
the American novelist, was summed up by one critic at the time of the writer's
death as "a vocation of pain." Much of her art, the critic commented, "seemed to
have flowed from her own tortured life." Before she was 29, Carson McCullers had
suffered 3 strokes which paralyzed her left side. Discouraged, she imagined she
could never write again. But gradually, a page a day, she resumed her work. The
ever-present pain intensified in her late years. Her husband later committed
suicide, and illness made her a virtual cripple. In a rare mention of her
troubles she said: "Sometimes I think God got me mixed up with Job. But Job
never cursed God, and neither have I. I carry on." Patient in suffering.
But "rejoice in hope," says Paul, for hope is what keeps us going, and helps
us to overcome. Dr. William Bucholz tells the story of overhearing two
physicians discussing a paper they were to deliver at a national meeting of
cancer specialists. One was complaining bitterly, "I don't understand it, Bob.
We use the same drugs, the same dosage, and the same schedule of treatment. Yet
I get a 22% recovery rate and you get a 74% recovery rate. How do you explain
that?" The other responded, "We both use Etoposide, Platinol, Oncovin, and
Hydroxyurea. You put those letters together and tell people that you are giving
them EPOH. I put them together in reverse order and explain to them that they
are receiving HOPE. I emphasize that they have a chance." Hope is what makes it
possible for us to look to the future, even in dark times, and to rejoice.
Paul also says that love is to be expressed toward those who have wronged us.
He says, "Bless those who persecute you." Invariably, when we have suffered at
the hands of someone else, we are tempted to foster thoughts of revenge. I read
about a fugitive scientist from a horror picture who dreamed up a serum that
brought inanimate objects to life. He tried it out on a statue of a great
general in the city park. Sure enough, the statue gave a quiver and the general,
creaking a bit in the joints, climbed down from the pedestal. The scientist was
overjoyed. "I have given you life," he exulted. "Now tell me, what is the first
thing you are going to do with it?" "That's easy," rasped the General. "I'm
going to get a gun and settle accounts with about two million pigeons."
Revenge is tempting, but it destroys harmony and perpetuates rancor, so Paul
says, "Do not repay evil for evil," (but) "bless those who persecute you." That
is asking a lot of human nature, but it's the only way of stopping the rippling
effect of evil in society. The Jewish community had a similar mandate in their
faith, which they found it difficult to observe during the pogroms under the
Russian Czar. One evening the people of the community were gathered around their
rabbi as his son, Mendel, asked the question, "Is there a blessing for the
Czar?", the ruler who was persecuting them. The whole group waited and listened
attentively, and the rabbi responded, "May God bless and keep the Czar." The
rabbi paused and then concluded, "Yes, keep him, far, far away from us."
Is it easy to bless those who have wronged us? No, it is not. But Paul has
set out to illustrate some of the ways in which love is to be expressed. And,
inevitably, we are going to come into contact with those who give us reason to
hold a grudge. If we succumb to it, our own lives will be hemmed in, and we will
be less happy for it. I know a woman who was displeased with her son's choice
of a wife. "If you marry her, don't expect me to come to the wedding," said the
mother. The son did marry the woman, and his mother has never invited them to
her house or seen her grandchildren. Everybody is hurting, and no one is
satisfied. Clearly, love is not being expressed. "Live in harmony with one
another," says Paul, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."
We show love to others, even those who have hurt us, when we can enter into what
they feel and feel it with them.
Paul concludes his list almost where he began; "Do not be overcome by evil,"
he says, "but overcome evil with good." The evidence of God's presence in our
lives is not found in our being exempted from ordeals, but in God giving us the
ability to overcome those things that trouble us.
In an article about Eleanor Roosevelt, columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "She
became a great lady, not because she was a first lady, but because she was able,
through enormous will, to turn her pain into strength, to turn disappointment
into purpose. The facts, just the facts, of her life might have defeated any of
us." As a child she wore a brace for her back, was called an ugly duckling by
her mother, and became an orphan at age 10. As a woman she cared for her
husband, Franklin, when he was stricken with polio and after 10 years of
marriage and 6 children, saw him fall in love with another woman. Yet, in spite
of all this, she got involved in programs to help the poor, supported civil
rights when it was still an unpopular cause, promoted women in government, and
worked for human rights through the United Nations. Arthur Schlesinger paid
tribute to her when he wrote: "Her life was both ordeal and fulfillment. It
combined vulnerability and stoicism, pathos and pride, frustration and
accomplishment, sadness and happiness." She had managed "not to be overcome by
evil, but to overcome evil with good."
"Let love be genuine," says Paul. He has tried to show us what that means.
When we learn to express it in all our relationships, what the world gets to see
is the genuine article: we are giving them a glimpse of the real thing.
