Whose lives matter?

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

20 August 2017

Romans 11:1-2, 28-32 

Psalm 67.1-7 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this too,

            but in the last couple of years

                        the incredible scientific feat of decoding the human genome

            has passed from the world of esoteric science,

                        into the world of the mundane.

These days, for less than the price of two theatre tickets,

            you can, and I quote,

            ‘Bring your ancestry to life through your DNA’.

The market-leading company, 23andMe,

            will apparently use their worldwide database of genetic sequencing

            to give you personalized information on your ancestry composition,

                        any DNA relatives you may have lurking undiscovered in your family tree,

                        and even your Neanderthal percentage.

And it occurs to me that whilst it may do one no harm

            to discover that you’re a few percent Neanderthal (after all, so is everyone else),

                        or that you’re only 25% European,

                                    alongside sub-Saharan African or East Asian ancestry;

            discovering that you have a direct match on their database

                        for a sister living in Australia that you previously knew nothing about

            may be rather more problematic.

Of course, there may be some health benefits in terms of inherited genetic diseases,

            but quite what one is supposed to do with the information

                        that you have a slightly increased chance of developing Alzheimer’s Disease

                        is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment…

And anyway, the health reporting isn’t what’s driving this new industry

            in personalized DNA sequencing.

People are, it seems to me, buying into this

            because they are curious to understand more about their identity.

‘Who am I?’ is one of the defining questions of our time.

            Am I a European, an African, or an Asian;

                        a mongrel or a Neanderthal?

            Who should I identify with?

                        Which tribe do I belong to?

In a globalized world of instant communication,

            and social networks that transcend all geographical barriers,

            it seems that we are living through a ‘crisis of belonging’.

It’s the same question that drives the huge interest in family tree research:

            ‘Who am I?’ Or, to quote the BBC, ‘Who do you think you are?’

                        – the title of course of the ever-popular TV show

                                    in which celebrities discover, and I quote,

                                    ‘secrets and surprises from their past.’

Except it’s not from their past at all

            – much of what is discovered, and the stories that are told,

            are from many generations before anyone alive now was even born.

Logically, of course, it’s all nonsense:

            you don’t have to go back very many generations

                        before you have more ancestors

                        than there were people living in the entire world!

The time of the Norman Conquest in the 11^th Century

            achieves this by a fact of three or more.

Which means that, basically, we’re all massively in-bred.

            There is no ‘pure line’ in any of us.

My Nana used to say, with some considerable pride,

            that her ancestors came over with the Normans.

            Well, so did all of ours, if we’re white British!

In fact, did you know that if you’re a white European,

            you are, statistically speaking, a direct descendent of Charlemagne;

                        Carolingian King of the Franks, and Holy Roman Emperor.

It’s just a numbers game:

            he had (at least) eighteen children, and I’m one of his descendants:

                        it just must be true.

So, defining ourselves by our genetic or ancestral heritage

            is a logical nonsense.

But it continues to make emotional sense,

            and people keep doing it,

as the events in Charlottesville over the last couple of weeks

            have vividly and tragically demonstrated.

And as I said, I think this is because we have, in our Western Society,

            a crisis of belonging.

We don’t know who we are.

We’re programmed, at a genetic level,

            to live in villages of about 2-300 people,

which is about the number of people you can comfortably get to know

            and sustain some kind of relationship with.

Any more than this and it becomes quickly overwhelming.

Interestingly, the average number of friends

            that Facebook users have on the platform is 338,

                        but with a median of 200.

The figure 2-300 is about right for a community.

            Churches often struggle to grow beyond 300,

                        because they start to feel impersonal, and people get lost.

It seems we most naturally relate to smaller communities;

            and so, faced with the vastness of our world,

with all its diversity of ethnicity, gender;

            sexuality, social standing; political opinion, and religious conviction,

                        we search for meaning, for identity, for that elusive ‘sense of belonging’;

            and we do it by seeking answer to the question

                        of who we are:

            Are white or black, British or English,

                        European or French, African, Asian, Neanderthal, whatever…?

Which at one level is fine.

            There’s nothing wrong with a bit of quiet genealogical research,

                        I’m partial to it myself,

            and there’s nothing inherently dangerous about having your DNA sequenced.

But if these things are symptoms of a deeper malaise,

            if they arise from our crisis of belonging,

then that same sickness can also manifest itself

            in racism, sexism, white supremacy, neo-Nazism,

                        homophobia, gay-bashing,

            and the worst kinds of nationalistic sabre-rattling

                        such as ‘the world has never seen before’.

