Sermon: To Be Transformed

First Presbyterian Church

August 13, 2023, Pentecost 10A

Romans 12:1-8

 

To Be Transformed

 

So what’s the point anyway?

Well, yes, but what of it?

What does any of this mean to me?

What am I supposed to do with all this information?

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one of those long and winding lectures and been waiting for the speaker to get to the point, you might have asked one of those questions or something similar. Or perhaps in some cases you’ve had such a question thrown at you – perhaps by one of your children? You might have wondered this about a class in school or a job assignment, or maybe even a sermon on occasion (though I hope not). 

It’s fair to suppose that maybe even some of the Romans to whom this letter was addressed, the Jewish and Gentile community of followers of Christ hearing this letter read as a part of their assembly for worship, might just have started wondering the same thing after a while. Paul (who, remember, had never been to Rome and whom most of the Romans had never met) certainly had a lot to say, and had constructed some serious and intricate arguments about sin and human weakness, the grace of God and the love of Christ, and his own feelings about the rejection of Christ by many of his fellow Jews (in what we know as chapters 9-11). By this time it’s entirely possible that those hearing the letter were beginning to wonder “OK, but what’s the point of all of this? What difference does it make? What am I supposed to do with all this?”

Well, now it’s time for the “so what.”

Not surprisingly, Paul introduces this final stretch of the letter with a great big transition word. In Greek it’s ουν (“oun”), which we translate as “therefore.” Paul used that word at the beginning of chapter 8, but this is the big one: everything that has come before leads to this. All the intricate and heavy teaching that has come before? Now this is what it looks like in “real life.”

Beyond the opening word, the first two verses of this chapter serve not only to make the transition from teaching to application, but they also provide the foundation for the descriptive material to come. In this platform Paul deftly makes clear that the life for followers of Christ to live is not merely a “private” matter of the heart or the mere checking off a list of beliefs to profess; it is all-consuming, changing the way we live in both body and mind.

Paul’s first exhortation challenges his hearers to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Two things should be clarified here. While we might get hung up on grisly images of sacrifice, the act of sacrifice took many forms in ancient Israel and other religions of the time, many of which did not involve the sacrifice of an animal. You might get a clearer image by using the word “offering” here. Also, you might remember how Paul spent a lot of time earlier in the letter lamenting the fallen condition of the human “flesh” (or σαρχ, “sarx”); here Paul is using not that word but the other “body” word, σομα (“soma”), the one that referred more specifically to the physical human body. So this is not some mere spiritualized exercise; this is an instruction that our whole physical self is to be offered up to God. 

The very next verse, though, looks to a different kind of surrender: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” It’s not enough for body or mind to be submitted, but the whole together. We are a package deal, so to speak. But it’s not about being made super-smart or some other kind of mental prowess; our minds are to be transformed to “discern what is the will of God”: to see, at least some tiny little bit, what God sees, or how God sees is the whole point of the transformed, renewed mind. And so much of being a disciple of Christ starts with this.

Perhaps it is not an accident that, after those exhortations to make our bodies into living offerings and submitting our minds for transformation and renewal, Paul’s next exhortation is to something like what we would call humility. That’s a word we often use badly or even abuse, misunderstanding it as a kind of self-abasement. Novelist and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner captures that misuse:

 

Humility is often confused with saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship.

If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy.

True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.

 

Even this, though, doesn’t completely capture what Paul is encouraging upon his readers and hearers in Rome. It’s not super easy to capture in words, but what Paul is encouraging here is that each of us should see ourself, in Paul’s words, “with sober judgment” – or “in your right mind,” so to speak, not distorted by arrogance or hatred nor by despair or shame. 

In short, there is no room for assuming any kind of superiority – or supremacy, to use a sadly common word these days – to anybody else who is a child of God. My job is at least in part not to think too much of myself because I have the gift of being a preacher, or of being a cancer survivor (so far), or of being white, or male, or middle-aged, or a hybrid-vehicle driver or an introvert or any number of other attributes that I might be guilty of elevating as an object of pride or a means to exalt myself above others. Your list will look a little different, but you get the idea. The things we do don’t win us extra merit in the eyes of God. We’re not in this for brownie points. 

