(The American community in London hosts a service of worship at St. Paul's Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day each year. It was my privilege and honor to give the sermon for the service today.)
First Thessalonians 5:12-22
Happy Thanksgiving!
For many Americans this is the favorite holiday of all: No presents to buy—it’s not a day that suffers from being too commercialized. It has all the best food and most of the best sports (if they would play just one baseball game on Thanksgiving Day it would be the most perfect holiday ever).
Now this is the part of the service where the preacher usually tells some kind of turkey-related joke. I confess that I started looking for a good joke months ago, but never found one that would work for today.
I did, though, discover that there are a lot of sayings or phrases out there that use the word turkey in them. In the States, when you’re having a serious conversation about something we say you’re ‘talking turkey’.
Here in Britain when someone chooses to accept a situation that isn’t going to go well for them we say it’s ‘like turkeys voting for an early Christmas’.
A ‘turkey shoot’ is a way to describe an easy victory, while going ‘cold turkey’ describes the very difficult process of shaking an addiction or habit.
For those of us who grew up watching American crime shows, we can all remember watching police officers chasing suspects through alleys and around corners—the officer would climb fences and jump over walls in pursuit of the suspect—we knew that in TV-speak he was called the ‘perp’—and the chase would end when the officer drew his pistol and aimed it at the perp and said: ‘Freeze, turkey.’
Well, there are a lot of frozen turkeys giving their all for us today, and we’ll all be thankful for that later on today. (I told you there weren’t any good turkey jokes this year.)
Last month an 81-year-old Australian man confirmed one of the classic stereotypes about men. He got up one morning and got into his car to go and buy himself a newspaper. Along the way he got turned around and ended up hopelessly lost, almost 400 miles out of his way. When he finally stopped, a policeman asked him how he’d allowed himself to get so far off course, and the man simply said that he liked driving, and that he had a full tank of gas.
Now we all know the real answer here, right? He didn’t want to stop and ask for directions—I’ll pause as the wives glare at the husbands here today. He didn’t ask for directions and in the end found himself almost 400 miles away from home—a long way from where he was supposed to be.
Our text today comes near the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It reads:
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.
This passage is about a lot of things. It’s focused on the life of Christian churches—about how the early communities built around the Christian faith could grow and thrive and hold together. But the teachings in this passage aren’t limited to the house churches of the 1st century.
Our text has a lot to teach us today about learning to live and work together in healthy ways—about being productive and honorable and generous as we press on with the tasks that get us out of bed each morning. There’s a strong message here about what it means to live and work in community—about the ways we interact personally and professionally.
There’s also a lesson here about learning from challenges, or even mistakes—about being disciplined in the way that we work and serve and love. There’s some very practical advice in this passage that fits with what we’re celebrating today—that helps us see thankfulness as an important part of our lives.
Thanksgiving is one of those rare holidays that asks us to reflect on our own lives—to look around and take stock of what we can be thankful for. It’s a holiday that calls each one of us to do something that might not be a normal part of our lives, no matter what our faith tradition might be. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder to each one of us that thankfulness is important—being grateful to each other, and also being grateful to God for his blessings in our lives.
When George Washington declared the first National Day of Thanksgiving on this date in 1789, he said it was ‘the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits.’
That’s why we’re here today. That’s what we gather to remember and celebrate on this special day.
Well, no American holiday is complete without some reference to one of the most important American philosophers of all. Someone who each year manages to articulate our feelings and focus our attention on the true meanings behind most of our special days. Of course you all know that I’m talking about … Charlie Brown. In the States, for most of the last 50 years or so, there has been a Charlie Brown special produced and televised on each major holiday.
Who can forget ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’, with the classic menu of two slices of buttered toast, some pretzel sticks, a handful of popcorn, and some jelly beans.
There were more of these programs:
A Charlie Brown Christmas
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
Or maybe the classic: It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
There are others.
You’re in Love, Charlie Brown
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown
And finally, for those of us nearing or looking back on middle age:
You Don’t Look 40, Charlie Brown
In 1983, the gang from Peanuts traveled to Europe and visited some of the battle sites from the First and Second World Wars. They saw and talked about the horrors of war and the sacrifices of those who had to fight. That story was told in one of the most reflective specials in the series. The title was: ‘What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?’
As we pause to be thankful and to reflect and celebrate this week—we can ask ourselves the same question that gave the title to that Charlie Brown special:
What have we learned in the past year?
It’s been quite a year. When we last saw each other there were many people in this gathering who were unsure—unsure about their jobs, unsure about their savings and families, even unsure of where they might be living in a few weeks or months. When we met here last year the banking crisis had gathered up so much momentum that all of us—and millions of others around the world—all of us were wondering just how far the collapse would take us.
Many of us saw friends move away too soon as casualties of the financial crisis. People in this room today took demotions or transfers they didn’t want—they had to scramble to live in the same houses or keep their kids in the same schools. Some people had to move back to the States and still haven’t found new jobs.
It’s been quite a year.
And so Charlie Brown’s question is a good one: What have we learned?
Maybe one thing we’ve learned is that every once in a while, it’s a good idea to stop and ask for directions. Otherwise we run the risk of ending up far from where we meant to go—we end up lost, with no clear way back home.
Certainly we’ve learned the hard way that we’re far more connected than we ever imagined, so Paul’s teaching on what it means to live in community can offer us some lessons as well. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians can help us as we look back on the past year.
What can we learn from our passage of Scripture today?
Some of what we learn is personal—it’s about how we think and what we value and how we want to be. Some of what we learn is personal, and some of what we learn is more public—it’s about how we work and make decisions that impact other people.
On the personal side, Paul instructs his readers to keep their eyes fixed on God no matter what happens. Paul’s readers were people who had heard the Christian gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation through the Cross of Jesus and thrown their whole weight on it—given their whole lives to it. Now they were trying to figure out how they could demonstrate that faith as they lived each day.
‘Be joyful always’, Paul says. That doesn’t mean walking around with silly grins on our faces. Being joyful is being willing to trust that God is who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he would do.
Paul continues, saying: ‘Pray continually’. That’s about sharing our deepest thoughts with God—and also about waiting around to listen for an answer.
Then Paul says we should ‘Give thanks in all circumstances.’ Challenging times make it difficult to experience the joy that springs from feeling thankful, but forgetting to be thankful altogether doesn’t really work either. Challenging times, more than any other, remind us that thankfulness is a discipline and not a feeling—it’s something we have to remember to do, even when we don’t feel like it. Especially when we don’t feel like it.
Things over the last few years may or may not have gone differently if we’d practiced joy…or constant prayer…or if we’d disciplined ourselves to be thankful in all circumstances. Maybe we can debate whether or not the world would have been a better place if more of us spent more time being joyful and praying and being thankful. I can live with that.
What isn’t really up for debate is this: The world would be in much better shape—many of the people in this room today would have had a much better year if we’d followed the advice in the second part of our text.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
What do you think about that? Whether you think of yourself as a Christian or a person of faith or not, it’s good advice, isn’t it?
