A Blessing to All

If you have a red Bible nearby, you may find it useful to turn to page 1123, that's the passage I'm going to say a few words about. We actually make it a habit in church to work through sections of the Bible rather than just whatever comes into my head at the time, which is maybe not that great. We just happen to be in Romans chapter 12. I'm going to spend a few minutes on the verses here 9-13. Not next week, because it's a family service, but the week after that, Luke Williams, who is a member of the 5:00 PM church and many of you know him, is going to be taking us through the second section which takes us all the way through to the end. But I thought I'd have us read the whole section.

You might know the story of the man who is unemployed and he answers a job advertisement on Seek. It's a job at the zoo. When he arrives, the person there says, "Look, the issue is we have a shortage of gorillas. So what we'd like you to do is would you just put this suit on? It's pretty easy job, really. You just have to lie around in the sun most of the time, and you don't have to really worry too much about it. It's a pretty easy job, just lie around in the gorilla suit and people will think you're a gorilla". So he thinks, "I haven't really got too many options, I'll take the job, it seems pretty easy". Things go well for a while until he realizes that there is a female gorilla who takes a bit of a liking to him. So he realizes he can't keep going with this and he realizes he's got to escape. So he does, and he gets out of the gorilla enclosure and people think a real gorilla has escaped and they start chasing him, or the zookeepers start chasing him through the zoo. As he's running away from them, he trips and falls into the lion's den and a large lion starts coming towards him. It's getting closer and closer and closer. So he panics and he yells at the top of his voice, "Help, help, I'm not a gorilla, I'm just a man in a gorilla suit!". And the lion comes closer and closer till he can almost smell the rancid breath of the lion, and the lion opens his mouth and says, "Keep quiet, you fool, or we'll both lose our jobs".

That's one of my favorite jokes, but the point is it's possible to just wear the Christian skin. This is about being the real deal, the real deal, that's what this passage is speaking about. We've been studying Paul's letter to the Roman Christians; it was written about 60 AD. Over the last couple of weeks, he's made a case where he's trying to talk to us about our standing before God, and it's a gift, our standing before God. But then he talks in chapter 12 about being transformed. It's an inside out word, being transformed from the inside out, not to just wear the outer skin but being transformed. Christianity is not really a code of ethical behavior, it's not really a way of living. It is rather a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It's got to do with Jesus' death and resurrection, and that is what changes a person from the inside out and it changes everything. It changes your thinking; he talks about renewing your mind, change the way you think about life and the world. And then what he talks about here is just a series of one-liners which I think are all related to each other, and I'm going to try and show you how they are. So just a minute or two on each line.

Love must be sincere.

First of all, verse nine, he says "Love must be sincere." Of course, wouldn't that be true? We don't want fake love, do we? In the original, love should be unhypocritical. The word comes from the world of Greek drama where an actor would wear a mask. People thought that actors were not fit for public office because you could never trust them; you never know when they're play acting or not. And this was the word for the actor, they would wear these masks and they could really be what you want. He's saying, don't be that, don't be the person who wears the mask or the skin, be genuine, be sincere. But then he says love has got a moral capacity to it as well. See verse nine: "Hate what is evil, cling to what is good." So in other words, it's not just sentimental love that's on view here. I subscribe to the New York Times, and they have once a week an essay under the title Modern Love, a weekly essay on modern love stories. I think they also have another short one called tiny love stories, which is a story which is just a hundred words, which is also good. It's a breath of fresh air to read them compared to a lot of the doom scrolling and most of the online news which is pretty sad and depressing. It is a breath of fresh air, but they're also quite sentimental. And the love that Paul's speaking about here, the love the Apostle's speaking about here, is not just sentimental love but it's love with substance. "Hate what is evil, cling to what is good," it's got a moral capacity to it. Sometimes to love someone is to protect them from evil and protect them from harm. Sometimes it's the harm they do to themselves; that's the love that's being spoken of here.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.

Second, he says, "Be devoted to one another," verse 10, "be devoted to one another in brotherly love". The word for brotherly love or sisterly love, if you like, has got to do with the word filos, from which we get the word friendship. So it's friendship kind of love that he's speaking of here. C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia series but he also wrote some terrific essays and terrific books, wrote a book called The Four Loves. In it he said this kind of love, this friendship love, is the highest love. Friendship is the love that's often dismissed. Perhaps we know it's the most time-consuming and the least celebrated. Most people think it's the one we can live without. Very few value it because few experience it. He then goes on to say, "Romance lends itself to conception, affection gives us to have a sense of placing and belonging, and charity provides a track to redemption, but friendship doesn't have the same sort of productivity". But he says, "Friendship likely has the closest resemblance to heaven where we'll be entwined in our relationship". We develop a kinship over something in common or that longing for camaraderie that makes friendship all the more wanted. He says, "It must be about something even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice". So he's speaking here about being devoted to one another in brotherly and sisterly love.

Honor one another above yourselves.

Thirdly, he says it's to "honor one another above yourselves". This is not to say, "I make myself nothing". No, I have needs, I have wants, I have plans, I have expectations. It's not to dismiss myself; I am a person, I'm not a nothing. But I don't have to rule over you and I don't have to conquer you. I can wait, I don't need to win. I can treat you with the honor and dignity that is right for another human being. I can treat you with honor and dignity even if you feel like you don't have any yourself. You might have come across those people perhaps in the workplace or in some situation in study or school. You know, the sort of people who are really different to the people who are above them, but if you're below them, that's a different story altogether. That's what Paul's speaking about here: honor one another above yourselves. If you're not sure how to do this, reflect on the way Jesus did it, the way he interacted with people. I love that passage that was read from Mark chapter 5 where it talks about the woman who would have thought she was an outcast, and look at the way Jesus honors her. Honor one another above yourselves.

