If God is for us, who can be against us? wrote Paul. I wonder if God is for all the people who have ever been and ever will be.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 8:26-39).
Unlike most of the other letters of Paul which have survived to become part of our New Testament, the letter to the Romans was sent to people that Paul had not yet met. Some of them he clearly had heard about. He clearly expected that they had heard about him. He planned to visit Rome on his way to Spain, so he wrote a letter to introduce himself and to ask for their help and support as he planned that great journey.
As a result, the letter to the Romans is more expansive than some of Paul’s other correspondence. Paul had more to say about the extent of his thinking and his theology. In his letters to the churches in Corinth and in Galatia, Paul focused more on specific concerns arising within those congregations. In his letter to the Romans, he was trying to describe who he was and how he thought and what he believed about Jesus. And so we have not just the longest of Paul’s letters, we have the one in which he had the most to say.
This section of the eighth chapter is just packed with Paul’s thinking about salvation and about God’s role, not just in creation, but in the extent of God’s love for creation. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The God said that sent Jesus, the God who was willing to sacrifice Jesus, the God who was willing to let the human beings do what they wanted to Jesus, is a God who will respond with grace and with mercy.
In Paul’s thinking no power on earth could step between God’s mercy and those to whom God chose to provide it. Paul called them God’s elect and indeed that’s true, those whom God has chosen. I do wonder if we can assume that God chose a small number. Paul worked diligently to increase that number.
But if God sent God’s Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him (as John, the gospel writer, later put it), well then how much of the world did God intend to save? And if there are no powers that can stand between God and God’s mercy, how many people will God preserve at the end of time?
I do think that I can’t entirely remove the possibility of condemnation for some. Between the freedom of God and the ability of human beings to make pretty catastrophic mistakes, I think that possibility is always there. I also think that God’s intent was, is and will always be, to welcome all humanity into that place of light and beauty and love that God has prepared. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions, and I go to prepare a place for you.” How many mansions have been prepared for us and for those we know and for those we do not know?
The answer to that question lies in the gracious heart of God.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Psalm 86 is a song of an individual person. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t written to be said together in a big worship service, or chanted by a procession through the streets. It describes the spiritual place that one person was in thousands of years ago. It doesn’t tell us a lot – the writer wasn’t very specific about things – but that does help make it accessible to any of us. The themes of the poem are familiar to us, though the events which prompted its writing might not be.
The poet’s first concern was, well, concern. The very first words are: “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” The psalmist wrote from a “day of trouble.” They had opponents, they had enemies. “O God, the insolent rise up against me; a band of ruffians seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.”
The need for help is not just a common theme in the Psalms. It is a common reality in human life. Sometimes our need is the result of other people’s actions. We might be targeted for crime. We might be discriminated against in employment or housing. We might be suffering from an injury or illness which doesn’t just test our health but also our financial resources and the support of our family and friends. We’ve all been through a global pandemic, when a shortage of human contact made it even harder to endure economic hardship and the fear of dangerous disease.
We know what need is. We know what it is to pray out of our needs.
Curiously, the Psalmist did not just pray out of their need. There’s no shame in doing that; there are Psalms that really do concentrate on the cry for help. This writer, however, spent roughly as much time on a second theme as on their concerns and distress.
The second theme was thanks and praise.
“I give thanks to you, O LORD my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.” A lot of the Psalms praise God. You could make a case that, in some way, they all do, but there are a good number that focus on praising God. About half of Psalm 86 praises God for being merciful and generous, for being great and powerful, for abounding in steadfast love.
We know what it’s like to pray in thanksgiving. We’ve enjoyed successes, we’ve received gifts, we’ve celebrated the beauties of the world. We’ve rejoiced at weddings, we’ve welcomed births, we’ve completed difficult things and received rewards. Out of these and more we pray with thanks.
This is a Psalm which simultaneously praises God’s goodness and seeks God’s aid in some pretty deep distress. It’s a Psalm that knows both pain and exultation, both sorrow and celebration. Which made one line really stand out for me:
“Give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”
In a Psalm that is divided between opposite themes, the writer asked for “an undivided heart.”
I think some people do have the notion that the life of faith is supposed to feel like one thing and one thing only. Once you’ve made the commitment, somehow your faith is supposed to keep you in a similar state of mind from day to day. A read through the Book of Psalms would tell you, to the contrary, that the life of faith is filled with different feelings. A read through one of the Gospels reveals that Jesus himself, though a remarkably consistent person, displayed a range of emotions and reactions on different occasions.
I’m not sure why anyone thinks that Christian faith means our internal life is supposed to be just one thing, but some do.
You don’t have to. At any rate, you don’t have to worry about it when you find that your mind keeps changing and your feelings keep changing from one day to the next. That happened to the prophets. It happened to the Psalmists. It happened to Jesus himself.
So how can this Psalmist call for a unified heart?