Whether you think Jesus was a crazy man or a wise teacher or the Lord and Savior of the universe, we can agree that learning to be joyful, to acknowledging a power beyond ourselves, and developing the discipline of thankfulness—we can agree that these are good things, right?
Beyond that though, and in light of what we’ve learned about business practices and banking strategies—and also about being borrowers and customers—in light of what we understand now about how we got into this mess—in light of all that, we can agree that there’s something important for all of us to take away from this ancient Christian text as we celebrate Thanksgiving.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
In our personal lives and professional behavior, this is more than just good advice. This is a call to faithful living. This is a challenge to be honorable and decent in every area of our lives. This is a call to integrity and discernment and wisdom, and if we answer that call it will quite simply change the way the world works.
On this Thanksgiving Day, as we consider just how much there is in our lives to make us truly thankful, this is an important lesson for us to remember.
As we celebrate a holiday that has become synonymous with overloaded tables and overstuffed guests, let’s not forget where we were a year ago today.
Maybe the question isn’t: ‘what have we learned?’ Maybe we just need to be reminded that it’s wise to stop sometimes and ask for direction. Maybe the best question for all of us to ask as we celebrate Thanksgiving is this:
‘What can we still learn?’
That’s where we come back to this strange little text, tucked away at the end of a letter in the Christian Bible.
Be joyful always.
Pray continually.
Give thanks in all circumstances.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
May God bless you and keep you…and have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
So What?
(This message is the last of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 12:1
As we wrap up our brief journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish by writing to them:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
So what about our passage today?
This is another of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ collection—a passage that we memorize and recite, sometimes without allowing it to speak to us in context. In preaching classes we use this passage as an example of something that should happen in every sermon—the shift from what our message is to what we should do about it—from the indicative to the imperative (for those of you who are taking notes). This is about the ‘So What?’ question.
This is a rich sentence—it’s a text we could have built a series around all on its own. Let’s look at it phrase by phrase.
‘Therefore I urge you’: Right there we have some actual proof that whatever Paul is about to say, it’s connected somehow to what has come before. You can’t start a something new with a ‘therefore’, because there’s nothing there to build on.
When Paul starts this new section, he’s building on some stories and teachings that he’s already shared with his Roman readers.
Creation, a way of forgiveness, keeping of his promises, the sacrifice of his son, and the invitation to life in the Spirit—life the way it was meant to be. It’s a good list.
But Paul doesn’t stop with just a list of things he’s already said. Those events—those acts of God—each one of them is an example of a quality in God’s character—they represent something about God that matters—that should matter to us. Listen to the next line:
‘In view of God’s mercy…’ In view of all these things God has done—in view of God’s overwhelming love, his mercy toward us.
It’s important here for us to explore the word ‘mercy’ for a moment. What is mercy? Maybe the best way to start to respond to that is to think about the counterpart to mercy—what’s the other side of the coin?
It would be easy to think that the opposite of mercy is cruelty, and in some ways that would be true. We talk about cruelty as the absence of mercy—of being merciless. I can see how we would think of cruelty as the opposite of mercy.
But that’s not what Paul means in this letter.
Paul has been working from a particular point of view from the very start of his letter to the Romans. God’s relationship to his Jewish covenant people is always a part of the evidence Paul is gathering to make his case—it’s never far from his mind as he tries to convince the Roman Christians that God can be trusted. In Paul’s understanding of who God is, the opposite of mercy isn’t cruelty.
The opposite of mercy is justice. That’s worth a little explaining.
The legal framework that holds biblical Judaism together is fairly simple. It’s about getting what you deserve. When Paul says: ‘In view of God’s mercy…’, what he’s really saying is this:
Since God loved you so much that he didn’t give you what you deserve—that he loved you so much that he gave you far more than you ever dreamed or imagined you could have…
And that’s when he moves to the next part of the text—when he makes the transition from the indicative to the imperative—the ‘So What?’ part of the text.
‘Present your bodies as living sacrifices.’ Well. That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all. Who in their right mind would choose to offer themselves to be a living sacrifice? Think about that for a moment.
Julie and I have been watching an American TV comedy called ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ The other night one of the characters, who’s a bit of a stickler for language, was trying to argue for the difference between the words ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively.’ This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, as a confirmed language geek—things that are literal should actually happen, and things that a figurative can simply be examples. Another character, who didn’t share our hero’s grammar values, responded, and I quote, saying: ‘I literally want to pull your head off right now.’
Paul isn’t literally saying that churches should start offering human sacrifices. Paul would have argued, as the Protestants did 1500 years later, that Christ’s sacrifice was a once and for all kind of thing. We don’t need to repeat that sacrifice, we just need to remember it and what it means. That’s a brief summary of literally thousands of pages of Reformation theology right there.
So what does it mean then, this business about presenting your bodies as living sacrifices?
To me this is one of the most important ‘So Whats’ in the entire New Testament.
This is a call to each of us to make our lives available to God for the purposes of spreading his Kingdom.
This is about taking all that we have and all that we are and bringing it before God to see what he might do with it and through it.
There’s no mystery here. It’s not a coincidence that we’re talking about this passage as we prepare to commit our pledges to God’s work. But it’s not just about money. This is about how much of our lives we’re willing to offer in response to God’s mercy toward us.
David Landsborough was a 2nd generation medical missionary in Taiwan. His father had started the first medical school in the region—it’s still there—and David went back to serve there when he’d been trained as a doctor. During his service there a young boy came in with an infection on his leg that was resistant to all the medicines they had. A skin graft was the only option, but no one was willing to be the donor. Dr Landsborough’s wife Jean, who was also a doctor, volunteered and gave enough of her own skin to provide several grafts for the boy. It was through her that this little boy’s life was saved. Incidentally, he grew up to be the minister of one of the largest churches in Taiwan, and served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church there.
‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…’
Paul ends this verse with an important description of what it means when we give our lives as an offering to God. He says: ‘This is your spiritual act of service/worship’
I love it that these two words can be interchangeable in the Bible—service and worship. One writer simply said that the person ‘who has been reconciled and renewed carries out the worship of God through the Spirit by presenting his or her whole being’ in service to God’s Kingdom…‘it leads to the surrender of the whole life, which is spiritual worship.’
So what are we supposed to do…really?
The point of Paul’s letter is that God can be trusted to keep his promises because he’s kept the promises he’s already made. Let’s be clear about exactly what Paul is saying here.
Because God never gave us what we deserved—because he loved us so much that he gave us far more than we could ever deserve on our own—because Jesus Christ offered himself as a living sacrifice for us…
In view of God’s mercy, the call is on us to commit our lives—everything about our lives—to God, as a thankful response for what he’s already done for us.
This faith of ours—part of it is a collection of beliefs we pass down from generation to generation. It’s a list of creeds that help us understand what it is we believe and who it is we believe in.
