“Going the extra mile—even when you don’t feel like”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Thursday, February 10, 2022
Romans 12:9-21 (Forward, p. 12) CEV p. 1184
Elsewhere in one of his letters, the apostle Paul says something that applies very well today’s passage, as well to our world today. In Galatians 6:9 he says, “Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” During our long prairie winter, especially come February, it is easy to grow weary, albeit with the cold and snow and fluctuating temperature and weather conditions. And with covid and its variants, and the mad scramble of governments and medical people trying to keep abreast of them and provide guidance and information about them and come up measures to help mitigate their impacts—and with us, having to live through all of this—it is easy to grow weary.
It would seem that the Christians in Rome were also growing weary. He mentions this on several fronts. First of all, there is simply the ordinary ‘garden variety’ aspect of loving and caring for each other. Here he says that they should be sincere in their love and not simply be ‘going through the motions”. This means that they should honour each other even more than they honour themselves, be friendly to all comers, and be especially concerned to help the needy and the newcomer (the stranger). Paul tells them furthermore that they should come alongside and commiserate with those who are less fortunate than themselves.
It is easy to grow weary in all this, but it gets worse. So far this has only referred to people who are more or less nice to you, kind to you, but what about those that aren’t? What about those who mistreat us or treat us badly? I, for one, would certainly grow weary in being nice to them and being civil to them. Sure, I might not actually say anything out loud or in public, but what about my thoughts—or what I say just in ‘closeted’ private conversations? I’m afraid that I certainly do grow weary here.
So, what does Paul say to this? He says, firstly, that we should ask God to bless them. And rather than trying to get even by wanting evil to befall them, or by wanting personal revenge or retribution in some way, we should leave all of this in the hands of God. And not only that, we are to work for their good and be kind to them and help them, for by so doing, we ‘heap burning coals upon their heads’. But what in the world does that mean? Many translations suggest that this means that we cause the offending person to ‘burn with shame.’ But that hardly seems consistent with Paul’s final words in this section, “Don’t let evil defeat you, but defeat evil with good” (verse 21). And it hardly seems to accord with Paul’s overall call to love others or with Jesus’ policy of non-vengeance or retaliation.
The most logical explanation that I have found, that seems to accord with what both Paul and Jesus say, finds its root in an ancient Middle Eastern practice. Owing to the lack of easy fire-lighting means (things like matches), it was essential that one keep the coals of his or her hearth alive and burning twenty-four hours a day, as it was an onerous and difficult proposition to get it going again. In fact, the easiest method was to go over to a neighbour to ask for some of that neighbour’s live coals and then carry them home, perched on your head in some fireproof container. To apply this analogy to our present context, what this means is that you were doing your opponent a real favour and thus defusing the situation. It was a great way of putting your love into practice.
I don’t know about you, but I find it hard these days not to grow weary, weary with dealing with controversy and hostility, and certainly weary with trying to treat everyone civilly and lovingly. And yet that is exactly what Paul counsels. The good thing is that God is in all of this. Essentially, we are turning everything over to Him and letting Him take charge. And then, in whatever He calls us to be, or do, we have His guidance and His help. Amen.
Forward notes: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (verse 15).
“It’s no secret that our culture is unsettled by grief. We don’t know what to do when terrible things happen to others, and so, too often, we fail to offer comfort. Instead, we back away from their suffering, or we try to make meaning of it by telling them that God is just testing them, or we try to make the problem disappear by suggesting that it’s time for them to move on with their lives.
“Yet Paul offers a simple and beautiful word of wisdom to all of us who want to help but don’t know what to say. He reminds us that in times of great suffering, the greatest gift we can offer is our empathy. We don’t have to say all the right things, and we don’t have to fix the situation. If we can find it in ourselves to sit quietly alongside grieving people and share in their weeping, as Jesus did with Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus, we can offer true comfort by showing them the face of Christ.”
Moving Forward: “Sit with someone who is grieving.”