But of course, for all of our technological advancements,

            we aren’t the first generation to experience a crisis of belonging,

                        we aren’t the first generation in which people have struggled

                        to know who they are.

The Roman Empire dominated the known world in the first century,

            and has many parallels to the globalized media

                        and financial empires of our own world.

The Romans were technologically dominant,

            with a massive military machine

                        and an all-encompassing trade and financial network,

            all held together by the religious ideology of Emperor-worship.

People who, just a generation before,

            had no experience of life beyond their village,

found the Roman Empire on their doorstep,

            informing them in no uncertain terms

            that they were now part of something much bigger.

The ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity of the Roman Empire

            was greater than at any time before it in human history,

and it was something which would not be repeated

            until relatively modern times.

And so, in the first century, people faced their own crisis of belonging.

            To whom did they belong?

                        To Rome or to Galatia? To Philippi, or to Palestine, or to Jerusalem?

            Who were they to regard as their tribe, as their people?

This is the background to what we meet

            in our passage for this morning from Paul’s letter to the Romans,

and you can see, I hope, that it is a context

            which has strong similarities with the world that we find ourselves in.

My hope, also, is that as we explore Paul’s approach

            to these issues of belonging, ethnicity,

                        nationality, and religion in his context,

            we will gain some insights

                        into how we might address such issues in our world too.

Paul begins chapter 11 of his letter to the Romans

            by rehearsing his conclusion from the previous chapter,

            which we looked at last week:

                        Does the inclusion of the Gentile nations into the people of God

                        mean that God has broken faith with, and rejected, the people of Israel?

‘By no means!’ says Paul in verse 1,

            and to prove it he uses himself as an example:

He’s a Jew, a genetic descendent of Abraham,

            and yet he’s also part of God’s Christian people.

He’s no less a Jew because of this,

            and just as he argues that the Gentiles do not need to become Jewish

                        to receive righteousness through Christ,

            so he remains a Jew, even as he puts his own faith in Christ.

And, he says, if it’s true for him, it’s true for others.

            God has not finished with Israel.

Then, in the bit of chapter 11 that the lectionary skips over in today’s reading,

            Paul goes over the same ground again in some considerable complexity,

using his famous metaphor of the olive tree:

            showing that the Gentile branches have been grafted

                        into the historic root and trunk of Israel,

            and that while some of the Jewish branches may have been broken off,

                        they can still be grafted in again by God the master-gardener.

Then we come to the conclusion of this part of Paul’s argument,

            which has been running for the last three chapters,

            as he has teased out the relationship between the Jews and the Gentiles,

and here we find ourselves in the murky and distressing waters

            of racism and xenophobia.

The incendiary language leaps out at us in verse 28,

            where Paul speaks to his mostly Gentile audience about the Jews,

                        and says “As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake”.

Interestingly, the New Revised Standard Version, our pew Bible,

            tries to soften this a bit – and adds a couple of words:

            ‘As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake’,

                        but that’s not there in the original Greek.

Paul is hitting the shock factor here:

            the Jews, who he has just spent three chapters arguing

                        are still part of God’s covenant,

            are now ‘enemies’ with regard to the gospel of Christ.

What on earth is going on?

As we discovered last week,

            when we looked at Paul’s language of justification by works,

we have to recognize that we are reading this

            in a very different context from that in which it was written.

There may be certain similarities,

            but we are reading this post-holocaust.

            We know where anti-Semitism can take us,

                        and so we are careful to avoid it,

                        and we are alert to any hint of it.

We might criticize the Jewish state

            for its current war of attrition against the Palestinians,

                        and we are I think right to do so;

            but that is not the same as saying that the Jews, all Jews,

                        are ‘enemies’ of the gospel.

So why does Paul say this?

            Well, of course, Paul is himself writing this as a Jew

                        – he’s made that very clear already.

This is not anti-Semitism coming from a powerful oppressor

            against a minority population.

But there is certainly a background here of anti-Judaism,

            within the congregation that Paul is writing to in Rome,

and he uses this inflammatory language to call it out.

The majority of the first century Christian congregation in Rome

            was made up of those who had converted from the pagan religions,

and only a minority were drawn from those

            with a Jewish background.

