A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

ARE YOU A SPARTAN CHRISTIAN?

Romans 12:14-23, Preached at the Congregational Church of Boca Raton, February 11, 2007

Eleven people were hanging on a rope under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all, so they decided that one had to leave, because otherwise they were all going to fall. They weren’t able to name that person, until the woman gave a very touching speech. She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope, because, as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her husband and kids, or for men in general, and was used to always making sacrifices with little in return. As soon as she finished her speech, all the men started clapping .... See, it does feel good to sacrifice for someone else. It really does.

We sacrifice for our children, for our spouses, maybe even for our parents. It feels good and right. We give up time for our church, friends, and the company. Like Paul said in verse 10: “Love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor.” Did you notice the “one another?” Barney the purple dinosaur, has a song, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family/best friends like friends should be.” We like those who like us. We love those who love us. We are called to be affectionate in mutually affectionate relationships, even when things get a little difficult. This is fundamental Christianity through the first section. But now, things are different. We’ve hit the second section. This is where we separate, as we say, the men from the boys, and to be inclusive, the women from the girls. And it starts right away: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” It is no longer “bless those who bless you.” Now you can see why Paul starts a new paragraph. This is completely different stuff, isn’t it? I have a feeling this is where Christians earn their keep, in God’s eyes. So be gracious to those who lack grace and kind to the one who isn’t. Let the Lord direct how you will speak and respond in tough situations rather than letting your emotions get the best of you. We don’t follow the lowest common denominator but we’re supposed to set the standard.

What we want to see this morning is that we are called Christians for a reason. We aren’t called Lovers. We aren’t called Believers, except when it means believers in Christ. We aren’t called Hopers, nor Givers. These are all important, since they make up the four cornerstones of fundamental Christianity, according to our scripture passage and the last four weeks’ messages. But we are called Christians. Our name names our central value. What does it mean to be a Christian? Jesus’ last words tell us: “You shall be my witnesses … even to the ends of the earth.” We are named Christians because we are witnesses for Christ. Our lives are supposed to give testimony, provide witness for Christ’s life. What Jesus stood for, we now stand for. So carry your cross. The Lord is a strong support and a helping hand when things get heavy in life, and like that wonderful poem says, it might not even be you who’s doing the walking, but the Lord who’s doing the carrying. Be trustworthy when all around you others are slinking and slipping. Go the extra mile to overcome evil with good. Greet those who do not return your warmth. Don’t talk behind your enemy’s back but consider their lot in life and how you may return love for hate. In this way, you save others from falling, and yet the reward is yours.  

Now you may be thinking—“Witness? I don’t know about that.” Look, there are two insufficient ways to think of witness, and you are probably thinking of one or the other right now. One way is like an eyewitness to a crime. The other is the idea of “witnessing for your faith.” Neither one of these is the witness that is meant when Jesus says, “You shall be my witnesses.” It’s not enough just to see Christ, like seeing a crime; what we see of Christ has to shape our life. It is also not enough just to talk about Christ. Anyone can talk, but it’s the actions that really provide witness to your beliefs and to Christ’s life. For example, there was a barber who thought that he should share his faith with his customers more than he had been doing lately. So when the sun came up and the barber got out of bed he said to himself, “Today I am going to witness to the first man who walks through my door.” Soon after he opened his shop the first man came in and said, “I want a shave!” The barber went in the back and prayed a quick, desperate prayer, “God, please give me the wisdom to know just the right thing to say to him. Amen.” Then quickly the barber came out with his razor knife in one hand and a Bible in the other, saying, "Good morning sir. I have a question for you. Are you ready to die?" In other words, a good witness isn’t like a salesman or an executioner… A good witness is like a signpost. It doesn’t matter whether it is old, young, pretty, ugly; it has to point in the right direction and be understandable. We are witnesses to Christ when we point to him, when you “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Mt.5:55

