Living at peace with all people? What about me?

Beloved of God,

    This Sunday, we will not be having our regular Sunday School classes. What we will be having is breakfast food! If you are going to be with us as we worship this week, plan on sticking around for a potluck brunch at 10:30 a.m. Bring a pile of bacon. Bring a casserole. Bring hasbrowns that have been covered, peppered, and chunked. If you forget to make something, pick up apple fritters on the way. Or just show up knowing that a 9” x 13” pan is more than enough monkey bread for almost anybody and you won’t go hungry.

    Our Scripture reading this week follows hot on the heels of our sermon text from last week. It picks in Romans 12:9 and goes on through the chapter. Sometimes I wonder if we miss how demanding this passage is because it sounds so gentle. Folk, I’m not always loving or lovable. My spiritual zeal sometimes fizzles. I often fail to inhabit joys with the joyful, and sorrow with the mourning. Forgoing the repayment of evil? Doing what is right in the eyes of everyone? Living at peace with all people? What about me? Where does living this way get me? What about my rights, my proper respect, my convictions? 

    Beloved, if we would follow Jesus it might mean placing even our moral outrage on the altar. It might mean taking up a cross made not of wood but of unanswered wrongs and even enemies who have been fed at our table. It may be a matter of soul searching for us whether we really believe that by doing such things we overcome evil with good. 
    But if Jesus Christ conquered sin and death through a cross and a grave, isn’t it likely that our own victory may have a similar shape? If we are people of wonderful gifts and renewed minds, it’s so that we can live a different kind of life altogether. There are purported Christians with large platforms who simply will not seek to live this kind of life and who are leading others away from it. They are in love with power and revenge. And I don’t know if I completely blame them, because living the way we’re instructed here in Romans 12 is hard. It is too hard for them to live out.
    But it is the way of Jesus. It’s the path of our master and Lord. And because he is alive, even this path of forgiveness, gentleness, and quiet righteousness is a path to true victory in and by Him. 

    Please join me this week in praying for:

• Those who are traveling this weekend.
• Our neighbors suffering loss in Florida and South Carolina.
• Those who are grieving.
• Your enemies; people who do not love you or treat you lovingly.
• Our associate pastor search team.
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local levels.
• Those who respond to emergencies in our wildlands, on our roadways, in our communities, and even in our homes.
• Each other (please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer list)

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,


Marshall

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