2nd Sunday in Lent

The Rev. Tommy Thompson

2nd Sunday in Lent

4 March 2012

Her name was Susan.  She was a mother of three beautiful children. They lived out in the middle of nowhere.  She didn’t have much...she and the children had to wear homemade clothing or hand-me-down clothing.  She did everything she could to make her husband’s paycheck stretch far enough to keep the lights on and the water running for one more month... Her biggest goal was to put something on the table for her children to eat each day...and it was a good day when that something was a hot meal.  And then there was her husband...he was an abusive, raging alcoholic.  He had his way of making her feel like he was the only possibility for her. “You’ve got no other place to go...”  “You said for better or for worse.”  “Think of our kids...”  he made her know that the little bit they did have depended upon her being with him...

But Susan believed that all was not grim...she had passed by that little church on the hill so many times on the way to the school or the grocery store.  She had felt like she was being asked to go there...so she thought ‘why not?’ ‘what do I have to lose?’  

Susan attended that little church on the hill...and she felt welcomed...overwhelmingly so.  Her children were attending the children’s bible classes.  She was meeting new people.  She was joining God’s people in the worship of the holy God...her life was beginning to change...  All felt so right.  She wanted to offer something in thanksgiving to this God for what he was already doing in these short few weeks that she had been worshipping with the little church on the hill.  She was a very good seamstress...if she started working now, she could work up some nice costumes for the children and have a children’s Christmas pageant this year, if the church would be okay with it.  She went to the pastor and she sheepishly asked, ‘i know i haven’t been here long...i don’t know a whole lot about the bible...about the church...but I feel like i need to use my sewing for God...could I...i mean, would y’all be okay with me sewing some costumes and putting together a Christmas pageant this year?  

The pastor thought it to be a fantastic idea.  He told her, “Sure! My wife has been wanting to do this too...let’s decide what evening we would like to do it on, and you both can head this up.”  She was excited!  Her kids were gonna be able to tell the story of the birth of Jesus for people to hear and she got to make the costumes for the pageant! 

What a wonderful response to grace!  

Oh, but she went too far too quickly...too much change too quickly...sometimes God moves folks and if they respond faithfully, they are in for it.  It wasn’t but a few days since the pastor had agreed with Susan that it’d be a great idea to do the Christmas pageant one evening for the community and for Susan and the pastor’s wife to head it up.  And that’s all the time they needed to put together their plan.  Following the meeting of the church council one evening, one of the long-standing members of the church caught the pastor in the parking lot as they were leaving the church building.  “Preacher!  I need to have a word with you!”  “Well, okay. What is it, JoAnna?”  “We’ve heard about how much this new lady...what’s her name? ... Susan...is doing in the church right now.  And we’re not happy...who do you think you are?  You’ve been pastor of this church for hardly a year...we’ve been at this church our whole lives.  Who do you think you are letting that lady lead anything in this church?  Do you know anything bout her home life?  Do you know the rumors in this community?  She hasn’t proved herself in this community...she has no business leading anything in our church.  And if you don’t tell her she can’t do it...you’re gonna lose me, my family, and many others.  

God was leading Susan to faith...but some of his people had problems with that...For them salvation came with their own set of preconditions.  If you are going to be a vital part of our community, then you must first do _________.  In this situation, it was about Susan not yet being good enough...it was never clearly laid out what exactly she would need to do to ‘prove herself’ worthy of a place among the disciples of Jesus Christ....

...In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he deals with similar ‘preconditions’...  

Romans is among the earliest New Testament writings we have.  Paul’s letter was written before the temple was destroyed in 70A.D.  It was that period where the difference between Christian and Jewish did not really exist.  To be Christian meant to be a fulfilled Jewish person for the most part.  It meant you believed that Jesus really is the Messiah...and because Jesus is the Messiah, you now read the entire history of Israel over again with Jesus as it’s fulfillment and interpretive key.  Many had trouble with this...and Paul’s letter to the Romans is written in regard to these very issues...it is written to Jews and Gentiles of the Roman church who are trying to make sense out of what it means for this Jesus who was crucified and raised to be Israel’s Messiah.  

For the Gentiles, it meant Paul had to work very hard helping them to see that they are not part of some new religion ... he worked hard at persuading them that everything Jesus did and taught and now expects from the church is in continuity with and in fulfillment of the Old Covenant...he wants the Gentile church to take seriously the story of Israel...

But there’s a balance here...and that’s the issue Paul takes up with the Jewish members of the Roman church.  The sign of the new covenant is not circumcision nor is it’s way the Torah or the “Law.”  

So Paul’s letter to the Romans, in a nutshell, is to Jews and Gentiles who are working out the implications of Jesus being the long awaited Messiah of Israel -- the Righteousness of God for both Jews and Gentiles.   

Righteousness -- that is exactly what chapter four is all about.  Paul is shedding light on how God has made the world righteous...which means put to rights or put in right relationship with God.  The Jewish believers have been demanding that the Gentiles in the church must identify with law and circumcision if they are to be a true part of the people of God. They have set preconditions that they expect the Gentiles to go through in order to be ‘really’ one of them...to ‘prove themselves’ before being able to lead in the church....Of course this is fueled in part by the Gentile insistence that they need not pay attention to the history of Israel...