But this faith of ours is more than just what we believe—it’s really about the relationship we have with the one we believe in.
The point here is that we live in relationship to a God who has already held up his end of things. ‘In view of God’s mercy’ is a reminder to us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done something amazing already.
The call on us is to respond. We do that by making our lives available to the work of the Kingdom of God. We do that when we share our time and talent—we do that when we commit to the financial support of a local church.
As we move into a time of prayer and commitment as we receive your pledges, I invite you to reflect on God’s mercy in your own life—where God has shown you love in ways you never imagined—think on God’s mercy, and how you’ll respond to it.
In the very first message of this series on Romans we talked about our lives being based on a promise, and called for a purpose. That title for the series was always pointed at the text we read this morning. Our lives are built on a foundation of the promises of mercy that God has kept—that he’s fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The purpose we’re called to is to share our lives in Christ’s name to glorify God and to share his message with the world. That’s our spiritual act of worship and service.
As we move into Thanksgiving this week and the Advent season next Sunday, I invite you to remember that Jesus Christ is the source of our thankfulness and holiday celebration—that he is the fulfillment of every promise, known and unknown—and that his call on our lives is simple: He simply asks for everything.
Let’s pray together.
Romans 12:1
As we wrap up our brief journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish by writing to them:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
So what about our passage today?
This is another of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ collection—a passage that we memorize and recite, sometimes without allowing it to speak to us in context. In preaching classes we use this passage as an example of something that should happen in every sermon—the shift from what our message is to what we should do about it—from the indicative to the imperative (for those of you who are taking notes). This is about the ‘So What?’ question.
This is a rich sentence—it’s a text we could have built a series around all on its own. Let’s look at it phrase by phrase.
‘Therefore I urge you’: Right there we have some actual proof that whatever Paul is about to say, it’s connected somehow to what has come before. You can’t start a something new with a ‘therefore’, because there’s nothing there to build on.
When Paul starts this new section, he’s building on some stories and teachings that he’s already shared with his Roman readers.
Creation, a way of forgiveness, keeping of his promises, the sacrifice of his son, and the invitation to life in the Spirit—life the way it was meant to be. It’s a good list.
But Paul doesn’t stop with just a list of things he’s already said. Those events—those acts of God—each one of them is an example of a quality in God’s character—they represent something about God that matters—that should matter to us. Listen to the next line:
‘In view of God’s mercy…’ In view of all these things God has done—in view of God’s overwhelming love, his mercy toward us.
It’s important here for us to explore the word ‘mercy’ for a moment. What is mercy? Maybe the best way to start to respond to that is to think about the counterpart to mercy—what’s the other side of the coin?
It would be easy to think that the opposite of mercy is cruelty, and in some ways that would be true. We talk about cruelty as the absence of mercy—of being merciless. I can see how we would think of cruelty as the opposite of mercy.
But that’s not what Paul means in this letter.
Paul has been working from a particular point of view from the very start of his letter to the Romans. God’s relationship to his Jewish covenant people is always a part of the evidence Paul is gathering to make his case—it’s never far from his mind as he tries to convince the Roman Christians that God can be trusted. In Paul’s understanding of who God is, the opposite of mercy isn’t cruelty.
The opposite of mercy is justice. That’s worth a little explaining.
The legal framework that holds biblical Judaism together is fairly simple. It’s about getting what you deserve. When Paul says: ‘In view of God’s mercy…’, what he’s really saying is this:
Since God loved you so much that he didn’t give you what you deserve—that he loved you so much that he gave you far more than you ever dreamed or imagined you could have…
And that’s when he moves to the next part of the text—when he makes the transition from the indicative to the imperative—the ‘So What?’ part of the text.
‘Present your bodies as living sacrifices.’ Well. That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all. Who in their right mind would choose to offer themselves to be a living sacrifice? Think about that for a moment.
Julie and I have been watching an American TV comedy called ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ The other night one of the characters, who’s a bit of a stickler for language, was trying to argue for the difference between the words ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively.’ This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, as a confirmed language geek—things that are literal should actually happen, and things that a figurative can simply be examples. Another character, who didn’t share our hero’s grammar values, responded, and I quote, saying: ‘I literally want to pull your head off right now.’
Paul isn’t literally saying that churches should start offering human sacrifices. Paul would have argued, as the Protestants did 1500 years later, that Christ’s sacrifice was a once and for all kind of thing. We don’t need to repeat that sacrifice, we just need to remember it and what it means. That’s a brief summary of literally thousands of pages of Reformation theology right there.
So what does it mean then, this business about presenting your bodies as living sacrifices?
To me this is one of the most important ‘So Whats’ in the entire New Testament.
This is a call to each of us to make our lives available to God for the purposes of spreading his Kingdom.
This is about taking all that we have and all that we are and bringing it before God to see what he might do with it and through it.
There’s no mystery here. It’s not a coincidence that we’re talking about this passage as we prepare to commit our pledges to God’s work. But it’s not just about money. This is about how much of our lives we’re willing to offer in response to God’s mercy toward us.
David Landsborough was a 2nd generation medical missionary in Taiwan. His father had started the first medical school in the region—it’s still there—and David went back to serve there when he’d been trained as a doctor. During his service there a young boy came in with an infection on his leg that was resistant to all the medicines they had. A skin graft was the only option, but no one was willing to be the donor. Dr Landsborough’s wife Jean, who was also a doctor, volunteered and gave enough of her own skin to provide several grafts for the boy. It was through her that this little boy’s life was saved. Incidentally, he grew up to be the minister of one of the largest churches in Taiwan, and served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church there.
‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…’
Paul ends this verse with an important description of what it means when we give our lives as an offering to God. He says: ‘This is your spiritual act of service/worship’
I love it that these two words can be interchangeable in the Bible—service and worship. One writer simply said that the person ‘who has been reconciled and renewed carries out the worship of God through the Spirit by presenting his or her whole being’ in service to God’s Kingdom…‘it leads to the surrender of the whole life, which is spiritual worship.’
So what are we supposed to do…really?
The point of Paul’s letter is that God can be trusted to keep his promises because he’s kept the promises he’s already made. Let’s be clear about exactly what Paul is saying here.
Because God never gave us what we deserved—because he loved us so much that he gave us far more than we could ever deserve on our own—because Jesus Christ offered himself as a living sacrifice for us…
In view of God’s mercy, the call is on us to commit our lives—everything about our lives—to God, as a thankful response for what he’s already done for us.
This faith of ours—part of it is a collection of beliefs we pass down from generation to generation. It’s a list of creeds that help us understand what it is we believe and who it is we believe in.
But this faith of ours is more than just what we believe—it’s really about the relationship we have with the one we believe in.
The point here is that we live in relationship to a God who has already held up his end of things. ‘In view of God’s mercy’ is a reminder to us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done something amazing already.