And just as Paul had argued strongly

            that the Gentile converts did not need to adopt the Jewish law,

so he now has to argue that Jewish converts

            do not need to stop observing their Jewish religious practices.

In essence, the Gentiles in the Roman congregation

            had been picking on the Jewish Christians,

probably in retaliation for the efforts by some of the Jews

            to tell the Gentiles that they needed to start keeping the Jewish law

            in order to be proper followers of Jesus.

So Paul echoes their language back to them:

            Yes, he says, the Jews are enemies of the gospel,

                        but that doesn’t mean that they are estranged from God,

                        or cut off from the love of God.

            Their error in rejecting Christ,

                        or misunderstanding what it means to follow him,

                        doesn’t mean that God has broken faith with them.

            And if they are enemies, Paul goes on,

                        they are no more enemies of the gospel

                        than the Gentiles themselves were before they converted;

            so the response of the Gentiles should be to show the mercy of God to the Jews,

                        not to mock, belittle, or otherwise oppress them.

As Paul says, ‘God has imprisoned all in disobedience,

            so that he may be merciful to all’.

No-one is any better, or any worse, in God’s eyes, than anyone else:

            whatever your nationality, religious conviction,

                        ethnic heritage, or political persuasion,

            we all equally need the mercy of God.

In many ways, this verse 32 of Chapter 11

            is a one-sentence summary statement

                        of the entire theological argument that Paul has been developing so far

                        through the letter to the Romans, so let’s hear it again:[1]

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

It may be short, but it makes some bold theological moves

            that it’s worth getting our heads around.

Firstly, the reason all humans, regardless of ethnicity or heritage,

            are imprisoned in disobedience

            is because God has willed it to be so.

Paul’s observation is that there’s something about the nature of the world

            at every level, from the individual to society,

                        from human affairs to natural world in which we live,

            which means that when people pursue paths

                        other than seeking after God,

            they find themselves more and more hemmed in

                        and confined by the consequences of their decisions.

It’s not that God punishes us for our unfaithfulness

            – it is rather that we punish ourselves

                        when our choices in life take us away from God.

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

Secondly, the great irony of humanity’s imprisonment in disobedience

            is that it is at the very moment when we recognize our disobedience

            that we open ourselves up to the mercy of God.

You know how sometimes people say that you have to hit rock bottom

            before you can start to come back up?

Well, that’s a good summary of this.

When we realise how imprisoned we have become

            by our own attempts to be strong and wise in our own strength,

then we open the door to God’s love

            in releasing us from our striving and effort.

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

Thirdly, the ethnic, cultural,

            social, and ideological divisions in humanity

are rendered meaningless by the love of God.

Israel’s covenant privileges have been extended to all,

            and all nations are blessed

            through fulfilment of the Jewish covenant in Christ.

Therefore, there is no basis for any one nation, tribe, or people

            to regard themselves as more chosen than any other.

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

Fourthly, God’s mercy to all

            does not negate God’s absolute anger against sin,

where sin is understood as that

            which shuts human heart from openness

            to the love and mercy that God longs to pour in.

Stating the universal love of God for all that he has made

            does not stop God hating all that distorts that love in action in people’s lives.

So where sin abounds,

            where people conspire to put themselves over others,

                        and believe the lie that one life is worth more than another,

            then God’s wrath hardens hearts

                        in order that the haughty will be brought down

            to the point where all, including the worst of sinners, can be raised up.

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

And Fifthly, there is no mention in any of this about human faith

            – it is God’s faithfulness which does all of this.

God is merciful to all,

            God is faithful to Gentiles in their unbelief

                        and to Jews in the hardening of their hearts,

            God is faithful to creation as it’s creator.

‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’

So, where does this leave us?

            Where does it leave a world living with

                        the consequences of a crisis of belonging?

            Where does it leave us in the days after

                        the Barcelona terrorist attack?

            What does Paul say to us,

                        as we seek to deal in our towns and cities

                        with the ethnic tensions that blight so many of our relationships?

            From Barcelona, to Finland, to Palestine,

                        to the streets of Homeland America.

Well, I think he would say, very clearly,

            and particularly in the light of Charlottesville,

            that Black Lives Matter.

There is absolutely no justification in Christ

            for the view that white lives matter more than any other,

and the alignment of certain segments of the Christian church

            with the views of white supremacy is an evil to be opposed.

And before we say that Charlottesville is not London,

            and that we it doesn’t happen here – believe me it does.

