Romans twelve puts the cookies on the bottom shelf, as it tells us how a transformed mind works right down in the jungle of life. It shows us what Christian worship, love and detachment look like at street level. I encouraged you last Sunday to read this chapter several times during the past week. Reading it routinely helps us, because most of us ned to be reminded more than we need to be instructed. So, let's allow the apostle's words to jog our memory about some issues of practical Christian experience. Look with me at Romans 12:13-21.

Hospitality
Verse 13 says, Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. The first week I ever walked into BVBC, I heard about someone who had an urgent need. This congregation, much smaller at the time, responded with a love offering of $5,000. This willingness to share with those in need has continued through the decades. I see it in the way you respond to Thanksgiving projects, Angel Tree Gifts, and Shoebox gifts. There are countless other ways in which you of this congregation without fanfare share with other people who are in need.

Much the same can be said about your hospitality. Let me encourage you about one small point of Sunday hospitality. One of the ways I learn how people are is to notice where they sit in the sanctuary. It's quite predictable, and so I can look out and practice new names. If you were all to change seat locations, I would at once forget your names.

Now, no one is as immovable in these habits as people who sit on the end of the pew. Earth-moving machines will not dislodge these intrepid occupants of end seats. That's not a bad thing, and I wonder if all you who sit on the end would consider becoming guardians of hospitality for your row. You would be the ones who welcom every person on your row as if they were all guests in your own home. Learn their names. Introduce them to each other. Make sure they know where they are going next. Offer to take them on a tour of our church site. Make it your goal to seat twelve to a row.

Pews would become cadres of the committed with occupants of end seats their co-captains. They would adopt names. Pew seven would be known as the Hounds of Hospitality. Pew 13 would gain fame as the Company of the Compassionate, while another impossibly stuffed pew would be known simply as The Handwringers.

My beleaguered point is that a guest walking in here ought to find hospitality and not be left to fend for himself. I almost ache, when I see people sitting by themselves in public worship. I want to leave the platform and keep them company and introduce them to half a dozen of you, who would immediately charm them and put them at ease. Don't forgt how uneasy people can feel, when they visit a church for the first time. Practice hospitality here of all places, where we are likely to forget our manners.

Rejoicing with the Joyful
In verse 14 Paul says, Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. I will postpone comment on this idea until verses 17-21, where this idea rounds out chapter twelve. Verse 15 takes us into the next region of a renewed mind. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

The first half of that call to share people's feelings is open to a superficial misreading. Someone reading that in a hurry will miss its profound wisdom. Because you are people who care about wisdom and are capable of distinctions, let me escort you through some of the subtleties of rejoicing with those who rejoice.

First, it is easier to mourn with those who mourn. Maybe because people in mourning are vulnerable and pose less of a threat to us; maybe because we take a certain, innocent pleasure in other people's sorrows. Whatever the cause, we share other people's sorrow better than we share other people's joy. Why is that?

To answer that I need to make a distinction between jealousy and envy. Jealous is the name for the feling of fear we have, when someone threatens to take away from us something that is legitimately ours. A guy feels jealousy, when another guy takes away his girlfriend.

Envy is the name for the feeling of sorrow we have, when someone has something we don't have and may never have. A man may envy another man, because that other man has won the heart of a beautiful woman, who doesn't eve know the envious man exists.

You should know that when Church theologians discerned the most serious of human sins, jealousy was not among them, but envy was. Furthermore, with great wisdom, Christian theologians called envy a cold-blooded sin. It sulks. It is sullen. Its "lean and hungry look" resents the other person's success. By calling envy one of the seven deadly sins the Church wanted people to know that envy is a destroyer.

And what, pray tell, does this have to do with Romans 12:15? One reason we find it hard to rejoice with those who rejoice may be the envy in our hearts at their success. People who succeed, especially in ebullience over their success, may make us feel inferior. We may think they are getting ahead of us on the job or with their newfound influence.

We can tell when envy has showed up, because we start looking for ways to take the successful person down a peg or two. We make a snide remark about the person or recall his past failures. We vow that we "won't let that woman get ahead of me; I'll show her. I'll do everything she's done and do it better. They'll see."

It is truly a hallmark of the Holy Spirit's presence, when we see another person's success, and outwardly, we talk up their success to other people, and inwardly, we thank God for that person's success. Ronald Reagan had a saying in the White House. "It is amazing how much you can get done, if you don't care who gets the credit." Not caring who gets the credit marks the person that rejoicees with those who rejoice. The apostle says that kind of joy in other people's success should characterize the Church. I cannot begin to tell you how liberating it is to rejoice with those who rejoice.

I want to say one more thing about the wisdom of verse 15. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn can go on simultaneously, and neither cancels the other out; but they don't go on simultaneously in the same room. Let me give you an example from my own experience.

