Living on the Edge - Serving in Love

As we have been working our way through Romans 12, I have been doing a lot of reflecting back on my life and I hope that if you have been part of a small group digging into this material that you have also been doing some reflection and sharing. I think it is important for us to reflect back on our lives and identify those times when we have experienced a taste of this life on the edge so we can learn from those moments what it is that makes life so good. This week as I have looked back over my life I have come to realize that the best times of my life have come when I have been part of a community larger than just my family. In fact, one of the most formative times of my life was during High School and what made that time so good for me was being involved in my church youth group. Our youth group had one unspoken rule – everyone was accepted. Everyone was loved – unconditionally. When I didn’t feel like I fit in at school – I fit in at my church and when my friends at church were willing to be my friends at school, that acceptance and friendship lifted me up and made my life better. I didn’t just make it through those difficult years of being a teenager; I thrived during that time because I found a place where I belonged and people who served me in love.


The relationships that formed in my church were powerful and many of them have lasted to this day because we were willing to be real with one another. We laughed together and we cried together. We didn’t have to pretend to be better than we were, or different than we were because we knew that we would be accepted for whom we were, the good and the bad. Our love for one another was sincere and that is what helps strengthen relationships and that’s what forms community and it is that sincere love that helps us experience real life.

Last week we heard from Romans 12:5 that we were created to be part of the body of Christ which means that we belong to one another and the only way we will truly belong to one another is if we are willing to be honest with one another. God places a high value on authenticity, integrity and transparency in the life of the church, in fact, when hypocrisy first tried to enter into the early church, God dealt with it swiftly and harshly. The story is found in Acts 4-5, and it begins with a man named Joseph who sold a field and brought all the proceeds from that sale to the disciples and gave it to the church as an offering. The people were so encouraged by this faithful and generous act that they gave Joseph the name Barnabas, which means son of encouragement.

Now the news of what Barnabas did spread and there was a couple named Ananias and Sapphira who wanted that same recognition and praise, but they didn’t want to pay the price, so they sold some of their property and brought just a part of the proceeds to the leaders of the church as an offering but they each told them it was the full amount. In other words Ananias and Sapphira were not being honest. They wanted to appear loving and generous without have to be loving and generous and when the reality of their hypocrisy was revealed both Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead. The first sin exposed in the life of the early church is hypocrisy and it is dealt with swiftly because God knows that not be honest with one another will not only destroy the church, but it will keep relationship from forming and if strong relationships can’t form, then people are kept from experiencing the fullness of life.

This should be a sobering story for us. Think about what would happen if God judged the church this way today? My guess is that there would be no church because in different ways we are all hypocrites, we all wear masks and struggle to be transparent with one another and the reason is that we are afraid of being rejected and yet if we would be willing to be honest with others the first thing we would find is that we are not alone in our struggles which means that there would be others here to accept us and love us and even help us through the difficult times. One of the hardest things as a pastor is when people come and share with me some of the heartache and struggles of their lives and as they share with me I’ll be thinking, wow, someone else just shared with me that same struggle and I wish that I could get these 2 people together so that they would know that they are not alone and they could maybe even find support and encouragement from one another. There is a freedom that comes with being real with others and there can be healing and strength that comes in being honest and yet these kinds of relationships take time to build because they require of us courage and the building of trust which has its ups and downs.

My hope is that we will be willing to invest time and energy in building relationships in the church. One of the saddest things about the church today is that we have replaced these kinds of authentic relationships with religion. We have replaced people with programs and yet there is not one program in the life of the church that can bring us life – but our connection with people can bring life because we were created to be part of one another’s lives, we were created to be members of one another, and when we are part of that kind of strong community of faith we will experience God’s best and the power of God’s life.

So living on the edge comes when we are part of a real community and for community to be formed our love must be sincere, but it’s not enough to just be honest – we also need to be committed to one another. Romans 12:10. Devotion to one another means being willing to serve in love, it means being there for others when there is a need and while we often give lip service to this kind of devotion, living on the edge means being willing to live it out.

