This week's text and sermon I preached... (audio)Romans 12:9-21
English Standard Version (ESV)
Marks of the True Christian
9(A) Let love be genuine.(B) Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10(C) Love one another with brotherly affection.(D) Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal,(E) be fervent in spirit,[a](F) serve the Lord. 12(G) Rejoice in hope,(H) be patient in tribulation,(I) be constant in prayer. 13(J) Contribute to the needs of the saints and(K) seek to show hospitality.
14(L) Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15(M) Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16(N) Live in harmony with one another.(O) Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.[b](P) Never be wise in your own sight. 17(Q) Repay no one evil for evil, but(R) give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18If possible, so far as it depends on you,(S) live peaceably with all. 19Beloved,(T) never avenge yourselves, but leave it[c] to the wrath of God, for it is written,(U) "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20To the contrary,(V) "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In 1824, a small group of young women in Paris felt a strong call to ministry and service amongst those in need of medical care. These 12 young Catholic women wished to serve those in greatest need, starting their own new and very unique order of nuns. They lived at a time of great conflict and distrust of the Church, especially the Catholic Church in France and a time of rampant illness, disease and poor sanitation. Most of the poor could not afford to go to the hospital and many saw hospitals as death traps. The poor often resorted to relatives for home healthcare, most of whom had no experience in tending the sick.
It is into this world, these brave young women sojourned. Popular belief at the time was that, if nuns left the safety and security of a convent, they were to return by nightfall. However, the needs of the sick could not be scheduled solely in daylight hours. The young sisters would stay on floor mats and tend to the sick all night, if need be. These sisters would tend not only to the patient, but to the patient’s whole family. If the mother was sick, they would care for the children and cook the meals and tend to any housework. If it were the father, they would work the land or his shop. They practiced a tireless, faithful hospitality… not in a church or a convent or a hospital, but they sought out those in need and when they found them, they did all that was needed and more.
The sisters broke the tradition too of going only to those within their faith tradition and they refused to offer their help upon contingency of belief or repentance of sins. Their radical love acted out in their “sisterly affection” was unmatched. And while the Catholic church was skeptical about granting them their own order, by the end of their first year, they had more than doubled in size and continued to grow. More sisters flocked to “associate with the lowly.”
These young women, who became known as the Sisters of Bon Secours, the sisters of good help, would go on to become a large order that established hospitals internationally, including throughout the United States. I worked at a Bon Secours hospital as a chaplain in seminary, and they continue their holistic ministry of seeking to show hospitality even today. They do not merely extend medical care to all those in need, regardless of ability to pay, but they will do all they can to serve the entire family of the patient in whatever way may be needed.
In this way, the Sisters continue to serve in a way that reflects Christ’s ministry in a way that so many hospitals, hotels… and churches… do not. They do not merely provide the highest level of hospitality to those who pass through their doors, but they seek out those in need. It is that seeking that is unique in Christ’s ministry and teaching. Try to imagine a gospel devoid of seeking. Jesus opens up a back room in his father’s carpentry shop and takes applications for 12 spots in his disciple visioning team. He tells these disciples that the son of man has come to save the lost who stop by his shop. He tells them stories. Once there was a shepherd who lost one of his sheep. He sat around all day and when the sheep never came back, he was very upset. A young man takes his inheritance early, squanders all his money in a foreign country and when he heads home, his father sees him coming and sits at the kitchen table till his son peeks his head in the door and gives him a disapproving look before hugging him.
What kind of Gospel is that? Where is the Jesus who seeks to save the lost? Where is the good shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep? Where is the prodigal son’s father who goes running out to his lost son? Where is the seeking? Where is the associating with the lowly? Without leaving the house, without getting out in the world, without turning over stones, without seeking, hospitality is just good customer service. It’s not “brotherly affection.” It’s not “associating with the lowly.” It’s letting the lowly associate with us. And it’s certainly not “overcoming evil with good.”
