The Power of Pauline Ethics: The Christian Life and the Life of Christians
Two weeks ago I preached a sermon called The Perils of Pauline Theology. In it I expressed major reservations about what seems to be Paul’s primary doctrine, namely, that Jesus’ death on the cross was the divinely required sacrificial atonement which saves us from our sins. I will not repeat what I said in that sermon, but I will note that this idea is spelled out in great detail in Paul’s letter to the Romans. For eleven chapters the man from Tarsus went through a carefully presented, closely reasoned summary of his beliefs concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
In the 12th chapter of his letter, however, Paul shifted from theology to ethics. If we believe Jesus is God’s Messiah, which I believe and I hope you also believe, then Paul asks how that conviction translates itself into how we live. What should the Christian life look like? How ought we, as Christians, to live?
Today, and for the following six Sundays, I will be preaching a series of sermons called The Power of Pauline Ethics. Having voiced some doubts about what Paul said we should believe, I want strongly to affirm many of the things he said we should do. He intimated that whatever we might believe about God and Jesus Christ is of little or no consequence unless it issues in lives that are transformed by our faith. Paul proclaimed that notion by many outstanding declarations throughout his various letters to the first Christians.
Paul begins the 12th chapter of Romans with these memorable words: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (12:1). Having written for eleven chapters about what Paul considered to be the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, now the apostle wants us to think about how we too need to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others. “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2). If we truly believe what Jesus said, then we must put those convictions into action in the way we live out our lives.
God has given each of us certain gifts, said Paul, and we should use them according to the grace He has given us. If we have the gift of prophecy, which means the ability to describe what God wants done in the world, then we should do that. If our gift is service to others, then we should do that. If we are natural teachers, then we should teach, telling what we know about God, and also telling what we know about a wide variety of subjects people need to know about in order for them to be able to act more effectively themselves in God’s world. Those who contribute to the needs of others should do so with liberality; those who assist others should do it with zeal; those who perform acts of mercy should do them cheerfully, and not grudgingly.
“Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (12:9). In that regard, I want strongly to suggest two movies you ought not to see. They are American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street. American Hustle is a black comedy based on the Abscam scandal in the Seventies. However, it is much more black than it is comedic. The language is atrocious. To be sure, much contemporary language is atrocious, both in movies and in reality, but this is above and beyond the bounds of ordinary atrocity. As for The Wolf of Wall Street, I read several reviews which commended it, and one which said it is the best movie of 2013. It received four stars in a couple reviews. It also is filled with atrocious language, it seems like it has hundreds of naked women traipsing through the scenes, when there are probably only a dozen or so at most, and the behavior of the principal character in the plot is as sleazy as can be found in any character from stage, screen, or literature. The story is based on an actual Wall Street stock broker who made many millions of dollars in commissions trading stocks for investors about whose welfare he cared not a single scintilla.
In these bewildering and befuddling times, we do not hate evil nearly enough, nor do we hold fast to what is truly good nearly enough. We put up with the bad and avoid the good too much.
There is talk that Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, might name Silvio Berlusconi, the disgraced former Italian Prime Minister, who is a convicted felon, as the Russian Ambassador to the Vatican. It is an appalling symbol of our time. In the first place, it would be like the US government naming former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown our ambassador to Russia. Who are we to do that? But of greater importance, it would be like naming Bernie Madoff as the head of the Federal Reserve Bank or Al Capone as the chairman of the Federal Ethics Commission. Hate evil, for heaven’s sake, and hold fast to what is good!
“Love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor” (12:10). Affection is a virtue in fairly short supply in the Twenty-Teens, especially among males of our species. But affection is a virtue, whether or not it is “brotherly.” As for showing honor, that too is in short supply. Everyone needs to be honored - - - not just mildly affirmed, but actually honored. Everyone is a child of God, and therefore we should show honor to one another, if only to remind one another that we are worthy of honor, because we belong to God.
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (12:14). There aren’t many people who actively persecute us, but there may be a few. If so, nothing is gained by treating them as they treat us. If, as Jesus said, the Golden Rule is that we should do unto others what we would have them do unto us, no one wants to be persecuted, and thus no one should persecute persecutors. Loving our enemies beats hating them, and it might even turn them into friends.
I just read a wonderful novel called The Jew Store. It was written by Stella Suberman, and it is the real-life story of Aaron and Reba Bronson, two Jewish immigrants from Russia in the early 20th century who ended up in a small town in northwestern Tennessee. Stella was their third child. Aaron Bronson opened a low-cost clothing store in Concordia (the town’s name is changed to protect the innocent --- and the guilty). Apparently many Jewish families all across the South established small department stores a century ago, and the businesses they started were widely called by the locals “Jew stores.” There is certainly an implied slur in the very term, but the Bronsons learned to make their peace with being the only Jews in a town in which there were also no Catholics. Despite the potential overwhelming tension which might accompany such a story, Stella Bronson Suberman weaves a great deal of cultural humor and understated sagacious observations in a heartwarming author’s recollection of her childhood.
Two of the town’s leading citizens made it their business to try to stymie Aaron Bronson when he tried to open his store, and they openly persecuted him. Wanting to succeed, and knowing he could not do so by actively opposing them, he cleverly maneuvered around them. Eventually Bronson’s Low Priced Store became a roaring success, particularly after the Depression swept across the country and many people could buy only low-priced items, if they could buy anything at all. In the end, one of the men who sought to thwart Stella’s father, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, became Aaron’s ally in saving the town’s shoe factory, which in effect saved the town. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (12:14).
