One of my favorite plays is “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, (Abridged).” In it, three actors rush through almost every one of the Bard’s sonnets and plays (other than Coriolanus) in two short acts.
I’m not going to do something that ambitious today,
but I would like to go through the high points of Romans with you all
in a single sermon.
Romans in miniature.
Prayer
Romans in miniature.
Paul begins by knocking down some incorrect religious assumptions.
We are not made right with God and God’s family based on:
-our family history or family tree,
-our length of time in this or any religious community,
-sinner’s prayers said or good works done,
-being the brother or mother of a minister,
None of that.
We’re made right because God acted first,
God has already worked out our salvation,
our relationship with God and with neighbor,
in Jesus Christ.
The Christian response to God’s free gift to us
is often described in Protestant tradition as “Faith” or “Belief”.
Faith gets at a spiritual and emotive aspects of this response to God’s grace,
and Belief gets to a doctrinal and mental aspect.
But try this one on for size,
Trust.
Trust is another way of talking about this response,
that perhaps bridges the gap between those two descriptors
—faith and belief.
It also uplifts the mutuality and relational aspect of grace’s effect on Christians
—we trust Jesus because Jesus is trustworthy.
Yes, God is trustworthy,
worthy of our trust.
Imagine you’re traveled 1,000 miles by train,
and your parents promised to pick you up at the train station.
Are they trustworthy parents?
If so, you expect them to be there to pick you up.
So too the God found in Jesus Christ
—trustworthy!
God is trustworthy,
but humans are a little dodgy,
we’re ambiguous creatures.
We’re Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
It is this conflict within us that Martin Luther King Junior called
the “schizophrenia of man.”
ours is that internal conflict that author William Falkner says,
“alone makes good writing,
because only that is worth writing about,
worth the agony and the sweat.”
It is this conflict that Jungian psychologists
call the “realization of the shadow self”
and Freudians discuss as the interaction
between the Id and Superego.
Paul describes us as perpetually enslaved to something,
as traitorous mercenaries who belong to an occupied country…
We’re like that guy in the Gospel,
we’ve got debts no honest man can pay.
And yet, Paul assures us the Holy Spirit acts on our behalf
—that the Spirit allows us to trust that every debt is paid.
That through Christ a spiritual D-day is occurring,
and our sighing struggles and prayers
are a sort of re-enlistment in the resistance
and an investment in the renewal of our liberated country.
That the Spirit is our adoption papers;
instead of enslavement to Sin,
our relationship is that of adopted heir of God!
And all of this is done in community.
-The Spirit’s acts are discerned most clearly in the Church.
-The ambiguity of being human is most apparent when worshipping with fellow sinners!
-trust in God is lived out when we bear one another’s burdens.
Now, Paul is writing this letter to a very particular community
—the Churches in Rome at about the year 56.
-Seven years after all the Jews (including the Jewish Christians)
had been expelled from Rome by the Emperor.
-Two years after they’d been allowed to return.
Paul writes his letter to the Romans for one reason—Reconciliation.
In Rome, the divisions between Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian
came out most fully at mealtime.
The Traditionalist Jewish Christians
—Paul calls them the Weak
—refused to eat Meat,
because it had been sacrificed to Pagan Idols.
The Liberated Gentile Christians
—Called the Strong by Paul
—went ahead and ate this meat,
assured that if there is only one God,
then the Idols are nothing.
These divisions may sound silly today
—but they were issues that could make or break
the Christian community in Rome…or anywhere else.
Issues of Traditionalism and Liberty at tension in community
—that’s nothing new, nor something old that doesn’t happen anymore.
The Weak had return to their Roman Churches in 54 or so
and find everything changed.
It doesn’t work like it did before.
They lack the vision to value how the Spirit had worked among the Gentile Christians in their absence.
So, they resort to being judgmental,
their prejudices betray them!
They need to go back to the font of faith and recommit to trusting God,
so that even in the world as it is,
they will be able to see God at work,
and join in that work.
God has not abandoned them…
No! God always goes on ahead of us!
Paul encourages these Traditionalists to be curious,
and to look carefully
at their fellow Christians and to try, really try,
to see how they are honoring and giving thanks to God in a new way.
At the same time, Paul does not pull punches
with the so called “Liberated Ones”—the “Strong.”
He affirms that they’ve rode the chaos
of the emptying of the Rome Church,
back in 49,
in a faithful way.
They’ve read the Spirit’s calling more faithfully
than the Traditionalists who recently returned…
And, he warns, getting it right doesn’t make them righteous…
in fact, if they aren’t careful it’ll make them fools!
They must not despise or discriminate against their siblings in Christ!
The danger of innovation and being ahead of the curve
is that you can overload the consciences of those who aren’t there yet.
You are obliged to be in regular discernment about your intentions
—are my intentions good?
Will my choices be mimicked
in ways that make a mockery
out of the Christian faith?
To put it plainly, Paul is saying that being right
in such a way that you ruin someone else’s ability to trust God,
is always wrong!
He prays that the Spirit will
transform judgment into curiosity
and overthrow discrimination with discernment.
And that’s Romans in Miniature…
-Trusting God’s Generosity.
-Human Ambiguity
-The Spirit Acting.
-Reconciliation in Community.
Amen.
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