The call on us is to respond. We do that by making our lives available to the work of the Kingdom of God. We do that when we share our time and talent—we do that when we commit to the financial support of a local church.
As we move into a time of prayer and commitment as we receive your pledges, I invite you to reflect on God’s mercy in your own life—where God has shown you love in ways you never imagined—think on God’s mercy, and how you’ll respond to it.
In the very first message of this series on Romans we talked about our lives being based on a promise, and called for a purpose. That title for the series was always pointed at the text we read this morning. Our lives are built on a foundation of the promises of mercy that God has kept—that he’s fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The purpose we’re called to is to share our lives in Christ’s name to glorify God and to share his message with the world. That’s our spiritual act of worship and service.
As we move into Thanksgiving this week and the Advent season next Sunday, I invite you to remember that Jesus Christ is the source of our thankfulness and holiday celebration—that he is the fulfillment of every promise, known and unknown—and that his call on our lives is simple: He simply asks for everything.
Let’s pray together.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Better than Conquest
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:31-39
I saw in the news that Ellis Island closed 55 years ago this past week, on Nov 12 1954. Ellis Island was the main gateway for immigrants to the US for more than 60 years, and during that time more than 20 million people entered America through its gates. One of them was my grandmother. She moved here from Italy with two young sons to rejoin my grandfather who was working here. They were just one family in the waves of immigration from Europe and other places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Immigration is controversial both here and in the US, I know, but on balance I think it’s had an enormously positive impact on American culture. If we’re honest we know that few if any of us come from Native American families, and of course now a lot of us are living and working in still another country not our own.
How we enter a new place—how we make a life in a new culture—is important for us not only in relation to our nationality, but also to our identity as Christians.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today?
Paul starts with a list of rhetorical questions—we looked at the first one of these last week. After his radical statement: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” After that, Paul asks some questions:
What do we say in response to all that God has done?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If God didn’t spare his own son, is there any limit to his generosity and love toward us?
If that’s true, then who can accuse God of anything?
If God is God and we’re not, then who is in a position to judge us?
And if that’s true, and Christ died for us and continues to pray for us, then we see this amazing promise:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
This is like those situations where we go in with a lot of questions, but someone has thought of them already and provided us with answers.
We’re called to engage the culture as redeemed people with a message of good news. If you think about that you’ll come up with a ton of questions, but in this passage Paul offers us answers that work about what we’re called to do—about who we’re supposed to be.
Paul asks: “Shall trouble or hardship or nakedness or danger or sword keep us from the love of Christ?”
That’s a pretty comprehensive list, isn’t it? Hardship, trouble, any form of shame (that’s what ‘nakedness’ would have meant to Paul’s readers), or even violence.
Will any of those keep us from experiencing the blessings of being in the presence of God?
Paul answers with a flat “NO.” Why? Because we’re ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.’
When we come to Christ in faith we re-enter our own world, our own culture, but not as an invading army. This time we come more as immigrants, coming in to make new lives for ourselves and influence the lives of our neighbors.
That may seem like we’re being a lot less than conquerors, but in the values of Christ’s kingdom it’s a lot more than that.
Being a Christian in this world is more than just moving into a new territory and settling in. It’s about bringing change to the culture in Christ’s name. It’s more than coming in as an occupying force, like the Germans in France or Holland during WWII.
Acting as conquering invaders is clearly not what Paul is suggesting for us as Christians in the world.
Here’s the point: We aren’t called to conquer or even to win—this isn’t about having power or authority or privilege. This is about the call Christ makes on our lives to live differently because of what he’s done for us.
We’re called to be more than conquerors—we’re called to be agents of transformation.
That’s something entirely different—something sacrificial and life-changing. In the end the call to be more than conquerors is the call to be Christ-like—to live as models of the reconciling renewing restoring work of Christ himself.
How do we reshape ourselves into that kind of church? How do we become people like that, both individually and as a community of faith?
It’s risky, just as it is for immigrants to a new nation and culture—we won’t always be accepted—we might not even be accepted very often at all.
But whether or not people accept the message of the gospel is really God’s business. Most of us wouldn’t dream of taking the credit for the way the gospel spreads and takes root. Why would we take the blame if we’ve been faithful in living it and sharing it?
The real fear is that somehow God won’t be with us as we do his work—that we’ll be abandoned as we face a hostile culture and even friends and family who don’t want to hear us talking about God, or about Jesus, or just try bringing up the Holy Spirit in some places.
The fear is that we’ll be left alone in our work as disciples of Jesus Christ.
That’s where that final, wonderful, amazing, life-changing promise comes in:
Paul says: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”
That promise is one of the great excuse-killers in the entire Bible. It doesn’t just appear there, disconnected from anything else. It comes as a part of the call to all of us to be living models of the gospel—to be agents of reconciliation—to live our lives as forgiven sinners who’ve been adopted into God’s family and given full inheritance rights.
This last promise is Paul’s way of cutting the legs out from all the excuses we use to avoid being the people God calls us to be.
Let’s see, “death nor life”: so even dying is no excuse, and neither is how busy we are in our lives.
Angels and demons can’t stop us—neither can pretending that angels and demons don’t exist.
“Present or future?” All the stuff we’re doing—and this church has some of the busiest people I’ve ever known—all the stuff we’re doing and all the plans we’ve made for next week and next summer and next year. None of that is an excuse.
“Nor any powers”, Paul says. That means that terrorism can’t stop us—neither can Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or evolution or someone who smirks or rolls their eyes at you when they see you reading a Bible.
The rest of the list covers just about everything else we might use as excuses for giving up. “Height nor depth nor anything else in all creation…” None of it can separate us from God’s love as we live out the message he gave to us. Nothing.
OK, now that’s a long string of tough talk, but it’s important for us to remember what it means. God will never leave us, no power can prevent us, nothing can stop us, from being the people God made us to be: more than just conquerors and bullies—but people who live the gospel and share it in meaningful ways with their families and friends and neighbors and strangers.
This is better than conquest. It’s better than looking good or feeling important. It’s better than acting like we’re better than other people or piling up possessions for ourselves.
It’s better than throwing our weight and money around and calling it mission work.
This is about being a part of a relationship that will change everyone and everything and every place in the world. Being more than conquerors means learning new ways to interact with people who haven’t heard or don’t believe the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the new Presbyterian study catechism that we’ll be using in our confirmation class, one of the questions reads:
How should I treat non-Christians and people of other religions?
Listen to this response:
“As much as I can, I should meet friendship with friendship, hostility with kindness, generosity with gratitude, persecution with forbearance, truth with agreement, and error with truth. I should express my faith with humility and devotion as the occasion requires, whether silently or openly, boldly or meekly, by word or by deed. I should avoid compromising the truth on the one hand and being narrow-minded on the other.”
Now catch this part…
“In short, I should always welcome and accept these others in a way that honors and reflects the Lord’s welcome and acceptance of me.”
