On the Christ-like practice of heaping burning coals on your enemy's head

Our youth pastor preached last night. It was a pretty cool service. 

He opened with a story about a young man who, while in prison and utilising the full measure of Holy Scripture offered to him, smoked his way through the first three gospels, using the paper to roll his own cigarettes; it was only once he turned his attention to John that the power of this book was revealed to him: his smoker’s cough was now paired with a believer’s heart.

Darrel had the good grace to admit that he was unable to verify this story, though either way it is pretty awesome. (Darrel uses the word ‘awesome’ a lot – he is, after all, a youth pastor.)

I agree with him.

After that he asked us as a congregation to choose one passage of the scripture that we would take as a summary of the essential story of God if we were ever in the unfortunate predicament of only being allowed one passage of scripture. I have yet to think of a scenario where one passage of scripture would be the cut-off in terms of maximum scripture passages allowed, but still – setting aside the strange confluence of events such a person might find themselves in – what passage would that be?

He opened it to the floor. I got a little nervous as, for the life of me, not a single scripture passage came to mind. We were asked to share these out and I prayed, oh I prayed that Darrel would not look at me and say something like, ‘Well as the minister, what would your passage be?’ I had nothing. Nothing was coming to mind. Something out of Isaiah flitted briefly across my foggy brain but then I could not recall the exact location of that passage. And so my mind rested on Isaiah and refused to move. Thankfully someone else spoke up, “John 17!” He was cheating; I had covered that in the morning services. Another:  “John 3”. Of course. The next: “How about 1 Corinthians 13”, leading me to think to myself, why the heck couldn’t I even think of that? I preach on that flaming passage every second weekend.

Shortly after this, Darrel put up on the passage he would take. It was Romans 12 and by all accounts an excellent choice. He put up some of the verses on the screen and asked us to consider which part of this passage stood out for us. He went through about four slides and then asked us to discuss briefly with the people around us.

Now, anybody who is thinking of leading anyone or anything in a church environment, always think twice about asking them to share, or look at each other, or God forbid, hold hands.

When in Ireland a few years back two significant things happened to me in terms of the church services I shared in: the first was my failure to take over a pair of smart pants that actually fitted me. When packing I’m not sure what possessed me but I packed the most outrageously small pair of trousers in my closet. I don’t know where I found them. I don’t know if Mary is a closet ventriloquist and left her dummy’s spare slacks in my cupboard by accident. They must’ve been a hangover from my high school days – you know, when I last weighed eighty kilograms – but on this exploding one hundred and five kilogram frame they were simply a mockery. I jumped up and down, sat on the bed and wiggled, but no can do. There is tight and then there is the possibility-of-lodging-a-button-in-someone’s-forehead-should-you-accidentally-sneeze-in-their-direction tight; smuggling budgies tight. Even spandex looked at these pants on my body and thought, that material is uncomfortably close to the skin.

So I wore my jeans.

Now the Irish church is a little more high church than say the South African church. In South Africa – well, in Durban – we routinely have people lead worship with no shoes on and not because they feel like they’re standing on holy ground, no, they just don’t like shoes. In the past I’ve even remarked to these bohemians that I’m mightily impressed at their sense of the sacred in kicking off their shoes and they look at me as if to say: tell yourself whatever you like preacher man, these toes need to breathe.

The Irish church is a little stiffer than that so jeans could very well have upset the apple cart.

Also, at the end of the service I did what we always do in the South African church – I made them hold hands for the benediction. Well did this rock their world. Hold hands in church?! In fairness I don’t think everyone in South Africa enjoys this practice but such discomfit as I found in Belfast is hard to find outside of a woman walking her husband through the lingerie section of the local clothing store.

After preaching in my jeans, I enquired of the leadership if this was okay. Their response was unequivocal and final: the jeans are absolutely fine but never, never, never ask us to hold hands at the benediction again.

I got the sense that I could have been wearing a pink tutu while prancing down the aisles faintly touching and blessing each person with my fairy wand and this would still have been better than holding hands at the benediction.

And so it goes.

So even this was a bit uncomfortable for HMC. We don’t like to have to talk to each other, at least not during the service. But we did and we survived.

Then Darrel came to a rather peculiar verse in Paul. Paul instructs people to be kind to other people as this will burn heaping coals on their heads (Romans 12: 20).

Now you don’t need to be a New Testament scholar or Ethics professor of renown to see the glaring issue with Paul’s motivation.

Really Paul?

Darrel told us that we are not to take this passage literally, which I thought was a good start.

But after that, where do you go? What is it saying about the heart of the believer if they act kindly only to ensure an extra measure of God’s ferocious wrath?

Can you imagine the paranoia this could birth in a non-believing world?

Is he helping me because he likes me?

Is she indifferent to me but helping out of a sense of obligation to the way of Jesus? (Not great, but still passable.)

Or God forbid, is he helping me because he really, really despises me and hopes that this kind act will catapult me through to the ninth level of Dante’s Inferno?

If the third is an option then I will be pushed into even greater suspicious independence: No really, I’ll carry those groceries myself thank you very much. Now slowly back away from me.

By his own admission, Darrel offered a spectacularly out-the-box interpretation and it goes like this:

 If you are going to put coals on a person’s head, you might have to hold them upside down to dip their head into the coals and by doing so you will - tada! – have helpfully inverted the way they see their world.

I’m not sure I agree, but it’s a fair try. And his offering does suggest the philosophical and theological gymnastics such a passage demands. For another quite persuasive take on this verse check out this link.

Passages like this make me wish that guy had smoked his way through some of the epistles as well leaving us only passages that are easy to understand.

In which case, what do we do with some of that thinly veiled bias of Paul in Corinthians and 1 Timothy 2? Time to roll a joint buddy.

What if Paul is a man in process? Heresy I know but stay with me. What if Paul was doing what every human does – yes, because remember Paul is human as you and I are human, not divine as say, I don’t know, Jesus? – And what if he was working things out as he was going along? What if the idea of helping was great but Paul’s motivation for that helping well, less great?

Better yet, what if the fighting in that community was so bad, the spirit of these people so corrupted, that just trying to get them to behave better regardless of motivation was the first step? You know, the difference between theory and reality. Not unlike our parents who told us that making a face at another person could be detrimental to our future aesthetic appeal should the wind ever decide to change direction. You challenge a parent around how they motivate their children to do certain things (and the lies they intrinsically tell as they are doing so) and they might well give you a lesson or two in real-life as they drop kick your sorry butt to the curb.

If you aren’t in the trenches, you don’t have the full picture.

Maybe Paul is the eternal optimist in 1 Corinthians 13 and the hardened realist in Romans 12.

Maybe these are some of the reasons and maybe these are none of the reasons.

But I will say this in closing: any action motivated from a desire to see harm brought to another person does not seem to be any motivation Jesus himself would underwrite.

The Bible is great in this way as well though. It keeps us on our toes. When we’re expecting a shot to the top right corner we find ourselves nutmegged.

It won’t so easily align itself with our modern day sensibilities.

And we are better for it.

And it might be a struggle but always keep it in perspective. Like that majestic church in Ireland would probably say: interpret it anyway you like Andrew, and feel free to wear only your briefs while doing so, just whatever you do, don’t ever, ever make us hold hands for the benediction.