The Work of a Christian

Yesterday morning, my facebook feed was filled with rejoicing – the rain had come.  I hadn’t realized that so many other people were feeling the same hopeful anticipation – we were due.  In the South, in the summer, it builds up, doesn’t it.  Hot days, dry ground, dust in the air…and then the humidity rises.  One friend had posted a verse from the prophet Hosea, “He will come to us like rain.”

There is nothing like the smell of rain coming – it is the smell of hope.  And finally the first drop hits, and another, and then all of a sudden it is pouring.  When I was a kid, we would sit on the porch and watch and wait.  Drop…drop…drop drop…thunder…and as the drops started to fall – faster now – it was like we were drawn to a magnet – we catapulted off the porch to spin in the falling rain, and we soaked it up.

The earth needed rain, we knew that.  The farmers needed rain, we knew that.  But, when the rain started to fall, we were drawn in…we needed rain too.

The passage from Romans is labeled in many Bibles “The Marks of a True Christian.”  Sadly, we are in a season when the world needs true Christians much like the South needs rain in August.  The fruit struggles to keep from withering.  The ground gets so hard that the little water it gets bounces off.  It is hot, dusty, and humid…and unbearable.

One minister told about his experience in a hospital ER.  It was an experience like many that I had when I worked as a chaplain in the ER.  We had a trauma unit, and the chaplains were the ones who called the family to let them know their loved one had been transported to the hospital, and we were the ones who sat with the families while they waited and supported them as the doctors came to share their loved ones’ condition.

This minister was working as a chaplain, too.  He was called to the emergency room to support an older man whose wife had been brought to the hospital by ambulance.  They had started their morning with no idea how events would unfold that day.  After shopping, they stopped at a restaurant, and while she was eating, she suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital.  Shortly after the minister arrived in the consultation room with the husband, a doctor approached him to announce that his wife had died.  The doctor handed him an envelope with her wedding ring, her necklace, and her eyeglasses.  Needless to say, the man was stunned with grief.

After a few minutes, the minister offered to call the man’s pastor.  He didn’t have a pastor because they didn’t attend a church.  The minister asked if he could call a family member to come and take him home.  His family was scattered across the country, many hundreds of miles away.  The minister asked if he could call a co-worker to be with him.  He had retired many years before from work in another city.  What about a neighbor?  He said he and his wife didn’t know the names of the other residents in their apartment complex since they’d only lived there three years.

The minister says that he helped the man with the paperwork, offered a prayer as he held his hands, made sure he had the envelope with the jewelry and glasses, escorted him to the exit and watched him walk away alone to cope with the shock, alone to grasp its meaning for himself.

Life is not meant to be that way.  But, 40 to 60 percent of people in America have no church relationship.  A lot of the people who live on your street don’t have a pastor to call.  The ground is dry, the air is hot and humid.

And the good news is that the smell of rain is in the air!  The drops are falling, hope is here – can you smell it?  The church quenches the thirst of our dried out, dusty, hard lives.  Because there is a gully washer happening here – a gully washer of love and harmony, of justice and peace.  This passage is often titled, “The Work of a Christian” and I love the practical way that Eugene Peterson puts this passage in The Message:

“Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it.  Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.  Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down.  Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up.  Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.”

And when we live this way, it is like little drops of rain.  Our neighbors who don’t go to church sit on their porches and the smell of rain wafts through, and they see how the community of the church cares for one other, drop by drop the dust is transformed, drop by drop by drop they are drawn to the edge of the porch.

But the gully washer really comes in the next few lines Paul writes, “Bless those who persecute you.  Don’t hit back; look for beauty in everyone.  Try to get along with everybody.  Revenge is not for you to do;  don’t insist on getting even.  “I’ll do the judging,” says God, “I’ll take care of it.  If your enemies are hungry, feed them.  If they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”

And I have to admit, for a long time, I thought that God was the one putting burning coals on the heads of my enemies, so I thought the message here was just wait, they’ll get theirs.  But, then I learned that in the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras, which was part of the Hebrew Scriptures of the Jewish people, there is reference to an Egyptian ritual of penitence.  They would repent of their wrongdoings and carry a bowl of burning charcoal on their heads as a sign that they had confessed and were transforming their ways.

So, Paul is saying that by not retaliating and by caring for our enemies – feeding them when they are hungry and giving them something to drink when they are thirsty, they might repent.  Do not be overcome by evil, says Paul, but overcome evil with good.

In our world, it feels a lot like summer in the South as the temperature and the humidity rises.  The earth is dry, dusty and still.  It is going to rain.

God calls us to be the first drops.  To love.  To extend hospitality.  To bless – even those who persecute you.  To associate with the lowly, to live peaceably, and to never seek revenge.

One of the world’s leading Bible scholars, N.T. Wright, writes about the meaning of this passage for us today.  He says, “Revenge keeps evil in circulation.  Whether in a family or a town, or in an entire community like the Middle East or Northern Ireland, the culture of revenge, unless broken, is never-ending.  Both sides will always be able to ‘justify’ further atrocities by reference to those they themselves have suffered.”

The work of Christians is to recognize evil and to refuse to volley back with evil of our own.

It’s not easy.  The General Assembly of our denomination just voted for divestiture…to no longer invest our denomination’s funds in three companies that have refused to modify their business plan to no longer benefit from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It seems simple.  We do not want to benefit from war.

It has not been easy.  Time will tell whether that drop had any thirst-quenching effect.  Certainly, it did not stop war.  Certainly, it did not have any effect on the companies…our investments were much too small for it to impact their businesses.  Certainly, it has been misinterpreted as a statement against Israel or people of Jewish faith or a vote for the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement.  Are there other companies that benefit from war?  Yes.  Is this a start?0  The commissioners at General Assembly hoped so.  A drop, that may lead to a drop, that may lead to a downpour that will draw those on the porch to dance in the rain of justice and righteousness.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the issue.  I do know the vote was very, very close.  I do know that it has been divisive.  I do know that the commissioners who were voting as they felt led by God, by a vote that was 310 to 303, voted to send a message that rain is coming.  That was their intent.  Whatever else may be a part of that debate, the tone surrounding the vote was whether or not we, as Christians, should invest in a way that wars continuing benefits us.

That doesn’t mean that we should allow evil to continue, or that we should not have a military, or that we should never go to war.  But when we go to war, it should be to with a hope of peace, a promise of protection, and a commitment to justice.  We go to war to stop evil, not to persist in it.  One drop at a time, the rains begin.

Sometimes, it does effect out economic system.  It did when the labor unions were formed in our country.

In the late 1800’s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days, seven days a week, to eke out a basic living.  Children as young as 5 or 6 worked in mills, factories, and mines across the country, for a fraction of the wages an adult earned.  Unsafe working conditions, insufficient fresh air, restroom facilities and work without breaks were the norm.  But, the workers banned together…and drops of rain came down by the bucket-fulls, and the American workplace changed.  We celebrate that change this weekend.

It’s not easy.  But, the rain comes – one drop, then two, then it starts to soak in, and finally it even draws the folks on the porch to stand in it, soaked through.

Where is God calling you to do love?  To resist evil?  To refrain from revenge?  It may be with a neighbor.  It may be with a co-worker or an acquaintance.  It may be with a family member.  It may involve what you do or what you support or where you invest your resources.  It may be easy.  It may be simple.  Or it may seem complex and difficult, like divestiture or labor laws…but it starts one drop at a time.  It won’t happen perfectly, but as long as our actions are made out of love rather than evil, as long as we seek peace rather than revenge, the rain is coming – the reign of God – can you smell it – the hope in the air?