The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for June 19, 2005

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7/Romans 5:1

Sermon Title: “Great One-liners”—Installment One

              “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”—Woody Allen.  “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”----John F. Kennedy.  “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”---Benjamin Franklin.  “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”  Winston Churchill.  It is amazing what a few well-chosen words can do. An art form in its own right, the one liner is a very special form of communication. Distinguished by its brevity and the particle of wisdom it communicates, a good one liner always attracts an appreciative audience.  

                This morning I introduce a sermon series I have chosen to call “great one liners.”  Beginning this morning, and for the next four Sundays I will be preaching, I will be basing my sermons on selected verses from the Old or New Testament.  The verses I have chosen, and the date on which those verses will be treated, are identified in this morning’s bulletin.

The criteria I have used in selecting the particular verses are their familiarity and ability to communicate key biblical themes. Though each of the verses I have chosen possess “stand alone” qualities, we will be ever mindful of the context in which those verses are set.  We will constantly refer to context as the verses are being treated.

              So let us begin.  “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  There is arguably no single verse in the sixty-six books of the Bible that says so much in so few words.  Please note the particular vocabulary; “justify,” “faith,” “peace.” Each of those words, friends, constitutes a pillar upon which our life in Christ under the sovereignty of God is set.  Moreover in his letter to the church at Rome, from which the one liner is extracted, Paul anchors those pillars in God’s self-revelation datable from his call to Abraham, whom he appointed to be the father of the Jews. 

              The verse we are studying today, and the letter from which it is drawn, are not merely the creation of a fertile theological mind, but embrace in one breathtaking stroke an entire history of God’s relationship with humanity.  Though addressing a particular faith community in a particular time and place, the verse we are treating addresses fundamental issues we face today in our encounter with God.

              That said, we might justifiably ask whether or not Paul was consciously writing for the ages. There is no evidence to suggest that he had posterity, or personal reputation, in mind. Yet inasmuch as he regarded the gift of salvation Christ conferred as good for all time, and also worshiped God as the eternal God for all time, we can say that Paul was writing to us.  The fact remains, however, that the particular addressee for his letter was the faith community in Rome, a community Paul, incidentally, had yet to visit.

              So what prompted Paul to write this particular letter to this particular community?  Scholars are of divided mind on the question, one group persuaded that Romans constitutes a letter of self-introduction wherein Paul lays out his base convictions regarding salvation, while another group of scholars believed that Paul was writing to address issues raised by Jews attempting to create dissension in the fledging Roman faith community. Yet regardless of the position taken on the issue, what we have in Romans is the most fully formed and precisely argued theological document Paul composed.

Incidentally, I refer to the faith community of Rome rather than the church, because there was no single established church in Rome, but rather several house churches---we don’t have precise numbers. Driven underground by their Roman persecutors, sometimes literally, discretion ruled for the Christians of Rome.  Christians in that city did not openly affiliate, hence the house church.

              The house church was literally a house church, one household of Christians inviting other followers of Christ into their home for worship and song.  There were house churches whose members were mostly Gentile, and house churches whose members were most Jewish, and there were some churches, more rare, where the two groups were represented in equivalent numbers.

                 Though the formation of the individual Christian may have differed, and differed greatly, Paul addressed the Jewish convert steeped in the history and traditions of the Jews, and the Gentile convert who had no prior acquaintanceship with the God of Israel whatsoever, on equal terms. Paul, you see, introduced a perspective to first century Christianity that was unique among Jesus’ most devoted disciples; he addressed both Jew and Gentile as children of God for whom Christ had willingly died.    

                  Paul, whose biography most of us know very well, was willing, indeed believed himself to be directly summoned, to bring Christ to the non-Jew out of his conviction that faith was not exclusionary, but was a gift of God meant for all people, whether they be people who called Abraham “father,” or people who had never even heard of Abraham.

                 “Therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.”  Again, the “we” to whom Paul was referring was not the Jewish “we,” but all people who heard, and then believed, the message of salvation.  “We are justified by faith.”  The convictions that supported that statement arose out of Paul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus.  

