Sermon: Too Deep for Words

First Presbyterian Church

August 2, 2026, Pentecost 10A

Romans 8:26-39

 

Too Deep For Words

 

What do you do when you hear music without words? Yes, music with no words being sung to it, but even more music with no words at all - not a hymn arrangement or a descriptive title; just the music?

Maybe you’re the particularly blessed type who can simply listen and let the music take its course through your soul. Probably, though (if you’re like most people), you try, consciously or not, to “fill in the blank.” Your mind starts to create a story to go with the music.  Or perhaps it begins to invent a poem, in which the words fit to the tune you hear.  Or possibly, if you’re a more visual type, your mind conjures a picture or scene that plays out as the music moves along.

Either way, we modern-day humans have a sharply defined inability (or most of us do, anyway) to let the music simply be music.  (And the church, it should be noted, is particularly not helpful in this regard, relying heavily on music with words or music with words attached to them in some way.) We somehow develop the idea, perhaps unspoken but no less powerful, that the music has to mean something, something that we can somehow encapsulate in words or maybe in pictures.

Felix Mendelssohn begs to differ with you.

Mendelssohn was of course one of the outstanding composers of the nineteenth century.  He was known, among many other things, for the “Song without words,” a type of piano work that was very much in the form and structure of a song – relatively brief, with a clearly defined melody and accompaniment. The only thing missing from these “songs without words” was, indeed, any kind of sung text.

Mendelssohn wrote at least four dozen such “songs without words” in his brief lifetime.  A few of them have descriptive labels attached to them; for example, some are labeled as “Venetian gondola songs” because they so strongly resemble the songs sung by the gondola drivers in the canals of Venice.  Most of them have no title, as Mendelssohn presented them.  A few were given labels after their publication, in some cases even after Mendelssohn’s death, by editors or critics or others who felt that the music had to mean something, something that could be captured in words (or at least it would sell better if it did).

In a letter to a former student Mendelssohn very specifically rejected this idea.  As he put it, he believed that words were insufficient to the task of capturing what music meant: to him, words (many or few) were “so ambiguous, so vague, so subject to misunderstanding when compared with true music, which fills the soul with a thousand better things than words.”  He continued, “The thoughts that are expressed to me by the music I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite… .”

I can’t help but suspect that the Apostle Paul might have at least nodded knowingly at this idea that Mendelssohn expresses here.  At the very least he might have acknowledged that Mendelssohn’s idea that the music he loved was “too definite” for words sounded a lot like what Paul himself writes here in verse 26 of this eighth chapter of Romans:

 

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. (NRSV)

 

I admit that phrase – “sighs too deep for words” has haunted me most of my life, probably since some sermon I heard as a younger man (since I was raised on the King James Version, I didn't hear this phrase as a child).  Back then I wondered what that could possibly mean; being a wordy guy I couldn’t really imagine how something could be “too deep for words.”  If you couldn’t say it, how could it be real?

I’ve grown up since then and I have at least some small idea of just how silly that was, even before I ever read Mendelssohn’s own description of his view of music.  Oftentimes this sense, this deep-rooted wordless sighing has been a part of my life in times of trouble; the death of my mother, later the death of one of my sisters, or my own diagnosis of cancer some fourteen years ago.  Occasionally it has been experienced in more joyful times; our wedding day, for example, or a particularly profound musical experience.  Sometimes it has come in moments of struggle or uncertainty; the period of time when I was considering giving up the teaching career I loved to jump off the cliff into seminary stands out there.

Indeed, sighs too deep for words.  Even when my soul tried to fit words into my feelings, their insufficiency and inferiority became painfully clear.  Why does this happen?  Why did I get cancer that I could survive, and my classmate got cancer and didn't survive?  The words collapse on their own uselessness.  Sighs too deep for words.

I suspect you can search your own lives for times when you’ve known that experience of sorrow, or joy, or struggle, or uncertainty, or relief for which words could not be found or did not exist.  It’s one thing to know that kind of experience, one “beyond words.”

It’s a whole other thought to know that the Holy Spirit does that for us. 

