Overcoming Evil with Good
Sunday, 31 August 2014 - Romans 12:9-21
Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado ☩ www.hclchr.org
Several years ago on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson Frank Sinatra related this true story about an incident he had many years before with the acid-tongued comedian Don Rickles. Sinatra was dining in the lounge in the Sands hotel when Rickles came over to him and told him how he wanted to be a big hero with the girl he was eating with, who was star stuck by the famous Frank Sinatra. Rickels asked the crooner if he wouldn’t mind coming over when he was finished eating to just say hello. “Don’t come right away,” said Rickels, “just give me a few minutes with her first.”
So Rickles went over and sat back down with his date and after ten minutes or so Sinatra finished his dinner and walked over and said,"Don, old friend how are you?" And Rickles turned with an annoyed look on his face and said,"Frank, why are you bothering me. Can't you see I'm with somebody?"
Not only was that a good prank, but wonderful illustration of human nature, which is,of course, just the opposite of what we find in today’s epistle lesson: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil…Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengence is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Do not be overcome evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Boy, that is easier said that done isn’t it? I think it safe to say that as Christians we all want to live God-pleasing lives. We want to be more stable in our spirituality, more consecrated in our devotional life, more dedicated in our service to God and his people, but again and again our behavior does not measure up to our ideals and we fall far short of what we ought to be and when we do that, whether we want to admit it or not, we are doing evil in the sight of God. Now when you talk to most people about evil, they perceive it as something entirely apart from themselves. To them it is some sort of extreme, terrible act done by another person, someone else who has no conscience and feels no remorse. Rarely will they ever see themselves as being evil or doing evil.
Such is the case with the sin that the Apostle Paul points to in our text, that of anger which brings with it the desire for revenge. Once again most people, and that might even include some of us, think of revenge as some gross act of retribution, like a criminal committing murder to repay a doublecross or a spurned lover killing his former sweetheart or her new boyfriend. But when we do that what we are really doing is denying our own sin, by saying and thinking that we have no such desire. Often we give it other names like: “getting even” or “teaching someone a lesson.” We seek to mask our anger and claim that we are justified in our desire for retribution, because of the evil done to us. And so we secretly believe that we are right in taking matters into our own hands.
Sadly, the place where I have seen this manifest itself most often is in marriage. One spouse does something to offend the other, but instead of talking about it the offended spouse quietly and often subtly begins to act out their anger. The undealt with anger and tension increase until the husband and wife who once promised before God to love one another until death, are at eachother’s throats. That reminds me of the time a reporter asked Ruth Graham, the wife of the famous evangelist Billy, on the occasion of their 35th wedding anniversary, if she had ever thought about divorce. “No,” she said, “No, I've never thought of divorce once in all these 35 years of marriage, but I have thought about murder a few times."
Ouch! At any rate, whether we want to admit it or not we have all been guilty of the sin of anger and felt the desire for revenge at some point in our lives. And like all sin it has an insidious underlying cause and that cause is pride. This text pulls no punches in making it clear when is says we ought not to be haughty, or Paul says elsewhere: “Do not thing more highly of yourselves than you ought.” And that has been the problem all along. From the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in garden of Eden to this day humankind has always thought more highly of itself than it ought to have. That is what caused the first man ever born, Cain, whom Eve thought to be the Savior, turned out to be the first murderer instead. He slew Abel his brother because his pride had been injured, and he became jealous and angry when God had not accepted his sacrifice.
Likewise we also desire revenge and retribution when our pride is injured, and as I pointed out earlier, we even attempt to justify it before others and before God, but try as we might we cannot. We can’t, because we are but poor miserable sinners as we confessed at the beginning of our worship this morning. Brothers and sisters, we are nothing more than animate dust. We would have nothing and we would be nothing if it weren’t for our gracious and loving God. And it is only when we understand that and bow our heads in deep humility and repentance, that we can begin to receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Now, that being said, it is also important to point out that in spite of our sinfulness and unworthiness, we have great value to God. I like to use the illustration of the child and his Teddy bear. The child owned the Teddy since he was an infant and it was his constant companion. As time passed the little bear became old, ragged, and worn. It had been restuffed and sewn together again and again. The parents thought that it should be thrown out and replaced with a new toy, but the child wouldn’t hear of it, because he loved it. It was priceless to him. Likewise, beloved, our worth isn’t determined by our ragged appearance or what we have done or not done, but by God’s incredible love for us. There is nothing in these sinful wretched bodies that would seem to have any value to anyone, yet God has sewn us together again and again with his forgiveness and in His eyes we are priceless. The realization of that amazing truth, is the essence of the Christian faith.
For the ultimate expression of God’s love for us, we need look no further than to the cross and to Jesus Christ who died upon it. Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth, the omnipotent Lord who sustains all things, came into his creation, suffered a lifetime of injustice, poverty, persecution, pain, and death to restore us to communion with Him. The king became a servant, the creator became a creature, all to buy us back from our sinful pride and anger and from death and the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. On Calvary Jesus humbled himself, enduring the punishment that was rightly ours, so that we would not have to.
Beloved, it is only in light of Christ’s humility, that we can begin to understand what St. Paul is telling us here. Jesus, in his incomprehesible mercy, has forgiven us our trespasses against Him, against God, so we have no right, no justification for not forgiving others theirs. That is why we do not fight fire with fire or repay evil for evil, but by the Holy Spirit’s power we do the exact opposite. We repay evil with good, we feed our enemies when they are hungry, we give them something to drink when they are thirsty, we kill them with kindness, and sometimes, though certainly not all the time, our enemy becomes our friend, then he is not our enemy any more.
On the other hand, if evildoers decide to persist in their sin against us and, by extension, against God, as we do good to them, then not only will their consciences accuse them and it will be as if burning coals were heaped upon their head, but in the end they will face judgement by an omniscient and omnipotent God and the eternal flames of hell.
Beloved, please understand that God is just and that in the end His justice will prevail, which is why we, in faith, through by the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, seek to proclaim the Good news of the Gospel and share the love of Christ with everyone, because as Christians, we like our Father in heaven, want no one to go to hell. We want all people to be saved, yes, even those who persecute us. That is why we abhor evil and seek to do what is good, leaving any vengeance or retribution up to God.
The best example of this that I have heard of recently was depicted in the movie End of the Spear, which tells the true story of the murder of five men, American missionaries in 1956. They were killed by members of a primitive Ecuadoran tribe called the Waodani. The Americans had been trying to penetrate the tribe's isolated culture, befriend its members, and bring them to Christ, but instead met their deaths at the hands of the Waodani's spears. The story could have ended there, but it was only the beginning. In a decision that would have been unimaginable to most people, the wives and children of the murdered missionaries later moved into the Waodani village and helped care for them. Everyone, the widows and orphans of the missionaries, the killers and their families, were all eventually transformed by the awesome power of God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus Christ. The Waodani men laid down their spears and gave up a tradition of revenge killing that had been going on for more than 100 years.
What a wonderful lesson for us all to learn, that evil is not overcome with spears, but by faith in Jesus Christ who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed by our iniquities, and by whose stripes we are healed. May God grant us all the strength to lay down our spears as well. In Jesus name. Amen.