Indeed, even the thought of judging our individual selves “on our merits” doesn’t hold water if we’re truly thinking with that renewed mind from verse 2. It’s not about anything but seeing ourselves and one another as those who have received gifts from God, “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” as Paul puts it, for the purpose of living together in the body of Christ. There’s a lot hinging on that “renewing of our minds,” nothing less than our very ability to be the Body of Christ.

Even our ability to present our own bodies as a “living sacrifice”, our ability to be members of the Body of Christ here in Independence or anywhere in the world, hinges on this transformation.  Our living in the Body depends on the renewing of our minds. All those lovely spiritual gifts in verses 6-8 start with what happens in verses 1-2.

Up to this point in the letter Paul has been trying to teach the Romans a myriad of ideas about the law (as he understood it), and its susceptibility to sin; and about the grace of God and its sole power to defeat sin and to bring salvation to us. Now here is the key to living in that grace, to being “more than conquerors” living in the love of God from which nothing can separate us, as Paul wrote in Chapter 8.  

You see, there are certain things a renewed mind, a mind thinking with “sober judgment,” discerning God’s will, cannot do. A renewed mind doesn't cling to the things of the world. A renewed mind cannot live in fear, and it certainly cannot wallow in suspicion of those who are Other, who are somehow Not Us.  A renewed mind cannot see itself as superior because of accidents of birth or ability to check off a list of do’s and don’ts. A renewed mind will never presume that "I alone can fix this" when it comes to the body of Christ, whatever the thing needing fixing may be. A renewed mind will never assume that wealth equals righteousness, or that one country is any more special to God than any other, or that our way of doing church is the only way of doing church.

A renewed mind, a mind utterly transforming the way we think and live, discerns the body of Christ equally in a city slum or a shack in the woods.  A renewed mind discerns the pain suffered by the oppressed (whether we have ever witnessed it or not), the despair and anguish of the poor and forgotten, the sins of pride of the privileged and elite, and weeps for all of them.  

And perhaps hardest of all, a renewed mind is not something we can do.  Note that Paul says “be transformed by the renewing of your minds”, not “be transformed by renewing your mind." It doesn’t happen just of our own initiative; we can’t just “change our minds” by ourselves.  Only in turning away from and renouncing our own willfulness and control can our minds be renewed by the same saving, loving, transforming grace that delivers us out of sin and restores us into full relationship with God.  

Too often we don’t want to give up our way of seeing the world, of dividing the world into Us and Them; but a mind submitted fully to the love of God, the fellowship of Christ Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit learns to see the world through the love of God, the fellowship of Christ Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit.  

And then, only then, are we no longer conformed to the world, with its scorekeeping and supremacy and walls. Only then do we really start to live as anything at all like the Body of Christ.  

Let your mind be renewed, and the Body will follow.

For the renewing of our minds, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #722, Lord, Speak to Me that I May Speak; #432, How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord; #720, Jesus Calls Us

Transformed, yes, but ... not like this.

Sermon: Too Deep For Words

First Presbyterian Church

August 6, 2023, Pentecost 9A

Romans 8:26-39

 

Too Deep For Words

 

What do you do when you hear music without words?

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.  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 sometimes just to sell more copies of the sheet music.

In a letter to a relative 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…this, however, is not your fault, but the fault of words, which cannot do better… .”

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 child.  Back then I wondered what that could possibly mean; being a wordy little kid 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 childish thought 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 more than a decade 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 others don’t?  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 even exist.  It’s one thing to know the experience of that kind of experience, one “beyond words.”

But it’s a whole other thought, something different altogether, 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.  