For indeed that is what Paul tells us right here in verse 26: “that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  When we cannot find the words to pray rightly, whether in our joy or sorrow or need, it isn’t that the Spirit gives us words to say.  No, it is that the Spirit steps in for us with its own wordless, unspeakable sighing or groaning. 

Remember in last week's reading, starting in verse 22, Paul writes of all of creation “groaning in labor pains;” not only creation, but we ourselves, “groan inwardly” while we wait for the adoption God has promised to each of us, of which Paul spoke in verse 15.  Paul has also already spoken of the Spirit bearing witness with us, in our times of crying out to God, even as simple a cry as “Abba! Father!”  In our unfinished spiritual state, when we cry out for we know not what or even when we cannot cry out, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter Jesus promised us to send after he was gone, is at work in us and with us and for us, bringing our petitions before God even when we cannot rightly articulate them or know what they are. 

And it is from this knowledge, this promise of a Spirit that intercedes for us beyond our capacity to know or understand, that Paul can exult throughout the rest of this chapter in the unspeakable love of God.  The God whose Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words is the God who relentlessly works through everything that happens to us for our good (even if the NRSV translation of v. 28 doesn't convey that very well). It's not about eliminating suffering or pain from our lives but about God blessing and sustaining us through it; this is the God who created us and foreknew us and made us to be part of the family of God; this is the God who, even though we could be charged with all of the corruption and weakness sin can muster, instead intercedes for us, not even withholding God’s own Son, that we would be reconciled and restored; this is the God who justifies, who saves, who redeems and restores; this is the God who loved us and loves us and will love us so profoundly and so unspeakably that Paul can practically sing out in joy that nothing – not death or life or angels or rulers or dark powers, nothing can separate us from that love.  God meets our sighs too deep for words with love too deep for words.

For that, dear brothers and sisters, even though the words themselves are painfully inadequate, let us never fail to say, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #703,Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me; #---, God works in all things; #529, Draw Us In the Spirit's Tether; #833, O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go  

 

 

Sermon: Family Resemblance

Grace Presbyterian Church

July 26, 2026, Pentecost 9A

Romans 8:12-25

 

Family Resemblance

 

I’ve been married to my wife for a little more than thirty years now. Especially during those early years of marriage I was present when she saw relatives, family friends, old teachers, or others whom she hadn’t seen in many years. One thing that happens frequently in those reunion situations is that someone is very likely to make a remark about how much my wife looks like her mother. 

We’re accustomed to looking for family resemblance of some sort. Whether it is in a child, newborn or adult, in whose face we see the features of mother or father; or the grandmother who sees in a grandchild’s tantrums or misbehaviors the very same tantrums or misbehaviors the child’s mother – her own daughter – threw when she was a child; or perhaps more unfortunately, the grown son who falls into the same destructive patters of behavior that brought his “old man” down.

In the case of Julia’s resemblance to her mother, though, it’s always a little bit difficult to stifle a chuckle when some relative says to her that she looks just like her mother. You see, Julia was adopted. The arrangements were made well before she was born, and – after an extended stay in the hospital due to premature birth – she went home with her parents, who would adopt another daughter about three years later.

You would never know this, though, just by observing the family. There is no sense in which the way my wife interacts with her parents gives away any lack of blood relationship. They love her, and she loves them, in ways you would never be able to distinguish from those of a “natural-born” daughter and parents. They are, simply put, a family, and blood relationship or lack thereof simply doesn’t matter.

To think about adoption, as we know it today, might be just the thing to help us get into Paul’s instruction here in the eighth chapter of Romans. For one thing, adoption was not an uncommon practice in Paul’s time, particularly in the city of Rome, the location of the churches Paul was addressing in this letter. Now adoption didn’t work exactly the same way in Rome as it does here and now, but there is an important similarity; one who was adopted into a family gained the right of some part of the inheritance of that family. To be adopted did not signify any kind of lesser status; all of the benefits of being a son in a Roman family were extended to adopted sons every bit as much as to natural sons. 

Thus, for Paul to write in verse 15 that we have not received a “spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear,” but a “spirit of adoption,” is extremely important, and would have carried a world of meaning to Paul’s readers that we need to understand ourselves as well. Part of that involves clearing up verse 14.

