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 500th 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)
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