Friends that’s what it looks like to be "more than conquerors," and that’s my prayer not only for our commitment to missions in this church, but also for the way we live each day as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Romans 8:31-39
I saw in the news that Ellis Island closed 55 years ago this past week, on Nov 12 1954. Ellis Island was the main gateway for immigrants to the US for more than 60 years, and during that time more than 20 million people entered America through its gates. One of them was my grandmother. She moved here from Italy with two young sons to rejoin my grandfather who was working here. They were just one family in the waves of immigration from Europe and other places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Immigration is controversial both here and in the US, I know, but on balance I think it’s had an enormously positive impact on American culture. If we’re honest we know that few if any of us come from Native American families, and of course now a lot of us are living and working in still another country not our own.
How we enter a new place—how we make a life in a new culture—is important for us not only in relation to our nationality, but also to our identity as Christians.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today?
Paul starts with a list of rhetorical questions—we looked at the first one of these last week. After his radical statement: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” After that, Paul asks some questions:
What do we say in response to all that God has done?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If God didn’t spare his own son, is there any limit to his generosity and love toward us?
If that’s true, then who can accuse God of anything?
If God is God and we’re not, then who is in a position to judge us?
And if that’s true, and Christ died for us and continues to pray for us, then we see this amazing promise:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
This is like those situations where we go in with a lot of questions, but someone has thought of them already and provided us with answers.
We’re called to engage the culture as redeemed people with a message of good news. If you think about that you’ll come up with a ton of questions, but in this passage Paul offers us answers that work about what we’re called to do—about who we’re supposed to be.
Paul asks: “Shall trouble or hardship or nakedness or danger or sword keep us from the love of Christ?”
That’s a pretty comprehensive list, isn’t it? Hardship, trouble, any form of shame (that’s what ‘nakedness’ would have meant to Paul’s readers), or even violence.
Will any of those keep us from experiencing the blessings of being in the presence of God?
Paul answers with a flat “NO.” Why? Because we’re ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.’
When we come to Christ in faith we re-enter our own world, our own culture, but not as an invading army. This time we come more as immigrants, coming in to make new lives for ourselves and influence the lives of our neighbors.
That may seem like we’re being a lot less than conquerors, but in the values of Christ’s kingdom it’s a lot more than that.
Being a Christian in this world is more than just moving into a new territory and settling in. It’s about bringing change to the culture in Christ’s name. It’s more than coming in as an occupying force, like the Germans in France or Holland during WWII.
Acting as conquering invaders is clearly not what Paul is suggesting for us as Christians in the world.
Here’s the point: We aren’t called to conquer or even to win—this isn’t about having power or authority or privilege. This is about the call Christ makes on our lives to live differently because of what he’s done for us.
We’re called to be more than conquerors—we’re called to be agents of transformation.
That’s something entirely different—something sacrificial and life-changing. In the end the call to be more than conquerors is the call to be Christ-like—to live as models of the reconciling renewing restoring work of Christ himself.
How do we reshape ourselves into that kind of church? How do we become people like that, both individually and as a community of faith?
It’s risky, just as it is for immigrants to a new nation and culture—we won’t always be accepted—we might not even be accepted very often at all.
But whether or not people accept the message of the gospel is really God’s business. Most of us wouldn’t dream of taking the credit for the way the gospel spreads and takes root. Why would we take the blame if we’ve been faithful in living it and sharing it?
The real fear is that somehow God won’t be with us as we do his work—that we’ll be abandoned as we face a hostile culture and even friends and family who don’t want to hear us talking about God, or about Jesus, or just try bringing up the Holy Spirit in some places.
The fear is that we’ll be left alone in our work as disciples of Jesus Christ.
That’s where that final, wonderful, amazing, life-changing promise comes in:
Paul says: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”
That promise is one of the great excuse-killers in the entire Bible. It doesn’t just appear there, disconnected from anything else. It comes as a part of the call to all of us to be living models of the gospel—to be agents of reconciliation—to live our lives as forgiven sinners who’ve been adopted into God’s family and given full inheritance rights.
This last promise is Paul’s way of cutting the legs out from all the excuses we use to avoid being the people God calls us to be.
Let’s see, “death nor life”: so even dying is no excuse, and neither is how busy we are in our lives.
Angels and demons can’t stop us—neither can pretending that angels and demons don’t exist.
“Present or future?” All the stuff we’re doing—and this church has some of the busiest people I’ve ever known—all the stuff we’re doing and all the plans we’ve made for next week and next summer and next year. None of that is an excuse.
“Nor any powers”, Paul says. That means that terrorism can’t stop us—neither can Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or evolution or someone who smirks or rolls their eyes at you when they see you reading a Bible.
The rest of the list covers just about everything else we might use as excuses for giving up. “Height nor depth nor anything else in all creation…” None of it can separate us from God’s love as we live out the message he gave to us. Nothing.
OK, now that’s a long string of tough talk, but it’s important for us to remember what it means. God will never leave us, no power can prevent us, nothing can stop us, from being the people God made us to be: more than just conquerors and bullies—but people who live the gospel and share it in meaningful ways with their families and friends and neighbors and strangers.
This is better than conquest. It’s better than looking good or feeling important. It’s better than acting like we’re better than other people or piling up possessions for ourselves.
It’s better than throwing our weight and money around and calling it mission work.
This is about being a part of a relationship that will change everyone and everything and every place in the world. Being more than conquerors means learning new ways to interact with people who haven’t heard or don’t believe the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the new Presbyterian study catechism that we’ll be using in our confirmation class, one of the questions reads:
How should I treat non-Christians and people of other religions?
Listen to this response:
“As much as I can, I should meet friendship with friendship, hostility with kindness, generosity with gratitude, persecution with forbearance, truth with agreement, and error with truth. I should express my faith with humility and devotion as the occasion requires, whether silently or openly, boldly or meekly, by word or by deed. I should avoid compromising the truth on the one hand and being narrow-minded on the other.”
Now catch this part…
“In short, I should always welcome and accept these others in a way that honors and reflects the Lord’s welcome and acceptance of me.”
Friends that’s what it looks like to be "more than conquerors," and that’s my prayer not only for our commitment to missions in this church, but also for the way we live each day as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
A Different Perspective
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:28-32
In a conversation recently someone said to me ‘the exception proves the rule’, and that got me thinking… That saying makes absolutely no sense at all. If it’s a rule there aren’t exceptions, and if there are exceptions there really can’t be a rule. So I looked up the saying and here’s what I found out.
The origin of the phrase is actually from 16th-century English law. It was originally written ‘Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis’, which of course we all know means ‘Exception confirms the rule in cases without exceptions.’ In clear English it means that posting an exception to a rule is a reminder that at other times the rule exists.
There are all kinds of sayings or quotes that have come down to us that either don’t make sense or aren’t exactly faithful to the way they were originally written.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ comes to mind. Has that ever actually happened? Not really, so we can’t take it at face value. Where did that one come from? The most likely origin, according to one source, is that in London in the 17th century, heavy rain used to fill the streets and carry along dead animals—mostly cats and dogs—and so the saying came out of that.