In Romans 4, Paul is dealing with both of these issues.  In the opening verse of today’s reading, “The promise that Abraham would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.”   

It didn’t come through the law...the law wasn’t even laid out yet...besides that righteousness would be impossible through the law, because as Paul says, the law reveals how sinful we really are...it brings wrath...

But Gentile people, pay attention the story of Israel...because that’s where the story of salvation begins...After God had created all that is and named it as good...and we sinned against God, causing evil to run rampant in the world, God did not give up on us...instead he called a person and a family who were part of the problem to be a part of God’s solution. His name was Abram...His wife’s name was Sara.  The promise was that through Abram, God would begin his project of saving the world that had become subject to sin, death, and decay eventually changing Abram and Sarah’s name as a mark of the transformation God is bringing about in God’s world.  

So Paul makes clear to the Roman church: It is the faith of Abraham that is fruit of righteousness...not the law or anything else.  Consider Abraham...He was good as dead...His wife was barren...100 years old...if the promise is going to be, Abraham and Sarah know it isn’t going to be up to them.  There is nothing they can do to prime the pump of God’s promises...they learned that the hard way with the whole incident of Hagar and Ishmael.  The faith of Abraham is about realizing that without God’s saving intervention, there is absolutely no hope for newness or transformation...it requires a radical shift in the way we see ourselves....

Jesus put it like this: “"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Abraham was a foretaste of this kind of radical discipleship...he was as good as dead ... he had to deny himself and trust in the God who calls into existence things that do not exist...who gives life to the dead.  

That’s what the faith of Abraham is all about...for those of us in the church, it means no preconditions.  There is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING we can do to become righteous -- rightly related to God and one another...circumcision won’t magically make it happen...adherence to the law will only frustrate.  If you want to be a follower of Jesus,  death must occur...death to self...death to the idea that says ‘if it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”  Take up your cross and follow him so that in losing your life completely, you might truly, for once, have it completely through Him who is able to give life to the dead...who rose from the grave.  

By bringing into focus the story of Abraham, Paul is able to make it crystal clear for Jews and Gentiles alike in Rome...don’t depend upon your ancestry for righteousness--it’s not good enough.  But Gentiles, don’t discredit the history of Israel, because it is through that history that salvation comes to fruition.   

And for us, the contemporary church, the challenge is deep.  Paul has made it clear by focusing on the covenant to Abraham that there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn favor with God--we are dead in our sins...if we are going to be anything else, this God who is able to call into existence that which did not exist...this God who is able to give life to the dead, is going to have to act.  

And that is the good news of the Gospel.  This God has acted once and for all in Jesus the Messiah’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and final return.  We have been made righteous...the world is being put to rights...not by our works...not by our socio-economic status...not because of how long we’ve sat down and stood up in a church building...not because of who our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and aunts and uncles are...and not even because we have faith.   Because not even faith is the precondition for righteousness.  Faith is it's fruit. N.T. Wright says, "Faith is the sign of life; life is the gift of God. Justification is God's declaration that where this sign of life appears, the person in whom it appears is within the covenant."I think too often we make the little bit of faith we can muster up the star of salvation. No, Paul makes it clear: “It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification." It is not "my faith" in Jesus that makes me righteous before God but Jesus' 'once-for-all' faithfulness as our human representative that makes me righteous. If Jesus did not raise from the dead, we would still be in our sins...it wouldn’t matter how much faith we could muster up...

And so, if it is not even the little bit of faith that I can muster up that is the cause of righteousness, then why is the church going around telling the Susan’s of the world, ‘prove yourself?’  Do we really believe that Jesus has done everything that is necessary for salvation -- for right-relatedness?  Is there something else someone else needs to do to put the world to rights?  Why is the church telling Susan she can’t be apart of them until she’s met a certain amount of preconditions that have nothing to do with taking up the cross and following Jesus?  

Let’s revisit that true story and bring it to it’s conclusion. Remember JoAnna, the disgruntled church council member...she was letting the pastor have it for allowing Susan to have a place in the church before she had “proved herself” to a certain group of church members of that little church on the hill.  In response to JoAnna’s threat that she would leave the church if the pastor did not tell Susan she couldn’t do the Christmas pageant, the pastor responded, “I’ll make a deal with you, JoAnna.  If you can show me anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus looked at a potential disciple and said, “Get your life right...prove yourself worthy, and then follow me,” I’ll go and tell Susan she can’t be apart of this.  If you cannot, I cannot.

I wish I could say that the church member had a coming to Jesus moment and Susan did the Christmas pageant and all is well...but it didn’t happen that way, unfortunately...JoAnna did as she said she would...first she made sure Susan wouldn’t come back to the church...and then she and her family left the church until the pastor was no longer at the little church on the hill and they returned to their seats of power.  

This Lent the Gospel gives us the fresh invitation to follow Jesus to Jerusalem...to take up the cross and die to preconditions...to die to the way of the world and to live in the faith of Abraham that believes for all people that Jesus is and has done everything necessary for our salvation.  Let us freely accept whoever God sends our way and let that acceptance be the fruit of righteousness Paul calls faith.  Amen.