Paul of course is writing to a church in Rome that contains both male and female members. Given this diversity in the church, it might seem odd that in verse fourteen, Paul uses rather different language that doesn’t really reflect the makeup of his addressees. Unlike other verses, which use a Greek noun that refers to “children” both male and female, Paul here really writes “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (emphasis mine).” What’s going on here? Are the women being left out? Did Paul revert to the sexism of which he is so often accused?

As Paul has said many times in this epistle, “by no means!” Here Paul is making use of his readers’ understanding of the legalities of adoption and family ties in Rome. Both natural and adopted sons received part of the inheritance of the family, but daughters typically were married off, and their lot was cast with the family into which they married. So, by Paul referring to “sons” in verse fourteen, he is emphasizing the degree to which all of his readers, and all of us – male/female, Jew/Greek, slave/free – participate in God’s inheritance. We are all part of God’s family, which is to say we are delivered from the sin that bound us before we received “adoption” into God’s family.

Now all of this sounds just wonderful, happy, and blissful…until we get to verse 17.

Paul continues from where we left off back in verse 15, pointing out that our very crying out to God is the very same Spirit bearing witness to us that we are indeed children of God – and here Paul uses that noun for “children” that includes both sons and daughters – and goes on to say that if we are children of God, we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ … “if, in fact, we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.”

Huh? What’s the deal with suffering? Nobody told me anything about suffering? Nobody said you had to suffer to be adopted, did they? Maybe we feel like we don’t understand what Paul’s talking about here.

Except…when we think about it, we really do understand what Paul’s talking about here. To be adopted into a family means that the child shares in everything that family has. The inheritance, yes. The joys that the family experiences, of course.  But also the sorrows, the struggles, the failures, the setbacks and discouragements and sufferings. When my wife’s grandmothers died, several years apart, it was no comfort to her to think that she was adopted, not really “born into” this family. The grief and pain was every bit as real, as painful, as if she were their “natural” granddaughter. She was spared no suffering for having been an adopted child. 

And so it is to be adopted into God’s family. The difference, though, is that the scope of “family” here is an awful lot broader than we might be accustomed to thinking. The “family of God” does not stop at the walls of this church. It does not stop on this side of 7th Street, or at the borders of East Moline or Rock Island County or Illinois (yes, it really does cross the river into Iowa) or even the United States. And when any part of God’s great grand worldwide adoptive family suffers, we suffer.

When rockets fall from the sky and destroy homes and villages, we suffer, even if it’s not our country. When children flee across the desert from murderous drug gangs, we suffer, even if they’re not our children. If we have truly received that “spirit of adoption,” if we are truly and fully among the children of God, we suffer when any part of God’s family suffers. We don’t smell the stink of the bombs or feel the heat and thirst of the desert, but we suffer because God’s children are suffering. When any part of our family suffers, we all feel pain. That’s how families are. We feel pain when any of God’s children suffer, if we really are part of God’s family. 

As if that weren’t enough, Paul goes even further starting in verse 19. After talking about children and heirs and joint-heirs, suddenly Paul shifts gears and begins to speak of creation. Now it is creation that has suffered bondage, creation that was “subjected to futility” as Paul puts it. All of God’s good creation lives in anticipation, “groaning in labor pains.” Indeed our family-of-God-ness is bound up not just in other people, but all of creation as well; when any part of creation suffers, we suffer, if we really are part of the family of God. Creation suffers disasters both “natural” and (especially these days) man-made.  When hurricanes slam into populated places, we suffer. When earthquakes shatter whole towns or cities, we suffer. But also, when earth is abused, when air is polluted, when rivers are poisoned, mountaintops demolished, seas become dumping grounds with more plastic than fish in them, we suffer with God’s creation. 

God’s “family” is really a lot more expansive than we expect. All of that might just make us a little more cautious about singing that old song, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.”

Finally, though, Paul comes to the climax of his mini-argument here.  All of this talk of adoption and inheritance and family and suffering, for Paul, boils down to something we saw way back in chapter 5: the indispensable fact of our hope in God. 

