Proper 17 year A RCL
August 31, 2008
Romans 12:9-21

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

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; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.  In the name of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“Hate what is evil.”  Have you ever heard the saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner”?  Some people claim that the saying goes all the way back to St. Augustine in the 4th century.  They attribute it to St. Augustine so that they can put his authority on it.  I cringe every time I hear it.  I don’t think that there is such a thing as “hate the sin, love the sinner.”  With this for a motto, invariably the sinner is going to get some of the sin-hate overflow.  

“Hate the sin, love the sinner” turns into what I call, “I love you, but...”  “I love you, but you lied to me.”  “I love you, but I hate that you yell at your sister.”  “I love you, but I don’t like those pants you are wearing.”  When we add a “but” to “I love you” the love is cancelled out.  “I love you, but” does not make a criticism any softer.  In fact, it conditions people to think that every time they hear the words “I love you” from anyone, including God, there will always be a “but” that will follow.  God loves us.  Period.  There is no but.  That is why I have my own version of “hate the sin, love the sinner.”  I say, “love the sinner, love the sinner.”

When St. Paul said, “hate what is evil,” I wish that he had never used the word “hate.”  I would have much rather he would have said, “resist what is evil.”  Follow this logic with me:  I hate sin.  I sin.  I hate myself.  I know that this is a degradation of what Paul intended.  However, I think that plenty of people think along these lines unintentionally misusing Paul’s words as a starting point.

I just don’t think we should ever let the word “hate” enter into our Christian vocabulary.  Pretty soon we have Christians saying that God hates sin.  God is love.  I’m sure that God is saddened by sin because sin is what separates us from God and God does not want to be separated from us.  But I would never say that God hates anything.  Once we justify the right to hate things because we think God hates things, then we are not very far from the jump from things to people.  I choose to strive to keep all forms of hate out of my spirituality.  I’ll stick to resistance, which is what I think St. Paul intended anyway.

Of course, the rest of this passage from Romans is right in lines with Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount.  “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”  Do not do evil to the person that has done evil to you.  We are to feed our enemies if they are hungry and give them something to drink if they are thirsty.  By doing this is will be to them as if we were heaping burning coals upon their head.  This part about feeding our enemies and heaping the burning coals on their heads was not a new idea originating with Paul.  It comes from Proverbs chapter 25.  It comes from the wisdom of Judaism.  

I can’t get it out of my mind that thought that treating enemies with kindness so that they will feel cowered is a very passive aggressive action.  It seems strange for the Bible to be telling me to be passive aggressive.  I can see myself with a plastered on fake smile offering a plate of sandwiches to the guy that robbed me, thinking to myself, “That’s right, take a sandwich.  And here is a glass of water for you to pour on your scalded head.”  I think that the writer of Proverbs was just trying to say that we should love our enemies using colorful imagery.  We should leave the burning coals and the vengeance to God’s discretion.  And we should never say, “I love you, but…”

==AMEN==