Angeles Arriens recalls a wonderful encounter he saw. “I was at a bus stop, sitting next to a woman reading a newspaper, but I was totally engrossed in the performance of a 14-year-old boy on a skateboard. He had his baseball cap turned around with the bill in the back, and he was skating beautifully and very fast. He buzzed by us once, then twice. When he came by a third time, he accidentally knocked the woman's newspaper out of her hands. She said, ‘Oh, why don't you grow up!’ I watched him glide down to the corner of the block, where he stood talking with his buddy. The two of them kept looking back over their shoulders at the woman. She hesitated for a moment, then rolled up her paper, tucked it under her arm and walked into the street, motioning to him. ‘Won't you come here?’ she called. ‘I want to talk to you.’ Very reluctantly, he skated over to her, turned his cap around with the bill in front, and said, ‘Yeah?’ She said, ‘What I meant to say was that I was afraid that I might get hurt. I apologize for what I did say.’ His face lit up, and he said, ‘That’s cool!’ (Angeles Arrien, Walking the Mystical Path With Practical Feet .) Not only is that cool but it’s courageous, and Christ was nothing if not courageous.

One of the most famous witnesses for Christ, Francis of Assisi, made it a point to emphasize that you have to walk the walk when it comes to being a Christian and not just talk the talk. In his Letters to Rulers of People, Francis wrote these words: “Keep a clear eye toward life's end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creature. What you are in his sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember, that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received—fading symbols of honor, trappings of power—but only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” What is eternal in our heart are the labors of service, love, sacrifice, and courage that are true witnesses to Christ’s life.

 The new movie, 300, is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.E), in which an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of over 120,000 of Xerxes I troops could pass. (When Xerxes asked Leonidas to surrender their arms, Leonidas gave his noted answer: "Come take them." This quote has been repeated by many later generals and politicians to express the Greeks' determination to sacrifice rather than surrender. Today, it’s the emblem of the Greek First Army Corps. Greek morale was high. Herodotus wrote that when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows would be so numerous as to blot out the sun, he remarked with characteristically laconic prose, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.") After three days of battle a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks, revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. Though they knew it meant their own deaths, they held their position and secured the retreat of the other Greek forces. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks. The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led group offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory in the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian navy destroyed. Xerxes was forced to flee to Asia and left his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle for one last time. The Spartans and other Greek allies assembled at full strength and decisively defeated the Persians in the Battle of Plataea, putting an end to the Greco-Persian War, along with Persian expansion into Europe. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.) Since then, this famous battle and the word thermopylae have been used to signify a person who overcomes against extreme odds.

Paul, like Jesus, challenges you to become a Spartan Christian when he challenges you to bless those who persecute you. To become a thermopylae Christian is to accept becoming a radical witness to Christ’s victorious effort to overcome evil with good. Like those Spartans soldiers who sacrificed themselves, losing their battle, but ultimately proving victorious, it is Christ who, losing the battle on the Cross, nonetheless wins the war against the grave. What seems like folly and defeat in the short run often proves otherwise later on down the road. If we always look to avenge ourselves, we forget God’s will in things. You can’t live your life getting madder than the already mad, crazier than the crazy, more jealous, greedy, violent than those who have hitched their lives to such falling stars. Choose instead to be like the sun, which shines on the good and the bad, whose warmth and light won’t be surrendered. Forget the lessons of lesser teachers and the urgings of smaller spirits, but follow the one true Teacher and the one whose Spirit brought order from chaos and light to darkness. Do not repay evil for evil, but find a way to turn the other cheek and to love your enemy.  

At the end of one of his novels, Saul Bellow has his character Arthur Sammler, survivor of the concentration camps and eternal witness to the follies of his fellow man, sum up the life of a dead friend by declaring that in the end, “he did meet the terms of his contract. The terms which, in his innermost heart each man knows. As I know mine. As all know.” (Charles Sykes, The Ideology of Sensitivity.)

There are five points to being a Christian: to love those who are yours to love; to believe in a God who creates and is ultimately in command; to hope in order to withstand what seeks to defeat; to give and thereby recreate a world in God’s image; and finally to fulfill our contract with Christ, with ourselves, to let good overcome evil in our lives, and thereby win the prize.

Return to Sermons (table of contents)

Return to Homepage of the Congregational Church of Boca Raton