Proper 17: Epistle, Romans 12:9-21                                           

Romans 12:9-21

A few years ago I had the pleasure and privilege of serving my congregation in the weekly teaching of our young teens in Sunday School and in Confirmation. One of my cohorts was a young Dad, we’ll call him Jack. And Jack and I worked together for a couple of years until I left the Sunday morning piece in his able hands. About a year or so into his term of flying solo, he came to me rather excited about a portion of the book of Romans and I thought perhaps it was Romans chapter one highlighting the proclamation of a powerful gospel. Or perhaps it was the eighth chapter where Paul serves to us the indestructible love of God in a Savior who doesn’t condemn us and from whom we cannot be separated. Jack was on a different track.

I remember him saying to me, “Have you ever spent any time in Romans 12?” Romans 12? I didn’t expect that to be the center of his excitement, but Jack found it in just the place I never thought about in terms of exhilaration. Jack had stumbled on a list of “to-do’s” in that chapter and he was genuinely stoked. His thrill came from reading the very verses we have before us today. And his thrill was this: God wants us to do all this neat stuff for others. AND WE CAN! I remember just that sentiment coming from Jack. Now those of us who come from churches from the Reformation and especially those of us who wear the label, “Lutheran,” sometimes are made nervous by the commands of the Bible. After all, Luther taught that the two great doctrines of the Scriptures are Law and Gospel. Law lists God’s demands and judgments which we can never fulfill in our own strength. The Gospel, God’s gifts. And Luther taught that the church up to his day had learned to confuse them with dangerous results. I would agree.

So what was Jack excited by in a list of stuff to do? Well, here’s what I was reminded of by my younger co-worker: God has so crafted salvation into our believing hearts and hands, that we can now, by His power, live His life toward our friends, neighbors, and even those we might not like. And in blessing them we will see God bear fruit for both those who serve and those who are served.

Doing stuff doesn’t make you a Christian. But being a Christian surely leads you to doing stuff. Loving our neighbors, and that is what Romans 12 is all about, is not an option. It’s a joy. And thanks be to God, and to Jack, I learned again that entering into this labor of love allows us to know and love ever more deeply the God who gave us this list.