Ro 12:9-21

31 August 2008

“Do It Yourself”

You may have noticed that my sermon title resembles the one from last Sunday. That is no accident. For those of you who weren’t here, the title was “Speak for Yourself.” I talked about Jesus putting two questions to his disciples. The first one is this: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13). The disciples come up with some names—John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, and so on.

This is the next question: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (vv. 15-16). Peter is the one who answers. He’s the one who speaks for himself. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus expects Peter to go by himself. He isn’t to be a lone wolf. He places him within the context of church. What he does not tell him is, “Do it yourself.”

There was a time when I would have expected, and welcomed, such advice.

When I was a freshman in college, I went to school in Austin, Texas. I was at St. Edward’s University, a Roman Catholic school. I couldn’t have cared less about its religious affiliation; what attracted me was that it was far away from home, and it was warm. (Obviously, my preference in climate has changed since then!)

I thought I was really smart back then, but truth be told, I was a real bonehead. (Even more so than now!) A couple of times, I wrote letters to the school newspaper, expressing my views on the world at large. For example, I thought that taxation, in any form, amounted to little more than theft. I didn’t really care what benefits people got from government.

Still, I wasn’t very consistent with my logic. My dad’s retirement checks from the Navy were okay; I thought it was fine for me to have a publicly-funded grant for college. Still, I felt Reagan was too liberal; I defiantly called myself an “individualist.”

Late one sunny winter afternoon, just as I was going into one of the classroom buildings, my American history professor was leaving. He spoke to me on the steps outside. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born; I never knew them. But this fellow reminded me of what a kind, old, grandfatherly type would be. He had a rather whimsical nature.

He said that he’d read the letter I sent to the campus paper. I expected him to engage me in some kind of public policy discussion. (I was all set for that!) All he said was, “You know, you have to care about people.” I mumbled something like, “Yes, I know.” And that was the end of that. He continued down the steps, in his kind, old, grandfatherly way.

He wasn’t one bit interested in the pros and cons of my position. Imagine such a thing! I was a bit irritated, but below that, I felt a sense of shame. In years to come, I would look back on that brief meeting on the steps with a kind old man as one of those moments when God spoke to me. The message seemed to be, “You’re going too far. You have to remember that you can’t do it yourself.”

Of course, with my attitude of “do it yourself”—of which I still retain many elements—I was only reflecting the lessons I’ve learned as an American. This was something noticed as early as 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic work, Democracy in America. (Please excuse the gender exclusive language!)

In it, he describes our idea of freedom, which is mingled with individualism, which he says “disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into his circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the great society to look after itself.”[1]

That may or may not seem like a serious thing, but it can lead to danger. As he notes, it can lead to “thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.” There can be other consequences, with each one “forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”[2]

The danger of our individualism is that we see individual persons as the basic building block of society. And the definition that most of us have for “family”—the so-called “nuclear family”—is something that’s become widespread only in the past few decades. For countless millennia of human history, to conceive of human relations in such a fragmented and disintegrated way was, well…inconceivable!

This mentality has long been present in the church. Jerry Doherty, an Episcopal priest, takes this up in his book, A Celtic Model of Ministry. It’s a primary reason why the church has become so ineffective in America—why it’s seen by so many as irrelevant.

He takes a shot at his own church with what he calls “an incredible declaration.” He refers to the decision made by the Episcopal Church which “set aside the 1990s as ‘A Decade of Evangelism’…Yet,” as he states, “evangelism has been the work of the Church from its beginning. Why then was it necessary to make such a declaration?”[3]

Of course, we Presbyterians are by no means off the hook! We’ve had our own share of proclamations that the next month—or the next year—will be when we share the good news of Jesus. As if every day isn’t the right time! We’ve had our “bring a friend to church” Sundays. As if we have to wait for a special day in order to bring someone with us.

The point that Doherty is making, and that I also want to make, is that the ineffectiveness of the church in America is largely due to our embrace of our society’s values, especially individualism. Basically, “Americans feel that religion is a private matter, separate from their daily lives. Because religion is so private, it does not enter into the world.”[4] And by “[entering] into the world,” that doesn’t mean artificially turning conversations to matters of faith.

Believing is not the same thing as belonging. It’s possible to know the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It’s possible to believe all the church’s confessions of faith. It’s possible to make an eloquent statement of faith. It’s possible to do all of that, and yet not belong. That’s one major reason why so many people feel like they don’t need the church. They can worship God on their own. They can do it themselves.

The antidote to individualism is community. As our friend Jerry says, “Community is what the word ‘church’ really means.”[5] The New Testament word usually translated as “church” is ekklhsia (ekklēsia). It means “assembly,” “gathering,” and as the first Christians also thought of it, “community.”

