Sermon: Messengers Needed

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

August 9, 2026, Pentecost 11A

Romans10:5-15

 

Messengers Needed

 

How lovely are the messengers that bring us the gospel of peace

How lovely are the messengers that bring us the gospel of peace

The melody is by Felix Mendelssohn, yes, the same composer of “songs without words” from last week’s sermon.  This is from a chorus found in the second part of his oratorio Paulus, or Saint Paul.  Mendelssohn’s text was originally in German, and the English version is a rather loose translation/paraphrase of the original, meant to fit Mendelssohn’s melody as much as to translate the German text accurately.  Even so, the original German text here has nothing about “feet,” which I suppose is just as well; most of us don’t have what we’d call beautiful feet, if one wants to be literal about such things.

The verse that Mendelssohn appropriates here, and which appears in today’s reading, is dropped into the oratorio after the dramatic moment in which Barnabas and Paul are set apart – by the Holy Ghost, no less – for the work of proclaiming the gospel.  It is of course a key moment in Paul’s career, as the book of Acts describes it, and even if this verse is pulled in from Romans, it does serve its dramatic purpose effectively. 

Our reading tells us that Paul is quoting – “as it is written,” he says plainly – and in this case it’s from Isaiah 52:7.  In that context the statement is elaborated a bit:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

 

Not surprisingly, Paul is happy to latch on to that one phrase ‘’who announces salvation” and translate it into his own context; for Paul, of course, the gospel is salvation. 

How lovely are the messengers who bring us the gospel of peace.

Feet or no feet, Paul’s appropriation of Isaiah here serves to complete a rhetorical point that has been at least ten verses in the making by this time.  Today’s reading includes several passages from Hebrew Scripture intended to support Paul’s key claim that all – all, not just Jews but “Greeks” also – all who call upon the Lord’s name will (in the words of Joel 2:32) “be saved.”  From this end point Paul walks his readers back to the necessity of those “messengers” – how can they call upon one in whom they have not believed, how can they believe in one of whom they’ve never heard, how can they hear unless someone proclaims, how can anyone proclaim unless they are sent? 

It’s no surprise that this passage pops up in ordination services on occasion.  It does seem to offer a clear rationale for the office of a preacher, or a “teaching elder” or “minister of word and sacrament” in Presbyterian-speak, as one “sent” to proclaim the name of the Lord on whom all are invited to call.

Of course it isn’t all joy.  Paul himself has experienced firsthand, by the time he writes this letter, a great deal of rejection of the gospel message, not to mention opposition to it, sometimes violent.  He knows fully well that “not all have obeyed the good news,” and turns again to Isaiah for support, or is it consolation – “Lord, who has believed our message?” [Isa. 53:1] 

It particularly grieves Paul that many of those who have rejected the gospel are those to whom it was first proclaimed; namely, the people of Israel, or the Jews (Paul usually calls these people by the collective term “Israel”; let us not confuse it with the modern state of that name).  The whole discourse from which today’s reading is selected begins with a striking lament from Paul over this, in Romans 9:2-3:

 

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. [Rom. 9:2-3]

 

Even as Paul spent his missionary career among primarily Greeks, even as this career proceeded under the adopted name “Paul” instead of his given, Jewish name “Saul,” he carried in his heart this grief over the general rejection of the gospel among “Israel.”  Obviously this was not a universal case; there were Jews among the Roman Christians to whom Paul was writing, as well as elsewhere in the Roman Empire.  Still, he grieved over the rejection of the Messiah by the “people of Israel,” rejecting one of their own.

How lovely are the messengers who bring us the gospel of peace

As beautiful as this passage and this key verse is, though, there is danger here.  Many of those churches who use this passage expect that, once this new pastor is ordained and installed, he or she will then take care of all the proclamation duties, allowing them to sit back and, well, be off the hook from that scary and maybe embarrassing business of (shudder) talking about religion. 