There’s ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, ‘Make no bones about it’, and ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ (I think that people who make up sayings don’t like cats all that much.)
How about this one: ‘That’s the best thing since sliced bread.’ Really? Better than airplanes or computers or iPods or even Pop-Tarts? Better than heart transplants or antibiotics or the cure for polio? Would we really give up all those things if it meant we had to run a knife through a loaf of bread for ourselves? For Pete’s sake. There’s another one—who’s Pete?
It’s also common sometimes to hear misquoted Bible verses, or sayings that people think are Bible verses but really aren’t.
‘God works in mysterious ways’ is one of the most common. People cite it as a Bible verse, but it’s actually from an 18th century English poet named William Cowper.
A more damaging one is this: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Really? What about the rest of us? Does God ignore the needs of those who find themselves powerless sometimes? What does that mean for the millions of people in 12-step programs? The first step is the admission that we’re powerless in the face of our addictions.
You can tell these make me a little cranky.
Our text this morning includes a passage that has been misread and misquoted for centuries.
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness—we were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today? How has it been misunderstood?
I have to say that when we started this series on Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was looking forward to this precise passage, but I’m not now—it’s really one of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ in Scripture—most people who have read this letter will know Romans 8:28 and quote it often.
And maybe that’s where the problem is.
So many people know this passage that it feels pretty daunting to say anything new about it. How do we make this text come alive one more time as we work our way through this important letter?
But the real reason this text is hard is that it’s been twisted and abused over the years—it’s been made to mean something that God or Paul never intended, and so that’s why it’s so important that we look at it again.
How has this passage been abused? Let me ask that a different way: How many of us have had this verse recited to us when we’ve suffered a tragedy or some other kind of loss? How many of us have had someone share this text with us as a way of trying to get us to stop feeling something genuine like grief or anger or sadness.
You know how this happens. Someone suffers a loss and a friend comes up and says: ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
I have to tell you that that drives me crazy.
First, it makes it sound as though we should be glad or happy or free of sadness no matter what happens. If it’s all going to work out for good then why be a killjoy? Why spoil the party by actually having authentic feelings about something? ‘All things work together for good,’ don’t they?
The second problem with that quote is that it makes it sound as though our ability to squelch our feelings is directly related somehow to how much we love God. Do you see that in there? ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’ The logic there means that if things don’t seem to be working out for good in your life, then you must not love the Lord—or love the Lord enough.
That just makes me nauseous.
Most importantly, though, the way this passage too often gets quoted is a corruption of the way it was actually written. Please, tell me you can hear the difference between these two:
‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
And…
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
One of these is a lie—a simpering, shorthand, cheeseball way of reducing Scripture to a lame version of ‘All’s well that ends well.’
One of these is a lie, but the other is a revolutionary expression of hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing the Christian faith as a wimpy, unrealistic escape —the real definition of the ‘opium of the people’.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing Jesus Christ as a nice guy we can model our lives around, and seeing him as the one true transformational source of hope for every person and place in the world.
One of these is a waste of time. The other is a call to a deeper level of discipleship than we ever thought was possible.
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
Romans 8:28 isn’t a call to some Pollyanna refusal to acknowledge problems or evil in the world. It’s an expression of faith that no matter what happens, God is working to find some redemptive purpose in it—in other words, we are not alone. One writer described it as the belief that ‘our confidence is sure precisely because our future is not in our hands and does not depend on our own faithfulness or ability’ to be perfect. As with every argument in this entire letter, the point is found in coming to God in faith, struggles and all, brokenness and all.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there. In the next section he asks a rhetorical question and then answers it with a reminder of what God has done to bring us back to him—he answers the
question by telling us the lengths God has gone—and will go to—to place us back into his family.
What do we say about this?
What do we say to a God who doesn’t promise us a pain-free life, but promises to work for good within everything that happens.
What do we say to a God who doesn’t just say things.
What do we say to a God who goes so far to demonstrate his love for us that he doesn’t even spare his own son?
We say three things:
We say we want to know this God. That’s why we offer opportunities for people at all ages to grow and learn and become mature in their faith.
We say we want to worship this God. That’s why we don’t stop at just knowing about God—we come together to offer our praises and prayers—to sing and listen and challenge ourselves to draw near to God himself.
We say we want to serve in this God’s name. If our faith stays inward then it hasn’t grown into maturity yet. Knowing about God and worshipping faithfully are the starting place for serving each other and strangers and the whole world in the name of Jesus Christ.
Notice that none of this is about putting our faith in a list of doctrines and then forgetting all about them. This is a different perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
This is about building a relationship with God and with each other and with the rest of the world. Remember that through the entire letter to the Romans Paul has been saying that all of this comes to us when we come to God in faith.
John Ortberg describes it this way:
‘Faith is not simply holding beliefs. Many people, when they consider faith, think ‘I believe that God exists,’ or ‘Scripture is accurate,’ or ‘love is the greatest virtue.’ But at its core, faith is not simply the belief in a statement; it puts trust in a person. We think we want certainty, but we don’t. What we really want is trust. Trust is better than certainty because it honors the freedom of persons and makes possible the kind of growth and intimacy that certainty alone could never produce.’
That trust is the key. Believing that God wants the best for us and that he’ll work to bring it about no matter what else happens to us—believing that is the beginning of trust, and the beginning of an amazing, life-changing, world-altering relationship.
And the best part is that there are no exceptions to God’s rule—we’re all included. The good news for us this morning is this: God helps those—he offers himself to those—who come to him in faith.
Let’s pray.
Romans 8:28-32
In a conversation recently someone said to me ‘the exception proves the rule’, and that got me thinking… That saying makes absolutely no sense at all. If it’s a rule there aren’t exceptions, and if there are exceptions there really can’t be a rule. So I looked up the saying and here’s what I found out.
The origin of the phrase is actually from 16th-century English law. It was originally written ‘Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis’, which of course we all know means ‘Exception confirms the rule in cases without exceptions.’ In clear English it means that posting an exception to a rule is a reminder that at other times the rule exists.
There are all kinds of sayings or quotes that have come down to us that either don’t make sense or aren’t exactly faithful to the way they were originally written.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ comes to mind. Has that ever actually happened? Not really, so we can’t take it at face value. Where did that one come from? The most likely origin, according to one source, is that in London in the 17th century, heavy rain used to fill the streets and carry along dead animals—mostly cats and dogs—and so the saying came out of that.
There’s ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, ‘Make no bones about it’, and ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ (I think that people who make up sayings don’t like cats all that much.)
How about this one: ‘That’s the best thing since sliced bread.’ Really? Better than airplanes or computers or iPods or even Pop-Tarts? Better than heart transplants or antibiotics or the cure for polio? Would we really give up all those things if it meant we had to run a knife through a loaf of bread for ourselves? For Pete’s sake. There’s another one—who’s Pete?
