Sermon Title: "Coach Paul's Pep Talk"
Date: August 31, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Romans 12:9-21

As Cal-State, Long Beach prepares for the beginning of fall semester classes this week, I can just imagine that parents across the country have sent many college freshmen off with all sorts of admonitions and well-meant advice:

• Be sure to get enough sleep.
• Don’t drink anything from an open punchbowl or container.
• Don’t get behind in your reading or homework.
• If you don’t understand something, go up and ask the professor.

As the parents’ mouths are moving, the students are hearing the same thing Charlie Brown hears from his parents in the television cartoons:  “Waa-waa…Waa-waa…Waa-waa.”

Hopefully, the advice the Apostle Paul gave to the early Christians as the Church was beginning in Rome was better received.  I think it should be, for it was intended to help build their community, just as we attempt to build fellowship, cooperation and service within congregations today.

It is interesting to note that Paul, at this point, had never visited the church in Rome, nor had any personal relationship with them.  Nevertheless, as the most prominent voice of the Church in the first century, in the preceding verses of his letter he urged the members to realize God has provided distinctive gifts to each one, and expects them to use the gifts to strengthen the whole and to serve as Christ’s body in the world.  It is with this context in mind that Paul gives a string of imperatives that provides tangible instructions for how to be a unified body in their day and age.

Each Monday, I look at the suggested lessons for the following Sunday.  Occasionally I don’t use one of them if I want to answer a specific sermon request.  But last Monday, the selection from Paul’s letter we heard this morning leapt off the page at me as something exciting, something important, something vital—not just for first century Christians to hear—but 21st century ones as well.  See if you don’t think these are valid guidelines for you to use in living a Christian life:

•  bless those who persecute you

•  do not curse those who persecute you

•  rejoice with those who rejoice

•  weep with those who weep

•  live in harmony

•  don’t be stuck-up

•  mingle with the less fortunate

•  don’t think you’re so smart

•  don’t repay evil with evil

•  live peaceably with all

•  don’t take revenge

•  feed your hungry enemies

•  give drink to the thirsty enemies

•  don’t be overcome with evil

•  overcome evil with good

Now, you know I’m the least likely minister to resort to sports analogies, but this message to the Romans sounds like the pep talk a coach would give to college teams before the first game this fall.  In the same sense, wasn’t Paul a coach for this new team of Christians in Rome?  In these verses, Paul asks his team to go out there and subvert the game and surprise the opposition by not hogging the ball, by refusing to retaliate—indeed, by helping out the opposition.  Oh, and leave the penalties to the Chief Referee. (v. 19)  Remember, that Ump is the very one who modeled this subversive way of playing and winning to begin with.

Now, the problem is that some of us players do nothing because we think God expects us to serve beyond our ability.  “Oh, I could never do that …”  Well, God isn’t asking us to do what we can’t do.  And, by the way, there were others in the Bible who said the same thing, and were astonishingly wrong about their own self-assessment — Moses, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, come to mind.

Then doubtless some think—back in Rome, in congregations today, on the college team—that they are not needed because the load is being carried by a community of very capable people.  Someone else is doing this, and doing it quite well, and therefore I am not needed.  So I don’t really need to play, or participate.

Paul’s view of this is that the Spirit has given us tasks, just like parts of the body have jobs to do.  You do what you’ve been asked and tasked to do.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You teach if you’re a teacher, you exhort if you’re an exhorter, you minister if you’re a minister, you give if you’re a giver, you lead if you’re a leader, you act cheerfully if you’re a compassionate one. (vv. 7-8)

How do you play this out in your life as a Christian?  Only you can answer that for yourself, for each of your answers might be different because your God-given gifts are different.  But here’s one woman’s illustration of what she saw.

The Rev. Betty Meadows, general presbyter of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery (a position similar, in some ways, to Conference Minister in the United Church of Christ), describes a summer sabbatical that transformed her life.  She left her churchy world behind and went “under cover” for three months, working as a hostess at one of my favorite restaurants to eat breakfast when I’m visiting in the East:  Waffle House.  To Betty’s surprise, as she put it, “the risen Christ showed up every day.”

A van broke down in the parking lot, on the Fourth of July, carrying a family from Alabama.  No garage or mechanic could be found.  A waitress heard of their plight and called her boyfriend.  He arrived 15 minutes later and fixed their van, for the price of a cup of coffee.

“The risen Christ in the mechanic and the waitress,” writes Betty.

A lawyer set up shop in the Waffle House, offering legal help to the needy of the community, for what they could pay—or for no payment at all, if they couldn’t afford it.

“Day after day,” writes Betty, “this lawyer sat at a table, smoking his cigar, meeting client after client, turning down no one.  The risen Christ in the lawyer.”

A woman hobbled into the restaurant, a cast on one leg, but displaying signs of other medical difficulties.  The police had just arrested her boyfriend for drunken driving and had impounded his truck.  She was turned out on the street, with nowhere to go.  The restaurant was so busy, none of the staff could give her a ride to the bus station, but she called her landlord, who lived an hour and a half away. He dropped everything, and drove right over to pick her up.

“When the landlord arrived,” writes Betty, “I said to him, ‘How kind of you to drive so far for one of your tenants, for this woman.’  “The man looked puzzled.  And then he said, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

“The risen Christ in the landlord.”  (Meadows, Betty. “Meeting God at the Waffle House.” Presbyterians Today, April 2005, pp. 18-19.)

Most of us probably think we’re pretty good Christians.  We try to do the right thing.  But don’t we somehow want to be even better Christians, better followers of Christ, doing what he would have us do?  Paul lays it out for us as easy as a play-list—a list of how we can we can “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (v.10-11)