The Little Things

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 9, 2014

The Little Things

Romans 7:19

“For I do not do the good I want,

but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Right and wrong.

Good and bad.

Black and white.

It’s all pretty simple, isn’t it?

We all know what is right;

we all know what is wrong;

we all know what is good;

we all know what is bad.

Stealing is wrong;

lying is bad;

sharing is good.

        

These are lessons we learn when we are young,

lessons we learn about right and wrong,

good and bad,

how to choose,

how to make good choices.

We learn these lessons through our families;

we learn them in school;

and we learn them here at the church.

Most of us learn about the Ten Commandments

in Sunday School;

Even if we cannot recite all ten,

we remember at least one or two:

honor your parents;

don’t kill,

perhaps another one or two.

    

Somewhere along the line,

we may have learned

what are called the Seven Deadly Sins:

·      Lust

·      Gluttony

·      Greed

·      Sloth

·      Wrath

·      Envy

·      Pride

We may even know their positive counterparts,

what are called the seven Cardinal Virtues;

·      Restraint

·      Temperance

·      Charity

·      Diligence

·      Patience

·      Kindness

·      Humility

The lists of Sins and Virtues are not specifically biblical-

you won’t find either of the lists in the Bible.

It was at the end of the sixth century that Pope Gregory I

developed the list of sins as a teaching tool;

The list of virtues came later.

Paul had his many lists scattered throughout his letters,

lists of qualities and characteristics

he believed a faithful Christian ought to have,

ought to show the world.

The lists differ here and there,

but they touch on the same basic themes:

Live with patience,

kindness, generosity,

and faithfulness.   

Don’t be arrogant, jealous;

don’t be quarrelsome;

don’t think you have all the answers.

But even as Paul was writing his lists,

telling his listeners and readers to live in a godly way,

a Christ-like way,

he also acknowledged how hard that can be,

how even he struggled.

That’s what we heard in our lesson,

our verse from his letter to the Christians in Rome.

His letter to the church at Rome was probably

the last of his letters.

It is deeply, sometimes even confusingly theological.

But it is also deeply human,

especially the text we heard:

“I do not do the good I want,

but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Paul expressed this sentiment twice

within the same chapter:

Just a few sentences before our lesson

he wrote, “I do not understand my own actions.

For I do not do what I want,

but I do the very thing I hate.”

(Romans 7:15)

Paul captured the struggles he had,

the struggles we all have,

in trying to live a godly life,

a Christ-like life,

a truly faithful life focused on the good,

focused on doing what is right.

As Paul expressed with such anguish,

we’re not always going to be right,

we’re not always going to be good,

we’re not always going to do right, or do good.

Paul knew what we all know,

if we’re honest enough to admit it:

that life doesn’t sort itself out neatly

into the good and bad,

right and wrong,

black and white.  

Try as we might to make things simple,

we learn, as Paul did, that life is filled with nuance,

that we live in the grays most of the time,

and as a result, we find it that much harder

to make good choices, godly choices.

It is easy to say, what would Jesus do.

It’s often very hard to do it.

But Paul teaches us that we will be more successful

at living the good life, the godly life,

doing what is right in the eyes of God,

if we focus on living in the Spirit,

if we turn away from earthly concerns,

what Paul calls very broadly the life of the flesh.

What he means by that is anything,

everything that turns us from God,

everything that distracts us from following Christ.

Be transformed, Paul urges us,

from lives of the flesh to lives of the Spirit.

Paul understood that that doesn’t happen in an instant—

one time and then we are good.

Even after his moment on the Damascus Road,

Paul still lived in the earthly world,

struggled in the world,

faced all the challenges of everyday life

that leads us to store up more treasure on earth,

than we do treasure in heaven.

He understood that life confronts us minute by minute

with choices, big choices,

but even more important,

little choices we make each day, every day.

throughout the day.

And Paul wants us to understand that

it is more in the little choices,

the little details of daily life,

that we learn how to live more fully in the Spirit,

that we learn how to live more godly lives.

We will struggle, just as Paul did,

even after 20 years of discipleship,

20 years of praying, talking, preaching,

listening, learning.

We will understand Paul’s frustrations

when he lamented,

I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it;

I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.

My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions.

Something has gone wrong deep within me

and gets the better of me every time.

(Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message)

In giving voice to his frustration,

he is reminding himself and us

of the importance of work, of discipline,

of persevering, just as we talked about last week.

The more we work,

the more intentionally we focus on growing in the Spirit,

the better equipped we’ll be to make right choices,

godly choices,

even bold choices.

You may have seen or heard the news this past week

that the management of the drugstore chain CVS

have decided to stop selling cigarettes

and tobacco products.

By the end of the year,

they will no longer sell any form of tobacco

in any of their more than 7,000 stores.

They said they did this because

they want to focus on helping customers stay healthy,

on being part of their customers’ health care team.

They will lose about $2 billion dollars in revenue,

which sounds enormous to you and me,

but in fact represents just 1.6% of their annual sales.

Now, I don’t know anything about the faith lives

of any of the senior managers of CVS;

I am guessing that the decision to

rid themselves of tobacco products

was based on economic projections and market research.

But I’d like to think that at least one executive argued

that it was simply wrong to sell tobacco products,

that at least one executive concluded

in his or her heart and mind

that selling a product that kills

more than 400,000 people a year,

selling a product that is highly addictive,

even if it is legal,

is wrong.

I’d like to think one executive decided in his or her heart

that they could no longer hide behind the argument

that they were simply selling a product in the marketplace

that customers choose on their own to buy.

To argue that way – that they were simply

providing a product in the marketplace,

that no one was forcing a customer to buy tobacco –

don’t you see that that argument is thinking in the flesh,

it isn’t thinking in the Spirit,

thinking what is honorable, right, and just.

Our Lord reminds us that every little detail

of our lives matter:

Whoever is faithful in a very little, our Lord tells us,

is faithful also in much;

(Luke 16:10)

Living faith is not about grand gestures;

it is the many details of daily living.

Here’s how Paul sums up his thinking and his advice

for the Romans and for us:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating,

going-to-work, and walking-around life—

and place it before God as an offering.

Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture

that you fit into it without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.

You’ll be changed from the inside out.

(Romans 12:2ff, from The Message)

So let’s all of us do that:

Take our everyday lives,

the details that fill our every day,

and make them all an offering to God.

The details of our lives at home,

at work,

at school,

at play – everywhere.

All the little things that fill our days.

Let’s all of us truly fix our attention on God,

on the Spirit

so that the good we want to do

becomes more and more

the good in fact we do.                                      

AMEN