“Therefore,
since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace
in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of
God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing
that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.
For
while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the
ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though
perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God
proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ
died for us.”
Happy
Father's Day to all the dads out there. My Dad has always been quite
the story and joke teller...with many of his jokes lasting much
longer than really necessary...he tells one about a helicopter that
goes on and on. He can make it last for five minutes with all his
details and misdirection – but the joke could be told in three
sentences: There was a new helicopter pilot who was showing off his
skills to his superiors, going higher and higher as they became more
impressed. They were stunned when he suddenly crashed and with a last
breath before he fell unconscious, he explained what happened. “It
got so cold up there, I turned the fan off.” Dad jokes. I'm glad we
are celebrating Dads and all their unique charms today!
As
a youth leader when I was just a kid...I could be mesmerized when he
was teaching Bible study and would illustrate a point with a great
story. One of my favorites was about Charles Blondin, a famous French
tightrope walker.
Blondin's
greatest fame came on September 14, 1860, when he became the first
person to cross a tightrope stretched over a quarter of a mile across
the mighty Niagara Falls. People from both Canada and America came
from miles away to see this great feat. He walked across, 160 feet
above the falls, several times... each time with a different daring
feat - once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle, in the dark, and
blindfolded. One time he even carried a stove and cooked an omelet in
the middle of the rope!
A
large crowd gathered and the buzz of excitement ran along both sides
of the river bank. The crowd “Oohed and Aahed!” as Blondin
carefully walked across - one dangerous step after another - pushing
a wheelbarrow holding a sack of potatoes.
Then a
one point, he asked for the participation of a volunteer. Upon
reaching the other side, the crowd's applause was louder than the
roar of the falls! Blondin suddenly stopped and addressed his
audience: "Do you believe I can carry a person across in this
wheelbarrow?" The crowd enthusiastically yelled, "Yes! You
are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. We believe!"
"Okay," said Blondin, "Who wants to get into the
wheelbarrow?"
You
see, they all believed he could do it...but it takes a different
level of faith to get in the wheelbarrow.
Today's
scripture is about faith. Paul is exploring the impact of
Justification. That's not necessarily a term we use enough in modern
times to immediately connect to a meaning. So I went to
dictionary.com and found this meaning “the act of God whereby
humankind is accounted just.” In personal terms – it is to be
made right with God. We are justified by faith – made right with
God by faith. And Paul thinks that is very important for people to
understand. Paul
uses the concept of justification more frequently than do the other
writers of the New Testament. For Paul, justification was a central
truth of the gospel.
Verse
1 in Romans 5 begins with the word “therefore.” Meaning that we
look backward to see what comes before the therefore – to find the
reason why the next thing happens. In chapter 4 Paul explains how
Abraham was reckoned as righteous through faith, not anything that
he, Abraham, could boast about. He says that the scripture is clear
“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness.” If Abraham, by what he did
for
God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for
it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story.
The God-story is about a free gift … an Abraham-story or an
Us-story is about how we earned something. Romans 4:4-5 from The
Message spells out the difference, “If you’re a hard worker and
do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a
gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s
something only God
can
do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself
no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that
trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by
God.
Sheer gift.”
Righteous.
To declare that a person is aligned with the heart and purpose of
God. But how is it possible for sinful people to be justified before
a holy God? That was the question then...it is a question that many
ask now! And Paul gives us the answer in verse 1 – we are justified
by faith. SINCE we are justified by faith, we have peace with God
THROUGH our Lord Jesus Christ. All we have to do is to believe,
there's not an initiation ritual or joining fee.
By
entering through faith into what God has always wanted for us – to
set us right with him – we have it all together because of Jesus.
And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at
the same moment that he has already thrown open his door for us! Can
you fathom how much God loves you?
Let's
think about love for a minute...close
your eyes and think back to the beginning of your first love. Some of
us may have to think back longer than others! Remember when your
heart would beat a little faster when the phone rang because you knew
it was your love on the other end? Remember times that you spent on
the front porch because kisses were like potato chips, you couldn't
stop until you ate the whole bag. Maybe older ones can remember
waking up and seeing your love asleep next to you and feeling the
love so intensely that your breath caught in your throat and a tear
came to your eye? Maybe it isn't a romantic love that you remember.
Maybe it is the love for a child. Or a child for a parent. Just think
right at this moment about an intense, heart-stopping love. Guess who
loves you more than that?
A
man named Bill was taking care of his father as he died of cancer.
His father had become frail and depended on Bill to do everything for
him. Although he was physically not what he had been, his mind
remained alert and lively. In the role reversal common to adult
children who care for their dying parents, Bill would put his father
to bed and read him to sleep, exactly as his father had done for him
in childhood. Bill would read from some novel and his father would
lie there, staring at his son, smiling. Bill was exhausted from the
day's care and work and would plead with his Dad, “look, here's the
idea. I read to you, you fall asleep.” Bill's father would impishly
apologize and dutifully close his eyes. But this wouldn't last long.