It’s scary because people might say “no,” or worse; they might change their opinion of us.  We might not be one of the “cool kids” anymore.  It’s embarrassing because we live in a world, and in an American society in particular, which has seen (and continues to see) more than its fair share of bad evangelism, preaching so permeated with hatefulness and exclusivity that any hearer would rightly wonder what’s so good about this supposed “good news.” To be honest, there are times it’s perfectly understandable to be reluctant to be seen in such a light. Maybe you’ve had the experience of “billboard evangelism,” driving up or down a freeway in some parts of the country to the sight of all those billboards from 1-855-FOR TRUTH or the one that literally aims to “SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU” (complete with flames around the word “hell”)?

And yet (or maybe even because of all this bad evangelism?), the messengers are still needed.  And if we look, we can actually find those who show us a better way to be those messengers, bringing good news.

We might look at Dr. Kent Brantly, a physician from Texas who ended up in the headlines in 2014 as the first American to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus then raging in Liberia and other parts of Africa.  Those who know Dr. Brantly spoke of a person who was called to be there, even as dangerous or as difficult as it is to be a physician working in inhospitable conditions to combat a disease with no known cure.[i]  Bizarrely, Dr. Brantly became an object of derision for certain American elites at the time, who apparently believe it was his own fault for going off to a foreign country to do dangerous work when he could have stayed in the US and not put himself in danger.  But even a physician can, at times, bring a message of peace. (He was returned to the US to be treated and did survive ebola, unlike 90% of the people who contract that illness.)

More historically, we could look at Mr. Rogers. You know, the guy with the neighborhood. It was in the 1960s that Fred Rogers (who was, yes, an ordained Presbyterian minister) began his television show for children, and you might remember the 60s as an era fraught with conflict in American life, from the escalating war in Vietnam to backlash against the Civil Rights Movement at home. In that setting and time Mr. Rogers deliberately and decisively moved to make his show, his time with the children of the United States via public television, a time for not only teaching but showing peace, both in the skits with the various puppet characters learning the folly of war and in his relations with the human characters on the show as well.

Maybe one of his most vivid illustrations came on a hot summer day, when Mr. Rogers was cooling his feet in a small pool. As the neighborhood policeman, played by a black man, walked by, Mr. Rogers invited him to take a break and cool his feet in the pool as well.[ii] This aired on PBS in 1969, a time in this country when such an image – white feet and black feet, in the same small pool – could get somebody shot or hanged.

How lovely are the messengers who bring us the gospel of peace.

Paul slipped an important point into his discourse, practically when we weren’t looking.  Notice verse 8: “the Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart”; “one confesses with the mouth and so is saved” in verse 10; and then those beautiful feet in verse 15.  Our faith, our gospel is not confined to the mind, but it occupies all of us from lips to feet, from head to toe.  Our witness is embodied.  We are messengers of the gospel of peace in not just what we say, but what we do.  The hand of fellowship extended to the one we don’t know, who may have ducked in just to escape the heat or the rain or the snow in winter; the word of the greeting to the coworker holed up in the cubicle next door; the cup of cold water given in Jesus’s name:  our message is not just spoken, but enacted daily, even when we may not realize it. 

The message is not only embodied in each of our own individual bodies, but it is also embodied in all of us as the body of Christ.  Our witness in staying together and continuing to come together as a congregation, being not merely in our community but being part of it, our welcome to those that others – even other churches – would declare unwelcome; this is a gospel of peace. 

To be messengers of the gospel of peace, all of us – not just the preachers – is not optional; it is inevitable. The only question is, what kind of messengers of the gospel of peace are we?

How lovely are the messengers that bring us the gospel of peace.

How lovely are the messengers that bring us the gospel of peace.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #624, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art; #175, Seek Ye First; #462, I Love to Tell the Story

 

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[i] “Send me: U.S. doctor treated for Ebola drawn to mission work since youth,” http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/02/health/ebola-kent-brantly/index.html (Accessed August 3, 2026).

[ii] “Walking the Beat In Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, Where a New Day Began Together,” npr.org,  http://www.npr.org/2016/03/11/469846519/walking-the-beat-in-mr-rogers-neighborhood-where-a-new-day-began-together (Accessed August 3, 2026).

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

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[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