Convicted Civility (Honoring One Another) by Dr. Mark Smith January 18, 2015 John 13:34 35, Romans 12:8 10, Philippians 2:1 8, 1 Peter 3:15

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1 1 John 13:34 35 Convicted Civility (Honoring One Another) by Dr. Mark Smith January 18, 2015 John 13:34 35, Romans 12:8 10, Philippians 2:1 8, 1 Peter 3:15 34 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. 1 Romans 12: Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 2 Philippians 2:1 8 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross! 3 1 Peter 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect... *** I read about a woman the other day who received an incorrect food item at McDonalds. She grew agitated, demanded her money back, and after the employees refused, she threw a fit. First, she grabbed the water dispenser and poured it on the counter, then she knocked over the cookies, followed by throwing signs and knocking over cash registers. In the end, she caused $1,700 in damages all because of an incorrect order. 1 The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Jn 13: The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Ro 12: The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Php 2:1 8.

2 2 What s with people these days? Sadly, this kind of an episode is not all that rare. I will never forget the time when I was watching a Little League game. The two opposing coaches raced out into the infield to dispute a particular call. They yelled curses at each other, kicked dirt, shoved one another, and generally made fools of themselves before a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds. It was truly embarrassing; there s nothing like so called adults modeling rude and unsportsmanlike behavior before such an impressionable audience! Having once been a Little League Umpire, I can also tell you how uncivil parents can be! So it continues There is a veritable epidemic of incivility in our society today. Pier Forni, professor at Johns Hopkins, and author of The Civility Solution: What to Do When People are Rude, says: In today s America, incivility is on prominent display: in the schools, where bullying is pervasive; in the workplace, where an increasing number are more stressed out by coworkers than their jobs; on the roads, where road rage maims and kills; in politics, where strident intolerance takes the place of earnest dialogue; and on the web, where many check their inhibitions at the digital door. He says, Nowhere is the problem of incivility more prominent than in politics with political discourse between candidates degenerating into attack ads and worse. I don t know about you, but political parties are already gearing up for the 2016 election, and all I can think of is, Oh no, here we go again, more rudeness, more polarization, more half truths and inflammatory, disrespectful rhetoric. Why do campaigns have to be so darn long! According to a recent survey, 70% of us think incivility is a national crisis. 95% of us agree that the country has a rudeness problem, and the average person deals with 17 acts of rudeness per week, or between two and three instances every day. Most of those occur when driving. But a growing number of instances happen online. 48% of people have unfriended or blocked someone on Facebook because they were rude. And 50% of people have ended a friendship in REAL LIFE because of it. People feel quite free to be rude and disrespectful on the internet have you noticed? 81% believe America's general level of rudeness is causing more violence. When asked why they thought rudeness and the lack of respect was rising, many people will cite the pressures of fast pace living and crowded conditions in the cities. Other explanations point to the times we live in and the values we live by the declining sense of community, offensive and amoral entertainment media. And then there is all the stress we are under and the insecurity we feel. When you have a weak economy, unemployment, wars, the threat of terrorism, racial issues, a hostile political environment where there is very little civility and so on that kind of stress makes us less likely to be considerate and kind to others. You just want to retreat, withdraw into your castle and shut the gates. We become more prone to anger and less tolerant of the mistakes of others. The author of the book on civility I mentioned, Professor Forni, says that feelings of

3 3 insecurity only exacerbate the problem. When we are insecure or not sure of ourselves for whatever the reason because the economy is bad, or we think we are going to lose our jobs very often we shift the burden of that insecurity upon others in the form of hostility. It is the kick the dog syndrome. You make an innocent pay for how badly you feel in order to find some kind of relief. In the end, it all comes down to sheer selfishness. In this dog eat dog world, you got to look out for yourself. If someone gets in your way, then, by golly, run over them. According to Yale law professor Stephen Carter, more and more, Americans are losing a sense of common purpose, and with it, the reason to be polite. He says, the illusion that we travel life alone is ruining us all. He says it is as if we are riding as passengers on a train but we fail to recognize our fellow passengers traveling along with us. "There are no bounds [to our own selfishness] because there are no fellow passengers whose lives or needs or hopes we must respect." We have devolved into uncivil, self centered individuals who are oblivious to everyone else. It s all about me. "I had a little tea party This afternoon at four. 'Twas very small, three guests in all, Just I, myself and me. Myself ate all the sandwiches, While I drank up the tea. 'Twas also I who ate the pie, And passed the cake to me. How, then, do we as Christians respond to this situation? Surely it is not to add to our society s ever expanding cesspool of incivility and general rudeness! And yet, to be honest, Christians have often done just that. We have a reputation among many in the broader culture that Christians are judgmental and condemning. Sometimes we have come across as negative, self righteous and accusatory. Christians have been guilty of labeling and demonizing others who do not share our world view. Many Christians have been engaged in a battle to take back America for God, and their tactics have not been very winsome, to put it mildly. The letter of 1 Peter exhorts us: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. Sadly, many Christians have not always been gentle or respectful. We may have strong convictions, but the Bible never counsels us to beat people over the head with the gospel. Last week, I quoted writer Madeleine L Engle. She offers a needed corrective: We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want, with all their hearts to know the source of it. In other words, Christians ought to be different. We ought to be light rather than add to the