Soon Bill's father would pop one eye open and smile at his son. Bill
would catch him and whine, “now come on.” The father would again,
oblige, until he couldn't anymore, and the other eye would open to
catch a glimpse of his son. Bill knew that this evening ritual was
really a story of a father who just couldn't take his eyes off his
kid. How much more so God?
That
justification – that making right with God...brings us into a
relationship with the one who loves us. “We
find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in
the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and
shouting our praise.” to quote Paul as phrased in Eugene Peterson's
The Message. To be “sharing the glory of God.” Verses 6-8
reinforce the good news of God's love, “For while we were still
weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
Indeed,
rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a
good person someone might actually dare to die.
But
God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ
died for us.” While we were still sinners.
While
we are still a mess...God loves us. If we can't accept this love then
how can we possibly spread the news to others? It's a message the
world needs to hear. It's a message I never tire of spreading. I'm
going to admit something to you...I'm pretty imperfect. One
imperfection that I'll tell you about is I'm lousy with sermon
titles. Especially if I have to give the sermon a title before I've
written the message. Which is why you can ignore the one in the
bulletin.
I
really thought when I read the lectionary scriptures as I started
preparing for coming to speak to you today that I knew what the
message was going to be...I was pretty sure I was going to focus on
that part of the scripture about boasting in our sufferings and
suffering producing endurance and endurance...character...etc. So
when Rick asked me for hymns and scriptures...I confidently gave him
what is in the bulletin today.
Then I
sat down to write...and wrote 8 pages! And then the Holy Spirit
said...nope. And I knew I was off track. And I had to stop and listen
to what the spirit was leading me to say. And once I started over...I
kept coming back to love. Unfathomable. Unexplainable. Incredible.
And I remembered what I had heard about John.
Jerome,
in his commentary on Galatians, tells that St. John continued
preaching in Ephesus even when he was in his 90s. Even when he was so
enfeebled that he had to be carried in on a stretcher, he would lean
up on one elbow and deliver his message, “Little children, love one
another.” Then he would lie back down and be carried out. One day,
the story goes, someone asked him why he said the same thing week
after week. John replied, “Because it is enough.” It is
Christianity in a nutshell.
Love
is the key.
When
I first
read the passage I got focused on the sufferings and endurance and
character and hope stuff – because I was back in the human
experience. It's easy to relate to sufferings. And to go back to the
advice of my Dad who would probably tell me how suffering built
character as I was doing yard work or trying to hold the flashlight
steady on whatever car part he was trying to fix. And I can certainly
agree that we can learn a lot from the hardships and obstacles that
life throws our way. And maybe that is another sermon for another
Sunday. Because this
passage is more about a free gift from a loving father.
Paul
is adamant that we understand this isn't anything that we earn or can
boast about obtaining by our own skills. It is a matter of faith –
believing that Jesus has wiped our slate clean and opened the door to
a full relationship with God. We just have to believe in God's love.
And
then watch out – it's going to overflow! Verse 5 from the Message:
“we’re
never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t
round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours
into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”
Now
what? We've got to let it flow onto others.
We
are called to love one another. To share love with everyone we
encounter – in every aspect of our lives. Because, as the old hymn
goes “They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” Who are they?
They are the people on the outside who
are just waiting to be invited in. Invited into the embrace of God's
love. I've been reading the most incredible book, I hope that you
will all take them time to pick it up...Tattoos on the Heart by
Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit who began Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles.
The book is a collection of stories from the gang-intervention
program that was started in the poorest parish in LA, center of the
gang capital of the world. You don't get much more “they” than
that.
In
this book, Pastor G (as the homies call him) tells about the instance
in scripture where Jesus is in a house so packed that no one can come
through the door anymore. So the people open the roof and lower this
paralytic down through it so Jesus can heal him. Although the focus
of the story is, understandably, the healing of the paralytic...there
is something more significant happening. They're ripping the roof off
the place, and those outside are being let in.
We
need to rip some roofs off. We need to go outside and see the people
who are hurting and need Jesus. We need to find every way possible to
get them connected to the one who loves them – and let them know
that he does.
First
you grasp how much God loves you...If we can grasp that
concept – then the rest is just making sure that light shines
through you. Everyone needs to hear about Unfathomable.
Unconditional. Love. We need to hear this too. We need to come to the
place of accepting this for ourselves. We need to know – we are
wholly acceptable to God. And he loves us. Right here. Right now.
Not
when we do better.
Not
when we get our checklist done: read bible daily, fast weekly, tithe,
stop speeding, never lose our temper...
No,
we are wholly acceptable. No conditions. Could not be one bit better.
When
we dive into the depths of that unfathomable love, then we start to
see the people around us differently. And this love thing starts to
spread. And this just might catch on.
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