It’s the fostering of community that the apostle Paul is concerned with in our scripture text. In verse after verse, he issues command after command, encouragement after encouragement, showing the church in Rome what love looks like. He sets the tone by saying, “Let love be genuine” (v. 9). He finishes his instructions with the warning, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (v. 21).

That’s the inspiration for my quote on our worship bulletin’s cover, “Don’t become a monster in order to defeat a monster.” Though to be completely honest, that line appears in the booklet which accompanies the DVD for the 2005 concert by the band U2.

I suppose none of Paul’s ideas are terribly easy to implement. I imagine all of us can point to ones that we find especially difficult. It’s important to realize that Paul isn’t just tossing out a grab bag of unrelated goodies. It’s not like he’s smacking a piñata, while everyone scrambles for the candy.

Chapter 12 is indeed a major turning point in his letter to the Romans. Here’s where he starts describing the Christian way of life. Before this, he develops his theological basis, which is summed up in chapter 1. That’s where he speaks of the gospel as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith” (vv. 16-17).

Now, with chapter 12, we hear the familiar words, “Do not be conformed to this world [to this age], but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (v. 2). So our scripture text flows right from the apostle’s desire for transformation in Christ. He wants to help the church see what that looks like in practice.

When the text was being read earlier, were you picturing that in your mind? Were you visualizing those words? Look at our scripture reading again. There’s a whole lot packed into those short verses. Two or three weeks ago, before I even decided to base my sermon on it, I was reading this passage and thought, “Imagine how life would be if we actually did this!”

As I suggested, there are some verses that will no doubt stand out to you. Something that challenges me is the second half of verse 13: “extend hospitality to strangers.” The New Jerusalem Bible says to “look for opportunities to be hospitable.” Associating with the Benedictines has taught me that hospitality is a key component of Benedictine spirituality.

On the topic of hospitality, it’s been noted that “Paul is not interested in self serving happy communities of people caring about each other. He widens the vision to include making contributions to people beyond our horizon.”[6] Think about what that means for us.

And what about the verse that comes right after? “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (v. 14). If anyone will say that Paul is naïve, let’s remember that he knows what persecution is! This is a guy well acquainted with beatings, whippings, and imprisonment.

Bill Loader notes, “To bless our enemies is not to condone their actions, but it is never to lose sight of their humanity and dignity as persons.” We are to “confront lovelessness with love, confront hate with grace. That only makes sense if the love is genuine. [Remember verse 9?] Such genuine love never writes people off, not even enemies. It is never sucked into revenge and the spirals of hate and violence. It breaks the cycle.”[7]

Last week in Sunday school, we spoke briefly about the “mean spirit” that thrives in our world. There’s so much suspicion of people’s motives; there’s so much cynicism. We’re so unwilling to give each other the benefit of a doubt. When people issue what seem to be sincere apologies, there’s no shortage of snarky reporters wondering, “What’s their angle?”

When trust is absent, there can be no hope of building community. We in the church have allowed ourselves to be infected by the virus that kills love.

Jerry Doherty has an interesting, and perhaps controversial, take on this. “We must admit that the vast majority of our church congregations are not really communities at all, but are doing a more or less good job of faking it. This is no one’s fault, really; most of us have never experienced enough community to recognize it. We just know we are looking for something we cannot find.”[8]

I think that explains the ineffable “warm feeling” that is sought by so many who can’t seem to find it. Our consumerist mentality describes it as “church shopping.”

He continues, “Yet difficult as it is to achieve and maintain, community is worth all the effort, because it is what we are called to by God. Once we have attained it, we will not want—indeed, we will not be able—to settle for anything less.”[9]

And I think that explains the associations, the groups, to which people belong. No, let me rephrase: the groups with which people feel a sense of belonging. It’s where they feel included. It can be a formal organization, with its own bylaws and all of that. But I imagine just as often (if not more so), it’s something more informal: a circle of friends, a group that hangs out at the same place, people who like to do the same thing, whatever.

Obviously, we need those kinds of associations. Humans are social beings. But there’s no other group or gathering, no other ekklēsia, that can replace the church. No other assembly has been created by Christ. No one else can do what the church does. Maybe our lofty calling as the church helps explain why we so often fall short. But still, our message to the world should never be, “Do it yourself!”

During our time here, we’ve seen glimpses of that beloved community shining through. It’s like the peaceable kingdom of Jesus, which is already here—but not yet. That’s the promise we carry when we’re together and when we go into the world.

[1] quoted in Jerry C. Doherty, A Celtic Model of Ministry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 4.

[6] wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/AEpPentecost16.htm

[7] wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/AEpPentecost16.htm