Overcoming Evil

 September 10 2023

Romans 12:17-13:1-

         Tomorrow we will observe the twenty-second anniversary of what are called the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That is a day that none of us will forget. All of us can most likely remember where we were when we heard the news that a plane had crashed into the first World Trade Center tower. Such news was so unbelievable, so difficult to just figure out what had just happened. As we watched in horror at the smoking wreckage of the first tower, suddenly a second plane crashed into the second tower signaling that this was no random plane that had gotten off course but it was instead a deliberate act  of terrorism. The whole country listened and watched and cried at the appalling loss of life as firefighters tried desperately to save as many of those trapped in the towers as they could. As the day unfolded it was learned that there were two more planes that were part of the attack. One of these planes crashed into the Pentagon, destroying a large section of that building. The fourth plane, which was most likely aimed at the Capital building or the White House, was brought down near Pittsburgh by the brave passengers of Flight 93.

         So, yes, we remember. We remember that this is the day that our country was shaken to its core for its belief, that such actions just could not happen on American soil, was forever shattered. What I also remembered about that attack was the real difficulty that I had with the teachings of Jesus as they related to what had happened. I mean, Jesus could not be more clear when he insists in the fifth chapter of Matthew, that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you. I am thankful that Jesus also teaches us to pray in secret because at that time I am pretty sure saying a prayer for Islamic terrorists in the public domain most likely would have resulted in a swift rebuke from someone. Yet, Jesus demands that we love exactly the kind of people who caused such devastation and destruction. Jesus though, is not alone in his difficult way of dealing with our enemies because, as we just read, Paul is also adamant that we are not to, in his words, “repay evil for evil”. We are supposed to be people who do not seek vengeance on those who have wronged us but we are to, instead, leave the revenging business to God. So, as I turned to scripture in the days after the 9/11 attacks, I thought that there was never a time when I felt that I was out of synch with many others who had every intention of repaying this evil that had happened with a little evil of our own in the form of war on terrorism. And, I am also very certain that there were a large contingent of people in our country who in the days following 9/11, most likely had no intentions of loving these their Islamic enemies let alone praying for them. This was, I suppose, one of those times that the church calls a moment of crisis because here was a time when many of us had to decide whether we were really willing to follow Jesus as he has called us to do.

         As those who can state that we are going to live by the wisdom of the Bible, we have to decide just what are we going to do with these rather difficult passages that we find here in this letter of Paul. As Paul concludes his letter in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters, he is going into greater depth about something that he had written back at the beginning of the eighth chapter, where he states that the mind in the grip of the Spirit is life and peace. This, as we have said previously is a quote from the second chapter of Malachi, where we are told that the covenant that God makes with his priests is one of life and peace. Paul quotes this because he considers those who are servants of God to be priests to God. Last week, Paul wrote of the life that we as priests are to be living, a life that is lived as one body, the body of Christ. Collectively, those who make up the body of Christ are to serve in the Spirit so that by the Spirit our life together mirrors the very life of Jesus. As Jesus was a prophet, so too the body of Christ has those who prophesy. As Jesus served, so also the body of Christ has those who serve. As Jesus taught, so too teaching is found in the body of Christ; as Jesus comforted others so also we bring comfort and encouragement to those who need it. As Jesus so freely gave, we too are called to freely give. And as Jesus modeled the life God calls us to live, so also the body of Christ has those that model the life of Christ to lead us in the ways we are to live. Lastly, Paul says that the body of Christ is where one can find mercy, joyfully given.This is the life that is ours when we, as priests to God, allow the Spirit to orchestrate our life together.

         Today, we come to Paul’s teaching of the peace that is to be ours when we know ourselves as priests to God through the Holy Spirit. Paul, in the eighteenth verse of this twelfth chapter, tells us to use all the power that we have to make peace with all people. It appears that what Paul is doing in this section is echoing what he taught us way back at the beginning of the fifth chapter where he begins by telling us that since we have been justified by faith in the resurrection we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Here we can begin to see that this making of peace is in some way connected to our belief in the resurrection. We hear something similar in the teachings of Jesus found in what we call the Beatitudes, where in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”. This phrase, “sons of God”, refers to those who are assured an inheritance by their Heavenly Father. So, again, there is a connection between our willingness to be peacemakers and the resurrection. We begin to understand this connection a little better when Paul further goes on to say in the nineteenth verse of this twelfth chapter, that we are to, “…never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”. Paul here is quoting from the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy and the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, where it reads, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge …but you shall love your neighbor as your self.” You see, what Paul is saying is that we have to trust that God, through the resurrection, is going to bring forth the justice that all of us long for. This is exactly what Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of John where he says, “The Heavenly Father has given his Son the authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all that are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of Man and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” When we say that we have faith in the resurrection, of course it means that it is our hope of rising to new life in the new creation but faith in the resurrection is also our trust that one day God is going to set everything right. This is why our faith in the resurrection justifies us as being righteous because our belief that God will deal with evil means that we will no longer be tempted to use evil to come against the injustice that we encounter in our world. When we know that God is going to deal with the evil of our world, then we are set free from our demand for justice. We can now use all our power to the making of peace, the seeking of reconciliation and forgiveness. We can give our enemies food and drink all in the hope that doing so will change their hearts in the here and now so that they might not come under judgment in the hereafter.

