Romans 12:9-21
August 28, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church, San Francisco’s Annual Church Picnic
Our annual church picnic is always a highlight. We mobilize a team of people to barbecue and cook a delicious lunch. We charter busses to ensure that everyone can get to Sunnyvale. We invite bakers to make homemade cookies and award prizes to the best of show! We are able to all be together under one gazebo for worship and in one area of this park to eat together and to fellowship in a way that we are unable to do so back in Chinatown. At the church picnic, we learn to be the church.
We learn how to act like the church at the picnic. We invite the older people get their food first. We let the parents with little kids carry multiple plates so that the little ones won’t be hungry. When we go through the lines, we thank the cooks and servers for the work they did. We are thankful for our first servings and wait until everyone has gotten their first before we go back for seconds.
But when it comes to the desserts, we seem to forget how to be the church at the church picnic! Some of us (like me!) love desserts so much that we take more helpings than we should. I have seen us rush and push our way to the sweets and fortunately, no one has been knocked down to the ground! We need good manners when it comes to getting our desserts.
One of the features that I read in the newspaper is Miss Manners. Last week, Miss Manners talked about gossiping neighbors and not to escalate the situation, bringing a gift to a boss’ son’s piano recital, and when do you use a teaspoon or a soup spoon!
Good rules come in handy. We have unwritten rules that help things go smoothly at our church. What if Miss Manners wrote some rules for our church? Some might be:
If you are in your 80s, you must come to Sunday school early. If you are in your 60s, be on time. If you are in your 30s, people will be glad if you show up at all.
You can eat your char siu bow on the sidewalk but never in the sanctuary.
When we promote our Sunday school classes on Sept. 11, we never promote adults because it makes the other people in the class feel bad.
Don’t wear shorts to church unless you’re Paul Chuck and Chris Jensen.
When you’re late for church, you will need to sit up in the front so that the pastor can see you.
Turn off your cell phones and if anyone whose cell phone rings should be stared at by the Deacons.
Only take one cracker at the Lord’s Supper.
Now and then, most likely then, Pastor Don should preach in Toisanese.
Pastor Don should never sing into the microphone.
At the church picnic, don’t push others to get your homemade desserts!
While Miss Manners has never written rules for how to act like a church, what has the Apostle Paul written about being a church?
Body of Christ
In our passage for this morning, Paul’s list of good manners for Christians describes what it means to be the Body of Christ. Paul writes, Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold tight to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing concern. Put others above your self. Be willing to let them have the credit.
Be enthusiastic. Never let up. Be the kind of Christian who is always hopeful. When things go badly, look at it as a chance to do something in a different way.
God has no interest in a self-serving church filled with people who care only about each other, so extend hospitality to strangers. Go out of your way. Don’t go around badmouthing people who aren’t nice to you. Speak well of them. Find something you can approve, and say so to others.
Join in the fun with those having fun. Join in the tears with those who are crying. Love makes room for other’s sadness and gladness. Don’t be so preoccupied with yourself that you can’t accept people where they are.
Live in harmony with one another. Don’t be stuck-up. Treat people equally. Pay no special attention to the wealthy. Talk just as much to the poor. Love doesn’t show partiality.
Never return evil for evil. Don’t take silent revenge for imagined or real insults. If it’s possible, live at peace with everyone. The way to overcome evil is with good. Let your love be genuine.
Paul’s hope was that members of the church would love so much that others would want to be a part.
80/20
Sometimes, people are turned off by church because they hear beautiful words about love, peace and joy, and expect to find those characteristics when they come to church only to find the world’s attitudes of arrogance, prejudice, and fear. We don’t always have good manners.
There’s an inspirational speaker named, David Roche who was born with a tumor on his lower left jaw. He had surgery to remove it that was followed by extensive radiation that proved disastrous. It left him with a facial deformity, a speech impediment, and discolored skin. David has spent much of his life coming to grips with his appearance and its effect on people. He says that people with facial deformities wear their shadow outside whereas the rest of us wear it on the inside.
