Village Shepherd

Many years ago at the age of eighteen, when I started training as a physiotherapist, we had to spend the first six months in academic learning in college. We weren't allowed near a patient and barely even saw the physiotherapy department. Of course at eighteen, all of us students were desperately impatient to begin the real work, the job for which we were training, and that first six months seemed to go on for ever. We wanted to learn our skills on real people, not just in the classroom. Looking back, from the point of view of the patients, it was mercy we were restrained!

Perhaps it's the same in all careers and at any age. Students can't wait until they begin the real hands-on work, and chafe at the restrictions of having to learn the theory first. Nowadays you even have to pass a theory test before you're allowed to take your driving test, and a good thing too. It's important to know something about the reasoning behind a certain course of action before you actually begin that action.

St Paul spends the first eleven chapters of his letter to the Romans teaching the theory of Christianity. He starts by telling his readers how lost human beings are without the gospel, and then goes on to tell them that all they have to do to be made right with God is to believe and trust in Jesus. Then he spells out how this "justification" works out in the Christian life and talks about both Jews and Gentiles.

Now, in chapter twelve, St Paul is ready for the practicalities. He's taught the basics of the theory, enough for his listeners to get started, and in this chapter he begins to tell them how it all works out in practical Christian living.

But first, he sums up Christianity in a few succinct words. "Love must be sincere," says Paul. "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." Until they have begun to build a relationship with God which is based on love, there's no point in the practicalities, for those practicalities must grow out of commitment to Christ, not the other way way round. Those who concentrate on good works before they begin to understand the reasoning behind it, may never make a real commitment to Christ.

So Paul begins by summing up the theory, but it then needs to be fleshed out with concrete examples. How can we be sincere in love? By sharing with God's people who are in need and practising hospitality. By blessing those who persecute you; rejoicing with those who rejoice; mourning with those who mourn, and living in harmony with one another. Then Paul adds a very timely and practical rider to all of this. He says, "Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited."

It's interesting that Paul saw this as a problem in the early church, for it seems like quite a contemporary problem. The Church is often seen by those outside its walls as rather highbrow and a place only for "posh" people, not for ordinary people.

This may stem from the times when everybody had their own pew in church with the most important people, like the squire and his family, having the best pew which they furnished and heated themselves, and the lowly people having poor pews with no heating, set right at the back of church. Although the days of personal pews are long gone, feelings of social inferiority continue to linger and may even be inadvertently fostered by the church.

Formal church services are quite difficult for outsiders to understand, and even more difficult for them to penetrate. So those who come into a formal church service for the first time probably feel completely alien and very inferior, not having the faintest idea what's happening or why it's happening. The churches which fare best in attracting outsiders seem to be churches which have a very free and open form of worship where the service is instantly accessible to anyone, whether they've been before or not, and churches which are very welcoming to newcomers without being overpowering.

Nowadays many churches have some informal services alongside their formal worship so that newcomers can be accommodated, but it can then be difficult to give both congregations a sense of identity with the church. And sadly, sometimes there can still be some conceit on both sides, with neither congregation willing to associate with the other, and with both congregations regarding the other as inferior.

But there's something else in this passage too, something which St Paul repeats three times, so maybe he regards that as the kernel of the passage, the most important part of it. In verse 9, he says: "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." Then later on, in verse 17, he says: "Do not repay anyone evil for evil." And finally, in verse 21, he says: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

It sounds as though something nasty was going on in the church. People were were in dispute with each other but were dealing with it in an unchristian way. They were hitting back. They were taking revenge on each other, and acting just as they did before they ever heard about Christ. They were reverting to their old ways of settling disputes, and by using those ways they nurtured evil, and were seriously affecting the church community.

Because churches are places where all sorts and varieties of people meet in the intimate setting of worship, disputes are inevitable, just as disputes are inevitable in families where people live together in close proximity and intimate relationships. But it continues to be of the utmost importance that those disputes are settled amongst Christians without allowing evil to flourish beneath the surface.

For some, this may mean "taking up your cross", as Jesus told us we must do, in today's gospel reading. It may mean suffering humiliation and defeat in the name of Christ, if that's what it takes to display Christian love to those who have somehow become enemies.

I can remember one of my daughters coming home from church horrified when she discovered that two church members who lived next door to each other and who were deeply Christian in church, were at each other's throats out of church, due to a dispute over the wall between their properties. My daughter never went to that church again, for it spoke to her of the worst kind of hypocrisy.

Our relationships within the church are noticed by those outside, and if the way we handle disputes is no better than the way disputes are handled outside the church, then we allow evil to flourish beneath the surface. It's no good rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn, if we don't live in harmony amongst ourselves and if we don't live at peace with each other.

How on earth do we do that in an imperfect world and within an imperfect Church? Through love. Time and again we come back to this basic of all Christian characteristics- love. First love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength, and then love your neighbour as yourself. And that way, you won't be overcome by evil, but will overcome evil with good.

And soon, those outside the Church will say, "See how these Christians love one another."