July 31 - Proper 13, Year A (RCL)
Do you remember how our reading from the New Testament ended last week? With that classic claim of the apostle Paul,
“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
There’s a big gap between that wonderful claim
and today’s reading. It’s a stark contrast, from that joy
to this desperation.
Paul is afraid.
He’s torn apart.
Because all around him
he can see the grace of God at work. And it’s wonderful.
People’s lives
are being changed, being made new.
They have new hope, new possibilities.
And above all, they have come to know God in Christ!
But then, there are the others. People
who want nothing to do with Christ
and with Christians.
They simply aren’t interested.
Or even worse,
they actively oppose the Christians, threatening them,
attacking them, accusing them.
They see, from Paul’s perspective, to be ignoring God
at the same time
as they claim to believe.
These are the people
who were brought up like him,
who had all the benefits of the law and the prophets, the covenant, the visions, the worship, the promises.
All that,
and they seem to be blindly ignoring it all,
clinging instead
to some sort of rigid belief system
with no room
for grace.
And it tears Paul apart,
it tears him apart
because he wants nothing more
that for them to experience
the transforming love of God
that has been so astounding in his own life.
And there’s probably some guilt in there too.
Because if you remember, Paul was pretty much like the people he’s upset about now.
He was raised in the Jewish faith,
and not just raised in it,
but educated to the highest degree.
He was a leader, a teacher, a rabbi.
He knew the religious law,
he knew the words of the prophets,
he knew stories upon stories
of how God had been faithful
to the people.
He knew how God had given them chance after chance,
new start after new start, and how they had ignored God
times after time,
and worse than ignoring God
had turned against him.
Now, compared to all that
Paul had been pretty faithful. He’d done his best
to keep the law, to follow the commandments,
to take heed of the prophets.
But then God did something new.
Something totally
unexpected.
God sent his son.
In hindsight, it wasn’t entirely unpredictable;
anyone who knew the words of the prophets
as well as Paul claimed to
could see for themselves
that this Son
was surely the fulfillment of them.
But when Jesus appeared,
Paul was just like all the other religious leaders.
He thought Jesus was a fraud, or even worse, a blasphemer,
totally opposed to God.
And so Paul was looking on approvingly when they stoned to death Stephen, one of Jesus’s early followers,
and he took that as the inspiration for a career,
a career of hunting down Christians
and arresting them
and destroying their little communities.
Until one day
when he was on his way to the town of Damascus
to hunt out and destroy the Christian community there
when Jesus appeared to him
and challenged him
and Paul did a 180 degree turn around
and became the leading theologian and supporter
of the Christian movement.
Paul himself has received the grace of God
in a powerful, life-changing way.
But he can see those who he grew up with,
his family and friends and colleagues
who haven’t.
They’ve heard the news about Christ,
and they’re
not interested.
And it’s clear that Paul thinks
that they are doomed.
I grew up in a part of the church
that through a little bit like Paul.
We were urged to share our faith
with our family and friends, lest they miss out on Christ
and miss out on life eternal.
And we were urged to go on mission trips overseas
to convert the unconverted.
We learned the four spiritual laws,
and questioned people
if they were certain
of their salvation.
Other people I know - and you might we among them - were taught that anyone who wasn’t a member of your church
was condemned to hell.
The point was
to scare you into heaven.
And all too often, passages like this from the book of Romans
were used to strengthen the arguments.
But think a bit.
Who do you think Romans was written to?
Was it written
to those people
who had never heard of Christ?
I don’t think so. How would they got hold of it, and what would have motivated them to read it?
Was it written to the people who had heard of him
but weren’t interested, or perhaps even rejected him?
I don’t think so. I doubt they would have bothered to read it.
No, Romans
was written to the faithful.
The people who had heard the good news of Jesus, and responded
and allowed Christ to enter their lives.
And if that’s the case, then probably Paul’s focus wasn’t
on what would happen to those who hadn’t heard about Jesus.
Because that wasn’t really
the primary concern of the Christians in Rome.
They weren’t about to head out on an expedition to deepest Africa,
or sail into the unknown
west of Spain.
His focus wasn’t even really
on the people who had heard about Jesus
and ignored or rejected him.
The Roman Christians knew about them;
in fact, they’d already tried to share the gospel with them.
That’s why
they were having such a hard time; that’s why Paul had been talking to them about persevering
in the face of suffering.
No, Paul’s focus is on them, on the faithful,
and on God.
He’s reminding them
how faithful God has been,
how faithful God was to the people of the Old Testament -
giving them a covenant and law and patriarchs and prophets and glory and worship and promises - how faithful God was
and how faithful God
will continue to be.
Even though
things look bad.
It’s as simple as that.
Paul is writing to encourage them,
to remind them
that God is always faithful
to his promises.
No matter what.
Nothing - our stupidity, our blindness, our rebellion, our fear -
nothing can get in the way
of God’s promises.
Today we have just the beginning of this;
in the next few weeks
we’ll have more.
And if this is something you want to do more thinking and talking about,
how it is
that God reaches out
to people
and what God does
with and for those
who don’t seem to be care,
you might be interested in something new
that we’re beginning here this fall at St James: a book club. We’ll meet monthly at the new Panera by the mall,
And the first book that the Christian Formation Committee has chosen to read first is “Love Wins”
by Rob Bell.
You might remember him from the Nooma videos that we’ve shown a few times here at church.
The book has been a best seller in the last few months,
because in it
Rob Bell is trying to address
exactly the things
that Paul is wrestling with in Romans.
What is this faith of ours? how is it that we get it,
and what about those who don’t?
Especially those we love, our children and grandchildren
who perhaps don’t seem to care
a whole lot about God.
It’s a slightly controversial book;
some leaders in the more conservative evangelical parts of the church at large
are concerned that it does away with hell,
and with it
the distinctiveness
of what Christianity
and Christ himself
has to offer.
I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
And I encourage you to join us.
And for now, if you look around
and wonder, what on earth is happening in this world.
and wonder, what on earth God is doing,
just remember this.
Love wins.
Love always
wins.
And God
is love.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010