I’ve got a ministry friend down in West Virginia who was of a bit of a mentor to me. He had some good advice on what to do when people mistreat you. He says that when you see them or start to ruminate about them, pray that the Lord will bless them. My friend gives this advice in the context of talking about a certain professor he had in seminary who just seemed to have it in for him. I also had a couple of classes with this same professor during university and he did have a reputation for having his favourites—favourite people to pick on, that is. For some reason no one will ever know, this professor, I’ll call him Sherman, chose my friend as the target of his belittling one year in his History of Christian Education class. Yes, it was a Christian school. It happens there too.
Well, my friend could have returned insult for insult or complained to the school administration or just dropped out, but he figured those routes would only make things worse. Being a person of faith, he turned to the Lord in prayer asking how to handle the problem and it suddenly occurred to him that he should pray for the Lord to bless Sherman. So, whenever he saw Sherman he would start to silently pray over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.” Whenever Sherman would take his jabs at him in class or through remarks on assignments, he would simply silently pray over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.” Whenever he found himself ruminating on the matter and thinking ill of Sherman, even then he would silently start praying over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.”
God answered my friend’s prayer for Sherman in an interesting way. He has no idea if God somehow ambiguously blessed Sherman. What happened was that in time my friend’s attitude towards him began to change. He began to feel compassion and brotherly love for Sherman. It’s hard to hate someone when you ask the Lord to bless him. My friend began to feel a sense of humility rather than righteous indignation. When victimized, we will often put ourselves in a moral highchair thinking we are better than our victimizer. But nobody is any better than anybody else, Mother Teresa aside. In the end, eventually and surprisingly, in time Sherman ceased picking on my friend.
You may have heard it said, “Prayer changes things, especially the person praying.” So often that is how God answers our prayers especially when we pray God to change another person. In close relationships the change that God brings about in us due to our praying for someone else will so often be the catalyst for change to occur in that other person.
Well, I like my friend’s prayer for his “tormentor”, “Lord bless…” I think it hits right at the core of the mission to which God has called his people. God blesses us by calling us to be his own people and bringing us into a relationship with himself so that we get to know him and his presence in our lives and know he is looking out for us and in turn he makes us to be blessing to others. We are blessed to be a blessing.
This mission started right back with Abraham. God called Abraham and blessed him and his descendants after him making them his own peculiar people. He promised them a land and to make them a great nation; promises which he kept. He did this so that through the family of Abraham God might bless the nations around them. So also, that mission became the purpose of ancient Israel and the Law of Moses and still applies to the Jewish people today. And then, through Christ, we who are not descendants of Abraham, not Jewish, have also been called into that same mission. God has blessed us in order to make us to be a blessing to those around us; and I will add to that, regardless of how they treat us. In this world, closeness to God inexplicably attracts mistreatment.
Looking at our Scripture reading today Peter reminds us of our calling to be a blessing as he quotes from Psalm 34 in an effort to give advice on what to do when people abuse us. Peter says we do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult, but rather we repay wrongdoing towards us with a blessing. We don’t use our words to incite evil or spread deceit. We turn away from evil and instead do the good. We seek peace and pursue it.
Peter is here saying that our character, our very nature, our way of being in this world as followers of Jesus is just so utterly different than the way the world typically operates. In verse 8 Peter really quite beautifully spells out the nature of persons God is at work in us making us to be…and he only uses five words in Greek to do it (we have to add a couple in English – like-mindedness or unity of spirit, sympathy, brotherly love, compassion or tender-heartedness, and humility.
Beginning with the first, at the top of his list is like-mindedness. Some translations say “united in Spirit.” Unity among us is important, but what is it? It’s found in a common attitude to each other. Paul tells us in Philippians 2:5 “Let the same mind or mindedness be in you that was in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit in us prompts us to be minded, purposed according to the love that Jesus embodied. Peter here gives us few more practical words to describe what the mind of Christ is like. We are like-minded in Christ, we share his mind when we act with sympathy, brotherly love, compassion, and humility. Let’s look at those.
Unity in spirit, like-mindedness, requires a mind set on “sympathy” for others. To have sympathy is to share in the feelings and experiences of others, to suffer with others, to feel joy with them. In Christian community when one of us hurts, we should all in a sense feel it too. We don’t step back and say “not my problem.” Sympathy is the way Jesus is; the way God is. God feels our sufferings. So, since that is the way God is, we are to be that way too. We share in one another’s struggles as if we ourselves are going through them in the hope that no one feels alone.
Now add brotherly love to sympathy. This kind of love is to regard others as if to be their best friend. That requires that we make it so that other people, even strangers, are able to trust us to be for them and to have their best interest in mind just as we would for a best friend. This means that every person who stands before us at any moment we must have the disposition towards them of “in this moment I am your best friend”. In the world, people are thinking “What’s in it for me” and “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.” In Christ, we are about brotherly love.
Now, add compassion or being tenderhearted to brotherly love and sympathy. Compassion takes sympathy to the next level, that of actually trying to alleviate the suffering of another. We can never be 100% sympathetic to another and that gives us a degree of objectivity towards another person’s situation. Sympathy gives us an understanding sense of what another feels. Compassion gives us the ability to truly be their best friend in the moment and help them move forward. Sometimes listening is all it takes. Other times, it becomes necessary to exercise unconditional, sacrificial love expecting nothing in return (which often means becoming financially and otherwise committed).
Sympathy, brotherly love, and tenderhearted compassion require something deeper from us: humility. Humility - the ability to set aside my own agenda and my own sense of my own self-importance in order to put you before me. Humility – the realization that we all trying to stand before God on broken legs. Humility – that is me having to live with the realization of how truly pitiful I am, me in all my glory, me in all my righteous indignation, me in all my looking down my nose at another person saying to myself “I’m glad I’m not like that” when, in fact, I am. Humility is the attitude required to actually be able to serve another in love.
Sympathy, brotherly love, and compassion are all rooted in humility and when we as individuals and we as a congregation share in them we have the unity in spirit that makes us able to be a blessing to others. But, if you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the way the world works. We have global leaders, community leaders, and even church leaders, neighbours, and family members who readily bully, spread deceit, repay insult for insult. We, the people of God, are not to jump into the sandbox and play like that nor are we to support those who do. We shun the evil and do the good. We seek peace and pursuit it.
Peter says that we will suffer for doing the good just as Jesus did. That doesn’t change the fact that we are still to be a blessing rather than just looking to our own interests. God has still called us to be a blessing, to be a people that embody hope and are ready to give account for why we would rather bless than curse.
Well, I don’t want to be accused of being long-winded. I’ve only got so long before you mute me or fast-forward the video. So, I’ll bring it back to my friend’s advice. To actively engage this world as God’s blessing to it, we must constantly be praying that God bless even the worst players on the stage. Having the humility not to be judgemental but rather to show sympathy, brotherly love, and compassion, pray God’s blessing upon others even those who hurt us. In this way, be a blessing. Amen.
