The Three Relationships (part 3)

“The Three Relationships”  (part 3)
Romans 12:9-21


This is the final of this three part series about the different kinds of relationships we have as we make our way in this life.  Paul describes three different relationships in this part of his letter to the Romans.  He interweaves them together, so we have to do a bit of untangling as we look at each of the relationships individually.

The first relationship I looked at is with your self.  Whether you like it or not, you have to have a relationship with yourself.  For many people, especially if you tend towards schizophrenia, relationship with your self can be problematic.  One guy said, “I couldn't live with myself if I had schizophrenia.”  Or maybe you’ve heard the little ditty:
Roses are red
Violets are blue;
I’m schizophrenic
And so am I.

It is from this, sometimes messed up relationship with the self, that you launch out into all other relationships.  If your relationship with your self is on shaky ground, probably all your other relationships will be as well.  So it’s best to make sure your relationship with your self is on solid footing in order to make the other two relationships Paul mentions work best.

The second relationship Paul describes is the one you have with people you like.  We all have people we get along with better than others.  There are people we just like being around.  They make us laugh.  They are positive and upbeat.  They don’t look at you funny.  They are encouraging and they have your back.  They’re reliable.  These kinds of relationships make life worth while.

Probably a couple of friends you may have heard about are Sven and Ole.  Sven and Ole are up fixing the roof. Sven picks up a nail, looks at it, and throws it away. He picks up the next one, looks at it, and hammers it into the roof. The next one, he hammers it into the roof; the next one, he throws away.
Ole says, "Sven, why do you throw away half the nails?”
Sven says, "Ole, don't you see, they have the point on the wrong end!"
Ole says, “Sven, don't be such a dummy! Those are for the OTHER side of the roof!”
What would we do without friends like that?

The third kind of relationship that Paul mentions, is the one we will look at this morning:  your relationship with people you don’t like.  This, besides the relationship with your self, may be the most problematic of the three relationships.  If we could just relieve ourselves of the jerks in our lives, everything would be so much better.  Like the little girl riding in the back of the car who asked, “Mommy, why do all the jerks only come out when Daddy is driving?”

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”  That’s the trouble with our lists of people we don’t like.  They might live next door to us, or they might be relatives, which makes it doubly hard to just ignore them or expunge them from our lives.

Another Sven and Ole story.  It just so happens that Ole is sick unto death.  His life is touch and go.  Ole is deep in thought as he lies in the hospital bed.  He looks hard at his wife Lena, and says, “Lena, promise me. Swear to me that if I die, you’ll marry Sven Svenson.”
“SVEN SVENSON???” Lena shrieks. “You want me to marry Sven!!??  You’ve hated him all your life!”
Ole answers, “Yep, I still do.”

Another problem with Paul’s instructions about dealing with people we don’t like is that he gives more advice about that relationship than the other two combined.  Look at all the stuff we’re supposed to do in our relationships with people we don’t like:
bless them and don’t curse them
be friendly
don’t mistreat them, even if they have mistreated you
earn their respect
live at peace with them
don’t get even or take revenge
feed them, or get them something to drink

Looking at the length of this list, it’s clear that Paul isn’t going to just let us write these people off.  Instead, it appears that this is the relationship that Paul is expecting us to do the most work on.

Jesus gave some equally penetrating words about getting along with those we don’t like:
You have heard people say, “Love your neighbors and hate your enemies.” But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.  If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends.  If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that?  But you must always act like your Father in heaven.  (Matthew 5:43-48, CEV)

I’m not going to lie to you—these are very tough words.  They are especially tough words if your family members are Steven Sotloff or James Foley, the two journalists who were beheaded by fanatic members of the Islamic State in northern Iraq.  How do you love those ISIS people?  How do you bless ISIS members instead of curse them?  Why would you want to live at peace with them, or not have thoughts of revenge?  How could you ever establish a friendship with someone who beheaded your loved one?

Then there’s Phil Robertson from the show, Duck Dynasty, who this week said about members of the Islamic State, “Convert them or kill them.”  This, in a sick way tries to combine the two worlds of the Old and New Testament:  Come at your enemies with Christ, and if that doesn’t work, revert back to the Old Testament adage, “An eye for an eye,” and kill them.  Either way, it appears you are being biblical.  But you are still missing the true power of Jesus’ and Paul’s words.  Not only that, if you follow Phil Robertson’s advice, you are stupidly saying and doing what the soldiers of ISIS are saying and doing:  Convert or die.

Jakob Whitson (to whom we are going to talk to in person, Sunday, October 6, in worship via Skype) posted an article on Facebook this week about this very topic.  In that article, “How are we to love the soldiers of ISIS?” by Greg Boyd, there is this statement:
With this background in place, we are in a position to notice something important about the question: How are we to love the soldiers of ISIS? The only reason this question is different from the question of how we are to love anybody else is that these people strike us as more evil than others and/or because we may be concerned about what would happen if everybody loved these soldiers. But as we’ve just seen, our call to love has nothing to do with how “good” or “evil” a person is.  We’re to love “the righteous” and the “wicked,” just like our God makes the rain fall and the sun shine no matter who you are (Mt 5:44-45).