All that has come before points us to the very thing that allows us to find ourselves in the “spirit of adoption,” and to bear the suffering that God’s family suffers. Because the good news, the gospel that is Jesus Christ, has already been proclaimed and delivered to the world, we are able to live into our adoption, to live like a child of God, an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ. Because of that gospel, we can live in a world of suffering, and feel suffering because others suffer, bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s sorrows, without losing hope. We can know the pain of the world without despairing. 

Hope is, of course, a very tricky thing to experience. As Paul points out, hope is all about what we can’t see. It would sound very silly if a child woke up on a Christmas morning and ran to the living room to see a shiny new bicycle parked beside the Christmas tree, only to continue moping around the house saying, “gee, I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas.” Hope is about what we don’t see yet. Hope is about the anticipation of what is to come, the joy not yet fulfilled but still to be fulfilled. We with all creation “groan inwardly” while we wait for the redemption that is, right now, our hope. 

Paul lives throughout this letter in the tension between what is now and what is not yet, between what we know and what we wait for. No one has to tell us that our physical lives are not yet redeemed. No one has to tell us our physical bodies are not yet redeemed. We still gain too much weight, still get old, still get cancer. The world still spins out hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes. Children still get killed, rockets and bombs still fall. And yet…

We know the salvation of God. We know ourselves to be adopted into God’s family.  It is not easy to wait with patience, as Paul prescribes. And yet it is the very hope we have that allows us to wait with patience. We don’t know when or for how long, nor can we really know what “redemption” looks like, if we’re at all honest with ourselves. And yet, the hope is part of that inheritance, a share of which is ours by adoption into the family of God.

And the more we live into that hope, the more we live into that adoption, the more we know our family to be vast and unbounded, the more we know that we are all together bound up with one another and with all of creation, the more we pull ourselves away from the things that bring suffering to others…the more we start to look a little, just a very little, like our adoptive Brother in God. The more we manage to be not merely “Christian” but more “Christ-like,” the more we live into our inheritance of hope, … then the more we finally, even as adoptive children of God, start to take on just a little of that family resemblance.

For a spirit of adoption, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #318, In Christ There Is No East or West; #---, For all led by the Spirit; #772, Live Into Hope

 

 

 

Sermon: Therefore...

First Presbyterian Church

July 23, 2023, Pentecost 7A

Romans 8:1-11

Therefore...

 

If the previous chapter of this epistle, Romans 7 (which we unfortunately had to skip) was marked by linguistic difficulty and a person shift to make a composition teacher weep – “I do what I don’t want to do, I don’t want to do what I do” – today’s reading from the next chapter does one thing exactly right in terms of written composition and exposition: it starts with a wonderful topic sentence.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Not only is it fair to call this a spectacular topic sentence for today’s passage; it’s quite possibly the pinnacle of this whole epistle. The first seven chapters of Romans point to and lead us toward this truth; everything in the rest of the book follows from it. One might argue that a wise preacher would stop here. I could just go ahead and say Thanks be to God. Amen. And be done with it. It’s that good as good news.

But no, not quite. There’s a reason Paul didn’t stop here, and there’s a reason a wise pastor can’t stop here. As good a word as it is, this sentence -- “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” – is not, in fact, the end of the story. In many ways it’s only the beginning.

You see, this isn’t a detached, abstract reflection floating about in some undefined ether or atmosphere. This is a direct statement, with a concrete, tangible, and even unavoidable effect on the lives of those who are, as Paul says, “in the Spirit,” who “live in accordance with the Spirit,” or for whom “the Spirit of God lives in you” or “Christ is in you.”

Paul goes about saying this in so many different ways, but all of them point to a same basic idea; namely, a life that is so bound up in Christ, so completely occupied by and contained in the Holy Spirit that there is no longer any room for the sin that had previously occupied and dominated what Paul has so far called “the flesh.”

A word of clarifiction about that: when Paul uses that word “flesh” (the usual epistle translation of the Greek word, σαρχ (sarx), he isn’t referring merely to the human body – for that he uses another Greek word, σωμα (soma). No, when Paul speaks of “flesh” (or sarx) he is referring specifically to the human in its sin-occupied condition, the human who does what it doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what it knows is right to do – the "wretched man" human that Paul calls himself in Chapter 7.

