The Three Relationships (part 2)

"The Three Relationships"  (part 2)
Romans 12:9-21


Last week I started a three part sermon series on these words in Paul's letter to the church in Rome.  This part of the letter is about the three kinds of relationships that make up our daily living.  There's the relationship we have with ourselves.  There's the relationships we have with people we like.  And there are the relationships we have with people we don't like or don't get along with.

Of course these relationships can get messy and overlap.  We have to have a relationship with ourselves.  But even though you have to have a relationship with yourself, you may not like yourself some of the time.  So you end up being on two lists at the same time.  Or there are other people with whom you have a relationship that you like some of the time and don't like the rest of the time.  They may go back and forth between two lists.

Up until this point in Paul's letter to the Roman Christians, he has been wading through some thick theological stuff.  He's trying to make the gospel of Jesus Christ clear to two different audiences at the same time:  Jews who have converted to Christianity; and, non-Jews who have become Christians, but are trying to figure out what it is that they just got themselves into.

So, for 11 chapters in this lengthy letter, Paul has given his readers a crash course on Christian theology.  Then with chapter 12, Paul makes a shift and wades into more practical stuff.  Relationships.  That's got to be easier to understand, right?  Rather than continue on about justification by faith, sin and sanctification, Paul rows out into the smoother waters of basic human relationships.

In essence, what Paul is doing is saying, "Look, there's a lot of basic theology you have to understand about God and what God was doing in Jesus Christ.  Then you have to understand how all that theology provides the foundation for your relationships with yourselves and each other.  This is theology, and this is how that theology works out in everyday life."

Last week I talked about our relationship with our self.  Paul's advice here was four-fold:  run from evil; don't be a quitter, be a prayer; keep yourself from burnout by being fueled by the Holy Spirit; and don't puff yourself up.

This week there are three characteristics, says Paul, that should be part of our relationship with others we like--especially if those others are fellow Christians.  If we're going to get along with others in the church, and by those relationships bear witness to Christ, then there needs to be three distinctive qualities.

First, says Paul, "Let love be genuine."  The word love here, in the Greek language that Paul wrote, is the word "agape."  Many of you probably know that agape was a little used Greek word that the early church took as their own and redefined it as the love that God has for us through Christ.  It is that kind of love that keeps loving no matter what you get in return for that love.  It is a kind of love that is willing to sacrifice the self in major ways for the other.

A college boy brought a framed picture of his girlfriend to a photography shop because he wanted to get another copy of the picture.  The shop owner removed the picture from the frame, and the boy noticed there was writing on the back.  It said:  "My dearest Jimmy, I love you with all my heart--I love you more and more each day--I will love you forever."  It was signed, "Marsha."  Underneath was a P.S., "If we should ever break up I want this picture back."

Agape love is not that kind of love.  It's not something you can just turn on and turn off.  This kind of love isn't a product you manufacture--like saying, "I'm going to be more loving today," and then trying to manufacture that.  It's more a fruit--something that grows out of something else.  For Paul, that something else is faith.  Faith in God that comes to action in love.  Therefore, this kind of love is built on something more solid than just what we can pull out of our own hats.

Love does not come from doing something; it comes from being with somebody, and that somebody is the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, through our faith, inspires us with that same kind of love that God has for us, so that we can turn around and love our brothers and sisters in the faith the same way.

A police officer pulled a driver aside and asked for his license and registration. "What's wrong, officer," the driver asked. "I didn't go through any red lights, and I certainly wasn't speeding."
"No, you weren't," said the officer, "but I saw you waving your fist as you swerved around the lady driving in the left lane.  I further observed your flushed and angry face as you shouted at the driver of the Hummer who cut you off.  Then I witnessed how you pounded your steering wheel and cussed when the traffic came to a stop near the bridge."
"Is that a crime, officer?" the man asked.
"No," the policeman said, "but when I saw the ‘Jesus loves you and so do I’ bumper sticker on the car, I figured this car had to be stolen."

And that's what Paul said was the true mark of this kind of agape love--that it's genuine.  The Greek word Paul used for genuine is anhypokritos.  It's actually the base word hypokritos with a prefix.  Hypokritos is the word we get our word hypocrite or hypocritical from.  A hypokritos in that Greek world was an actor on a stage, someone who was only playing a role, hiding behind the personage of the character they were portraying on the stage.  Being one person, but pretending to be someone else.

A hypokritos was also someone who is living in contradiction to himself/herself.  Their outer persona is a contradiction to who they truly are inside.

The prefix "an" means against.  So Paul is saying that the love we have for those we like and are our brothers and sisters in the faith has to be anhypokritos--that is, against hypocrisy.  Love that is two-faced isn't love at all.  In fact, that kind of duplicity in love undermines the whole spirit of the church and the relationships within the church.

There was a despicable scoundrel, whose face was twisted from the kind of life he had led.  He chanced to meet a young woman who was the image of outer and inner beauty, from her relationship with Christ.  The wretch of a man fell in love with the woman.  But he knew she would never love him from the way he looked and his awful past.  So he put on the mask of a handsome and better man and began to win the young woman over to his love.