                   You know the story.  Commissioned by the Jewish authority in Jerusalem to apprehend any followers of Jesus who might be living in Damascus, Paul had a life changing encounter with the Risen Lord, an encounter with ramifications that impact the church to this very day as people like us study and reflect upon the Apostle’s writings.

              The zealotry with which he hounded Christians as a persecutor of Christians was converted to a zealotry to introduce the world to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  Yet though his zealotry became refocused after his encounter with Christ, Paul never attempted to hide his past life as a persecutor of the church.  In fact, his deliverance from his past to a new life in Christ, and what that meant to him personally, became the central theme in his preaching. 

                No, Paul didn’t try to deny or excuse past conduct, but rather he used his personal experience of salvation to demonstrate the great lengths to which God in Christ would go to rescue the lost. And so Paul writes, “we are justified by faith.”  Synonyms like “acquitted,” or “vindicated” give a good renderings of what Paul was attempting to communicate.

               The significance of Paul’s justification, his acquittal, for his life and ministry would be difficult to overstate.  Imprisoned numerous times throughout his life, the freedom he won from those circumstances was not, he believed, worth comparing with the freedom he experienced when Christ took hold of his life. 

                The operative phrase there is “Christ took hold.”   Paul maintained no allusions.  He was quick to acknowledge that the freedom he enjoyed was not purchased on his own dime.  No, the freedom Christ introduced to Paul’s life had nothing to do with his own virtue or worthiness, for Paul writes, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  Catch that?  “While we were still sinners.”  Paul believed, you see, that God had justified him despite the fact that he had persecuted the children of God. God had not waited for him to get his act together first, but accepted him, justified him, as he was, knowing all the baggage he carried.

              Justified, acquitted, while we remain in our sin?  Thoughtful, reasonable, people who in day-to-day transactions expect to render value for value received, might want to ask, “what’s the catch?”  Everything has a price tag, they would tell us.  Thoughtful and reasonable people have for generations come out at the same place, concluding in deed, if not in words, “I am not worthy to receive something unless I demonstrate that I am worthy.” 

                There is a sequence in the movie “Cinderella Man,” some of us viewed recently, where the hero in the story, Jim Braddock, a down in the heels depression-era boxer, is reduced to applying for government relief in order to shelter and feed his family.  A proud man, he accepted the government’s help as the absolute last resort.

                 Months later, a successful fight behind him, Braddock turns up at the relief office with a roll of cash in the sum of $383.23, the total amount to the penny that he had received over a succession of weeks from that same relief office.

               A man of integrity and conscience, Braddock did a completely laudable and significant thing. He repaid the debt.  He fulfilled what he believed to be his obligation.  Moreover he demonstrated that he was worthy of the investment the government had made in him. 

                What self-satisfaction we experience when we have worked off a debt, fulfilled an obligation. Braddock could walk tall again.  His $383.23 had won back his self-respect.

                 Yes, you could say that Braddock was by our definition justified.  That is, his burden, represented by his debt, had been removed.  Yet the transaction by which he regained his self-respect did not confer the kind of freedom that  Paul is talking about in our lesson.  “God proves his love for us that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” 

                    The balance sheet that Paul is talking about does not come into balance through our doing, it only comes to balance through what Christ has already done, “while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  So why worry about sin at all, we might inquire, as some members of Paul’s original audience did, if there is nothing WE can do personally to get sin off our backs? 

                   Paul tells us that sin remains an issue in your life and mine because we are compelled through our sinning to acknowledge its power in our lives.  We cannot shed the guilt that sin prompts. Though Christ died and rose again from the dead, by that act vanquishing sin, guilt-ridden as we are, you and I feel we must work off the debt ourselves.  And we do a terrible job at that, because our efforts invariably involve us in some form or another of self-deception.  That is, we try to justify or excuse our actions, or we play the blame game, assigning blame for our sins on our neighbor or our circumstances.

                  Having struggled mightily to justify himself before God, Paul runs up the white flag of surrender, writing sometime later in Romans, “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.  I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”  We can relate, can’t we?

                   We do not know for how long Paul experienced the personal torment he is describing, we do know, however, that he ultimately saw the light, and low and behold it took this form---“Therefore, since we are justified by faith.” Let’s isolate that last bit--- “by faith.”  Those of us who have a more substantial acquaintance with Paul’s writings than I can offer this morning, know that Paul’s views on faith developed out of his formation as a Jew, a Jew raised under the authority of the holy ordinances and commandments of God. 