So it’s not about human bodies being all sinful and irredeemable; Paul will make that clear in verse 11. Reminding his readers of the One who was once dead but lives forever, Paul goes so far as to say that “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” It isn’t about “conquering” or “subduing” our mortal bodies – which, after all, are every bit as much a part of God’s creation as all of nature around us – but of no longer being enslaved to or bound by the sin that once held sway over those mortal bodies. And if we are truly in the Spirit, or in Christ, then that power of sin can no longer hold that sway.

Even the Law is redeemed. Earlier Paul spoke of even the good Law being twisted by sin but with sin no longer having power over us, as verse 4 says, “the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled” in those who are in the Spirit.

In short, we are set free – not by anything of our own doing, but by the action of God, in Jesus Christ, working in us through the Spirit. (Sounds very Trinitarian, doesn’t it? Paul never does articulate a specific doctrine or idea of the Trinity, but sometimes he sure sounds like it.)

Now in the central section of today’s reading, it seems as if Paul’s focus has shifted. Whereas in previous chapters Paul has spoken so much of the flesh – that sin-dominated body – now he begins to speak of our minds. Take verse 5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” That wonderful first verse of the chapter, in other words, is no excuse to disengage. Quite the opposite: now that there is no condemnation, the challenge of living in the Spirit begins.

You might remember the story, told in Acts 9, of how Saul, on his way to Damascus to root out other Christ-followers, was overwhelmed by an appearance of Jesus on that road, losing his sight for a time and being convicted of the sin of his ways. Saul doesn’t respond to this dramatic intervention by disappearing. He does go away for a while for some learning, after a few early attempts on his life, but by Acts 13 Paul (with the new name) is back, and the rest of his life is devoted to the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ. The news of “no condemnation” was no resting place, but the beginning of a new and highly challenging life for Paul himself, as it is for any of us who are in the Spirit.

Paul will have a lot more to say about what this “no condemnation” means for us, particularly in chapter 12 of this epistle and after, that great stretch of this letter where “the rubber hits the road” as Paul begins to speak of what the life of one who is “in the Spirit” looks like. But for now he wants us to examine where our minds are focused. Are our minds focused on the things of the flesh? And let’s not confuse that with mere bodily pleasures – the “things of the flesh” include such earthly pursuits as riches, power, fame, and so many of the things the world calls good.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of searching to see how many of those around us – even those who call themselves Christians, even those who call themselves Christian leaders – have given themselves over very publicly to these “things of the flesh.” They strut about in the halls of power, glorying in their “unprecedented”[i] access to presidents and congressmen and other powerful people rather than rejoicing in being in the Spirit. Anyway, Paul does not have a good word for those whose minds are set on “things of the flesh.” Don’t overlook verse 6: “To set the mind on the flesh is death.”

Fortunately, that verse continues: “…but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” “No condemnation” is not an end, but a beginning; a beginning of a life lived in the Spirit, lived with Christ living in and through us, wholly submitted and obedient to the freedom of God, and serving God in perfect freedom.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Praise be to God. So what's next?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #385, All People That On Earth Do Dwell; #---, There is no condemnation now; #288, Spirit of the Living God

---

[i] Adelle M. Banks, “Conservative evangelicals revel in their ‘unprecedented’ presidential access,” via Religion News Service, 19 July 2017, religionnews.com/2017/07/19/conservative-evangelicals-revel-in-their-unprecedented-access-to-the-president/ (accessed July 20, 2017, via Twitter).

 

Sermon: Freed to Obedience

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

July 5, 2026, Pentecost 6A

Romans 6:12-23

 

Freed to Obedience

 

I’m not sure if Bob Dylan ever studied Paul’s epistle to the Romans, but at least one song in his repertoire suggests he might have. I don’t think it’s one of the songs that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, but it still counts.

Maybe you remember Dylan’s evangelical phase? The first big single from that phase made it onto a Grammy Awards broadcast back in 1980. It was a thumping gospel-tinged number called “Gotta Serve Somebody.” And he did win the award that year.