I grew up watching the Black and White Minstrel Show,

            which was cancelled when I was six years old

            – with its perpetuation of grotesque caricatures of racial stereotypes.

The race riots of the early 1980s

            were when I first became aware of the power

                        of ethnic difference to incite violence,

            and I now know that they took place in those very cities

                        where white people had become enriched

                        through the slave and sugar trade of 17^th and 18^th centuries.

We live in a deeply divided country, and a deeply divided city,

            with people of all different nationalities, living and working side-by-side.

And yet if you are a black graduate of a British university,

            you will earn on average 23.1% less than your white fellow graduates.

Since 2010 there has been a 49% increase

            in the number of ethnic minority 16- to 24-year-olds

            who are long-term unemployed,

while in the same period there has been a fall of 2%

            in long-term unemployment

            among white people in the same age category.

Black workers are more than twice as likely

            to be in insecure forms of employment

            such as temporary contracts or working for an agency.

Black people are far more often the victims of crime,

            and you are more than twice as likely to be murdered

            if you are black in England and Wales.

When accused of crimes,

            black people are three times more likely

            to be prosecuted and sentenced than white people.[2]

Saying that Black Lives Matter is not the same

            as saying White lives don’t matter,

any more than saying that Children’s lives matter

            would be the same as saying that adult lives don’t matter.

But we have to recognize that we live with a heritage of ethnic oppression,

            and Paul’s insight in Romans is that all of us are diminished by this.

There is nowhere here for white privilege to hide;

            and simply saying that ‘I’m not a racist’

            doesn’t get anyone off the hook.

In 2007, the bicentenary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,

            I was part of the discussions at Baptist Union Council

            as to whether it would be appropriate for the Baptist Union

                        to offer an apology for their complicity in the ongoing legacy of slavery.

And I heard some interesting responses:

            ‘I’ve never owned slaves, so what have I got to apologise for ?’

            ‘I didn’t ask to be born white, and asking me to apologise for

                        who I am is just racism in reverse.’

            The insight I took from this was all of us are diminished by white privilege.

It has been said that when you are used to privilege,

            equality feels like discrimination[3]

and many white people will cry foul

            when their supremacy is challenged.

And yet, just as Paul argues that God’s mercy

            is big enough for both Jew and Gentile,

so we need to hear him telling us that equality is only equality

            if it works equally for both white and non-white.

Anything less than true equality

            imprisons white and black alike

            into the prison created by disobedience.

So as we pray for our world,

            and as we examine our own lives and our own hearts,

            and as we uncover our own preconceptions and prejudices,

I wonder what it means for us to hear, in our world

            that ‘God has imprisoned all in disobedience

            so that he may be merciful to all.’

---

x

[1] See James D. G. Dunn, Romans, Word Biblical Commentary.

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/30/what-it-means-to-be-black-in-britain-today

[3] Brian McLaren http://brianmclaren.net/why-ill-be-in-charlottesville-this-weekend/

Choose Life

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

13 August 2017

Romans 10.5-15  

Deuteronomy 30.11-20 

Earlier this year, Danny Boyle celebrated twenty years

            since the release of his wonderfully surreal film Trainspotting,

by releasing T2, the Trainspotting sequel.

Both films begin with a poems,

            known as the ‘choose life’ monologues

which echo our reading this morning from Deuteronomy

Here’s the poem from the second film:

Choose life

Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares

            Choose looking up old flames, wishing you’d done it all differently

            And choose watching history repeat itself

Choose your future

            Choose reality TV

Choose a zero hour contract, a two hour journey to work

            And choose the same for your kids, only worse,

                        and smother the pain with an unknown dose

                        of an unknown drug made in somebody’s kitchen

And then… take a deep breath

            You’re an addict, so be addicted

            Just be addicted to something else

Choose the ones you love

Choose your future

Choose life

And this question of what it means to ‘choose life’

            runs through so much of our wrestling with what it means to be human.

We come up with our answers,

            and we normalise them,

and then we condemn those who choose differently,

            writing off those who don’t fit our, or our society’s definition,

            of what an acceptable life must be.

But who are we to choose,

            and who are we to decide?

And on what basis do we write ourselves as normative,

            and those who differ from us as aberrant.

As Dawn said last week, one of the questions

            on which Christians have expended vast amounts

                        of energy, time, and effort

                        over the last two millennia,

            is this question of ‘who’s in, and who’s out?’