Share with God's people who are in need.

Fourthly, verse 13, "Share with God's people who are in need". In the pre-welfare society, the needs of widows and orphans and those with a disability were extreme because there was no social safety net, there was nothing. But Ehrman, who was a contemporary scholar and an agnostic, he's not a believer, says this: "Prior to the Christian conquest of the Roman Empire, the Western world knew of no such things as hospitals, orphanages, private charities or governmental assistance to the poor. These," he says, "are Christian innovations.". I could tell you the story of Fabiola, a 4th century woman. She was arguably the wealthiest woman in Rome. She established the very first hospital in the West. But she didn't just use her fortune to do that, she also got her hands dirty. Her friend Jerome wrote of Fabiola: "Fabiola sold all her property and when she had turned it into money she disposed of everything for the benefit of the poor. First of all, she founded an infirmary and gathered into its sufferers from the streets, giving a nurse's care to poor bodies worn with sickness and hunger. She gave food with her own hand and even when a man was but a breathing corpse she would moisten his lips with drops of water". Or the story of Allegius of Nuon, who in the mid-600s was the greatest jeweler in Europe and had extreme personal wealth. He would purchase souls in bonds. He devoted himself to using his vast wealth for the poor and slaves. He would go to slave auctions dressed as a king and buy everyone and then he would give them money to return to their homes. So it's kind like, "I bought you, you're free!" "No, no, I'm your slave!" "No, no, you're free, here's some money, go home". One source reports he liberated both sexes and from different nations. He freed all alike: Romans, Gauls, Britons, and Moors, but particularly Saxons who were as numerous as sheep at the time. When he ran out of coins, he gave more by stripping what he had on his own body, from his belt and cloak, the food he needed and even his shoes as long as he could help the captives.

Practice hospitality.

Then Paul says in 13, he goes verse 13, he goes on to say, "Practice hospitality". We think of house hospitality as a dinner party and having people over for lunch and things like that. That's a good thing, I think that's a good thing to do. But in the ancient world, it was to look after itinerant travelers and itinerant preachers because to go to the hotels and the inns, they weren't the safest of places. They were notorious dens that you really would not want to go to if you could help it. Offer hospitality. The word literally is love of strangers, love for the one you don't actually know. I wonder if you open your house to hospitality or not. I wonder if you can be the sort of person who has a hospitable demeanor. You know, the sort of person who just by the look on their face, it's welcoming. Not the sort of person who you look at and their face is saying, "Don't talk to me, stay away from me". Maybe you say, "I've just, it's just my nature, I've got a prickly personality, this is who I am". But is that who you need to be? Do you have to be who you say you are? Because Paul says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Is there a different way? Is there a different persona by which to approach people? A hospitable one?

Never be lacking in zeal but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord; be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer.

Lastly, he says, going to the middle here, verse 11, "Never be lacking in zeal but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord; be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer". That word zeal, it's a troubling word today, isn't it? People who are zealots, we're a bit worried about people like that, right? Or spiritual fervor, that sounds a bit suspicious as well. But surely this is just the energy you're going to need. Surely these are just words of energy. We've got a banner outside and on the banner is Jesus' words where he says, "By this all people will know that you're my disciples if you love one another". I always think that's a very ambitious banner to have your coffee and tea under on a Sunday morning. You'll notice it's a bit wobbly, and one of the clips is broken, and when I get the time I'm going to fix it, but at the moment it's wobbly. For me, it's a little bit like a parable. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking to myself, don't let your love get wobbly like the banner is.

How do I do it? How do I do these things that Paul has spoken about? I think the first thing is just to see the beauty of it. If you can see the beauty of these words, we're attracted to things we find beautiful. If you can see the beauty of it, you'll find yourself doing it more evidently than you probably thought. One of my favorite novelists is Tim Winton. I'd argue he's probably Australia's premier novelist. In one of his lesser-known books, That Eye in the Sky, there is a character in a little country town. She's a young woman, she's got two little kids, she's got a grandmother in decline, and her husband is badly injured in a motorcycle accident and he's left in hospital for months. He has a brain injury, multiple trauma, and when she brings him home she's unsure how she'll cope. There's a knock at the door the day she brings him home and there is a man at the door from the town who she vaguely knows, this enigmatic figure. He says, "I'm here to help, I'm here to help you. You don't have to worry about the showering or the bathing, I'll come each day and I'll do it". And he does, day after day, month after month. He's a man from the local church. You think to yourself, "What a great piece of fiction, what an interesting story!" Except Tim Winton says it's autobiographical. Because that was his story as a young man, as a young boy of five or six. His father, who was a motorcycle policeman in the local town, had a terrible accident. A drunken truck driver ran into him. He was badly injured with a brain injury, he was in hospital for months. And a man came and knocked at the door from the local church and said, "I'm here to help". And he did, day after day, week after week, he looked after Tim Winton's father.

In John's gospel it says, "No one's ever seen God". But then it goes on to say, "But God the only son who's come from the father's side, he's made him known." In other words, no one's seen God but if you look at Jesus, you'll see God and what he's like. But then John, many years later in his first letter, he says this: "No one has ever seen God". We expect him to say the same thing, but he says something else. He says, "No one has ever seen God but if we love one another God remains in us". So God is invisible. What's the answer to the invisibility of God? First century answer is, take a look at Jesus, that's when you'll see what God's like. What's the answer for the 21st century? Love one another, for if we love one another, God remains in us.

Let's pray, shall we? Heavenly Father, these are very, very incredible words. Yet we have the courage to pray that they might be true of us. We're conscious that this is an act that only you can produce. So we pray you would do that. Give us, grant us this sincerity of love, this genuineness of love one for another and for the people we come across. And we pray it so that people might look and see that you are real and true. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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