It’s also common sometimes to hear misquoted Bible verses, or sayings that people think are Bible verses but really aren’t.
‘God works in mysterious ways’ is one of the most common. People cite it as a Bible verse, but it’s actually from an 18th century English poet named William Cowper.
A more damaging one is this: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Really? What about the rest of us? Does God ignore the needs of those who find themselves powerless sometimes? What does that mean for the millions of people in 12-step programs? The first step is the admission that we’re powerless in the face of our addictions.
You can tell these make me a little cranky.
Our text this morning includes a passage that has been misread and misquoted for centuries.
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness—we were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today? How has it been misunderstood?
I have to say that when we started this series on Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was looking forward to this precise passage, but I’m not now—it’s really one of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ in Scripture—most people who have read this letter will know Romans 8:28 and quote it often.
And maybe that’s where the problem is.
So many people know this passage that it feels pretty daunting to say anything new about it. How do we make this text come alive one more time as we work our way through this important letter?
But the real reason this text is hard is that it’s been twisted and abused over the years—it’s been made to mean something that God or Paul never intended, and so that’s why it’s so important that we look at it again.
How has this passage been abused? Let me ask that a different way: How many of us have had this verse recited to us when we’ve suffered a tragedy or some other kind of loss? How many of us have had someone share this text with us as a way of trying to get us to stop feeling something genuine like grief or anger or sadness.
You know how this happens. Someone suffers a loss and a friend comes up and says: ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
I have to tell you that that drives me crazy.
First, it makes it sound as though we should be glad or happy or free of sadness no matter what happens. If it’s all going to work out for good then why be a killjoy? Why spoil the party by actually having authentic feelings about something? ‘All things work together for good,’ don’t they?
The second problem with that quote is that it makes it sound as though our ability to squelch our feelings is directly related somehow to how much we love God. Do you see that in there? ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’ The logic there means that if things don’t seem to be working out for good in your life, then you must not love the Lord—or love the Lord enough.
That just makes me nauseous.
Most importantly, though, the way this passage too often gets quoted is a corruption of the way it was actually written. Please, tell me you can hear the difference between these two:
‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
And…
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
One of these is a lie—a simpering, shorthand, cheeseball way of reducing Scripture to a lame version of ‘All’s well that ends well.’
One of these is a lie, but the other is a revolutionary expression of hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing the Christian faith as a wimpy, unrealistic escape —the real definition of the ‘opium of the people’.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing Jesus Christ as a nice guy we can model our lives around, and seeing him as the one true transformational source of hope for every person and place in the world.
One of these is a waste of time. The other is a call to a deeper level of discipleship than we ever thought was possible.
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
Romans 8:28 isn’t a call to some Pollyanna refusal to acknowledge problems or evil in the world. It’s an expression of faith that no matter what happens, God is working to find some redemptive purpose in it—in other words, we are not alone. One writer described it as the belief that ‘our confidence is sure precisely because our future is not in our hands and does not depend on our own faithfulness or ability’ to be perfect. As with every argument in this entire letter, the point is found in coming to God in faith, struggles and all, brokenness and all.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there. In the next section he asks a rhetorical question and then answers it with a reminder of what God has done to bring us back to him—he answers the
question by telling us the lengths God has gone—and will go to—to place us back into his family.
What do we say about this?
What do we say to a God who doesn’t promise us a pain-free life, but promises to work for good within everything that happens.
What do we say to a God who doesn’t just say things.
What do we say to a God who goes so far to demonstrate his love for us that he doesn’t even spare his own son?
We say three things:
We say we want to know this God. That’s why we offer opportunities for people at all ages to grow and learn and become mature in their faith.
We say we want to worship this God. That’s why we don’t stop at just knowing about God—we come together to offer our praises and prayers—to sing and listen and challenge ourselves to draw near to God himself.
We say we want to serve in this God’s name. If our faith stays inward then it hasn’t grown into maturity yet. Knowing about God and worshipping faithfully are the starting place for serving each other and strangers and the whole world in the name of Jesus Christ.
Notice that none of this is about putting our faith in a list of doctrines and then forgetting all about them. This is a different perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
This is about building a relationship with God and with each other and with the rest of the world. Remember that through the entire letter to the Romans Paul has been saying that all of this comes to us when we come to God in faith.
John Ortberg describes it this way:
‘Faith is not simply holding beliefs. Many people, when they consider faith, think ‘I believe that God exists,’ or ‘Scripture is accurate,’ or ‘love is the greatest virtue.’ But at its core, faith is not simply the belief in a statement; it puts trust in a person. We think we want certainty, but we don’t. What we really want is trust. Trust is better than certainty because it honors the freedom of persons and makes possible the kind of growth and intimacy that certainty alone could never produce.’
That trust is the key. Believing that God wants the best for us and that he’ll work to bring it about no matter what else happens to us—believing that is the beginning of trust, and the beginning of an amazing, life-changing, world-altering relationship.
And the best part is that there are no exceptions to God’s rule—we’re all included. The good news for us this morning is this: God helps those—he offers himself to those—who come to him in faith.
Let’s pray.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Saints and Other Failures
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:12-17
In honor of All Saints’ Day…
This holiday dates back to the 7th century as a celebration of all saints, known and unknown, so I thought we’d talk about saints for a moment.
Over the centuries saints have been seen as helpers or assistants in the Christian life of average believers. They were seen as close to God because of any miracles they might have done, but still human and worthy of following as examples.
The requirements for becoming a saint were exemplary lives and the performing of miracles. The Catholic Church takes nominations, then sends a commission out to research the life of the candidate. The commission builds a case for sainthood and presents it to the Vatican. That’s where the fun begins.
The last stage is a trial, where the commission presents its case, and someone called a promotor justitiae argues the other side. We know that person better as the Devil’s Advocate. The Devil’s Advocate (or, the DA) tries to oppose every aspect of the case for sainthood by every lawful tactic. If the candidate survives, then eventually they’re canonized as a saint.
Catholic or not, most of us are aware of the idea of a patron saint. That’s a saint who has some historical connection with a group or type of person.
There are patron saints for actors, animals and archers. For cab drivers, clothworkers and cooks. For fathers, firefighters and fishermen. For lawyers and leatherworkers and lovers.
There are patron saints for headache sufferers, heart patients, and those who suffer from intestinal ailments (Erasmus, a 3rd century Italian bishop, who earned the honor because of the gruesome way he was martyred.).
Gabriel, the angel with the loud horn, is the patron saint of broadcasters.
Benedict is the patron saint of speleologists, which I had to look up. Speleologists are people who study caves—I’m not sure why they need their own saint… You won’t get this kind of information anywhere else.
Joseph of Copertino was said to rise up off the ground and even fly when the Spirit moved him, so now he’s the patron saint of astronauts.
Matthew, who was a tax collector before becoming one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, is the patron saint of bankers and accountants.