We worship a God who seeks us. It is the example he sets from the beginning of creation. Adam and Eve, for all their stupidity, know that their God is a seeking God. They go and hide. And sure enough, God comes looking for his children. The Bible is a history book… in that it is a history of the times God has gone looking for his people. As Presbyterians, we often baptize infants and small children. We do this as a symbolic act that before we ever profess faith or go seeking God… he is seeking us. It is one of the most deeply important reminders for us as Christians… that we worship a God who seeks us. And he sent his son to find us and to show us that same example, to seek out the lost, to seek to show hospitality.
As a freshman in college, I can only remember one or two care packages I received. One of them was a complete surprise. I received an air mail package from my home town. I couldn’t imagine who would send me an air mail package or why they would do it from only 2 hours away. I opened the box and found 2 dozen fresh chocolate chip cookies, made with love by my best friend’s mom. She had shipped them air mail so they’d still be fresh when I got them. More than cared for, I felt sought out. I felt found. I felt loved. That is seeking to show hospitality.
Many of us know that kind of love. Many of us have experienced the feeling of being sought after. This is a feeling, a knowledge and a hope that we cannot deprive another from feeling, from knowing, from sharing. In seeking to show hospitality, we show others the radical love of Christ in a way that we cannot do passively. We can be good people by being kind to those who walk through our door. But we cannot be good Christians, good disciples if we do not run out our own doors and go look for those who are lost or in need. We are to be a church on the move. And what is it we must do when we get our own doors? We must seek out those in need and seek to do everything we can for them. And there are even deeper needs than those of a lonely, hungry college student.
Emperor Julian of Rome once remarked of the early Christians that “the godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own.” In order to feed people who didn’t come to their churches and homes, the Christians had to leave their homes and go find these hungry people. And it was so common a practice and so radical a notion that even the emperor knew what this fledgling group was up to. It’s the Gospel manifest in the faith of a people who are convicted.
What is the Gospel if not a collection of the hope we are promised and the expectations we are given by a God who loves us? If the Gospel you profess is full of love, so too should be your life and faith. If the Gospel in which you believe is full of forgiveness, so too should your life be. If your Gospel is full of stories of seeking and saving the lost and seeking to show hospitality, shouldn’t your life be a story of the same?
The prophet Isaiah was big on hospitality. And his brand of it was not an easy one. If you don’t like being challenged in your lifestyle, stay out of Isaiah. It’s one of the bad neighborhoods of the Bible. If you decide you’re gonna read Isaiah, don’t go in there unprepared. Have your excuses ready. Be ready to defend your lifestyle choices with arguments about how much you need your creature comforts and expensive possessions to be happy, or how you need an expensive car because it’s reliable. And if you get backed into a corner, do what I so often do and pull out the big guns and be ready to say your biggest concern is the safety and security of your family. Because Isaiah is tough. Isaiah isn’t interested in excuses and good intentions.
Isaiah says we must not only make up a nice room for relatives and even the in-laws. Isaiah says we must not only give money to the homeless and provide them places to stay, low income housing and shelters. Isaiah says we have to invite the homeless into our own homes! Most of us get around that by living in nice neighborhoods and high rises where the poor dare not venture. We seek safety and refuge far more often than we seek to show hospitality to those in need.
The people with whom I worked in inner city Richmond moved into the worst area of town for just that reason. Richmond, like many cities, Denver included, is designed to minimize the interaction those in different socio-economic groups must have with one another. There are skywalks that connect office buildings so you don’t ever have to risk running into a homeless person. Not only are the bad neighborhoods separated from the good ones by geography, but even the highways that pass through have strategically placed trees, planted by the city, that hide the lower income neighborhoods from view.
This had to be pointed out to me by my mentor there. As I drove from my safe home in a neighborhood that had one car break in over the course of a year to this neighborhood where homicide was a daily reality, I had never noticed all the carefully constructed barriers that kept me not just safe from crime, but safe from ever seeing the need. The people who moved into this neighborhood found the need because they were seeking. I hadn’t even thought to look.
We have had 9 baptisms this year at Wellshire. Each is a reminder that God seeks us. Each is a reminder that we are called to seek. My prayer for each of you as you leave today, a church on the move, that your eyes be wide open to need, always seeking those in need. I pray that when you look, you find everything but the excuses that will keep you from showing hospitality to all. Seek to serve. Amen.
