Peace with God

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

February 24, 2008

Text: Romans 5: 1-11

CURVED IN ON OURSELVES

It is not simply sins which cause us grief. It is the state of being which can be called “sinfulness,” or lostness or fallenness.

The apostle Paul knew first-hand about fallenness. He persecuted Christian followers, hauling them off for punishment by the religious authorities, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” He was authorized by the religious authorities to tie them up, men or women, and march them to Jerusalem for punishment. (See Acts 9) He even held the coats of those who stoned to death Stephen, the first Christian martyr! He was a first century version of religious extremist, comparable in zeal to a member of the Taliban.

Paul was caught up in something bigger than himself. He certainly made his own choices. But he came later to see that he was a participant in a movement, aroused by the goodness of God in this man Jesus, which was deadly serious in the campaign to snuff out the light which shone in Jesus’ life. Men and women “loved darkness rather than light,” as the Gospel of John records.

When Saul (as he was called at the time) was knocked to the ground and blinded by the light of heaven on the road to Damascus, he hears a voice, asking, “Why do you persecute me?” When Paul asks, “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus identifies himself with those whom Paul is capturing, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”(Acts, Chapter 9) And Paul himself is captured by Christ. Either in his own account of his conversion in his Letter to the Galatians, or in the accounts in the Book of Acts, the result is the same: he is made aware of his own desperate state, and his dire need of God’s grace. He came to be convinced that, whether we mortals are Jewish or Gentile, we are sinners who cannot find authentic happiness and fulfillment without divine intervention.

(Sinfulness as a condition bears much resemblance to the state of addiction. For more on this subject, I recommend the book by Gerald May, Grace and Addiction.)

So when Paul sits down to write the Letter to the Romans sometime between AD 54 and 58, setting forth his understanding of the gospel, he must begin with sin. For Paul, the good news is not good news for us unless we also face up to the bad news about us.

Here is an example of Paul’s descriptions of the bad news, translated in the colloquial by Eugene Peterson:

“By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it's not as if they don't know better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face. And they don't care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!”

This sorry state of affairs is everyone’s circumstance, even---especially---those who mask their sins in religious guises. Paul knew what a dangerous thing religion itself can be when our hearts are not in the right place. Moral rectitude as a ladder to climb up to God and present ourselves as worthy can make insufferable hypocrites out of even the most morally serious person. Religious inflation is more dangerous than economic inflation any day!

BUT ARE WE REALLY THAT BAD?

I want to protest: “But there is also goodness in us, isn’t there? Are we really as bad as all that?! We just need a little help so our better natures can win. ”

Of course, we should not deny the evidence: even secular people  have goodness in them and  work to relieve human suffering and honor God and love neighbor. These are the presence of God in life which keeps hope in us alive. This basic decency of human beings, when it is evident to us, is a sign, Paul would say, of God’s preventing or prevenient grace, God’s activity in our lives which keeps us from falling so far that our salvation would be hopeless.

But for the man or woman who has come face to face with the depth of God’s mercy and power in Jesus Christ, there arises a profound awareness that God desires and works not only for human decency, but for a give and take relationship with us---- so that we can be truly happy and fulfill our calling which is to be agents of God’s Shalom in the world. This is a standing which we cannot achieve without rescue from the forces of evil. For this salvation, we depend on God.

Albert Outler, former SMU theologian, wrote of a student who came to see him. The student complained that Outler seemed to saying that “human sinning was something deeper and more mysterious than a failure of free will or a moral lapse.” Dr. Outler recommended a book on the subject for the student to read---a book which laid out the classic doctrine of original sin.  The student returned in two weeks “still more baffled.” After a few minutes of conversation, the student “gave vent to a real outcry from the heart: ‘Well…if we don’t have the power to decide to sin or decide not to sin, then all I’ve got to say is, God help us.’” Outler pointed out to the young man that he had stumbled into “involuntary orthodoxy.” (Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, page 24)

Paul’s view is this:  Our fallenness is radical, at the root of our lives and of the life of our world. We are alienated and separated from God, molded and shaped from our earliest days to move away from God’s love for us and to try to live as if God did not exist, and to act as if other mortals are simply opponents to be defeated and /or used for our own benefit.