Every one of these women and men became saints because they had demonstrated some extreme level of faithfulness. They’d accomplished some great task, or done some great miracle. They came to represent the ideal for what we should do and how we should live.
But at some point each one of these saints had to earn their way into sainthood. They had to meet some standard and be judged by their brothers and sisters to see if they were worthy.
I hope you can see how different that is from what we’ve been learning in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The whole point of this for Paul—the thing that drove the growth of the Christian faith and even inspired the Reformation 1500 years later—the point of the gospel is that we don’t have to earn it at all.
Forgiveness for our sins, and restoration to life in the presence of God—all of that is a free gift that we receive when we come before Christ in faith.
12Therefore, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Just to recap the theme of our journey through Romans:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is the relationship we were made to have with God, and the way that relationship is complicated by sin.
If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law.
Paul talks about the difference between life in the flesh and life led by the Spirit. One writer describes it like this:
“Life pursued according to the flesh is the life influenced by rebellion and idolatry, in which the entire perspective of the person is turned on him- or herself, and the person becomes the center of all values.
Life in the Spirit, on the other hand, is life set free from bondage to self and sin…It is life in bondage to God, which freely acknowledges his lordship through Jesus Christ. The power of Christ’s lordship has broken the enslaving power of self-worship and sin, and set the person free to enjoy a new relationship with God—that new relationship is as a child—a son or daughter—rather than a rebel.”
I love the part of our text that talks about being God’s children—being made heirs—being made to feel part of the family. It’s still more than I can comprehend that God calls us into a relationship with him where we can be close to him—where we can rest in his presence—where we can call out to him, Abba, Father.
The real translation of Abba is ‘Daddy’, a term of closeness and affection and safety.
What does it mean to be welcomed into God’s family?
“To be led by God’s Spirit means to have changed our future from life to death, to have changed our relationship to God from rebellion to obedience, and to have changed our status from enemy to beloved child.”
Another way of looking at this, and in honor of All Saints’ Day, is that we’re all saints now, just by coming to Christ in faith.
We’re all saints now, not by anything we’ve done to earn it, but through the grace of God only.
That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ—that’s the essence of the Christian faith.
That’s what we remember as we come to the Table in Communion.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means that we’re forgiven, that we’re welcomed into God’s family with full inheritance privileges, and that wherever we are or wherever we go, we have a home where we’re loved and where we belong.
Our ‘hymn out of season’ today is a usually sung on Good Friday, as we reflect on the pain and suffering of Christ’s sacrifice for us. We sing it now as a way of preparing our hearts to celebrate Communion today.
Please stand and let’s sing together: ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’
Romans 8:12-17
In honor of All Saints’ Day…
This holiday dates back to the 7th century as a celebration of all saints, known and unknown, so I thought we’d talk about saints for a moment.
Over the centuries saints have been seen as helpers or assistants in the Christian life of average believers. They were seen as close to God because of any miracles they might have done, but still human and worthy of following as examples.
The requirements for becoming a saint were exemplary lives and the performing of miracles. The Catholic Church takes nominations, then sends a commission out to research the life of the candidate. The commission builds a case for sainthood and presents it to the Vatican. That’s where the fun begins.
The last stage is a trial, where the commission presents its case, and someone called a promotor justitiae argues the other side. We know that person better as the Devil’s Advocate. The Devil’s Advocate (or, the DA) tries to oppose every aspect of the case for sainthood by every lawful tactic. If the candidate survives, then eventually they’re canonized as a saint.
Catholic or not, most of us are aware of the idea of a patron saint. That’s a saint who has some historical connection with a group or type of person.
There are patron saints for actors, animals and archers. For cab drivers, clothworkers and cooks. For fathers, firefighters and fishermen. For lawyers and leatherworkers and lovers.
There are patron saints for headache sufferers, heart patients, and those who suffer from intestinal ailments (Erasmus, a 3rd century Italian bishop, who earned the honor because of the gruesome way he was martyred.).
Gabriel, the angel with the loud horn, is the patron saint of broadcasters.
Benedict is the patron saint of speleologists, which I had to look up. Speleologists are people who study caves—I’m not sure why they need their own saint… You won’t get this kind of information anywhere else.
Joseph of Copertino was said to rise up off the ground and even fly when the Spirit moved him, so now he’s the patron saint of astronauts.
Matthew, who was a tax collector before becoming one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, is the patron saint of bankers and accountants.
Every one of these women and men became saints because they had demonstrated some extreme level of faithfulness. They’d accomplished some great task, or done some great miracle. They came to represent the ideal for what we should do and how we should live.
But at some point each one of these saints had to earn their way into sainthood. They had to meet some standard and be judged by their brothers and sisters to see if they were worthy.
I hope you can see how different that is from what we’ve been learning in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The whole point of this for Paul—the thing that drove the growth of the Christian faith and even inspired the Reformation 1500 years later—the point of the gospel is that we don’t have to earn it at all.
Forgiveness for our sins, and restoration to life in the presence of God—all of that is a free gift that we receive when we come before Christ in faith.
12Therefore, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Just to recap the theme of our journey through Romans:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is the relationship we were made to have with God, and the way that relationship is complicated by sin.
If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law.
Paul talks about the difference between life in the flesh and life led by the Spirit. One writer describes it like this:
“Life pursued according to the flesh is the life influenced by rebellion and idolatry, in which the entire perspective of the person is turned on him- or herself, and the person becomes the center of all values.
Life in the Spirit, on the other hand, is life set free from bondage to self and sin…It is life in bondage to God, which freely acknowledges his lordship through Jesus Christ. The power of Christ’s lordship has broken the enslaving power of self-worship and sin, and set the person free to enjoy a new relationship with God—that new relationship is as a child—a son or daughter—rather than a rebel.”
I love the part of our text that talks about being God’s children—being made heirs—being made to feel part of the family. It’s still more than I can comprehend that God calls us into a relationship with him where we can be close to him—where we can rest in his presence—where we can call out to him, Abba, Father.
The real translation of Abba is ‘Daddy’, a term of closeness and affection and safety.
What does it mean to be welcomed into God’s family?
“To be led by God’s Spirit means to have changed our future from life to death, to have changed our relationship to God from rebellion to obedience, and to have changed our status from enemy to beloved child.”
Another way of looking at this, and in honor of All Saints’ Day, is that we’re all saints now, just by coming to Christ in faith.
We’re all saints now, not by anything we’ve done to earn it, but through the grace of God only.
That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ—that’s the essence of the Christian faith.
That’s what we remember as we come to the Table in Communion.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means that we’re forgiven, that we’re welcomed into God’s family with full inheritance privileges, and that wherever we are or wherever we go, we have a home where we’re loved and where we belong.
Our ‘hymn out of season’ today is a usually sung on Good Friday, as we reflect on the pain and suffering of Christ’s sacrifice for us. We sing it now as a way of preparing our hearts to celebrate Communion today.
Please stand and let’s sing together: ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’
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