August 28, 2011 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Hold Fast to What Is Good

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 46
Romans 12:9–21

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Romans 12:21 (NRSV)

Because we know our hearts of anxiety so well,
we seem fated to disease.
But because we know your heart of fidelity so well,
we know you will defeat our demons
and make us new.

We know about your abiding fidelity in
Jesus of Nazareth.
Give us patience and steadfastness as we
process the ragged edges of our lives.

Walter Brueggemann

The heading in my Bible for today’s scripture reads “Marks of the True Christian.” Love genuinely, do not lag in zeal, outdo one another in showing honor, bless those who persecute you, live in harmony, do not be haughty, live peaceably with all, feed your enemies and give them something to drink. If this is a list of the things that Christians must do, I will be the first to admit I am failing in most, if not all, categories. This is a tremendously demanding list. Forget the list, take just one: “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.” Who among us can look at the life we have led in the past days, weeks, and months, read this command, and think, “Hmm, bless the people who have done me wrong. Yes, I’m doing well on that one. Check.” To achieve any one of the things on this list is remarkable; to think that we must achieve them all is intimidating, if not ridiculous.

The scholarly consensus on this passage seems to agree with me. The biblical commentaries I read this week are all in agreement about at least one thing: this text threatens to overwhelm the reader with a list so deep and broad. One scholar I read actually began “Woe to the preacher” who tries to cover all of this in one sermon. There’s truth in that statement. If I must be responsive to this whole list in order to be a Christian, how would I even get started? The idea that one should be attentive to all of these things at once is likely to result in ignoring all of them and finding something else to think about.

I often feel a sensation similar to this when I observe how The Today Show or Good Morning America deals with the news of the day. The hour always starts with a five-minute race through the complexities of national and world politics, a litany of the threats and disasters that beset our world, only to abandon the whole list in favor of the next fifty-five minutes spent on more manageable challenges, like what’s going on with the latest deposed bachelorette or how to prepare a really great birthday party for your seven-year-old. We are often eager to abandon the deep challenges in favor of the ones that are manageable, even if those challenges are mundane or even meaningless.

Think about it: In the midst of hearing about our lagging economy and depressed markets, the progression of the Libyan rebellion and the violence thrust upon innocent Syrians, the destruction of hurricane Irene even as the news of earthquakes and tornadoes is still fresh, the inadequate education and the pervasive violence that faces so many of our city’s children, isn’t it easier just to ignore them all? I’ve left off listing your own personal problems at work or at home, whether you are struggling to find work or are unhappy with the job you have, whether you have just been diagnosed with cancer or suspect that your marriage is in trouble or can’t figure out why your child will not eat dinner no matter what you cook. It’s so easy to be feel defeated by it all.

Such is the message in this list in Romans 12: “Marks of the True Christian.” Can we do all these things? Can we expect to master even some of them? Probably not. Why torture ourselves by reciting the list? And there are lists like this one all over the New Testament. Knowing what a tremendous challenge marriage can be, can you believe couples seem to enjoy having passages like this one read at their wedding? There’s a particularly popular one in Colossians 3: “Get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. . . . But clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3: 5, 12). At wedding rehearsals, friends asked to do a reading often ask me, “Pastor, how should I introduce the passage?” I must admit that on a few of my more bitter days, I’ve thought of suggesting that they say, “A reading from the Letter to the Colossians, in which the Apostle reminds the couple of just a few of the ways in which they are likely to disappoint one another.”

If Romans 12 is the list of requirements I must meet, I am more than intimidated about the Christian life—and had I known what I was getting into, I probably would not have signed up in the first place.

Oddly enough, I did sign up, and so did all of you when you walked through the doors of the church this morning. Oddly enough, couples continue to want passages like this read at their wedding. Oddly enough, passages of scripture like this one inspire us as often as they intimidate us.

The answer why is found a few verses back, where I began this morning’s reading: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” The context is important. This is not the top of the hour on The Today Show. It isn’t a listing of the things you can’t possibly change. It isn’t an impossible listing of all of the ways in which you have failed so far. It is not a list of demands that must first be accomplished if you want to begin to be a Christian. What this is is Paul’s letter of encouragement to us; it is an invitation to a better life.

Paul writes this whole letter because of his response to the grace of Jesus Christ, the one who came to challenge all of our assumptions about what is possible and achievable or where the limits of goodness are to be found. This is the one who refused to be conformed to this world; he is the one who accepts us regardless of the inadequate places we have been, who encourages us that there is a better life waiting for us if only we will accept his way of living.

One of the defining challenges of life in this world, particularly in response to the grace of Jesus Christ, is that we have a choice we can make in the midst of all kinds of circumstances. We can respond to the challenges set before us by being inspired and encouraged or by being dismayed. The challenges may not be of our choosing, but the response to the challenge is very much within our grasp.

Theologian John Calvin knew that this distinction was an important one and was quick to point out Paul’s message that when we understand our lives in the context of the grace of Christ, we are freed from the guilt of dwelling on our failures. Calvin writes, “Even though [we] do not yet clearly feel that sin has been destroyed or that righteousness dwells within [us], there is still no reason to be afraid and cast down in mind as if God were continually offended by the remnants of sin” (Calvin, Institutes, 3.19.6). God accepts us. And yet Calvin is quick to remind us that this is not an invitation to laziness; it is not an invitation to abandon the challenges of life. It is a declaration that we must live in a place of tension between accepting that life is full of challenges and being filled with a yearning to overcome them—in Calvin’s words, “to be filled and to hunger, to abound and to suffer want” (Institutes, 3.19.9).