English Standard Version (ESV)
Marks of the True Christian
9(A) Let love be genuine.(B) Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10(C) Love one another with brotherly affection.(D) Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal,(E) be fervent in spirit,[a](F) serve the Lord. 12(G) Rejoice in hope,(H) be patient in tribulation,(I) be constant in prayer. 13(J) Contribute to the needs of the saints and(K) seek to show hospitality.
14(L) Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15(M) Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16(N) Live in harmony with one another.(O) Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.[b](P) Never be wise in your own sight. 17(Q) Repay no one evil for evil, but(R) give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18If possible, so far as it depends on you,(S) live peaceably with all. 19Beloved,(T) never avenge yourselves, but leave it[c] to the wrath of God, for it is written,(U) "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20To the contrary,(V) "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In 1824, a small group of young women in Paris felt a strong call to ministry and service amongst those in need of medical care. These 12 young Catholic women wished to serve those in greatest need, starting their own new and very unique order of nuns. They lived at a time of great conflict and distrust of the Church, especially the Catholic Church in France and a time of rampant illness, disease and poor sanitation. Most of the poor could not afford to go to the hospital and many saw hospitals as death traps. The poor often resorted to relatives for home healthcare, most of whom had no experience in tending the sick.
It is into this world, these brave young women sojourned. Popular belief at the time was that, if nuns left the safety and security of a convent, they were to return by nightfall. However, the needs of the sick could not be scheduled solely in daylight hours. The young sisters would stay on floor mats and tend to the sick all night, if need be. These sisters would tend not only to the patient, but to the patient’s whole family. If the mother was sick, they would care for the children and cook the meals and tend to any housework. If it were the father, they would work the land or his shop. They practiced a tireless, faithful hospitality… not in a church or a convent or a hospital, but they sought out those in need and when they found them, they did all that was needed and more.
The sisters broke the tradition too of going only to those within their faith tradition and they refused to offer their help upon contingency of belief or repentance of sins. Their radical love acted out in their “sisterly affection” was unmatched. And while the Catholic church was skeptical about granting them their own order, by the end of their first year, they had more than doubled in size and continued to grow. More sisters flocked to “associate with the lowly.”
These young women, who became known as the Sisters of Bon Secours, the sisters of good help, would go on to become a large order that established hospitals internationally, including throughout the United States. I worked at a Bon Secours hospital as a chaplain in seminary, and they continue their holistic ministry of seeking to show hospitality even today. They do not merely extend medical care to all those in need, regardless of ability to pay, but they will do all they can to serve the entire family of the patient in whatever way may be needed.
In this way, the Sisters continue to serve in a way that reflects Christ’s ministry in a way that so many hospitals, hotels… and churches… do not. They do not merely provide the highest level of hospitality to those who pass through their doors, but they seek out those in need. It is that seeking that is unique in Christ’s ministry and teaching. Try to imagine a gospel devoid of seeking. Jesus opens up a back room in his father’s carpentry shop and takes applications for 12 spots in his disciple visioning team. He tells these disciples that the son of man has come to save the lost who stop by his shop. He tells them stories. Once there was a shepherd who lost one of his sheep. He sat around all day and when the sheep never came back, he was very upset. A young man takes his inheritance early, squanders all his money in a foreign country and when he heads home, his father sees him coming and sits at the kitchen table till his son peeks his head in the door and gives him a disapproving look before hugging him.
What kind of Gospel is that? Where is the Jesus who seeks to save the lost? Where is the good shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep? Where is the prodigal son’s father who goes running out to his lost son? Where is the seeking? Where is the associating with the lowly? Without leaving the house, without getting out in the world, without turning over stones, without seeking, hospitality is just good customer service. It’s not “brotherly affection.” It’s not “associating with the lowly.” It’s letting the lowly associate with us. And it’s certainly not “overcoming evil with good.”
We worship a God who seeks us. It is the example he sets from the beginning of creation. Adam and Eve, for all their stupidity, know that their God is a seeking God. They go and hide. And sure enough, God comes looking for his children. The Bible is a history book… in that it is a history of the times God has gone looking for his people. As Presbyterians, we often baptize infants and small children. We do this as a symbolic act that before we ever profess faith or go seeking God… he is seeking us. It is one of the most deeply important reminders for us as Christians… that we worship a God who seeks us. And he sent his son to find us and to show us that same example, to seek out the lost, to seek to show hospitality.
