Warm Spirits

Paul isn’t giving a list of commandments in what I just read, but he is providing a handy check list, brief bullet points, not difficult to memorize and get by heart, timely reminders for us, a disciple’s diagnostic.  It might not hurt to copy down this list of bullet points Paul provides for growing in Christ.  Certainly, all people, religious and secular, could live these virtues—what a blessed world it would be!  For a Christian, such living is incumbent upon us, called as we are to help others see and know the Father of virtues, our glorious God.  Maybe keep a copy in your wallet or purse, on the wall next to your computer or work area where you can look up and see it, out in your shop or garage, near your sewing machine, maybe even near your stove.  Make time from time to time to look these over, and meditate upon each one.

Christ’s love in action in our lives looks like something: “Love must be sincere” (12:9).  Amen!  Not just words, empty air.  People by default tend to live self-directed lives, so a love-directed life tends to be noticed.  Sincere love has substance, a solid foundation; sincere love is durable, dependable.  It isn’t flashy, is not intended to call attention to itself.  It’s just there, and it’s life giving, life-sustaining.  A long time ago, I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  It’s an oldie, for sure, but worth the read.  Scenes and characters have stayed with me; one rises to special remembrance.  A slave-catcher—not exactly a popular person on the north side of the Ohio River—is shot and badly wounded.  A Quaker woman and her family take the man in and over a period of weeks nurse him back to health.  The abolitionist Quaker woman and her family had no great incentive to preserve the life of the slave-catcher—except that they took Christian love seriously and knew it needed to be shown and shared sincerely, even with those they didn’t exactly like.  Their personal preferences and prejudices weren’t quite the point.  Showing Christ’s love to some but not to others isn’t really hitting the target.  Let it never be said of any of us that our love never looked like much.  Love looks like something.

Love one another, yes!  And love, as Paul biblically reminds us, love has this dimension: love hates what is evil (12:9).  If I were to ask you to name something evil, you probably could.  What if I asked whether you hated it, or if there was anything that you honestly, actually, seriously hated?  Nearly all of us have been raised upon a Christianity that taught us that hate is bad, probably evil, and definitely the farthest from Jesus.  Don’t hate!  Don’t judge!  For many of us, that’s like saying the same thing.  It just seems right, just feels obvious, so it must be true.  We’ve most of us been convinced that to judge is to hate, so we don’t do the one by declining to do the other.  I hope it won’t shock you too deeply then, when I tell you hate is not evil.  What is hate?  I’m not talking about irrational rage that leads to unhinged violence.  Hate is the strongest aversion possible.  Hate is zero tolerance.  Remember all those zero tolerance policies that were out there for a while?  How it sounded good, to us, as if that phrase, “zero tolerance,” meant taking a bold, proactive stance?  I’m not sending my kid to school unless it’s zero tolerance!

We want nothing to do with what we hate, whether it’s the Rangers, the Longhorns, or Brussels Sprouts.  Among the psalms, we hear this of God: “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence.  You hate all who do wrong” (Ps 5:5).  What is arrogance?  Me before you; self before others.  My truth before God’s truth.  My desires matter more than any standing commitments, vows, or relationships.  It’s not that the Lord hates only the wrong they do.  The psalm is telling us that the Lord hates the wrongdoer.  Wow.  What that means is that God takes sin far more seriously than we do.  Beloved, remember—we become what we do, as God is well aware.

“The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion” (Ps 11:9).  Among other reasons for this, as the old English Puritan John Owen wrote, is that “Many previous sins make way for the great sin of finally rejecting the voice or word of God.”[1]  Won’t listen, sin by sin, becomes can’t hear.  The psalms also enjoin the faithful: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (Ps 97:10).  We hear in that longest psalm, Ps 119, “I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path” (Ps 119:104), and again, “because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path” (Ps 119:128).  The more we study, receive, and live God’s Word, the more we will love one another and hate evil.  When we know and love God, we will hate evil.  That book of wisdom for daily living, Proverbs, gives us this: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil” (Pr 8:13).  Paul himself here seems to be quoting from memory the words of the prophet Amos: “Hate evil, love good” (Am 5:15).

Oh, all the evil out there: oh, how we hate Trump; oh, how we loathe Democrats, Russia, Socialists, oligarchs and plutocrats, Israel, and Iran.  The harder task, to which the Spirit calls us, is to work with the Spirit in identifying the remaining evil in here, to hate it, and in cooperation with and submission to the Spirit, to do something holy, godly, faithful, about that residual evil.  The place to begin, the place to focus, beloved, is always the same place: right here.  We’ve more than enough work, right here, to occupy us for a long time.

In a shifting world of deception and chicanery, when you find the good thing, you cling to it.  When you find the pearl of great price, you go and exchange all you had to have it, your pride and joy.  But you must first know something of pearls.  Many merchants are selling many things out there, beloved, and many are buying.  In Christ, love that truly loves is animated by a clear, accurate, truthful understanding of God’s Word.  Not just a partial, baseline familiarity, which we all have, but an understanding of the Word: we’re all at work on that, and the Spirit is at work in and with each of us to cause that understanding of God’s Word to blossom.  We come to a richer, fuller, more complete understanding of God’s Word as a result of vital relationship with God, time in prayer, time in God’s Word, and life spent living the gifts God has given each of us: in other words, by being a disciple.