It doesn't happen often, but once in a while I do a funeral and a wedding on the same day. If you were at the funeral, I would look appropriately somber, and I suspect you would too. If you then went to the wedding later in the day, I would have on my party face, and I hope you would too. And I hope you wouldn't feel guilty or hypocritical about behaving in two very different ways; I don't.

What would be intolerable would be jocularity at the funeral and a long face at the wedding. Both emotions are appropriate in their proper contexts. If you h ave by nature a sunny disposition, you will enjoy weddings more. If you have by nature a more melancholy disposition, you will enjoy funerals more. Both dispositions are welcome within the body of Christ, and both have to be careful that their tendencies don't got to extremes.

Peace and Acceptance
Verse 16 doesn't make a lot of noise, but it calls for communal habits that all churches need, and some churches desperately need. Live in harmony with one another. I try hard to avoid making my self-esteem depend on the outcome of collective decisions. Very few things in life are worth going to the wall for. A willingness to compromise nearly always preserves the self-esteem of the other perso or the other group, and that preserves harmony within the Church.

The next two statements speak to a couple of habits that also contribute to living in harmony. The first one says, Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. I'm afraid the apostle would never make it in politically correct circles, although I suspect he would do very well in the Kingdom of God. We just don't talk about people of low position.

What we do talk about and what amounts to the same thing is people who are marginal or overlooked or neglected or shunned. The radical character of Christian love says, find out who they are and hang out with them. Dn't leave them isolated.

When I was a college freshman, my roommate took me to a Christian conference at Oklahoma State University. There might have been a hundred students at the conference, and Lorne Sanny, the president of the Navigators, was the speaker. In one of his speeches, he read a Bible verse and said, "Bo Matthews, what do you think that verse means?" I was a lowly freshman among people I didn't know, and to have the main speaker of the weekend call me by name startled me, but it also made me feel like I belonged somehow among my betters. Lorne Sanny knew my name. Who in your circles of relationships needs for someone to know their names, to give them undivided attention?

The last statement of verse 16 cuts to the chase pretty well. Do not be conceited. Get off your high horse. No matter how exalted your status, don't forget that almighty God condescended to associate with you. So, return the favor to your fellow human beings.

Returning Good for Evil
Verse 14 said, Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Verses 17-21 pick up that theme and say more about it than about any other single theme in this chapter. Let's listen in to the last five verses.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

This is quite similar to Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." What Jesus has called us to do with our enemies and what we feel like doing to our enemies place us between a rock and a hard place. The scripture both illustrates our dilemma and relievees it. Let me show you.

Listen to this pasage from Psalm 58:9-10,

    Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns -
            whether they be green or dry -
            the wicked will be swept away.
    The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
            when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

With few exceptions the Psalms are the most personal and emotional writings in the Old Testament. They serve as an index to the fell range of human feelings. It is true that you and I do not rejoice before God to bathe in the blood of the wicked. We don't pray that way, but we feel that way.

The scriptures thus place us betweentthe rock of our sometimes not so pretty emotions about our enemies and the hard place of our Lord's command to love our enemies. The Psalms keep us honest with ourselves; the Sermon on the Mount keeps us honest with God. We turn away from the Psalms at the risk of turning away from the truth about ourselves.

So, Romans 12 does not invite us to pretend we don't have these dark feelings about other people; it calls on us to behave better than we feel. It calls onus to behave opposite to the way we feel. It may even mean that we allow someone to do his worst and get away with it rather than retaliate. That is one of the lessons of Christ's death on the cross. It seems like folly; yet it is wisdom. It seems like weakness; yet it is strength.

Conclusion
Keeping in step with the Spirit means to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Our focus at BVBC is not on rules telling you what not to do. It is on how to give ourselves away to serve God and to benefit the people God sends across our paths everyday. To the extent that we live that way, we will keep in step with the Spirit, and our mind will be renewed, and our character be transformed.

Romans 12 tells us how love for our neighbor behaves. I am sure you noticed that everything Paul wrote in verses 3-21 is relationally rich. Human relationships form the matrix in which the Spirit of God is at work to renovate the human mind and transform human character.

We could do a lot worse than read Romans 12 at least once a month and use it as an instrument to diagnose our spiritual health. What if an entire congregation caught the vision of becoming a community of Christ's people whose distinguishing marks were the behaviors given to us in this chapter? What if the hundreds of congregations in the Brandywine Valley caught that same vision?

Do we aspire to nothing higher than what we are today? Do we pay nothing more than lip service to being salt and light in our world? What Romans 12 sets forth is what our world no only needs but wants. It speaks to the best in human experience. Think about that, and let us remember our calling as followers of Christ.