It’s not the most complicated song, not quite his usual heights of poetry; Dylan runs through a list of things you might be, where you might live, any number of possible conditions – you may be a doctor, you may own banks – but by the chorus it doesn’t matter:

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

It may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

 

As we’ll see shortly, this really could be a short take of one of Paul’s main points in this last half of Chapter 6. Paul might only quibble with the “gotta” part of the title: he would simply say that no matter what you think, you are serving somebody. It’s just a matter of whom you serve.

Picking up where we left off two weeks ago, Paul does another of his patented wrap-up-one-point-while-starting-another transitions, using verses 12-14 both to reinforce his previous point that you are no longer under the power of sin but under the rule of the grace of God, while at the same time urging that we are not merely to relax into this new rule; if anything, living into this grace is an active, even imperative thing – not at all passive.

For Paul it is imperative that we no longer present our bodies (our physical beings) or any part of those bodies as “instruments of wickedness.” (Given the frequent military use of the root of the Greek word here, the phrase might better be translated “weapons of wickedness”.) Paul’s talk of “members” gets people a little nervous or even giggly sometimes, but think of it this way: is there any part of you that cannot be used for malice, harm, menace, or some other kind of sinfulness? Think of the damage your hands can do, the horrors to which your feet can take you, the malice that can be unleashed by the tongue, the licentiousness in which the eyes can engage. You can go on from there. No part of us is beyond being a “weapon of wickedness”; therefore it is our imperative that, as creatures redeemed into the grace of God, we choose – actively, repeatedly choose – to live into that grace by not giving up our bodies to serve the bad, but presenting ourselves to the service of God.

Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and neurologist who was also a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II. One of his more famous observations (or at least attributed to him), drawn at least in part from his time in those camps, was that:

Between stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

In that response lies our growth and our freedom.

 

It’s not a perfect parallel, but it’s not bad. We are not compelled to continue in sin; God provides the space of grace to choose, over and over again, to submit ourselves to obedience, and our freedom is in that space.

There are so many things that would draw us back, not all of which would seem to fall into the category of “wickedness” (a word that probably trips up as many of us moderns as the word “sin” that is so pervasive in these chapters) – but anything that draws us away from God can be exactly that. The nineteenth-century Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard seemed to intuit this well; he writes:

O Lord Jesus Christ, weak is our foolish heart, and only too ready to let itself be drawn – and there is so much that would draw it to itself. There is pleasure with its seducing power, the manifold with its confusing distractions, the moment with its deceptive importance, and bustle with its vain toil, and frivolity’s careless squandering of time, and melancholy’s gloomy brooding – all of these would draw us away from our own self and to them, in order to deceive us. But Thou who art the truth, only Thou our Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a man to Thee, which indeed Thou hast promised to do, to draw all unto Thyself. So God grant that we by entering into ourselves may come to ourselves, so that Thou, according to Thy word, canst draw us to Thee –…. (Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, trans. Walter Lowrie, 2004 edition, 141)

 

This helps us towards Paul’s great contention. As he did in last week’s reading, Paul uses an image deeply familiar to his readers, but one far less pleasant than baptism. Paul speaks of his readers as slaves – inevitably, slaves to sin, or slaves to God. Even knowing that some of his readers or hearers likely had been or still were slaves (and apologizing, if in a slightly passive-aggressive way, in v. 19), Paul nonetheless points to the inevitability of being bound to one or the other; if we are not bound to God, we are bound to sin.

We are apt to speak of “freedom” a lot, particularly the day after Independence Day. It is a much-used word in our national vocabulary, and sometimes highly abused by those who would seek “freedom” to abuse or extort or otherwise harm “the other.” Paul would find such talk incomprehensible. Verse 16 makes it clear; any “freedom” we gain in Christ is freedom to obedience to the God who made that grace in Christ possible. As such, our full obedience, our full allegiance must be due to God, and only to God, if we are to claim to be under the dominion of God’s grace. We serve God, otherwise we are serving sin.

Where the language of justification was prominent in the two-weeks-ago reading, in these verses the language of sanctification – the immediate and ongoing process of being made holy – takes greater place. The two ideas, though, can’t be separated. It’s not one being necessary for the other or one following the other, but of both being necessary and both being consequence of God’s redeeming grace. If we are under God’s grace we are justified by the grace of God and we are sanctified by our dying and rising in Christ and we are being sanctified by our dying and rising in Christ. It’s now and it’s done and it’s a lifelong doing. And part of that is living in obedience to God, which we can only do by the grace of God.