Paul confesses this sin as separation and helplessness to overcome it, later in the Letter to the Romans: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law [requirements] of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members [mortal self] another law [agenda] at war with the law of my mind [what I know is right] and making me captive to the law [slavemaster] of sin which dwells in my members [me]. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:21-25)

SIN DISCOUNTED

Sin got trivialized along the way to our century. I remember one priest who said that listening to some people confess their sins was like being showered with popcorn. We confess the little things. We can remember the days when sin was associated almost exclusively with sexual behaviors, drunkenness and the like. Which caused one friend to tell me that ageing makes sinning so difficult to continue, that he figured he would be all right with God in the last half of his life!

I think we are afraid that we will damage people’s self-esteem if we talk about sin; or that we will be piling on when people have enough worries. We are much more comfortable talking up Christ as the person who can help persons succeed in life than we are talking about Christ as our Savior from sin. Self improvement  is not a bad thing, and there are lots of resources to help us along. But I get the impression at times that these resources only scratch the surface. They have become, for secular people, much like the Jewish ordinances were in the first century. “Just do these 7 or 10 things well and your life will be fulfilling.” We are still caught up in self-centeredness.(Martin Luther: “Our nature is so curved in upon itself at its deepest levels that it not only bends the best gifts of God toward itself in order to enjoy them….” we don’t even know that we are doing it!”) (Luther, Lectures on Romans, page 159)

RESTORATION THROUGH WRATH AND MERCY

What we have in Jesus of Nazareth is God’s offer of something more profound, like being born anew.

Sin, you see, is about a ruptured relationship. The God who has made us has created us for himself. We are prone to think we know better, that we can make it by ourselves. Sometimes this comes across as bravado; other times as lament. It can feel like we are at war with God. Either by giving up or by trying to fix the world and ourselves by ourselves, we are in big trouble. Out of love for us, we are the subjects of God’s wrath, God’s anger. (If you don’t believe in wrath in the New Testament, go and read the many times when Jesus was angry----and what made him most angry!)

I know: we usually associate God’s wrath with the God pictured in the Old Testament. We like to believe that the God of the New Testament witness left all that behind. What

What if we make uses of human relationship-language to try to get at what is meant by God’s wrath or anger?

Consider what we have come to call “tough love.” It is when a parent or friend holds those they love to a standard of behavior which will be beneficial to them, even when they have to say no. We do this because we can see that our loved ones are headed for a dead end.

I believe God’s wrath is just this: the tough love of God. God loves us just as we are but too much to see us make a mess of things. So God is angry with us, displeased with us, when we simply toss aside the requirements for basic human community (such as those expressed in the Ten Commandments); or when we spurn God’s requirements of neighbor love, or when we seem bent on destroying the earth God is providing for us.

Consider the behaviors and attitudes which made Jesus angry.

Hypocritites, play actors in religious form without substance.

Hard-hearted religious leaders who lay heavy burdens on the common people.

The commercialization of religion, as in the temple precincts.

Those who would rather see people remain sick in body and mind rather than be healed on the Sabbath.

Those who ignored the needs of hungry, imprisoned, ill-clad, sick people.

Jesus’ agenda was God’s agenda, which he set forth in his first commentary on the law: Release of captives, recovery of sight to the blind, the proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favor, hospitality for the lost sons and daughters, bringing freedom to those captured by demonic forces and impulses. (Luke 4:16-30)

Jesus’ wrath was reserved for those who would choose to continue to live in darkness rather than in the light which was shining upon them in the dawning kingdom of God---as well as those who would block others who have found the light.

GOOD NEWS

The Good News is that this divine-human relationship has been renewed from God’s side. “Through him [Jesus], we have gained access to this grace [unmerited love] in which we stand….” Out of great love for us, God has set aside that barrier between us and him. This has been done for us through the life, teachings, actions, suffering and death---and resurrection--- of Jesus of Nazareth.

How do we respond to this gift? Well, not by doubling our efforts to put our lives together so that we can stand before God. We enter into this relationship through faith, faith as trust in God. Paul Tillich called this action the acceptance of our acceptance. (See Paul Tillich, “You are Accepted,” in The New Being) (More to the point, faith is evident when, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we “Yes!” to God’s forgiveness and God’s provision of communion with us.