Just a few verses earlier, 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 all that happens to us (even the awful stuff) for our good, not eliminating suffering or pain from our lives but 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): #263, All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name; #188, Jesus Loves Me!; #840, When Peace Like a River

Sermon: Family Resemblance

First Presbyterian Church

July 30, 2023, Pentecost 8A

Romans 8:12-25

 

Family Resemblance

 

 

I’ve been married to Julia for almost thirty years now. Occasionally during those years of marriage I’ve been present when she sees relatives, family friends, old teachers, or others whom she hasn’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 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 aunt or uncle 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, 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 church Paul was addressing in this letter. Now adoption didn’t work exactly the same way legally 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 might say, “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. It all sounds great until 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 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 we also share 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 Main Street, or at the borders of Independence or Montgomery County or Kansas 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 or drown in barricaded rivers, 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 man-made.  When hurricanes or tornadoes slam into populated places, we suffer. When earthquakes shatter whole towns or cities, or when heat waves paralyze cities or towns or states, 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, we suffer with God’s creation.  

Finally, 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 the indispensible 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, along 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 get old, still get cancer. The world still spins out hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and heat waves. Children still get killed, rockets and bombs still fall, 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, but 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): #475, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing; #318, In Christ There Is No East or West; #360, Christ Is Coming!

Sermon: Therefore...

First Presbyterian Church

July 23, 2023, Pentecost 7A

Romans 8:1-11

 

Therefore...

 

If the previous chapter, Romans 7 – “I do what I don’t want to do, I don’t want to do what I do” – was marked by linguistic difficulty and a person shift to make a composition teacher weep, 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 “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 of 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. Remember how Paul spoke of even the good Law being twisted by sin? 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.

Notice how in the central section of today’s reading, it almost 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, 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 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 looking 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 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): #366, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling; #285, Like the Murmur of the Dove's Song; #286, Breathe on Me, Breath of 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: Getting It Wrong

First Presbyterian Church

July 9, 2023, Pentecost 6A

Psalm 119:169-176; Romans 7:14-25

 

Getting It Wrong

 

 

Before plunging into Paul's latest bit of pondering, it's worth a stop in the longest chapter in the Bible, which (perhaps not surprisingly) comes from the longest book of the Bible. 

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem, with each section beginning with a corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet; this means twenty-two sections in all, each consisting of eight verses as our modern arrangement of scripture divides it (if you read along in your pew Bible you saw this structure as it appears in print). Into this extended poetic structure the author has poured what one scholar calls "the exaltation of Torah," most likely a reference to those first five books of Hebrew scripture typically regarded as the law in Hebrew usage.[1] Across these twenty-two stanzas the poet has indeed exalted the Torah, spinning out verses in praise of that law despite whatever sufferings or persecutions the author might experience. The first seven verses of today's reading are relatively typical of the substance of the larger psalm.

But then, what happens in the eighth verse of this reading, the very last verse of this "exaltation of Torah"? For the first time in this extended psalm the author acknowledges "I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commandments." 

Notice that the author doesn't claim to have forgotten the law; in fact the author very specifically says "I have not forgotten your commandments"; nonetheless the author has gone astray "like a lost sheep." No matter how diligent and how joyful and how consistent the author's pursuit of the Torah has been, still at the very last the psalmist has to confess to straying from the path of Torah. All the study and all the law wasn't enough to keep the psalmist from getting it wrong.

To this, the Apostle Paul could relate. 

Already in this trip through his letter to the churches at Rome, we have seen Paul make the point more than once that the law is in no way capable of casting out or eliminating the condition of sin. It was (and is) good for naming particular sins, and to some degree for painting a picture of what a whole and good life in God might look like, but knowledge of the law was no guarantee of keeping the law, as our psalmist experienced by the last verse. We have also had occasion to be reminded that Paul's own life gave evidence of how his very zealousness at keeping the law had led him into the horrifying point of persecuting those who followed Jesus in Jerusalem and into Damascus as well, interrupted only by literal divine intervention in the form of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. In this case the law had not only not prevented him from sinning; it had in fact led him into sinning.

We need for a moment to make clear just what Paul is talking about when he speaks of "sin" in this singular sense. Modern rhetoric about "sin" tends to speak of individual actions of violation; even our typical Confession of Sin in the liturgy most often names out or at least suggests particular actions or non-actions for which we confess. This is not what Paul speaks of here; instead, he is writing of a larger, overwhelming condition in which humanity is bound save for the intervention of Jesus. We might think of the word "sinfulness," though even that word doesn't quite capture the totality of human bondage to sin. The word "fallenness," tracing the human condition back to the fall of Adam and Eve, comes closer in some ways; John Calvin's doctrinal formulation of "total depravity" is not completely off the mark, but the altered shades of meaning of that word "depravity" make this term harder to explain in modern theological formulation.