         Paul goes on to say that we are not to rebel against the authorities which is most likely a warning to his Jewish brothers and sisters in this Roman church. The Jewish people strongly desired to throw off Roman rule. This is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they refused to know the ways of peace. So Paul warns them stating that the rulers and authorities had been given their power by God and they too would have to answer one day to God. The authorities, Paul tells us, have been instituted by God to be his servants who carries out the wrath of God against the wrong doers. So, while Paul considers the authorities to be servants of God just as he considers those whose minds set on the Spirit to also be his servants, the work God calls the authorities to do is much different than the work God has for the body of Christ. One way to think about this work is to think about how sometimes fire is actually used to fight fires, as strange as that might sound. This is like the work of the authorities, they use the fire, the violence of the sword, to keep the fire of sin and violence from bringing total chaos on the earth. Yet, while you can fight fire with fire, fire can only be extinguished by water. This is who we, the priests to God are to be, the water which extinguishes the fire of evil by overcoming that evil with good.

         So, as long as we continue to be about the working with God as he brings his good to bear upon an evil world, we must be people who don’t get caught up in the concerns of this world. Should we pay taxes even if those taxes support evil? Paul would say, “Yes”, only because our faith in the resurrection is our hope that God most assuredly will sort everything out in the end. So, yes, we can pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to those we owe taxes , revenue to whom we owe revenue, respect to whom we owe respect and honor to whom we owe honor.

         Lastly, we cannot forget that what we owe to all we meet is love for this is the fulfillment of the law. We know that everyone is worthy to receive love because of the cross where God so loved us that he gave up his Son for us. This is why we now have peace with God because while we were still enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.What is so very difficult for us is to understand that there was a time when God knew us as his enemy, that he looked upon us in the same way we look and feel about our worst enemy. Yet, the love of God would not allow God to simply write us off, but instead his love gave up the most precious gift in order to redeem us. Silver or gold is not what has redeemed us, we are told in First Peter, the first chapter, no, we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. So, now in this evil world, it is our turn to love others just as God has first loved us. This is the work that we are called to do when we know ourselves as being priests to God. We are to bring the love of heaven which has filled our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit, and allow that love to be poured out on our neighbor. When we speak of our neighbor we do not mean just the person who lives next door, but  rather the person who needs our love the most right now, right where we are at, no matter where we are at, this is where our love is to be offered even if that neighbor turns out to be our enemy. When we love we are law-abiding people because love fulfills the law and we can know ourselves as those who abide in the love of God.

         The point Paul wants us to make is that when the Spirit takes hold of our minds, guiding and directing us, then we are to do everything in our power to be at the good work of making peace. This work is difficult but it is far from being impossible. I know this to be true because I have witnessed the making of peace behind prison walls. I was part of a team of men who took the gospel message to a select group of inmates at Belmont Correctional over the course of a weekend. As a means of demonstrating God’s love to these men who felt that God wanted nothing to do with them, we took with us a dozen homemade cookies for each resident. Belmont has over two thousand inmates so, yes, we brought a lot of cookies, enough to fill a U-Haul truck. Well, at our worship service on Saturday night we focused on the need for the residents to forgive those who had wronged them. They wrote the names of all those who they felt had wronged them on slips of rice paper and, when they were ready, they were to come forward and place their slip of paper into water which dissolved their paper, symbolically washing away all of the old hurts they needed to let go of. Then at the end of the service each resident who was part of our weekend received a bag with two dozen cookies. These cookies they were told were not for them but were instead to be given to someone in the general population that they needed to be reconciled with. The cookies were to be given as a means for good to overcome evil. As you can imagine, this was tough work in a setting such as a prison yet it was amazing when we gathered together the next day, there were wonderful stories how God used those cookies and the willingness of these men to make peace right there at Belmont Correctional. After I had a chance to witness the power of this simple gesture many times there in prison, I thought to myself that this is something that ought to be attempted on the outside. So, here is my challenge to you; think and pray about who it is that you need to be on better terms with, someone you feel has wronged you in some way. Then get busy making some cookies or if baking is not your thing, go and buy some. Then go, go and knock on that door and deliver the cookies. That is all that is necessary to be a peace maker as God calls us to be. Making peace can be hard, perhaps the hardest work involved is to swallow our pride, but as servants of God we need to get on doing this work with every bit of our power that we can muster because being about the making of peace is what God has called us to do. We can only imagine what it would be like if people when speaking of us as Christians would say, yes, they know us, they know us as those people who work hard at making peace. Amen!