To love is also to hate.  What?  To love is also to hate.  When we love, we hate whatever harms this love, whatever would harm the beloved.  Oh, I just can’t hate.  Well, could you at least bring yourself closer to an energetic dislike?  We want no harm to come to the one we love; we do not want to be the cause of harm or an accomplice in harm.  We know there is much out there with the power and the will to harm.  Love takes quite a beating, in this life!  Just ask Jesus.  Sincere love logically leads to hating what is evil and clinging to what is good.  If you’re not clinging to what is good, consider carefully whether you actually hate what is evil.  Our holy God wants us, in holiness, to hate what is evil.  We hate it, we are indifferent to it, or we love it.  And indifference to evil is not an option, for us.  Hate will have nothing to do with what is hated; hate will not allow what is hated to hang around: sin, for instance.  Sin is evil.  Evil works against sincere love.  Evil is the opposite of sincere love.

“Be devoted to one another in love” (12:10).  Love expresses itself, love arrives, through devotion.  Devotion sticks it out, sticks together, “keeps us together.”  The young, sad singers, wrestling with their immaturity, brokenness, “issues,” and temptation, sing of love tearing us apart, again.  Maybe they’ll kiss and make up.  Maybe they’ll kiss goodbye.  For those who have come to a fuller degree of maturity, wisdom, experience, and faith, love abides.  For these, love, first, is not an emotion—love is a choice to stay committed, to work on the relationship, to continue to choose to value the relationship.  I love you and I’m leaving you—no, I don’t think it works quite like that.  I love me, so I’m leaving you . . . yes, that sounds closer to the truth.

We know there’s love, Christ’s love, when we truly care about one another.  Be there for one another.  Church, ideally, will be the place where your best friends gather—your best friends will be those with whom you worship.  There are churches where people do not know one another and aren’t especially curious to get to know one another.  Devon and I worshipped with such congregations before I became a pastor.  I didn’t have the impression that anyone, there, would say the congregation was warm and welcoming.  It was just a space where people sat together for an hour once a week.  Church is supposed to be a place, a people, you know you can rely on; you know they are there for you, just as you are committed to be there for them, even any of them, even at any time.  Now, no, even here, even still, we haven’t fully gotten there, but we can be resolved to work on this, together.  We grow in Christ as we do.

Paul had earlier urged us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to do.  Now, he urges us to “[h]onor one another above yourselves” (12:10).  Don’t make a habit of putting yourself before others—take proper care of yourself, have all due, healthy regard for yourself, don’t let yourself go!, but don’t make you the focal point of your living.  The Supreme Self will always, necessarily, be in conflict with our Sovereign God.  Be available for others; be willing to be “inconvenienced,” even go out of your way for others.  Serve one another in love, not seeking recognition or praise—that’s a road to bitter burnout, for sure, if you do things looking for praise and thanks.  God sees!  So why isn’t that enough?

Let us go out of our way for others, remembering Christ, who might just say to us on that day, “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . . Come and share your master’s happiness” (Mt 25:21, 23).  In Christ, we are all made able to serve.  By the Spirit, let us serve.  We serve by being here for one another.  We aren’t seeking praise and acclaim here; we seek God’s approval, which we always have in Christ, living for Jesus.

Short sayings are easier to remember than longer sayings.  “Never be lacking in zeal” might be easier to remember than the full verse: “Never be lacking in zeal but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord” (12:11).  Zeal—what’s that?  A fire, burning bright?  Well, a fire needs fuel.  What is the fuel?  Grace, certainly, but perhaps, in addition, all that Paul has been encouraging the faithful to do for one another.  Doing gets us into a habit of doing.  A bright flame can also be momentary, brilliant and brief; a steady flame is more useful for our work, for staying warm.  Zeal is not necessarily some perpetual exclamation mark.  Zeal is a fire continually being fed, maintained, because we’re continually going to the source of our fuel to feed the fire.  Paul even tells us what that fuel is: serving the Lord.  If we’re not serving the Lord, who are we serving?  There is a very close connection between service and worship.  All our living in the Lord is to be worship of the Lord: live to worship God; live to praise the worthiness of God.  Sound monotonous?  Consider this, God is worthy, among other reasons, because He is the pinnacle of all excellence.  God is never boring.

Paul reminds us of the daily realities of our discipleship.  We have hope—we’ll need it!  There will be hardships, troubles, difficulties.  There is prayer.  Prayer and hope are provided—gifts—to see us through the hard times, as I think we could each testify.  One of these Sundays, I’m going to ask you to stand and give your testimonies to the ways and times God has seen you through.  That will be a specially blessed time of worship, beloved!  So, be ready!