The most fitting story I can tell you about this tension actually has to do with one of my closest friends, my college roommate, Andrew Bridge. Andy is a dermatologist, still newly minted from residency. One year ago this past week, the night before a job interview in Chicago, Andy was in a horrible accident and lost his ability to walk. Barring significant advances in stem cell research and spinal cord injury, he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair paralyzed from the chest down. Being present for Andy’s journey of recovery has been one of the most important and eye-opening experiences of my life. It starts with little things: I notice now in ways that I never did before when the sidewalk is steep or sloped or cracked; I notice when the only wheelchair accessible entrance to the restaurant is the back door and when the only toilet is in the basement down a flight of stairs.

As Andy and I talked this past week, we inevitably began to reflect on the past year and what it has meant to him. His progress has been remarkable in so many ways: he is regaining his ability to live on his own, he has started a new fellowship in dermopathology at Indiana University, and last week he took me for a ride in his new Honda Odyssey minivan, which he can drive on his own with the use of hand controls. When we met this week, Andy was waiting for me in an art gallery in Indianapolis, where he was looking at a couple of pieces he is considering adding to his collection of Indiana painters. But even given all of those concrete signs of hope, the thing that continues to amaze me and so many who are close to Andy is his tremendous spirit. This week his observations about the past year began a lot like my own simple observations: “Life is hard for me, now.” He said, “Everything is hard and takes such a long time. It’s hard to take a shower and get in and out of the car; I have to get up so early just to get to work on time. And over the past year I’ve noticed that even though I keep getting more capable all the time, things are still hard, and for the foreseeable future, everything is going to continue to be really hard.”

Then Andy said something I’m sure I will never forget. “For a while I was troubled by how hard things are now,” he said, “but the more I thought about it, I realized that I felt exactly the same way about my life before I ever got hurt. I can clearly remember being in medical school and thinking what a relief residency would be, and then finding out residency was just as hard. I remember feeling the same way about becoming a physician when I was a resident, and now I realize that I still have to put in long days because now the buck stops with me, and if I don’t finish my work, people suffer. And once I realized that, it occurred to me that sure, my life is hard, but my life has always been hard, and life is hard for everyone, even, and maybe especially, when life is lived well. And when I think about that, I really am thankful for the thirty-one years I had when I could do the things I did. I didn’t always do the best thing or the right thing, but I made a pretty good run at it; and even now, life is hard, but there are a lot of amazing things I still have to do.”

I can hardly think of a clearer example of refusing to be dismayed, refusing to be “paralyzed,” if you will, by the deep challenges of life. It is a choice we make. A choice for hope and change; a hope grounded in the belief that life is not easy, but that we live in a world that God has created good, and even when that world looks hopeless or too difficult to change, we are called not to be conformed to that hopelessness but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds—a renewal that gives us not an impossible list of “Marks of the True Christian” but an invitation into a life shaped by the hope of Jesus Christ, the one who came into the world to save us.

We have a challenging message before us this morning. What does it look like to live in world where we do not seek our own honor but we outdo one another in honoring others? What does it look like in your life to “not be haughty, but associate with the lowly?” What does it look like to feed our enemies when they are hungry and when they are thirsty, give them something to drink? Can we win wars by feeding and clothing and finding work for the people who hate us? Can you look at the loved one who may be seated next to you today and forgive them instead of holding a grudge? Can you refuse to be overcome by evil and instead overcome evil with good? These are not naïve suggestions; they are the demands put upon us when we walk into God’s house and bow our heads in prayer because we profess to believe in Jesus Christ.

Romans 12 is a hard list. But not to present a task so impossible that we cannot even get started, let me share with you another story from this past week. Last Sunday I heard a man named Mark Olmsted read an essay for the “This I Believe” series on Bob Edwards’ Weekend.

Olmsted is a recovering drug addict who found his way out of his own impossible situation in the most unlikely of ways: he started picking up trash. Having moved to Los Angeles, living on a dirty street, overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems in his life and in the world around us, Olmsted one day had an unusual and yet obvious realization: if he wanted to see less litter on the street, he could bend down and pick it up. He realized that everyone hates litter, even the people who do the littering, and picking up trash was one thing he could do, every single day, that would be unquestioningly, unambiguously good.

Today, five years later, Olmsted is clean and is putting his life back together. Each day as he walks his dog, he picks up at least four bags full of trash, and he writes that when he’s had a bad day, he goes out and picks up even more. But what really struck me about Olmsted’s essay was his rationale: “I believe in picking up trash,” he writes, “because it’s taught me that you can’t assume to know the difference between the things you must accept and the things that you can change—you have to think about it. It’s taught me to question the premise of all sorts of assumptions I had previously made, from the idea that the only possible reaction to traffic is anger and frustration, to the belief that I was a hopeless addict who couldn’t possibly get clean” (http://thisibelieve.org/essay/39990/).

I challenge you with a spiritual exercise today: Go home and read Romans 12. Read it slowly. Read it intentionally. Read it several times. Ask yourself, “What do these marks of the true Christian mean for me? What are the concrete ways they might be lived out in my life? Which elements on the list are hardest for me, and which ones might be manageable if I just gave it a try, if I just bent down and picked up that one piece of trash in my life?”

I challenge us to think about this same thing as a congregation. What problems in our city have we decided are too great for us to address? Where have we decided that our resources are too limited to make an impact? Where have we decided that Christianity is a zero-sum game and that if we’re going to pursue one great goal we must abandon another? Where can we get started?

In your life, and in our life together, I ask you, Where must we learn again the often-surprising relationship between the things we must accept and the things we can change? Where have we been conformed to this world, and where must we be transformed by the renewing of our minds?

Amen.