And it worked!  They were in love.  They were to be married.  But some of the criminals of his past caught up to the masked man.  In front of his beloved, they challenged him to come clean and take off the mask--show her who he really was.

Dejected, the man sadly looked at the ground and slipped off the mask.   As he looked up, the past co-horts of the man gasped.  His face had changed to look exactly like the mask.  He had been changed by the genuine love that only a relationship to the Holy Spirit can create.  "Let your love be genuine."

Secondly, Paul writes that in our relationships with those we like, and are part of our Christian community, we should "practice hospitality."

There is a connection between genuine love and hospitality.  Hospitality is the kind of loving friendship that is extended to people outside your circle of friendship.  There is a code of hospitality that extends back into the ancient Hebrew culture.  If you take a sojourner, a foreigner, into your tent, you are to extend that person hospitality.  That is you are to give them a place to stay, food to eat, care for their wounds, even protect them with your life.

We show this kind of hospitality to our fellow Christian sojourners, because we were taken into God's tent, so-to-speak, through Christ, when we were in need.  Through Christ, God took care of us, healed us, protected us from the world.  That's what we do for each other.  That's hospitality.

Princeton Theological Seminary once conducted what they called "The Good Samaritan Study."  They got 40 seminary students to agree to give a practice sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan.  They were held in one building, and when it was their turn, they were told to go to another nearby building to present their practice sermon.

On the way over, the students passed a man groaning, slumped over in a doorway.  He was a plant who was just acting.  Six of every ten seminarians who passed the groaning man went right by, ignoring him.  The fact that they were preaching a sermon on the Good Samaritan had no effect in their decision as to whether they would stop and help or not.

Hospitality is that extension of genuine love that comes from our faith.  It is that part of our faith that is supposed to turn love into action.  That's what makes our love authentic and genuine.  And don't think that no one is watching, gauging the genuineness of our love shown in hospitality.

President McKinley had to choose one of two equally competent men for a high diplomatic post.  He was having a hard time making a decision.  But then an incident occurred that helped him to make up his mind.

One stormy night, McKinley boarded a streetcar and took the only available seat left.  Not long after he boarded, a washerwoman with a large basket of clothes climbed aboard.  No one moved to make her comfortable.  One of the two candidates McKinley was considering for the very important job was sitting nearby, immersed in his newspaper.  He noticed the woman, but kept his nose in the newspaper to pretend he didn't see her.

McKinley went down the aisle, took the washerwoman's basket from her arms and led her to the back of the car where his seat was.  The candidate never looked up, was never aware of the kind act McKinley committed.  And when it came time for McKinley to decide between the two candidates, the one on the streetcar was never aware that his total lack of hospitality deprived him of the job.

Our Lord Jesus acts as the picture of hospitality.  At communion, Jesus welcomes all in hospitality to join him at the table.  He washes his disciples feet as a symbol of how they are to serve the world in humble hospitality.  And most importantly, The Lord Jesus offers his life in protection against the enemy, by dying on the Cross for our sins.  Our Lord showed hospitality is at the heart of God's grace and the gospel.

And the final quality of a relationship with those we like, who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, is to "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."

One of the main qualities of rejoicing is that it takes shape in fellowship.  True rejoicing isn't done by yourself.  It's done in the company of those who believe like you do, and who amplify your joy with their voices and lives.

Rejoicing is also related to hope, because who rejoices if they aren't hopeful?  If your hope in God is not based in the thought that your future can be bigger than your past, then you will not feel like rejoicing.

One day a young friend of Bertrand Russell, the famed philosopher, noticed that Russell was in a state of deep contemplation.  The young man asked, "Why so meditative?"
Russell replied, "Because I've made an odd discovery.  Every time I talk to a fellow scholar I feel quite sure that joy is no longer a possibility.  Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."   (Maybe that should be descriptive story for the master gardeners group.)  We find out best about joy and rejoicing when we surround ourselves with others who know what it's all about.

Likewise, weeping, when done with others, doesn't accentuate or increase the weeping but lightens that burden.  Grief is caused by loss.  It is an expression of our sorrow for the dead.  It is an expression of tears caused when two people part.  Or loss of a job. Or loss of youth or health.  Loss of innocence.

Or they are tears of remorse due to guilt.  It's interesting that Paul would include these words about weeping, because in the Greek culture, people didn't feel guilty.  They didn't feel guilt because they believed everything happened according to fate.  How can you feel guilty when what happened to you is simply fate?  It isn't your fault because of your bad decisions and choices or actions.  It's all fate.  If a person in that culture cried, it was because fate had dealt them a hard blow.

But for Paul, our knowledge of our sin should cause remorse, and remorse causes guilt, and guilt and remorse should lead us to tears of repentance.  It is with those who weep out of remorse whom we are to weep with, because we have all been there.

So those are the qualities of our relationships with others:  rejoice or weep with those who are doing likewise; be inventive in hospitality; and love others with a genuine love.

Next week we will look at our relationships with people we don't like.