Because we have hope, we can be joyful.  A lack of joy might indicate a lack of hope.  I’ve spoken of joy at different times, of how we tend to conflate joy with happiness.  Scripture more often ties joy to worship and peace.  Happiness is an emotion: flighty, finicky, fickle.  Joy is a spiritual state.  A worshipful peace—that’s joy.  Joy is enjoying the gift of God’s peace; God’s peace draws from us a worshipful response.  Our worshipful response, as Paul has been trying to remind us, is our disciple’s life.  All of life—supposed to be worship, walking in vital relationship with God.  To know Christ is to know hope.  “Be joyful in hope” (12:12).

To know Christ is to know trouble will come.  Jesus knew much of trouble, and he knew much of peace in the storm.  Be “patient in affliction” (12:12); Christ is with us; God is for us; the Spirit is seeing us through.  This too shall pass, the sun also rises, the steadfast love of the Lord abides.  The hurt will mellow.  The fear and worry will subside.  No, we don’t know how, now.  God knows.  We don’t know how we’ll get through this.  God knows.  We feel weak; God gives strength.  We feel sad; God brings joy.  We feel troubled; God is our peace.  Because waiting is a very large part of this life, peaceful people have learned how to wait in the Lord.

Be “faithful in prayer” (12:12).  I recently saw a bar graph displaying the frequency with which Christians in several nations pray.  Now, there were many around the world who prayed daily.  And there were many who prayed only in church on Sunday—fulfilling their weekly obligation, perhaps.  A few weeks back, I spent some time talking about prayer.  We wonder what to pray, how to pray.  Pray in the Spirit, allowing the Spirit to realign you toward what is pleasing to God.  How to pray in the Spirit?  Pray for what is pleasing to God.  What makes God happy?  Pray that way.  Pray for that.  Pray about that.  To neglect prayer is hardly different from neglecting any other dimension of our discipleship, whether it’s neglecting to gather for worship, neglecting the blessing of the Sacrament, neglecting the blessing of spending time with God in His Word, or neglecting to learn God’s love by loving those around us in Christ’s name, even the ones we’d rather not.

When we remember the hope we have, the present is cast in another, better light.  The Christian cannot be other than patient—impatiently patient!  We want the kingdom, now!  We know the timing is God’s.  We know there will be hills and valleys, some swamps also, along the way.  We won’t get anywhere without patience.  So long as we must journey, let God teach us patience along the way.  As we pray along the way, new depths of faith become open to us: prayer nurtures faith; faith leads us to prayer.  Before worship last Sunday, I was talking with a dear sister about the power of prayer!  Prayer is never in vain; there is no other way to seek the Lord.  So, be faithful in prayer.  Be in prayer, also, for one another.

Judaism placed strong emphasis upon concern for those with less.  That call to compassion comes from God Himself.  The Federal Reserve Board reported for 2024 that, while the majority of American families reported they were getting by, financially, a nearly identical majority reported economic challenges as a top concern.[2]  My guess is that the situation is not much different now.  It’s not so easy to see how we can afford to be charitable when we have little to spare.  But it isn’t primarily money that God is asking us to spare, despite the barrage of solicitations from all the worthy charities.  Paul exhorts the faithful there in Rome, to “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need” (12:13).  So, we direct our charity first to the family of faith, without neglecting those as yet outside.  That care and concern take different shapes, each an expression of our choice to be loving towards one another.  What we are basically called to share is ourselves: our attention, concern, and compassion.

Paul has been taking this time in Romans to sketch out how we can share with one another and with fellow Christians everywhere: practice real love, even if at first it’s mostly by practicing loving behaviors; hate what is evil, together; standing together makes a difference.  If we are devoted to one another and seek to value one another, we will be a sharing people.  We don’t honor anyone if we do not share with them; not to share is not to include, not to notice, not to care.  We are faithful in prayer for one another.  To riff on James, if I say I care about this person and that person, if I tell myself I do, yet I never pray for them, what does my professed care amount to?

We share ourselves with one another—our true and proper worship, glorifying God who calls us into life together.  Paul’s next instruction, then, is a very natural extension: “Practice hospitality” (12:13).  Christopher Nolan’s rendition of The Odyssey, out in theaters earlier this summer, makes much of the idea of hospitality.  The ancient world lacked the hotels and hospitals that are an assumed feature of our American landscape.  Hospitality was hugely important, and violations of hospitality were, frankly, wicked.  We hear a very similar message in Hebrews: “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.  Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:1-2).

Maybe you know of someone who, after high school, or one summer in the college years, backpacked around Europe, staying at youth hostels.  That word, hostel, shares the same root as the word hospitality, which also shares the same root as our word hospital.  All this begins to round out the idea and the blessing: offering a refuge, a respite, a rest upon the way—an oasis.  Around here, we know hot, tired, and thirsty.  As Jesus showed us, how we receive others matters.  Whatever you did for one of the least of these, and, also, this: whatever you did not do for one of the least of these (Mt 25:40, 45).  Let us be among those who do as if it were for Jesus himself.

[1] John Owen.  John Owen: Daily Readings, August 10^th.  Lee Gatiss, ed.  Christian Focus: Fearn, Tain, Ross-shire, Scotland, 2022.

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-overall-financial-well-being.htm