No Fighting Back!

Text: Romans 12:9-21
Other texts: Matthew 16:21-28

To be holy means to be separate. That’s what holy is: a place, a people, a culture separate from the world around it. Holy does not mean religious.

A sanctuary is a holy place. That is what the word sanctuary means. A sanctuary is a place removed from the rest of the world. When people say in common speech that they seek sanctuary, they mean a place that is safe. A sanctuary is safe because it can and does abide by rules that might not conform to the rules of the surrounding world.

Holy means separate. It does not necessarily mean better. Though people might come to a holy place because it does seem better to them. But to say that someone is holy does not mean that he or she is more virtuous. Just different. By choice.

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people. I will be your God, said God, and you will be my people. They were thus made holy by their agreement, or covenant as church people like to say. The law given by God to Israel served, among many other things, to define and enforce the holiness of Israel, its separation.

When something is separate there is a boundary between the inside, so to speak, and the outside. The boundary can be a physical boundary, like a wall or national border, or a behavioral boundary, like the law. Or like the actions that Christians are supposed to follow according to the command of Christ. “If you do this,” Jesus said, “people will know you are my disciples.” They will see a difference. When Jesus said, “do this,” he explained, he meant “to love one another as I have loved you.” Which, among other things, is what the apostle Paul talks about in Romans.

Paul, who provided the passage we just heard from his letter to Romans, was really interested in boundaries. He didn’t like them much.

Though he did benefit from them. He was a devout Jew, and a leader, and he was a Roman citizen, which gave him special additional privileges. Yet in his letter to Rome, he tries to render those boundaries meaningless. And in these verses, he argues that the attitude we have and the actions we take cannot be much different toward the people on the inside—the people like us, our family and friends—from the people on the outside—them, the others, our enemies. There may be an actual difference, but when it comes to loving one another, there can be no difference. This is pretty radical. And it is central to Christianity. And it makes Christians different in theory.

Paul’s argument here has three parts. The first part is general: love for all people must be genuine, without hypocrisy. Evil is bad and you should hate and loathe and abhor it. Good is good, and you should hold tight to it. This sets the stage for the rest of the argument. Paul is saying in this first verse: I’m not kidding. These are not just nice words. Pay attention and really do what I say.

The second and third parts of the argument tell followers of Jesus how to implement this love with two groups. The first group are the insiders, family and friends. The second group are the outsiders, the enemies.

We might guess Paul’s argument. Be good to your friends. Be bad to your enemies. Right? I’m mean, works for me. That’s how we do it, mostly. Give our friends gifts, avoid our enemies. Forgive our friends, throw our enemies in jail. Protect our friends, beat up on our enemies. Party with our friends, keep our enemies on the other side of the wall.

So Paul’s first words are not a surprise: that you treat your friends with honor and respect. And that you have affection for them. That you like to do things with them. That you give them the benefit of the doubt. That you have high hopes for them, and rejoice in their successes. And that when problems arise, as they do in every relationship, you work things through with them, persevering in times of trouble. And that you support each other financially, and that you all party together. That is what Paul says, in so many words, in the first verses of this passage to the Romans, the verses that tell us what to do when it comes to friends and family.

But when it comes to enemies—we are in for a surprise. When it comes to enemies, Paul sounds just like Jesus.

Bless those who come after you and attack you. Have as much respect for them as you do for your friends. When they mourn, mourn with them (don’t despise them and don’t gloat over their problems or defeats). Don’t think you are better than they are. Help your enemies out: feed them when they are hungry.

And most of all, do not repay them for the evil they cause you. Do not pay them back. Do not take it upon yourself to avenge the wrongs done you. This is really hard.

Paul knows it is hard. In the verses about your friends, he uses no verbs, just adjectives. The good things that you do for and with your friends are just what family ties and friendship are all about. It almost goes without saying. But when he talks about enemies, he uses strong commanding verbs. Do this, and do this, and don’t ever do this.

We like to be in control. And violence is the most extreme technique for control. Someone does something you don’t like, you try to control his behavior. If talking and negotiating and bribing and reasoning don’t work, then you bop him on the head, or tie him up, or much more serious variations of bopping and tying. What Paul is saying is that we must—using those commanding verbs—we must give that all up. Relinquish that control and give the rest to God.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells Peter that his mind is on worldly things, on human things. But human things are the things Jesus mostly talks about in his ministry, and human things in the end bring him to trial and execution, which are human actions of violence.

Paul rarely quotes Jesus. But these words of Paul here in Romans mirror the words of Jesus. Who do you say that I am, Jesus asks his disciples earlier in Matthew. You are the Messiah, one of them answers. The Messiah is a world-changer. The words of Jesus could change the world. But they are hard to follow. The world remains much the same.

Paul is not naive. There is a difference between the inside and the outside. We are built to see the differences between people. But the difference between the people on the inside—us—and the people on the outside—them—is not in the way we should behave toward them, but in how hard it is to behave in the same way toward all.

Our part of the job is to be good. Our responsibility is to use all our energies to be peaceful. It takes a lot of energy. As far as it is in your power, Paul says, live in peace with all other people. He does not just mean “try to live peaceably.” He means that when it comes to things over which you have control, when it is up to you, decide for peace. With all other people. The word “all” is right there in the Bible.

Do not let evil overcome you by making you do what you should not do. You overcome evil with good.

This is pretty weird. To behave this way is not to behave as the world behaves. A people who behaved this way would be unlike the world around them. They would be separate from that world. A people who lived as Paul commands in this passage in Romans would be a holy people.

May God so guide us. Amen.