September 4, 2011
How Can They Disagree? - Romans 12:9-21
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadThe Martin Luther King Memorial has just been completed on the National Mall in Washington, DC. From what I understand, it sits directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, as if to complete what they started. I was not alive when Martin Luther King was. Although I have heard what life was like back then, I can’t claim to have first-hand knowledge of it. What I can say, however, is that for me and my generation, Martin Luther King’s vision is a foregone conclusion. My generation went to integrated schools, and movie theatres. The military was fully integrated for us. I know that Martin Luther King was very controversial in his time. But Martin Luther Kings’ argument was a slam dunk case. Even if you are not Christian, even if you are just American, how could you argue against what he proposed? “We hold these rights to be self-evident that all men are created equally and are endowed by their creator with certain, unalienable rights.” How can anybody possibly square that up with slavery? How can you say that we’re created equally when you have separate water fountains and schools and neighborhoods? There is no way to make that fly. There is no way that you can disagree with what Martin Luther King had to say.
Paul tells us in Romans 12 how to relate to other people. I think what he says is that we should relate to people in way that they cannot possibly disagree with us. How can you possibly be against the kind of person that Paul describes in these verses? How can anybody disagree with us if we are patient in suffering, persevering in prayer, if we contribute to the needs of the saints and extend hospitality to strangers? How could they not like us if we bless those who persecute us, if we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? What can they possibly say against us if we live in harmony with one another, if we repay no one evil for evil, but if we consider what is good for everybody? What are they going to say about us, that we’re too hospitable? 1st Century Christians were a small minority of the population. How Christian should relate to other people was a huge topic for the early Church, as it is for the current Church. Paul’s answer to that question was, as I read it, to live in a way that leaves no question about you or the God you serve. And if you do that, it’s sort of a slam dunk case. Who can disagree with that?
Paul assumes in Romans that the outside world does not understand us. We speak a foreign language, and we have to interpret that language to them. Never does Paul tell us to close ourselves off from the outside world. We couldn’t do that even if we wanted to, and even if we could, it wouldn’t be faithful. Jesus died for them, after all, so at the very least, we should love them. But not only will they not understand us, but they might not like us. They might mistreat us.
That’s much harder than I thought. All you have to do is to ride by our Church to see that we’ve been here a long time, and that the community has changed a lot around the Church very recently. So when I first got here, I had the bright idea that we had to be a community church. We’re not a community church now. We kind of are, but not really. Many of you used to live here. Maybe you grew up here, or you moved here as young adult and raised your children here. In fact, some of you even used to walk to Church here, or maybe you rode your bike. David Abernethy told me how he rode his bike down York Road at night as a boy. Not only was it two-lane, it was gravel. About half of you have moved away from you Steele Creek, or at least much further down Steele Creek. Today we live in places like Lake Wylie, Clover, Fort Mill, Rock Hill, Indian Land, Indian Trail, Matthews, Waxhaw, Ballyntine, East Charlotte, and the university area. Many of you have to pass umpteen churches to get to this one. The main reason that you still come here is because you grew up here, which is great. It’s really hard, though, to get other people in Indian Trail to come to Church here, though. That model won’t work for us very long, to say nothing of the fact that this community is where God has placed us. We are right here right now for a reason, and that is to be the Church in the Steele Creek Community.
I was determined to do that when I got here. And I still am, but one thing that I have learned is how difficult that is. We are, I believe, very generous with our facilities. We built that Family Life Center back 2003. It is used six nights every week, especially during the school year. Monday nights are Room in the Inn. Tuesdays are Tuesday Night Basketball, where we open the gym up for the community. Wednesdays are Wealthy Wednesdays, which several people from the outside community attend. Thursdays are the Bridgewater Night, which is like a basketball academy for underprivileged children in the community. It’s a great program. The YMCA sometimes has sleepovers on Friday nights, not always, but often. They use the gym most all day during the summer and after school during the school year. The gym has a day off normally on Saturday. We use it on Sundays. None of that even mentions boy scouts, cub scouts, girl scouts, brownies, and AA, all of whom use the Church’s facilities weekly, and all of whom serve the outside community.
Since I have been here, we have had the following: We’ve had holes pocked in the dry wall, toilet paper dispensers ripped out of the wall. People have taken the top off the tanks of the toilets and have used the bathroom in them. People have written on the walls and made out in the showers. We have found drug paraphernalia in the bathroom stalls. Somebody wrote gang graffiti outside the kitchen last year. Our playgrounds are vandalized fairly often. Just last week, a bunch of skaters turned our pic-nic tables in the back into a skating ramp. Now all of that is the work a small minority of people, and there have been some occasions when outside groups were not supervised well. They are now.
Reaching out like Paul told us to do here is hard work. I get lectured frequently on how the Church needs to reach out more, but most of the people doing the lecturing have never actually done it. It’s hard. So what do we do? The other option is to lob some artillery shells over there. If you’ve been married for more than a month, you know well how that works. You get in an argument with your spouse, and you go to your inner artillery officer and figure out what kind of ammunition you have. It’s always a pretty good stockpile. Sometimes it’s nuclear. Sometimes you lob a really good, maybe even nuclear, bomb to your spouse, and you think that it will end the argument. But it never does, now does it? All it ever does is get another nuke dropped back on you, and then you both have said something that you can never really take away. All you’ve done, really, is hammered another nail in the coffin of your marriage. You’ve hurt the person whom you love the most.
Central Steele Creek is very much like the early Church was in Paul’s day. We are surrounded by a community that we don’t recognize, and that doesn’t recognize us. We cannot wall ourselves off. We cannot lob artillery. The only option, then, faithfully and practically, is to love that community and the people in it as Christ does. You know those skaters who desecrate the front porc? Jesus died for them, and God put this Church here for them. “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is corporation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.Ҕ That was Martin Luther’s King’s Speech to those who opposed him. I believe that Paul would agree. How can anybody not?
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
