Sermon August 30, 2026 “Love in Action” by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza

Sermon August 30, 2026 “Love in Action” by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza

Scripture Reading: Romans 12:9-21

 

There are so many exciting things happening for our church lately. A couple weeks ago our pews and chairs were reupholstered thanks to the Presbyterian Women’s League and the Hearts and Hands Mission Knitting Group. In September we are going to launch a campaign to paint the outside of the church, which will hopefully happen during the fall. And this week, the church purchased a new manse. After selling the previous manse a couple of years ago, the manse committee has been searching and thinking and working hard to make a good decision about the next property, and they did a wonderful job! And the previous owner did a wonderful job infusing it with good energy. Our family is really grateful and excited to move in. But I’ve been spending time in the empty house this week, which is its own unique feeling- right before you move into the next place you’ll call home. I have a picture of my son, Frankie just before we moved into our current home in Beacon. He was a year and a half old and wearing a bright turquoise fleecy monster hat. He was just standing there in our empty house, before any of the furniture got there. So many things happened after that- Josefine was born there, we got our dog Yoshi who tore the place up, we had Christmas gatherings and surprise birthday parties, and homemade puppet shows. This week I’ve been thinking about all the things that are going to happen in the new manse in the years to come. We’re going to bake pies and share meals and pray together, and have deep conversations about life around the fireplace. We just dropped Frank off at UVM for his Sophomore year of college on Friday, but this week he spent time at the empty manse and I snapped a picture of him under a rhododendron in the backyard, while he was writing in his journal. I hope it will be a place our family will come to think of as home and where our congregation can also gather and grow in faith together.

Today we read a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In it, Paul lays out how we’re called to live in true community. He says, “Let love be genuine…Love one another with mutual affection… Contribute to the needs of the saints… Extend hospitality to strangers.” The word used here for “love” in Greek is agape, which refers specifically to the kind of love that God has for people and that people have for God, especially in community.

What he’s talking about are practices for how to build up the beloved community. What are the things we need to practice in order to have a community where we are seeking goodness with and for one another? A practice is essentially whatever you are practicing. You practice the piano to get better at playing. And we practice spirituality to get closer to God. When we pray in church that is a spiritual practice. But there are other forms of spiritual practice too. Creating art, gardening, writing, music, meditating, walking your dog can all be forms of spiritual practice, if they are done with that intention. Our family has a practice at dinnertime where we go around and say what we’re grateful for, and the kids always have insightful things to say like I’m grateful for the universe or crickets or running water. Just noticing what you are grateful for in your life, on a daily basis, is profoundly transformative. It changes your perspective. I invite you to think about the kinds of practices you have in your life and make them intentional. It could be reading scripture, or it could be delivering groceries through the food pantry, or it could be responding with kindness even when it’s not easy. There are also things we can practice that damage community. So we have to be careful of that. Paul lists some toxic practices when he says, do not be arrogant, do not claim to be wiser than you are, do not repay evil for evil. 

It reminds me of how I heard once that contempt is a relationship killer. If you are practicing contempt in your community, that has the opposite effect. Learning that made me mindful of how I treat the people who I want to keep in my life. According to the Gottman Institute, contempt is the single greatest predictor of relationship breakdown. They did research in marriages about it, but it also applies to groups of people.

Contempt is beyond anger or frustration, it’s more like disgust or treating someone as if they are beneath you or unworthy. The reason it destroys relationships is because it destroys emotional safety and trust. Without safety and trust, it becomes impossible to be vulnerable, which stops people from being able to repair little things, so they turn into big things. Usually, people who treat others with contempt are doing it because they have unmet needs- and that matters too- but those needs won’t be met by hurting others. They say the cure for contempt is building a culture of appreciation and gratitude. We can replace toxic practices with healthy ones by doing things like: expressing fondness for each other, noticing what we love about each other, thanking each other for little things, and also communicating our needs without placing blame on someone else.

The beloved community that Paul talks about isn’t just a group of people who like each another though. It’s a community where we recognize our interdependence. And it’s not only about being members of a church- it’s about being neighbors and citizens, wherever God has placed us. It’s about asking: How can I help make my town, my country, the whole world more just, compassionate and peaceful? For everyone, not just me.

At the end of this Romans passage, there’s a part about overcoming evil with good, and how it’s like heaping burning coals on our enemy’s head. This is also a spiritual practice. He says, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink… Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. Paul says, we should nourish our enemy rather than fighting them. So basically “Kill ‘em with kindness”. I’ve always loved that saying, because it points out that our enemies are not who we think they are. Kindness is not a weapon, but when we “kill” someone with kindness, we are disarming the threat to both of us. It can feel counterintuitive, but if someone is passive aggressive to you, or intimidating, instead of returning it with more meanness, try just giving them more love, in a genuine way. In some cases, they might just need a hug.

I saw a video online years ago, but I still think about it. It was entitled “That moment you realize violence is not the answer” I liked the title so I watched- and it was a little kid- maybe 3 or 4 years old, with a baseball bat and a piñata in the shape of spiderman- which was the size of him. It must have been his birthday, and apparently, he was a fan of spiderman. As you watch, you see him swing the bat a few times, slowly and half-heartedly. Then all of a sudden he drops his head and his shoulders, he drops the bat and sobbing, he walks over and just hugs the spiderman piñata. Then he cries into spiderman’s shoulder and hugs him tighter. He doesn’t want to hit spiderman. It’s a powerful moment, and very cute, and the family members around him are doubled over laughing. It reminded me of something I read about Hafez, who was a Sufi poet and teacher from the 14^th century. He was asked once by a student, “Teacher, how do you know when someone has come to know God?” He thought about the question for a long time and then he said, “They’ve dropped the knife… They’ve dropped the cruel knife that we so often wield against ourselves and others.” I love this for a lot of reasons, but one is that it recognizes that the weapons we wield against others, are the weapons we wield against ourselves just as much- if not more so. And it speaks to a kind of love that disarms us. 

The dream of the “beloved community” is one in which society is ordered around mutual care rather than domination and greed. In God’s kingdom there is no poverty, no genocide, no racism, no institutionalized suffering of any kind. And Paul’s message is about creating an alternative to these toxic practices, by letting love be genuine. He says that God is calling us into a community where we truly belong to each other, and that takes practice.