Leaving Problems with God
Dr. Rev. John J. Lolla, Jr.
September 3, 2017
Text: Romans 12:19, O.T.: Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, N.T.: Romans 12:9-21
This is Labor Day weekend. All of us labor and appreciate a day of rest from our labors. Yet the weekend was named to honor the challenges and remember the sacrifices made by those who yearned for justice in the workplace. They struggled to be organized as unions to demand better living conditions for themselves and their families.
I would venture to guess we haven’t much experience with the injustices faced by coal miners in the early part of the last century. I never lived in coal mining country as a child. But I learned about it during the twenty-six years I served at Plum Creek.
There were five coal mines in Plum Borough. Now there are none that are operating. But each of those mines has its story. The Renton Mine sat about a mile from Plum Creek where I served. In 1931, a laborer’s demand for justice resulted in a story that was remembered in the mining town sixty years later.
The Coal and IronPolice were regarded as henchmen for the mine’s unjust management. They were not trusted and policed the mines, harassing families who wouldn’t shop at the company store. When miners tried to make a little money to help their families by gambling, the mining police would break up the games and keep the money for themselves. They sat on their mounted horses around the perimeter of the mine to keep away union agitators. They were despised by the coal miners and the miners’ families.
Groundhog Tony Tiberio had five children with his wife. He entertained his family by playing the accordion and earned his name because he fed his family with the groundhogs he shot in the fields and woods around the mine.
One evening he went with Bill Mellinger to hunt rabbits. Mellinger was apoliceman for the mine. After hunting they went to a local bar where they ended up in a dispute over how to divide the rabbits after a round of drinks. Their dispute went out to the street at the intersection where the elementary school sat. All of the animosity over the injustices of the mine that was pent up inside the coal miner burned inside.
Groundhog Tony shot Bill Mellinger dead at the intersection. He had resolved in his own heart the injustice of the Coal and Iron Police for the miners of Renton. He acted from his natural instinct to get justice.
Consider the difference between Groundhog Tony’s demand for justice and what happened in 2006 to a community in eastern Pennsylvania.
On October 2, 2006, Charles Roberts took hostage children of the West Nickel Mines one-room school house in Lancaster County. It was a school operated by Old Order Amish – Christians who live apart from the rest of the world.
We know the terrible story of what happened inside the school house. Today, the school house has been torn down and its site is a quiet pasture. The Amish have built a new school house. Four of five children who were wounded are disabled. Five other families mourn the loss of their daughters.
The story of West Nickel Mines School is not justabout the evil beneath the terrible shootings. It’s even more about the response of the Amish to the family of Charles Roberts. The Amish communityof West Nickel Mines reached out with grace to embrace the shooter’s parents, his wife and children, and his wife’s parents. They taught their children not to think evil of this man. They sincerely offered mercy in the face of evil.
They reminded us about a fundamental instruction Jesus Christ has given to His followers.
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
This may be one of the, if not the hardest lesson our Lord teaches us.
It lies at the root of Paul’s admonition to the church in Rome that we read this morning from Romans 12.
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them . . . Repay no one evil for evil.”
Jesus’ teaching on the law of love, and Paul’s application of it before the Church’s persecution in Rome, violate the most basic concepts of justice. Justice permits a response to injustice that balances the scales when an injustice is committed.
In Exodus 21:23-24, a fundamental principle of equality in Jewish law is outlined. God permits retribution for an injustice based on equal measure. The punishment for injustice should be equal to the injustice that warrants punishment. It’s described as giving “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Equal retribution was enlightened thinking in the ancient world. Justice for the Gentile world was defined as any punishment necessary to preserve the emperor’s authority. There was no consideration given to balance the punishment for an offense with the offense committed. Pagan justice was brutal and barbaric.
Judaism’s concept of justice is a high standard by which to measure Western law. Many times historically, the Church has failed practicing the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” principle.
But Jesus raises the bar for Christians and the Church. In Matthew 5:20 he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus says the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” principle must be surpassed by His followers. You must offer love in the form of grace, sincere love, to those who commit injustices against you.
Paul applies Jesus’ teaching in Romans 12:17, “Repay no one evil for evil. But take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.” What was noble in the sight of all was Jesus saying from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
What is noble in the sight of all is Christians following Jesus’ example, to which Paul pointed the Church in Rome during its persecution.
Martin Luther King followed Christ’s teachings in his freedom marches during the 1960s. He taught a non-violent response to social injustice, offering reconciliation in the face of racist hatred. The power of the law of love to forgive those who persecuted God’s children opened new avenues for America to live up to her ideals of equality and freedom.