And so we have drawn our theological lines in the sand,

            beyond which we will not cross;

and we have erected our doctrinal boundaries,

            to fence off those who don’t see things as we do;

and we have condemned to the outer darkness

            anyone. not. quite. like. us.

But underlying this question, of who’s in and who’s out,

            is I suspect an insecurity, a fear perhaps,

that if we fail to successfully define ourselves, over and against the other,

            we may ourselves find that we are on the wrong side of the line;

fenced off from God’s eternal truth,

            and left languishing ourselves in the outer darkness.

What if we find that we haven’t ‘chosen life’ after all?

Which is probably why this question has mattered so much,

            to so many, and for so long.

There’s a lot riding on it.

I wonder, can you think of a time when someone has told you

            that, by their understanding of salvation, you were ‘out’?

I know I can.

For me, the feeling that I was being excluded began in my teens,

            when I was spending time with some Christians

            who had had very definite ‘conversion’ experiences.

You know the kind of thing, where someone can name

            the day, hour, and even minute that they were ‘saved’,

                        whatever that means…

Well, for me it was never so straightforward

            – I have no moment of salvation,

                        no time or place on which I can pin my journey from darkness to light.

I have always felt somewhat left out when we sing that verse of my favourite hymn

            which has the words ‘my chains fell off, my heart was free,

                        I rose, went forth, and followed thee’.

In my experience I no more needed converting to the love of God

            than I needed converting to the love of my mother.

I might need reminding of both from time to time,

            but I’ve always known them to be true.

And so one of my friends, who I respected at that time,

            told me that if I had no moment of conversion, I was not yet saved.

I was, by his counting, out.

Similarly with those who told me that unless I spoke in tongues,

            I did not have the Holy Spirit.

Actually, at that point I was using the practice of speaking in tongues

            as part of my devotions, but I wasn’t telling them that!

More recently, I (and others here) have been told

            that we are outside God’s will and kingdom

                        because of our positive views on same sex marriage,

            and that I will be judged harshly by God for leading his people into error.

Mostly, these days, I don’t bother arguing

            – but that doesn’t stop the barbs hitting home sometimes…

I mean, I know I think I’m right, but what if I’m not?

            I’ve been wrong before!

What if God is a God of judgment, and I am displeasing him?

So in my lesser moments I comfort myself

            by reiterating my certainty that God is a God of love,

                        who draws all his dear children to himself,

            and there is nothing I nor anyone else can do

                        to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

And then I tell myself that those who are seeking to put me out are wrong,

            and that it is not I but they who have missed the truth,

and before I know it, and without realising it, I start to put them out

            – out of my mind, out of my life, out of my church, out of my faith…

and all too quickly I have become the person I didn’t want to be.

Can you relate to this?

            Does this, or something analogous to it, ring true for you?

Where would you draw the line?

            Who do you think is out, if you’re ‘in’?

Well, all this talk of in, and out,

            takes us right into the heart of our reading this morning

            from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

In today’s passage, we encounter Paul

            grappling with a deep and profound problem;

which is this

            – why is it that most of his fellow Jews

            have failed to turn towards Jesus as their long-awaited messiah?

From Paul’s point of view, this is a great conundrum.

Since his own mystical encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road,

            Paul the Jewish Pharisee had been convinced

                        that in the person of Jesus Christ, God had drawn near to humanity

                        to rescue people from the twin powers of sin and death.

            Through forgiveness and resurrection,

                        people had been granted new life in all its fullness,

                        offered as a free gift of grace without cost or condition.

And Paul had devoted himself to the proclamation of this good news,

            not just to his own people the Jews,

but to those from other ethnic groups throughout the Roman empire,

            known collectively as the Gentiles – or the ‘non-Jews’.

The mystery, for Paul, writing to the mostly Gentile church in Rome,

            is why it should be that his fellow Jews

                        were proving harder to convince about Christ

                        than their Gentile neighbours.

Surely, thinks Paul, it should be the other way around

            – after all, the leap from ‘faithful Jew’

                        to ‘faithful Jew who believes Jesus is the messiah’

            is not so great as the leap from ‘Emperor-worshipping Gentile’

                        to ‘faithful Christian’.

‘Can it really be’, wonders Paul,

            ‘that Gentiles are “in”, whilst Jews are now “out”?’

This is the conundrum that lies behind his train of thought here in Romans.

            And so he begins by drawing a distinction

                        between two different kinds of righteousness.