Dylan was right: you’re gonna serve somebody. Choose wisely.

For freedom to obey, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #331, God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand; #---, Thanks be to God that you, once bound in sin; #516, For the Bread Which You Have Broken; #794, O Jesus, I Have Promised

 

 

Sermon: Called to Be Raised Up

Grace Presbyterian Church

June 21, 2026, Pentecost 3A

Romans 6:1-11

 

Called to Be Raised Up

 

One of the great challenges in reading (or preaching) through Romans is that there are very few places in this letter where you aren’t automatically dropping into the text in the middle of something. It’s not quite a theological stream-of-consciousness, but it feels like it sometimes, and unless you are reading the entire epistle straight through (a feat of stamina, that) you are coming in either in the middle of an idea or in the middle of a transition from one idea to another. The latter is the case with today’s reading.

The question that begins our reading makes the transitional nature of this passage quite clear. “What then are we to say?” only makes sense as a follow-up to some previous discussion, in this case chapter 5's exuberant expounding upon sin and grace, with Adam as the one through whom sin entered the world and Christ as the one through whom grace is introduced to overcome the power of sin, finally concluding with (in 5:21) “so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It may not be the most poetic verse in all of scripture – Paul was no Shakespeare – but it is in its own way beautiful and powerful.

Thus we come to Paul’s transition: “What then are we to say?” How do we respond, fellow followers of Christ?

Now it’s not exactly clear whether the question that follows this one is an actual question Paul faced in his work, or if Paul is employing a rhetorical flourish that allows him to get to the point he wants to make. The question has certainly come up in the literature of theology since Paul introduced it here, but mostly in the writings of long-ago figures such as Augustine. To us today, it sounds ridiculous (I hope!), maybe something like the smart-aleck retort of an overly cocky high-school sophomore:

“Should we continue in sin so that grace may abound?”

Say what?

Before getting to Paul’s answer, one thing needs to be clarified. Note that Paul doesn’t say “should we continue to sin”, but “should we continue in sin?” For this passage, and really for almost all of this epistle, we need to lay aside the idea of individual particular transgressions and understand that Paul is talking about a condition of sin – a separation from God, an inability (apart from the grace of God) to live in any way apart from the power of sin as mentioned briefly last week.

So, continuing, Paul’s answer is another rhetorical flourish – translated here “By no means!” while the old King James Version offers "God forbid!" – but you might get more of an understanding of Paul’s incredulousness by substituting a more modern equivalent. My mind keeps coming up with “No way!”; a younger generation than mine might come up with “As if!” Whatever conveys for you that the suggestion is utterly ridiculous and almost impossible to take seriously, go with that.

What Paul would have his readers (and us) understand is that being in Christ means not just "not liking" sin or not wanting to sin; it is to be dead to sin. It is to be no longer under its domination, no longer willing to choose to submit to its power. Our reality is no longer the rule of sin, but the rule of grace given by God; to suggest that we might sin more in order to get more grace is to misunderstand most profoundly what grace is and how it works in us.

But that idea of being dead to sin is what Paul works out here, and in order to do so he turns to something that his Roman readers are most familiar with, an act that the community engaged in on a fairly regular basis; the act of baptism.

To be sure, baptism in this early period of the church looked not at all like it does in churches today, and I’m not just talking about churches that sprinkle from the font like us Presbyterians. For one thing, archaeological evidence strongly suggests that, in those locations that came to be built or dedicated or used specifically for worship, the baptismal pool was in fact in the center of the room – not a pulpit nor even a table for communion. Such structures were round and descended by steps down to the pool at the lowest point in the room. Even if the group or groups in Romans did not regularly meet in such a place it is most likely that they sought out such a location for the ritual of baptism.

You can see what that does to the baptismal rite. The convert being baptized actually had to descend to the pool and ascend up from it after being baptized. As a result, the image of baptism is actually pretty easy to tie to Paul’s description here and elsewhere; in being baptized we go down (with Christ) to death and are raised up (with Christ) to new life.