Although justice permits vengeance as a means of balancing the scales of injustice, retribution does not overcome evil. In fact, it shows that the goodness of being Christ’s follower is overcome by evil. We become no better than those perpetrating the offense. Offering love in the face of the evil is the only means to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance.
Grace in the face of evil shows Christ’s supremacy in this world.
Paul notes the power of love can appeal to the conscience of the unjust. When forgiveness and love is the Christian response to injustice, responsibility and remorse among the evil doer can be cultivated.
Whether we want to admit it, it’s human nature to fight back when we’re attacked. It’s human nature to want to injure the person who has injured you. There’s an inner psychology of getting even that comes naturally to us.
What comes naturally with getting even could be interpreted as being created in the image of God. But getting even isn’t our prerogative. This is where we’re mistaken. Judging an equal isn’t our role as God’s Creation. Judgement is God’s alone. Our job is to let God do the judging and to trust God will bring judgment at the right time and the right place.
God’s forgiveness from the Cross has compelled millions of non-believers to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Many of those non-believers once believed they had a God-given right to judge Christians. One was a Jew by the name of Saul – the very same man who wrote Romans 12.
Saul received God’s grace and became overwhelmed with contrition. He became the Apostle Paul and wrote in Romans 12:20 that being kind toward those who hurt you pours burning coals upon their head. He wrote from first-hand experience. He knew Jesus’ grace first-hand.
Paul wasn’t just quoting from Proverbs 25:20 to impress the listener with his Bible knowledge. He knew Jesus had given him a second chance on life despite his efforts to kill Christians for idolatry. He was thankful for God’sopportunity to live a new life.
God’s forgiveness of our sins is the ground from which repentance is offered and responsibility for ones’ sin is accepted. When we fail to live up to His grace ourselves, we’re undoing what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We’re rejecting God’s graceful method of judgment.
Peter’s letters consider what’s at stake for us when we reject God’s grace by not being graceful. In I Peter 3:6 in the second clause Peter says, “Keep your conscience clear so that when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.”
Where did Peter learn that approach? He learned it from Jesus.
We human beings naturally lust for vengeance – for retribution. It’s a fire that burns inside us until a score is settled. We want the other person to be in as much pain as we are. But this is the wrong type of burning that should go on inside of us.
Peter summarizes the problem in his first chapter of his second letter. “Jesus has given us, through these things, His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption of the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature.”
Jesus wants us to be participants of the divine nature. He wants us to go beyond simply being created in God’s image. Jesus wants us to participate in God’s loving nature – to live in God’s love, by God’s love, for others with God’s love.
Peter continues his thought. “For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.”
Each of these words modify “the divine nature:”
- goodness,
- knowledge,
- self-control,
- endurance,
- godliness,
- mutual affection,
- love.
When these traits shine in our lives, we are participating in “the divine nature.” We are living like God is.
Then, Peter gives this warning in chapter 2:20:
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than [not knowing Jesus Christ at all]. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them [through Jesus Christ’s teachings and example].
This brings us to the public rhetoric we’ve heard in recent months from America’s streets. Wishing for ill-will to afflict those with differing opinions from ours is not Jesus’ example. Wanting natural disasters to devastate communities we scapegoat for a cause is not Jesus’ example.
Jesus’ example is to sincerely offer from the Crosses we bear Jesus’ words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is what members from the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did in Charleston, South Carolina after a shooter invaded God’s house of worship and massacred church members during a prayer service in 2015. These Christians participated in the divine nature and showed us ordinary Christians like us can live like Jesus and let Him judge the rest.
To be loving and gracious in the face of injustice requires tremendous Christ-like self-control. It violates our natural sense of justice. We can only find that place of graciousness in our hearts through prayer. Through on-going conversation with our heavenly Father, we can begin to discover our capacity to bless those who persecute us, bless them and not curse them.
Only by contemplating the enormity of God’s unmerited love for us through reading God’s Word, can we grasp the potential of reconciliation with others. Reconciliation is God’splanto begin new life with others.
God has shown us from the Cross that He intends to right the wrongs that are being done. God has shown us from the Cross that it is not our burden to avenge the wrongs that are done in this life.
Avenging wrongs done in this life is God’s work alone, not ours.
When we offer sincere grace in the face of injustice, we show God, and the world, that His saving work in Jesus Christ is sufficient; Not only for the life to come, but for this world as well. Our passion isn’t for vengeance. Our passion is for Jesus.
Leave your problems with Christ to carry. Live as He has taught us to live so the world can know the power of His love in this world.
Amen.
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