Roche said the in every church, there’s 80% of sincerity. People are only capable of sincerity about eighty percent of the time. Out of his experience of rejection, Roche concludes that, “Eighty percent is about as good as it’s going to get. Eighty percent compassion is about as much as we can do. So 20% of the time, you just get to be yourself.”
He’s right. None of us are sincere 100% of the time, but if we’re alert and willing, God can do a lot with 80%. God helps the church act like the church.
If you pay attention at our church you will see people listening carefully to one another, being amazingly generous, and working with a love that transforms the church. We care for each other when great tragedies happen. We reach deep into our pockets to feed the hungry and to bring relief to the homeless. Maybe out of every 10 people we meet at the picnic, we like only 8 of them!
What about the other 20%? Every church is guilty of welcoming some more than others. We all fall short of loving like Christ loves. Welcoming the stranger is risky. We could end up misunderstood, hurt, or laughed at. As someone said, “The problem with others is that they aren’t us.” Sometimes strangers seem too old, too young, poor, rich, too tall, too short, clean, dirty, mean, sweet, black, Hispanic, or white for us to be a friend.
We need to ask God to help us with this 20% that is not yet sincere.
This 20% of ourselves that are not often sincere may be our unwillingness to not repay anyone evil for evil or to take revenge for something that terribly happened to us. Our world is designed with a criminal justice system that gets even with someone who may have harmed us with jail time, retribution, money or punishment. But it’s almost an insult to imply that a monetary settlement even things up.
We are to bless those who persecute us rather than hate them. Evil is not to be responded to on the basis of evil anymore than God responded to our evil with evil. God responded with love.
Paul said, “Vengeance is reserved for God. Only God owns vengeance. We are to overcome evil with good.” We are to behave toward others as God behaves toward us. And when we do this as followers of Christ, we would transform the world and turn the world’s injustice on its head.
Getting even, seeking revenge, hurting someone because he hurt me makes up some of that 20% of the time when we are not yet sincere.
Being the Church
Being the church today is not easy—far from it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasizes that true grace is costly grace, not cheap grace, because “it calls us to follow, and because “it costs a man’s life—Jesus Christ.”
Christians are called to a very high standard of behavior, not in order that we might be saved, but rather in response to the forgiveness and salvation that already has been given to us in Jesus Christ.
In fact, it is Jesus who sets this high standard for us. Paul derives all these rules for the church to be the church from Jesus’ life and ministry that is radically unselfish, radically loving, and radically accepting ministry of forgiveness and grace.
We might say that such a high standard set before us to live out is impossible. We’ll fail to come anywhere close to passing the bar. That 20% won’t let us be that sincere.
But Paul reminds us in Romans 11, that God is the source of all riches, wisdom, and knowledge. Nothing knows the mind of God, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (11:33-36). In 1 Corinthians 12:3, Paul tells his church that each member acts within the body “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” In other words, if there is any virtue, good behavior among the believers in the church, God is the source.
I hope and pray that as God has made you sincere 80% of the time that he will still transform that other 20% of you into a caring, amazingly generous, and loving person.
At this church picnic, I hope and pray that you will act as the Body of Christ welcoming the strangers in our midst, sharing your resources with others, and fellowshipping with people at our church whom you still need to get to know.
At this church picnic when we get to the time of getting our homemade cookies, that you act out of your 80% of the time when you are sincere knowing that God always seems to provide sufficiently for everyone. Let’s have good manners.
Let us be the church at the Church Picnic today.
Let us pray.
Teach us Lord to be your church today. Lead us to greet one another as friends whom it would be a joy to get to know. Expand that 80% of sincerity that we have to include that other 20% of ourselves that still need your grace and mercy to be more Christ-like. And when we come to enjoying our desserts, show us how to have good manners. All these things we pray in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.