As a freshman in college, I can only remember one or two care packages I received. One of them was a complete surprise. I received an air mail package from my home town. I couldn’t imagine who would send me an air mail package or why they would do it from only 2 hours away. I opened the box and found 2 dozen fresh chocolate chip cookies, made with love by my best friend’s mom. She had shipped them air mail so they’d still be fresh when I got them. More than cared for, I felt sought out. I felt found. I felt loved. That is seeking to show hospitality.
Many of us know that kind of love. Many of us have experienced the feeling of being sought after. This is a feeling, a knowledge and a hope that we cannot deprive another from feeling, from knowing, from sharing. In seeking to show hospitality, we show others the radical love of Christ in a way that we cannot do passively. We can be good people by being kind to those who walk through our door. But we cannot be good Christians, good disciples if we do not run out our own doors and go look for those who are lost or in need. We are to be a church on the move. And what is it we must do when we get our own doors? We must seek out those in need and seek to do everything we can for them. And there are even deeper needs than those of a lonely, hungry college student.
Emperor Julian of Rome once remarked of the early Christians that “the godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own.” In order to feed people who didn’t come to their churches and homes, the Christians had to leave their homes and go find these hungry people. And it was so common a practice and so radical a notion that even the emperor knew what this fledgling group was up to. It’s the Gospel manifest in the faith of a people who are convicted.
What is the Gospel if not a collection of the hope we are promised and the expectations we are given by a God who loves us? If the Gospel you profess is full of love, so too should be your life and faith. If the Gospel in which you believe is full of forgiveness, so too should your life be. If your Gospel is full of stories of seeking and saving the lost and seeking to show hospitality, shouldn’t your life be a story of the same?
The prophet Isaiah was big on hospitality. And his brand of it was not an easy one. If you don’t like being challenged in your lifestyle, stay out of Isaiah. It’s one of the bad neighborhoods of the Bible. If you decide you’re gonna read Isaiah, don’t go in there unprepared. Have your excuses ready. Be ready to defend your lifestyle choices with arguments about how much you need your creature comforts and expensive possessions to be happy, or how you need an expensive car because it’s reliable. And if you get backed into a corner, do what I so often do and pull out the big guns and be ready to say your biggest concern is the safety and security of your family. Because Isaiah is tough. Isaiah isn’t interested in excuses and good intentions.
Isaiah says we must not only make up a nice room for relatives and even the in-laws. Isaiah says we must not only give money to the homeless and provide them places to stay, low income housing and shelters. Isaiah says we have to invite the homeless into our own homes! Most of us get around that by living in nice neighborhoods and high rises where the poor dare not venture. We seek safety and refuge far more often than we seek to show hospitality to those in need.
The people with whom I worked in inner city Richmond moved into the worst area of town for just that reason. Richmond, like many cities, Denver included, is designed to minimize the interaction those in different socio-economic groups must have with one another. There are skywalks that connect office buildings so you don’t ever have to risk running into a homeless person. Not only are the bad neighborhoods separated from the good ones by geography, but even the highways that pass through have strategically placed trees, planted by the city, that hide the lower income neighborhoods from view.
This had to be pointed out to me by my mentor there. As I drove from my safe home in a neighborhood that had one car break in over the course of a year to this neighborhood where homicide was a daily reality, I had never noticed all the carefully constructed barriers that kept me not just safe from crime, but safe from ever seeing the need. The people who moved into this neighborhood found the need because they were seeking. I hadn’t even thought to look.
We have had 9 baptisms this year at Wellshire. Each is a reminder that God seeks us. Each is a reminder that we are called to seek. My prayer for each of you as you leave today, a church on the move, that your eyes be wide open to need, always seeking those in need. I pray that when you look, you find everything but the excuses that will keep you from showing hospitality to all. Seek to serve. Amen.
3 comments:
I like this. A huge reason I root for the Catholic church is the nuns. And that's Elliot's verse.
I do admire the nuns. I didn't know that was Elliot's verse.
Romans 12:16
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