In certain modern theological traditions this condition of sin gets personified, in the form of "the Devil" or "Satan" (both of which are used in slightly different ways in scripture). Such usage is rather easily twisted into comedic farce, perhaps never more effectively than in the 70s-era comedy of Flip Wilson, the one who punctuated much of his comedy with the phrase "the Devil made me do it." Nowadays, we might almost be able to apply a term borrowed from a very popular modern science fiction/fantasy movie series, in which some characters are considered to be bound to "the dark side of the Force" (let the reader understand). 

It is in this understanding of "sin" that Paul's twisty monologue in chapter 7 (and for that matter the condition of the psalmist in 119:176) is best understood. Paul upholds the law as good and strives himself to keep to it, but the sin that resides within him not only causes him to fail to keep the law, but also twists his keeping of the law to bring harm and to achieve the results of sin (as in his persecution of Christ-followers prior to his conversion). 

The way Paul chooses to express all of this in this particular passage is itself distinctive, particularly considering that this is a collection of churches Paul has not visited (though we will learn later that Paul is familiar with some of the members there). While Paul has occasionally gotten personal in some of his letters, this is seemingly a much more personal and even intimate bit of sharing Paul does here. It is not without parallels in Greco-Roman rhetorical style and practice, but it's not typical of Paul, for the most part. 

The culmination of this confessional is therefore appropriately emotional and charged with anguished struggle and something close to despair: 

 

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

So then, what might have been a formulaic recitation, of a type Paul uses frequently in his letters, is reconnected to the emotional charge and challenge of this passage. In short, it sounds like Paul really means it, as a matter of the heart and not just of the head.

Finally, we are reminded that, as much as we would like to think of sanctification as a one-and-done process, we are forced to remember that it is ongoing. Our minds may want to cling to God's truth, but our physical natures are still not escaped from fallenness or even "the dark side of the Force." Our only hope of that is in the ongoing and unending sanctification made possible in the work of Jesus. 

Things do get better in this letter. Chapter 8 will mark a change of tone and of content, to some degree, and Paul's rhetoric won't need to be quite so dark and tangled. Even so, this is a thing to remember. We don't get free of sinful nature through our own efforts. One might remember the example of John Nash, the mathematician played by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind, who was convinced that he could with his own mind escape the bondage of the mental illness he confronted, only to find out that the very mind that was so bound could not possibly free itself unaided. We do not escape sin, fallenness, or the "dark side" of our own efforts; our only way out is "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #32, I Sing the Mighty Power of God; #440, Jesus, Lover of My Soul; #53, O God, Who Gives Us Life

 

---

[1] David Noel Freedman, Psalm 119: The Exaltation of Torah, Biblical and Judaic Studies, vol. 6 (Winona Lake: Eisenbruns, 1999).

 

 

 

Sermon: Freedom to...Obey?

Grace Presbyterian Church

July 2, 2023, Pentecost 5A

Romans 6:12-23

 

Freedom to...Obey?

 

 

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 the album called Saved 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 the 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 gotta serve somebody

You gotta serve somebody

It may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you gotta serve somebody

 

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

As today's reading begins Paul does another of his patented wrap-up-one-point-while-starting-another transitions, using verses 12-14 both to reinforce his previous point (earlier in chapter 6) 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. Paul uses an image deeply familiar to his readers, but an extremely unpleasant and challenging one. 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 enslaved to sin. 

We are apt to speak of “freedom” a lot, particularly two days before Independence Day (and in a town called "Independence" at that). It is a much used part of our national vocabulary, and sometimes highly abused by those who seek “freedom” only to abuse or extort or oppress or otherwise harm “the other” (defined typically as whoever they don't like). 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 first part of chapter 6, 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.

Bob Dylan was right: you gotta 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; #725, O Jesus, I Have Promised; #187, Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us