Kathy was a recovering alcoholic who had been sober for a while when her grandmother died. Kathy’s grandmother was an important part of her life and many of us were concerned about how she was going to handle her Grandmother’s death. As I spent time with the family at the funeral home the afternoon of the viewing I saw many people come up to Kathy and offer words of love and grace and make offers of support, but then I noticed Rose. Rose was also a recovering alcoholic and was one of Kathy’s sponsors. Like everyone else, Rose told Kathy, I’ll be here if you need me and Kathy said thanks, but then Rose looked her in the eye and said, no I don’t think you understand. I will be here if you need me. I will be sitting right here all afternoon and I’ll be with you for dinner tonight and then be back here this evening and then I’ll drive you home and pick you up in the morning. I’ll be here for you and she was. Rose helped Kathy through that difficult time by being devoted to her not in words but in actions. That’s what the church needs to look like. We give too much lip service to devotion instead of actual service and sacrifice to those who are in need. I have a feeling that if we were to step out in faith and really commit ourselves to one another it would stretch us in many different ways and that kind of stretching might make us uncomfortable, but it will also be thrilling and life giving.

Think about Jesus, he didn’t just say he would love his disciples to the end; he loved his disciples to the very end. Just hours before his death we find Jesus on his knees washing the disciple’s feet. Then he offers them bread and wine at the Passover table, prays for them in the garden, forgives them as they run away when the soldiers come and then carries the cross from them because they are too weak to carry it on their own. The last 24 hours of Jesus’ life he is living on the edge and he shows us what true devotion looks like - it is radical and sacrificial, but I’m thinking that when we are willing to be that radical in our service and love – like Jesus, we will also experience the power of God in a way that will transform our lives. Living on the edge isn’t always easy, but it is where we will find God and if God is there – life is there.

Living on the edge means being part of an authentic community, it means being devoted to one another and being willing to serve in love and the time for us to do this is now. Romans 12:11 some translations record this as never lacking in zeal, which means that we need to be willing to serve God and others in love today. Too often we allow ourselves to wait and we convince ourselves that we can serve tomorrow or the next day but it is my experience that if we put it off until tomorrow it won’t get done at all. Sometimes it doesn’t get done because we are lazy and will just keep putting it off, but sometimes it won’t get done because the moment is gone and we will not have that opportunity again.

I may have shared this story before, but one of the images that haunts me to this day is of a bag lady in NYC who I saw huddled between two buildings and why I can’t get her image of our of mind or heart is because I didn’t stop and help. Living on the edge would have been for me to stop and give her my coat. I would have been cold for the rest of the day – but I would have been so excited that I made a real difference in someone’s life that being cold for a few hours would not have mattered. I never got that moment back and sometimes I wonder how many needs go unmet and how many people struggle and suffer because God’s people don’t respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and serve in love when God says serve.

I know that when I stand before Jesus and have to given an account of my life, all I will be able to do when that moment comes is ask God for his forgiveness. I have a feeling that it won’t be the sins we have committed that will weigh down our hearts as much as our sins of omission, that list of things God laid on our hearts to do and yet we didn’t do. This is why being able to hear the voice of God is so important. We need to hear God clearly when he calls us to serve in love because he wants us to be the ones who will meet the needs we see in others. The beautiful thing is that when we step out to meet those needs – we find life.

The last thing we need to remember as we seek to love and serve one another is that to accomplish this our focus always needs to be upward and outward. Look at Romans 12:12-13, verse 12 shows us that we need to look up and verse 13 shows us we need to look out. To be able to make serving in love a way of life and not just a program or event is to make sure our focus is first on God and Romans 12:12 shows us what a life that is focused on God looks like, we rejoice in hope, we are patient through the difficult times and maybe above all we pray. When this is our focus and way of life we will be able to serve in love not once in a while but all the time.

And then something happens as our focus becomes more and more fixed on God, the more we look to God, the more God helps us see the needs of others. Go back to the last 24 hours of Jesus - Jesus focus was during this time was God. At the table he gave thanks to God, in the garden he prayed to God and on the cross he cried out to God. Jesus is focused on God, and yet through that entire time Jesus is also focused not on himself but the needs of others. At the table Jesus gave himself to his friends in love. In the garden Jesus saw his friends sleeping and prayed for them; on the cross Jesus saw the need of his mother to be connected to a new family. From the cross Jesus also saw the needs and heard the cry of a thief and offered him life and salvation. As Jesus looked to God, God helped Jesus see the needs of others and as our hearts look to God our eyes will focus in on the needs of those around us and our minds will uncover the ways God is calling us to meet those needs.

So living on the edge comes when we are willing to invest ourselves in authentic relationship that help build up the church and it comes when we step out in faith to serve one another in love, and as Paul says, the time to live this way is now. Don’t put it off, don’t wait another day, serve in love today.