4 4 darkness. We ought to offer hope rather than contribute to the problem. Not only ought we to model civility to the greater society in which we find ourselves but especially in our relationships with one another, for the world is watching. Sadly, Christians have not always treated fellow Christians with common courtesy and respect. Angry debates among Christians have degenerated into name calling and demonization. I think I mentioned not long ago of the story told by our church architect. He was consulting with a church building committee (not ours!) and they couldn t agree on some aspect of the building. Their disagreement quickly degenerated into an all out fight to the point where they actually began to throw hymnbooks at each other! Wouldn t you like to belong to that church? Back in the 17 th century, the Puritans and Quakers were engaged in heated debates. The great Puritan preacher Richard Baxter wrote a pamphlet in which he lumped the Quakers with drunkards, swearers, whore mongers, and sensual wretches and other miserable creatures, And then in case he had not yet insulted them enough, he insisted that Quakers were no better than papists. (A disparaging word for Roman Catholics). The Quaker leader James Naylor announced that he was compelled by the Spirit of Jesus Christ to respond to these harsh accusations. He proceeded to characterize his Puritan opponent as a Serpent, a Liar, a Child of the Devil, a Cursed Hypocrite, and a Dumb Dog. The sad thing is that they were dealing with some important theological matters and they could have learned a lot if they had just sat down as brothers to study scripture together. It could have been a friendly argument among Christians. They could have learned from each other but unfortunately there was too much inflammatory rhetoric in the air and neither party heard what the other was saying. There have always been strong disagreements among Christians. Certainly there are persons in our congregation with strong views, one way or the other on matters related to issues of theology and/or denominational affiliation. The challenge before us is this: can we treat one another with profound courtesy and respect, knowing that we all mean well and serve the same Lord? Richard Mouw, the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote a very helpful book entitled: Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World. I would recommend this book for all of us to read. In the book, he talks about the need to develop convicted civility. I think that is a useful phrase. Convicted civility, says Mouw, is a Christian virtue whereby we enter into public discussions with strong convictions of faith, a willingness to learn from those with whom we disagree, and a desire to honor the humanity of others. It is about maintaining strongly felt convictions, while still nurturing a spirit that is authentically kind and gentle. It isn t always easy to keep that all in balance, to be sure. It is something we have to work at. I have always thought of the church is a kind of school in which we practice being Christian with one another. This church family is a good place to practice Christian civility. Scripture says:

5 5 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, says Romans, Honor one another above yourselves. 4 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. In the end, it is really about treating one another with profound respect. It is about recognizing the essential humanity of those with whom we disagree. Respect is the affirmation of the inherent dignity, the sacred worth of every human being. Respect is the acknowledgement that every person is an unrepeatable miracle, a cherished creation of God, God s work of art, and is therefore to be treated with great honor and reverence. Therefore we ought not to simply write them off or dismiss them out of hand or demonize them if they happen to seriously disagree with us or do something we don t like. Dr. Gary Smalley, a counselor, popular speaker and author, illustrated the virtue of respect in a memorable way. He was addressing a crowd on the theme of love and marriage, and he began his talk by walking over to a table and picking up an old, beaten up violin. The instrument s bridge was broken and dangling by its strings. Holding up the violin for all to see, he asked the audience what he thought the instrument was worth. Everyone laughed, and most thought no more than ten or twenty bucks. Then Smalley looked inside the body of the violin and read an inscription inside: 1723 Antonin Stradivarius. There was an audible gasp, as the crowd recognized just how valuable it was. (Probably $100,000 at the time). Smalley passed it around to the people in the front row and they handled it very gently, with great respect. The amazing thing is that moments before, people thought it was just a piece of junk. Nothing changed it was the same violin, the same wood, and the same broken strings. But people chose to honor it as the rare treasure it was. Which is to say, that people can choose to treat other people like a piece of junk (as they often do), writing them off as if they had no value, or they can choose to treat other people like a Stradivarius, with profound honor and respect, realizing that the people they live with and go to church with and work with bear the imprint and image of their Maker. What a difference would it make to think of each person as something like a Stradivarius an absolute treasure and therefore to be handled with extreme care? What difference would it make in our marriage, if, instead of taking our spouse for granted, we treated them always with profound respect? What different would it make in our friendships, our association with colleagues and classmates, our fellow church members to honor them, even above ourselves? The English Standard Version renders Romans 12:10, Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. The medieval rabbis used to say that if we could only see, each person is preceded by legions of angels singing Make way for the image of God. 4 The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Ro 12:9 10.

6 6 Brothers and sisters in Christ, all we have to do is look to the example of our Lord. Jesus treated every human being as a precious treasure. He had time for people whom everyone else had written off. He cared for widows and orphans. He reached out to the poor and the downtrodden, to the outcasts and sinners, the sick and the ostracized. He even honored and respected his enemies, valuing them so much that he was willing to go the cross for them, forgiving them and dying for them. Love another, he says, as I have loved you. And love, as we know, is patient and kind, not arrogant or rude [1 Corinthians 13]. Let your attitude be the same as Christ Jesus, admonishes Paul. Just as the Lord put the needs of others above his own, just as he treated everyone with profound respect and even reverence, so too, must we, who are called to carry on his work and to model what life is like when people submit to God s gracious rule. Solving the incivility problem in our world is a little bit like trying to establish peace on earth. It begins within you and me in our family, our church, and in all the relationships of daily life. We are called to be different. We are called to be light. With God s help, may we practice convicted civility with one another that the world may know we belong to Jesus Christ. Amen.