These are the extreme cases.  Those scenes of beheadings are horrifying, and we are thanking God that it wasn’t our family member. But the ISIS beheadings are no less troubling to me than the story I also read this week about the young mother who smothered her two children to death with a pillow.  Only one and three years old!  It makes me absolutely sick to think about those two baby girls, born into the world only so they could be smothered to death by their mother!?  I don’t even know the woman, but it’s still so hard—maybe nearly impossible—for me to be asked by Paul to “bless and not curse” that woman.

Even though both those incidents are tragic and awful and sick all at the same time, and we want some kind of justice (meaning “an eye for an eye”) for these despicable people, we have to ask ourselves an equally difficult question.  It’s a question we don’t want to have asked of us, because we don’t want to face the answer.  The question is, “Are you or I capable of doing the same thing?”  Notice, I didn’t ask, “Would you do the same thing?” but, “Are you capable of doing the same thing?”  Deep down, do you have it within you to commit some kind of atrocious act?  Is there something that is part of our basic humanity that holds within it the possibility of being deadly awful?

I’m going to let you sit with those questions, and as you think about them, think also about Jesus’ words that God “…makes the sun rise on both good and bad people.  And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.”  Because, if we are honest with ourselves, we are both.

I like the line from the article that Jakob Whitson shared that read, “… our call to love has nothing to do with how ‘good’ or ‘evil’ a person is.”  Our call to love has to do, not with the person we don’t like, but the person we are before God.  The flip side to the awful question I just asked you is, “Are we capable of blessing people we don’t like and not cursing them;  are we capable of being friendly to them;  are we capable of not mistreating them, even if they have mistreated you; are we capable of earning their respect; are we capable of living at peace with them; are we capable of not getting even or taking revenge; and, are we capable of feeding them, or getting them something to drink?”  Deep down, do you have it within you to commit some kind of graciously undeserved, and loving act towards someone you don’t like?  Is there something that is part of our basic humanity before God that holds within it the possibility of you being life altering amazing to those you don’t like?

Because the writer of the article that Jakob shared is right.  As Christians, it doesn't matter if the person we don't like is an ISIS terrorist and assassin, uncle Snert, Sven and Ole, or your next door neighbor.  It doesn't matter if they cut somebody's head off or are playing their music too loud.  Ultimately, it isn't about the person you don't like and their behavior.  It's about you and how far you are willing to go in your relationship with Christ.  How far you are willing to take Jesus and Paul's words to heart and doing them, no matter how hard they are.

"It’s important to remember that the teaching of Jesus, Paul and the rest of the New Testament about never retaliating and about instead choosing to love, bless, pray for, and do good to our enemies is emphatic, unambiguous, and never once qualified. Indeed, Jesus goes so far as to make our willingness to unconditionally love enemies the pre-condition for being considered a “child of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-5; Lk 6:35-6). If Jesus is in fact Lord, faithfulness to his teaching and example must trump all other considerations--including your possibly deserved sense of justice and retaliation. Otherwise we must face Jesus’ pointed question: “Why do you keep on saying that I am your Lord, when you refuse to do what I say” (Lk 6:46)?"

Jesus is not one of those, "Do as I say, not as I do," kind of Messiah.  Think about the whole arrest, trial, brutal whipping, and crucifixion scenes.  Remember that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity--that he is God in the flesh.  At any time during the whole ordeal when he was arrested, beaten and crucified, he could have retaliated by flattening all those who tormented him, spit on him, beat him, and eventually pounded spikes through his wrist.  Never did he fight back.  Instead he prayed that God would forgive them, "...for they don't know what they're doing."  He had the power of the Creator of the universe, and chose not to exert that power in revenge against his enemies.


There doesn’t seem to be a way around this one.  We can’t be like W.C. Fields, who when caught reading the Bible and asked what he was doing, replied, “Looking for loopholes.”  There doesn’t seem to be any loopholes in either Jesus or Paul’s words about how what kind of relationship we are to have with those we don’t like.  So, if there are no loopholes, I guess the only other alternative is to get at it, and do what they say.

This might help.  It’s a reading or a prayer that I found a number of years ago when I was trying for forgive someone who hurt me deeply.  It took me a long time, praying this prayer, to finally get to what its words are saying.  This is from Hugh Prather in his book, A Quiet Answer:

I release you from my hurt feelings.  I free you from my reading of your motives.  I withdraw my “justified” outrage and leave you clean and happy in my mind.  In place of censure, I offer you all of God’s deep contentment and peace.  I will perceive you singing, with a soft smile of freedom and a glow of rich satisfaction.  I bless you my brother (sister).  You are a shining member of the Family of God, and I will wait patiently for this truthful vision to come honestly to my mind.