On the one hand, he says,

            there is the righteousness that comes ‘through the Torah’,

            through the Jewish Law.

On the other hand,

            there is righteousness that comes ‘through faithfulness’.

Even as I say this, I can almost feel Martin Luther tapping me on the shoulder,

            and reminding me that 2017 is the 500^th anniversary

                        of his decisive actions that led to the European reformation,

            in which he accused the church of his day

                        of having adopted a gospel of righteousness by works,

                        in which people were expected to earn their salvation

                                    by paying priests for indulgences for their sins.

Luther’s point was that forgiveness for sins comes by faith alone,

            not by any action on the part of individuals or the church.

And certainly, in the context of the corruption of the medieval church,

            Luther was on the money, so to speak.

And of course, the most influential text on Luther was,

            you guessed it, Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Luther equated Paul’s language of the righteousness that comes through the Law,

            with the Roman Catholic practice of selling salvation.

Against this, the righteousness that comes through faith

            was understood as being the faithfulness of the reformation churches

            in their teaching of faith alone as the basis of salvation.

In other words, Luther used this passage, and others like it,

            to argue that the Roman Catholic church was excluded from God’s covenant

                        because in their works they were denying the grace of God.

Historically speaking, this is all well and good,

            at least it is if you’re Protestant like we are.

But of course, none of this was what Paul was actually saying.

Paul was writing in the first century, not the sixteenth;

            and he was addressing Judaism and the law of Moses,

            not Roman Catholicism and the infallibility of the Pope.

We are on dangerous ground here,

            if we start to equate Luther’s denunciation of the faith of Rome,

            with Paul’s exploration of the lack of Christian faith of the Jews.

That way lies Europe’s horrific history of anti-Semitism.

Here is the crucial point:

            Paul was not seeking to write the Jews out of the covenant

                        because of their unwillingness to embrace Christ as the messiah,

            and he was not seeking to write them out of God’s grace

                        because of their ongoing adherence to the Torah laws of their ancestor Moses.

If anything, Paul was arguing the exact opposite to this:

            he cannot, and will not, accept

                        that the inclusion of other nations, the Gentiles,

                        into the covenant of God through Christ,

            has resulted in the automatic and wholesale write-off

                        of God’s chosen nation of Israel.

For Paul, the inclusion of the Gentiles expands Israel,

            it does not annihilate it.

Those who live by the Torah, who keep the commands of the covenant,

            can still find life in the doing of it.

The keeping of the Law is not a curse from which release is needed;

            but, it is incomplete.

For Paul, the Law finds its fulfilment in Christ,

            as the doing of faith finds its perfect partner

            in belief in the new life that comes into being in Christ.

All through the passage, there is a kind of dance

            between these two concepts of ‘doing’ and ‘believing’,

            as they move in and out, and round and round each other;

so, ‘confessing with the lips’ is paired with ‘believing in the heart’,

            as the actions of the mouth in proclamation

            find fulfilment in heartfelt faith in Christ.

Doing and believing are not, in Paul’s thought,

            mutually exclusive polar opposites

– they are partners, each pointing to the other.

So, the faithful behaviour of Paul’s fellow Jews,

            originating in obedience to the covenant laws of Moses,

points to faith in the new life

            that comes through resurrection in Christ.

And similarly, faith in Christ points to faithful action

            in the proclamation of the good news that has been received.

This is not, therefore, about the exclusion of the Jews in favour of the Gentiles

            – not at all –

it is rather about Paul’s hope and expectation

            that the faithful response of the Gentiles to the gospel of Christ

            will circle back through their faithful proclamation

                        of the gospel to all people, including the Jews.

As Paul is at pains to say:

            ‘There is no distinction between Jew and Greek;

                        the same Lord is Lord of all.’

The truly faithful response to the gospel

            is to become the one who walks on Mount Zion

                        bringing good news to those who have not yet seen and grasped

                        the universal gospel, of God drawing near to humanity in the person of Jesus.

But Paul has a further problem that he’s addressing here in Romans.

As with most of his letters,

            he’s writing to address a particular problem in a congregation.

I have always taken great comfort from the fact

            that the people Paul’s writing to

            seem to be constantly on the edge of making a total hash of things!

                        It gives me hope!

Anyway, the problem in Rome seems to have been

            that there is someone in the congregation there

trying to persuade the Gentile converts

            that in order to be properly saved, properly ‘in’,

            they needed to adopt the practices and requirements of the Jewish Law.