                Though his respect for those holy ordinances and commandments never diminished, he believed that his Jewish brothers had placed subservience to the law ahead of subservience to God, the giver of the law, the law in effect displacing God who was its origins.

                     For Paul, faith in God, whose grace is mediated to us through Jesus Christ, is the sole source of that peace the human heart craves. Faith alone, not works of the law, or any other efforts we may mount to prove our worthiness, enables us to reap the full benefit that our justification confers. Yet make no mistake, faith is ever assailed by doubt.  We all know that, of course. 

                     God, however, does not leave us defenseless. Our struggle to maintain faith and share the glory of God, even our suffering to achieve those ends, can have a positive outcome.  Indeed, Paul writes to the Romans that believers can “boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance 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.”

                  We are justified by faith.  Faith, however, is subjected to stern tests in our world, tests that strain our endurance.  Each of us has experienced that strain.  Yet our endurance shall be rewarded, quote Paul, because the power of God’s love is greater than all forces that oppose it. 

                  Believe the good news, friends, we are justified. God forgives us.  Did not he send his own Son into our world, allowed him to be crucified for our sin, that we might experience the freedom for which we were created?

PRAYER

                 Long ago, O God, your prophet posed an important question, a question that remains current to this day among your people: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?”  And so we ask, O Lord, what do you require of us?” Yet even as we pose the question, we fear your answer.  Perhaps you will ask more of us than we feel we can give. Shall we like the rich young ruler turn away from you afraid to surrender the parts of us you wish to make your own?

                    Grant onto us courage as we reassess our lives as your children, O God, courage to undertake that assessment honestly, courage to listen for your voice, and courage to act upon the answers you provide. May your holy church, O God, likewise reassess its mission, preserving a willingness to serve as you direct. Ever tempted to be polite, conformist, and non-offensive, grant to those who lead the church the faith and wisdom to heed your call even at the risk of offending.

                     O Lord, many of us reject the mission to which you have committed your church, perhaps not in word, but in spirit.  Many look upon the church as a personal servant expected to be on call and available whenever need arises. The church is expected to meet our needs, to conduct itself within the parameters we have set.  Instead of asking how the church might serve the world, many of us ask how the church might better serve us. O God, forgive us for our self-serving ways, for our repeated failures to take seriously your call to go forth and proclaim the message of life, to baptize and heal in your name.

                   O Lord, all-powerful, grant us faith to see your hand at work in the affairs of nations.  Even as nations debate nuclear weapons policy and trade protocols, struggle to enact enforceable pollution standards, and dialogue on issues of third world debt relief, others, declining any responsibility for the welfare of the world, continue to press their agendas through intimidation and murder. O God, we earnestly pray for the cessation of violence around the world. May our nation, the most powerful on earth, continue to exert its influence in constructive ways, exerting the strong moral leadership the times require.

                    Even as we worship you, our heavenly father, we pause on this day to celebrate our birth fathers. For all blessings derived through our fathers, the lessons they taught us, the love they committed to us, the example they set for us, we give thee thanks, O Lord. Challenged by the responsibilities of parenthood, may all fathers know that you stand with them to face each challenge they may meet.  

                     Not because of our personal worth, O Christ, you chose to save of because of our need.  Help us, O Lord, to embrace the blessing you bestow, to accept the reality that our sins have been forgiven, that we no longer live under sin’s dominion.  Work your works within us that we might not be so committed to our personal ambitions and desires that we forget our responsibility to you and our neighbor.  As we have been forgiven, O God, so may we forgive. 

                    With thanks for all gifts you confer, the blessing of life, community, and your unfailing love, we lift these prayers remembering the following persons we know who have special needs.  We pray for Dedie Kelso in her struggle with cancer. We pray for Rudy and Shane who also wage that battle.  We pray for those newly married, and those celebrating anniversaries.  Abide with faithful servants of the church who live and work in challenging circumstances, the Shroeders in Bangladesh, the Streshleys in the Republic of Congo.  We pray your blessing on our partner churches in Cuba…