Jan 27 2019 Hebrews 10: 19-31

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds..
Here’s another word usage we don’t often hear. Provoke. Rarely do we hear or use ‘provoke’ when referring to anything positive. We use it when we’re talking about fights, war, and other bad behavior.  To me, it’s quite startling to hear it used for a positive thing.
And if you think about what provoke means, it’s even more startling. To provoke is to stimulate or give rise to a strong emotion or reaction in someone. One person does something that results in the action of another. Generally it’s used to blame the initiator for the bad reaction of the one provoked. But there’s always a second agent, isn’t there? There’s the person or event that was the initial provoker, and the one provoked. And because it’s mostly used to describe negative reactions, it would be rare for a good-hearted Christ-follower to want to provoke anyone or anything.
But today we get this startling and lovely alternative.  Provoke one another to love and good deeds. This isn’t just talking about us loving or doing good deeds ourselves. Rather, we are to be the inciter, the one who causes rise to a strong emotion or reaction – but in this case it’s a good reaction.
What a gem this is for me today. We are called to intentionally incite others into love and good deeds. That describes a duty to my neighbor that I hadn’t thought about before. It’s not enough for me to love them. I need to provoke them to love others too. As a deacon in the Episcopal Church, this is a brilliant, pithy way to describe what I believe I am called to do; provoke one another to love and good deeds.