This person was almost certainly a Jewish convert to following Christ,

            but unlike Paul they thought that Gentiles needed to become,

                        in effect, God-fearing Jews

            if they were to follow Jesus the Jewish messiah.

We know from Paul’s other writings, and from the book of Acts,

            that if ever there was an issue which put Paul’s back up,

                        it was this one.

His conviction that the Spirit of Christ has been poured out on all flesh equally,

            whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free,

led him to a profound conviction

            that whilst there was nothing wrong

            with a Jewish Christian keeping the Torah Law,

it was certainly contrary to God’s gracious reaching-out to humanity in Christ

            for Gentiles to be made to keep it.

Whilst the law may be a blessing to the Jews,

            it is a huge diversion for Gentiles.

In fact, Paul goes further than this.

            The Torah Law becomes a diversion for the Jews too,

                        if they hang their righteousness on it,

                        rather than on faith in Christ.

Good works, whether they be works of the law

            or other faithful responses to God’s calling,

            must follow and spring from a person’s faith;

they do not precede it,

            and are not a condition of faith.

And so Paul is very clear:

            There is no action necessary on the part of humans

                        that can summon up the presence of Christ.

            We do not need to indulge in mystical visions or esoteric practices

                        to ascend to the heavens to bring Christ down to earth

                        – he is already here;

            and we do not need to deny ourselves or mortify our bodies

                        to descend to the depths to raise Christ from the underworld

                        – he is already raised and present with us by his Spirit,

                                    on our lips and in our hearts,

                        stirring us to works of faithful obedience to the calling of his Spirit.

So, where does this leave us?

Where are we in our quest to know who’s in, and who’s out?

            Are we any clearer about where we draw the line

                        and erect the boundary fence around the faithful?

            Do we have a clearer picture of who God would have us exclude?

            Are we any more certain of our own righteousness?

Well, taking the last one first: I hope the answer is yes.

            If you ever have cause to doubt your own place within the love of God,

                        I hope you can hear clearly from Paul’s letter to the Romans

            that your value to God

                        does not depend on your own appreciation

                        or understanding of your eternal worth.

You are loved by God who has come near to us all in Christ

            – as close as the words on our lips

            and the secret stirrings of our hearts.

And with regard to who’s in, and who’s out?

            I think that Paul’s point is clear:

            whoever we might think is out, is actually in.

Wherever we would draw the boundary,

            God re-draws it wider.

And when we seek to impose our favoured, carefully selected,

            beliefs and doctrines on people,

            in order to ensure their acceptability to God,

we fall into the trap of the false teacher in Rome,

            seeking to impose the Jewish law on Gentile converts.

‘But Simon’, I hear you cry,

            ‘surely there must be some limit to the love of God?

                        What about… other faiths?

                        What about… the worst of sinners?

                        What about…?’

                                    Well, you can fill in the next blank.

I think that for Paul, it was of first importance

            that God’s faithfulness to his people did not fail

            – and if God is faithful to even those who have rejected the messiah,

                        then God is faithful to all that he has made.

This, I dare to suggest, is at the heart of the gospel of Christ:

            Jesus died for all, and is raised for all,

                        that all may have new life.

Over the next few days and weeks,

            some very big choices will be made

                        by president Trump, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, and others.

Choices of life and death.

They, like each one of us,

            will have to decide where they will draw the line,

                        who they will condemn, and on what basis.

But their choice on the international stage

            is of course merely an extension

                        of the individual and communal choices

                                    that confront each one of us

                        in our own more parochial circumstances.

In a democracy, we take pride in the fact that we get the leaders we choose,

            but of course that also means that we get the leaders we deserve;

and whether the subject is membership of a union of countries,

            or how we will define and defend our borders,

            or who is welcome in our cities, homes, and churches,

the choice remains the same: who's in, and who's out.

How we respond to that choice,

            in our living, praying, and voting,

            has a direct effect on the world.

The residents of Charlottesville are facing that choice today,

            as they take centre stage in the all-too-literal battle

            between who’s in, and who’s out.

Clashes of ideology can quickly become murderous

            as people choose death as the path to victory.

And as the people of God,

            we have a calling to live into being in our world

            the startling reality that in Christ, there are no outsiders.

So the question before us, then, today,

            is what are we going to do about it?

How will we respond?

And here we need to hear the call of Moses:

            ‘Choose life, so that you may live’ (Deut 11.19)