The result of this acceptance is a profound and radical change, “deep down in the innermost parts of the heart and not on the surface of the heart in the way foam lies on water.” (Luther, page 162) Or, as another has commented, “When God pours his power of love into our hearts, this takes control of us in the center of our personality and makes us its own, in fulfillment of Jeremiah 31: 31f.” (Ernst Kasemann, Commentary on Romans, 1980, page 135)

Jeremiah forecast this new day in this way: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, saying “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31: 33-34) The waiting father welcomes the prodigal son, and in his joy, forgets all the ways in which his son has sinned against him. There was a debt to be paid, but the father cancelled the debt himself.

Emil Brunner expresses this new relationship. He writes that our bad consciences are silenced. “Silenced not because we’ve set ourselves right but because Christ has put this Terrible Watchman into chains before God’s holy throne and silenced him….We becomes sons and daughters in the house of the Father.”(Emil Brunner, Letter to the Romans, 1959, page 40)

Our sins are forgiven. And the bridge to the Forgiver has been built.

EFFECTS

In faith, we enter upon a journey for the remainder of our lives. We are not yet in perfect relationship with God, not yet home, “…but we are on the way home and we know we will reach the goal, the glory of God, life eternal.” (Brunner, page 41)

Carl Michaelson wrote that the “goal is guaranteed.” When I first read that, I protested. But I have come to believe that he has it right. “Christians have a right to live in that expectation and to enjoy the wholesome psychological advantages of knowing that we are fighting and working and living in a cause that is fated to prevail…..In the Gospel we have the assurance that God has not asked anything of us that he will not see through with us to a successful consummation.” (The Witness of Radical Faith, 1974)

Therefore we can boast. (Couldn’t Paul have chosen a different word?) Left to ourselves, we are prone to boast of our own powers, even when we boast of our reluctance to boast----a double whammy! But, Paul says, we boast of God’s power----which is simply being honest and truthful. (And we do not boast of having exclusive rights to God’s power. Humility goes with genuine faith;  otherwise we would become merely another band of religious haters)

Even in our sufferings, we boast, he writes. Talk about a counter-cultural message! I don’t think he is saying that we should seek out suffering: enough will come our way. But we may grow in the midst of what happens to us----even though we can see this only in retrospect. From endurance to character to hope: because “God’s love  has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

“We are no longer left to ourselves and the world. Even now we are set in the kingdom of freedom, which is none other than the openness of access to God and of the peace” that God has granted. “We stand [boast], not on our own [humanness] but on ‘God for us and with us.’” (Kasemann, page 136)

Does God do it all? Yes, in one manner of speaking, for God is the author of the possibility of our new birth, our renewed hearts. Responding with faith---which God has makes possible---we try to “remain continually in the light of the salvation” which has been given to us. And we are empowered by the Holy Spirit through all of our trials, “like someone on the point of taking possession of a rich inheritance….”

So we may have peace with God. Our relationship may not always be placid, but it is built on the peace which passes understanding, the peace that God has won for us and in which we can abide.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote that the religious journey is one from thinking of God as void [emptiness]  to feeling that God is our enemy, to recognition and acceptance of God as our friend. I have found this to be so, but I go back and forth. For I know that God, out of love for me, also opposes me when I would worship other life-draining so-called gods, or when I would crawl back into my own little cave instead of offer myself in love of neighbor. And I have known the presence of God’s seeming absence and have known the struggle of trusting in God even through these wildernesses. And, thanks to God, I have known God as friend--- truth-telling and comforting and healing and forgiving---- loving me in spite of my wanderings. Perhaps you have, too.

Have you been at war with God? Have you been attempting to find yourself by measuring up to someone else’s expectations? (Roberta Bondi said that, if we don’t have a self, the prevailing cultures will be glad to give us one.) Do you find yourself helpless before all that is demanded of you?

Hear the Good news. “Christ died for us while we were still sinners. That is proof of God’s love for you.” Come in from the cold. Surrender to the pure unbounded love of God in Jesus Christ, and be free at last to become the person God has destined you to be. Live and die and live forever because your life is “hid with Christ in God.”

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