March 20, 2011 - Lent 2, Year A (RCL)
I have a confession to make. It’s Lent after all, the time for confession. And mine is, that I don’t much like
the letter to the Romans. I had some bad experiences
with people quoting it at me
when I was a young adult,
plus it’s probably the most academic of all the letters of the New Testament.
But one of the disciplines of having a lectionary
is that we can’t simply avoid
our least favorite books,
and because this year our preaching is largely focussing on the epistles,
we can’t avoid the book of Romans.
And I suspect that as much as I don’t like the book, once you dig down a bit
it has some important things
to say.
And today, what our reading from Romans is talking about
is the relationship
between faith
and works.
In other words,
do we get saved
because of our faith? And if so,
where do the things we do fit in?
Or is it what we do that matters?
And if so, does it matter
exactly what
we believe?
That’s the question
that the apostle Paul
is trying to explain. How is it
that we get saved?
It’s probably not a question
that most of us think about a whole lot. Not most of the time, anyway. I don’t normally wander round the mall or drive up 25A wondering,
“Do I need to do more for God to save me? Or do I need more faith?”
But it’s a question that sneaks in sometimes,
deep in our subconscious.
When you do something
that you regret
and suddenly think, “Will God hate me?”
Or things are difficult, and you begin to wonder,
“is it really true, all the stuff I’ve been taught?”
Or perhaps someone says to you something along the lines of
“I’m a Christian. I live a good moral life. I just don’t go to church.”
Or someone dies, and we find ourselves wondering,
“Is heaven really true? And what if I haven’t exactly kept
all the ten
commandments?”
Faith and works.
How is it
that we are saved?
Part of the problem, of course,
is the church. We need things done. Someone who volunteers a lot
is a good Christian, or someone who prays a lot. They’re sure
to get into heaven.
And the others, well, we hope so, but we aren’t a hundred percent sure.
But the apostle Paul is clear. There is no doubt.
It’s faith.
We are saved by faith.
All the good works in the world, all the commandments,
they don’t matter,
not unless
you have faith.
And Paul says, that’s what the story of Abraham is all about.
Faith.
He heard the call of God
to leave everything he knew
and go settle in a new country.
God would give him land,
and even though Abraham was old, God would give him descendants.
And so Abraham packed up his wife, and slaves, and extended family
and headed west through the desert.
And God was faithful.
Now of course, if you’re like me, you think,
“That’s great for Abraham, but I’m not him.
I can’t see myself
packing up everything
just because God said so.
I don’t think
I have that sort
of faith.”
And here is where
we have to part ways with Paul and Romans.
Not because it’s wrong,
but because Paul doesn’t go
quite far enough. He’s talking to a group of people,
who are trying to figure out
where their previous life and beliefs
fit in.
They’re all converts, probably most from Judaism, along with some from other religions.
They pretty much all remember a time
when they didn’t know about Jesus.
Then they heard the story,
and then they believed.
There’s a clear before
and after.
Our situation
is slightly different.
Most of us
grew up with some sort of faith.
And for us it’s not before and after,
but a gradual shift,
our faith coming to mean more to us,
and sometimes less,
an ongoing ebb and flow.
So if it’s faith,
how do we know
if
and when
we are saved?
When do we pass the magic line
that marks, “enough?”
And to answer that, I think we have to look back
into the stories of the early church,
into the book of Acts.
Stories like
Philip
and the Ethiopian
eunuch.
Philip
was traveling south
from Jerusalem, when he saw a chariot ahead of him.
And he had a feeling, one of those times
when you feel prompted by God to act,
he had a feeling
that he should go over
and see who was in it.
And so he hurried, and caught up with it,
and discovered a man from Africa
reading from the book of Isaiah.
And the man was confused,
and so Philip climbed into the chariot beside him, and began to explain the reading, and then told the man
about Jesus.
And next thing, the man asked ”So, can I be baptized?” ”I guess,” said Philip,
and they pulled over,
and Philip baptized the man.
No questions, just the very basics
of faith.
Or Paul himself who had been traveling,
and saw a vision of Jesus, and became blind.
And after three days, met Ananias who prayed for him, and his sight came back and immediately
he was baptized.
Time after time
people hear the basics about Jesus,
and believe
and are baptized.
Believe. Baptized. Saved.
It’s as simple as that.
There is no magic line
that marks when you have enough faith.
Even the tiniest amount
is enough,
as little as a mustard seed.
Salvation is by grace alone;
all we have to do
is have enough faith
to go to God and say,
“I think
I believe.
I’m going to take a risk
and trust you.”
And God’s response is,
“Welcome! Come be part of my family.”
You see,
salvation isn’t so much about whether we get to heaven or not,
though that’s part of it,
what it’s really about
is having a relationship with God.
One that begins now, here on earth,
and will continue when we die, in what we call heaven.
That tiny bit of faith
is the beginning
of that relationship,
that new relationship
with God.
We belong to God. We are marked as God’s own
forever.
In our reading from Romans,
you might have noticed
that we skipped a few verses.
We jumped from verse five
to verse thirteen.
Those verses
were about circumcision,
the mark that showed
that Jewish men
belonged
to God.
A visible sign, on their bodies.
We carry a mark too,
the sign of the cross written in oil on our foreheads when we are baptized.
I sometimes wonder
if it would be better if that cross were marked on our bodies
with a tattoo.
We could never
forget
that we belong to God.
And it’s because we belong to God
that works come into it.
We live differently
because we are in a relationship with our maker.
I sometimes think we get it wrong in our baptism service.
We begin with some simple questions.
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
And then we turn the baptismal covenant:
Do you believe in God the Father?
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
And only after all that,
is a person
baptized.
If we follow what the Paul says, if we follow the model of the early church,
we could stop after the first three questions, or even make it simpler:
Do you believe in Jesus? Do you want
to be baptized?
And then you would be baptized.
Because faith, just a grain of faith,
is all that it takes
to be saved.
And only then, only when we are in that new relationship with Christ
are the other things important.
Then we ask the questions,
who is this God
that you belong to?
Now that you belong to God
how will you live?
Because belonging to God
does make a difference.
It reshapes our lives.
We live a new life in Christ,
one in which
we are constantly being transformed
into Christ’s image,
where God is at the very center
rather than on the periphery
of our lives.
It’s then
that we are to share the gospel,
to love others as we love ourselves, to use our gifts
for the building up of the church.
But it is by faith
that we are saved,
by faith that we belong to God.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010