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (12:15). When something good that is unexpected happens to us, we want to share it with others. We naturally do that with the members of our immediate family, but sometimes it means even more to rejoice with friends. The best kind of a friend is someone with whom you can celebrate successes and other blessings. But also, the best kind of friend is someone who has shoulders tailor-made for crying on. The power of Pauline ethics urges us to be friends like that to everyone around us. The highest and lowest moments of our lives should not be experienced alone. They should be lived with others.
“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (12:18). Sometimes it is not possible to live peaceably with certain people. They make it their business to see to it that peace with those they perceive as enemies never happens. But most of the time, if we are wise and determined and do not consciously exhibit “in your face” behavior, we can create peace between ourselves and those with whom we have had some serious differences.
Remember how Archie Bunker and George Jefferson eventually learned to live peaceably with one another, until the Jeffersons went moving on up to the East Side, and started their own TV show? It wasn’t easy for either of those loveable reprobates to discover neighborly harmony, but with the help of their long-suffering wives and their open-minded children, they managed to pull it off. It can happen like that in real life as well. It doesn’t occur easily, but it can occur.
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God” (12:19). Vengeance appeals to our lowest nature, and never to our highest nature. It is “natural” to want to avenge ourselves on anyone who has wronged us, but that part of our nature which seeks vengeance is, by nature, base. It is not high or admirable or lofty.
Vengeance is promoted in too much literature and in too many movies. Captain Ahab was obsessed by avenging himself on Moby Dick, the white whale who had caused him the loss of a leg. Karenin wanted to take vengeance on Count Vronsky for stealing the affections of his wife Anna Karenina. Komarovsky wanted to take vengeance on Dr. Zhivago for taking Lara away from him. But then, Komarovsky wanted to avenge himself on everyone, because he is in the top one-percentile of really nasty men. So is nearly everyone in No Country for Old Men, which got four stars, and The Wolf of Wall Street, which got four stars, and American Hustle, which got three stars. Saving Mr. Banks will probably end up with two or three stars, but deserves four stars, if only because Emma Thompson did a super job portraying an irascible soul whose irascibility is better understood in a multitude of flashbacks to her youth in Depression-times Australia. At least P.L. Travers, who wrote Mary Poppins, was only imperious and not vengeful. We haven’t seen August: Osage County yet, which has a stellar cast, but I fear it also will have a dark and un-redeeming screenplay. Is there nothing between a lady who comes sailing in on an umbrella and a sociopathic stockbroker to give us proper pause for philosophic thought?
I realize the dark side of human nature must be addressed, and that it must never be intentionally papered over in a mist of Pollyanna melodrama. But must evil and retribution and payback take precedence in our culture or in our crania? Is that an inevitability? And if so, why?
Matthew Parris is one of the regular columnists for The Times of London. As he has informed his readers many times before, he is an avowed atheist. However, he is not an evangelical atheist, like Britain’s most famous (or is it infamous?) evangelical atheist, Prof. Richard Dawkins. Further, Matthew Parris believes that Christianity can be a liberating influence in the lives of millions of people. He wrote, “Very, very broadly, with a thousand exceptions, after making every kind of qualification, taking a global view, and allowing for some ghastly counter examples, I think Christianity is on the side of the free spirit. In teaching a direct and unmediated link between the individual and God, it can liberate, releasing people from fear (as I’ve seen missionaries do), freeing people from the weight of their own culture, empowering them to stand up for themselves. Christianity can smash the metaphysics that entrap cultures” (The Times, Nov. 23, 2013, p. 23).
To expand from that, but certainly not to try to speak for Matthew Parris, I would say that the ethical principles laid down by the apostle Paul in the 12th chapter of Romans can free us from our lower nature in our pursuit of a higher nature. God can’t be fully God to us unless we become the us God wants us to be.
Alec Reid was a Roman Catholic priest who spent his entire ministry in Belfast. He died recently at age 82. Father Reid hoped that Northern Ireland would become part of the Irish Republic, but he also sought to create peace between extremist Orangemen and extremist members of the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. In March of 1988, in the depth of what the Northern Irish all call “The Troubles,” Alec Reid stepped out of the crowd when two British corporals had been beaten by enraged Catholics and then shot by members of the IRA. He bent over the fallen soldiers, trying by artificial respiration to resuscitate their lifeless bodies. The photograph of Fr. Reid doing this was flashed around the world in the news media. Then, with bloodstained lips, he provided the soldiers the last rites of the Catholic Church. Later he wrote to the parents of the two young men, commending them for their courage in refusing to shoot into the rioters.
The Rev. Dr. Graham Tomlin is an Anglican priest who is the Dean of St. Mellitus College in England. He was writing about the importance and necessity of hope in the Christian life, and he said, “We need to be able to hold onto the hope that even though this world is seldom just, one day, even if it is beyond our lifetime, justice will come. Without that hope, patience is a waste of time” (The Times, Nov. 30, p. 97).
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (12:21). Paul elevates for us what he believes to be the Christian life. So how shall you and I conduct our lives as Christians?