These early church groups often added another element reinforcing this visual image of descent and ascent with another signifier of change; the one being baptized cast away the garment they were wearing before entering the water, and then they put on a new garment upon coming out of the water. Being changed visually became a sign of being changed in every other way.

It’s no surprise, then, that Paul would turn to an image his readers could readily identify in order to explain what it means to be dead to sin; it was a visceral way of communicating the importance of the idea, one which affected the entire community, many if not most of whom had experienced the rite of baptism in becoming part of that community (and those who hadn’t yet were possibly in the process of getting to that point).

But Paul is not merely concerned with being dead to sin, no longer under the power of sin, but he also wants the Romans to understand the consequence of being dead to sin. Being dead to sin is being alive to Christ. Paul wants his readers to understand that being dead to sin (marked by passing through the waters of baptism) was deliverance from slavery to sin, and deliverance to freedom and life in Christ – not just immediately, but also for eternity.

This is the call of the follower of Christ; to know oneself, in Christ’s crucifixion, to be dead to sin – not bound to that power any longer but to be raised up, in Christ’s resurrection, into new life in the grace and love and freedom of Christ.

We are not immune from individual acts that would be called sins, but we are not bound to them. We are not under the power of sin over us as an ongoing condition. One “sin” does not equal the power of sin. We repent, because we have sinned, but we are not enslaved to it. We don’t drop the Prayer of Confession from our order of service, but we don’t say it without an answering Assurance of Pardon, reflecting the grace into which we have been delivered.

So, sin more to get more grace? No way. Live in the resurrection, now and forever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #409, God Is Here!; #482, Baptized in Water; #---, Come walk in this new life!

 

 

See, the cat gets it...

Homily: Hope In...

Joint Worship Service East Moline/Milan/Rock Island

First Presbyterian Church, Milan, IL

June 14, 2026

Romans5:1-5

 

Hope In...

 

I had a little bit of online dialogue several years ago with a seminary classmate who was preaching on this same passage, and this subject of “hope” and just what kind of hope we’re talking about here. She was making the point that for us, far too often, hope (despite what Paul says in verse 5) really does disappoint us, or at least it sure seems like it.

And the thing is, she’s right. Hope does disappoint, most of the time.

We hope our loved ones will recover and continue to live among us, and they don’t. We hope the institutions of our society will seek justice instead of merely enforcing order, and our daily headlines make it clear they do not. We hope that we ourselves will truly live up to our best dreams, and we do not.

And Paul still says, right there in verse 5, “hope does not disappoint.” And he’s still right too.

The question is, are you hoping for, or are you hoping in?

We know what it is to hope for – whether it’s the child hoping for a new bicycle for Christmas or me hoping for a clean result every time I go for a cancer screening, we hope for some thing, usually something fairly specific, something good or beneficial or at least not harmful. Sometimes our hopes are fulfilled – sometimes the child gets the bicycle, and my cancer screenings keep being clear after thirteen years – but painfully often we are disappointed. The new job doesn’t come, or it turns out to be a horror show when it does. We send our child into the world and things don’t go well. Maybe they end up back home in disappointment. Our own health fails.

When we hope for, inevitably we will be disappointed. Bodies fail us. Other people fail us.

But we hope in God. And that hope does not disappoint, because God does not disappoint.

God doesn’t promise us a bicycle or a perfect new job or perfect health. What God promises us is God, God’s own self, the love that is God.

As Paul points out, we already know that love because God has shown us that love in dying for us. So, we know God’s love, and that does not disappoint. When others around us disappoint and harm and murder and commit gross injustice, God’s love does not disappoint. When our very world spins recklessly off its axis and the very fabric of our basic living together is trashed and torn by purveyors of hatred, God’s love does not disappoint.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus warned his disciples that his coming to them was no guarantee of peace; he did “not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). But here’s the thing; even when the sword has come, even when we are set child against parent, when we are beset by those who mockingly call us brothers and sisters … God’s love does not disappoint.

It may not seem like much; it might not seem like anything more than survival at times, as my pastor friend said, but God’s love is there, holding us up when we don’t even realize it. And that hope, that undying love of God, is where we are not disappointed. 

And for that, Thanks be to God. Amen.