“Heart” means a lot of things to us. We think of the heart as the center of feelings. Unity of feelings is really unusual in human experience. It happens, but it happens relatively rarely and in pretty intense situations. I can think of a few occasions, mostly while driving, when the only emotion I was aware of fear. I can also remember times when I was overwhelmed with joy, to the point where other emotions simply weren’t present. That just hasn’t happened all that often, though, and frankly that’s a good thing. Overwhelming emotion is overwhelming. Even the most joyous moments in my life were better as moments than they would be as an ongoing reality.
I’ve also mentioned more than once that our feelings aren’t under our direct control. We can do things to influence our feelings – I’ve found that a good meal reduces my anxieties pretty effectively – but it’s really difficult to tell yourself, “I want to feel happy” and then actually do it. So the deepest understanding of the truth of God, for which the Psalmist prayed, isn’t going to give us a unified heart. We’re still going to feel what we feel, and most of the time that’s a mixture, isn’t it? A mixture of feelings about what’s right in front of it and the things on our mind and the things that linger, good and bad, in our memories.
Did the Psalmist actually mean a unified mind?
I don’t think so, and not just because of the use of the word “heart.” The whole Psalm argues against it, because it’s a Psalm about both need and praise. The Psalm itself is divided in mind.
How do we resolve the paradox of the unified heart in a divided Psalm?
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us. We are held in a deep place. An ample place. A generous, sufficient, and roomy place. Though we might fear paradox, God does not, and it is in God’s soil that we are firmly planted. We’re safe, even in the contradictions. Messy and weedy for sure, but safe.”
In our understanding, but even more so in the use of the Psalmists and the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, “heart” was not just the seat of emotion. It was also a seat of decision: of loyalty. Of commitment. Of devotion. It’s one of the reasons that we use “heart” when we think about the way people come together in loving relationships – they’re rooted in emotion, but they go beyond that to commitment.
For the Psalmist, I think, the unified heart was able to bring together the needs and the thanksgiving, the feelings of fear and the feelings of joy, the reality of deprivation and the truth of God’s presence, into a foundational reliance upon God. That is, what connects need and praise is that we come to God with both.
Unlike emotion, that’s something that we can choose. We can bring our burdens to God for help and for comfort. We can bring our hurts to God for healing and for renewal. We can bring our uncertainties to God for guidance and for wisdom. We can bring our griefs to God for comfort and for resurrection.
And we can bring our successes to God for thanksgiving and for continuance. We can bring our celebrations to God for increase and for sharing. We can bring our joys to God for blessing and for remembering.
The unified heart is the one that knows that God cares about our joys and sorrows. The unified heart is the one that lifts the voice in praise and in petition. The unified heart is the one that waits in silence for God’s aid and for God’s smile.
Don’t worry that you feel different today than you did yesterday. Don’t worry that you think new things from day to day. Feelings will change, and I earnestly hope that you’re learning things as time goes on.
Do raise your needs to God; do raise your thanks to God. That is the practice and the commitment that makes a unified heart.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he’s preaching, hopefully to improve it, and sometimes accidentally.
The photo shows a sculpture of a world being unified. Taken by Eric Anderson in South Korea in 2013.
Psalm 86 pairs two of the most common prayers of human life: prayer arising from need, and prayer arising from thanks.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the second half of Psalm 86 (Psalm 86:11-17). The lectionary editors have chosen to begin this week’s reading with the words, “Teach me your way, O Lord,” that I may live in your truth. That is a wonderful thing for any of us to do and to pray: to seek from God the guidance and the leadership to shape our lives to mirror that of our God and our Savior.
Curiously, however, it is not the dominant thought of this ancient poem.
Psalm 86 is far more concerned with two other things. The first is a plea for assistance. The author (who is credited as David before the Psalm actually begins) the author says that he is beset with enemies, with a band of ruffians even. The other theme is a theme of profound thanksgiving. The author repeatedly raises praises to God for the things that God has done in the past.
Need and praise. These are the side by side dominant themes of Psalm 86.
I suggest that they can be and frequently are the dominant themes of our lives here in the 21st century. Some of our needs might be fleeting: the hunger we feel when we rise from sleep in the morning, something that we can satisfy with a breakfast. And then there are those whose hungers in the morning are not satisfied with a quick breakfast, but must linger until they find the resources to satisfy them.
There are other hungers that are also deep and enduring: the hungers of the Spirit, the hungers of the soul, the longing for those who have passed away, the longing for justice and for righteousness in a world that often seems to care very little. Need is our constant prayer.
And thanksgiving is also our constant prayer. For we do rise to a world that is filled with beauty. We rise to a world that is filled with human beings who do love one another —imperfectly, it must be said — but love is still the dominant experience of most of us in this world. And love can be the dominant experience for everyone in this world, because human beings can bring it and God always brings that love and grace.
Need and thanksgiving. These are our prayers yesterday, today and tomorrow.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I have only briefly been a farmer or a gardener. My parents decided one year to plant a small vegetable garden behind our house. It wasn’t a great location. Between hedges, a small garage, and fruit trees, it didn’t get much sun. The soil wasn’t terribly rich. And then there was the family of garden-loving rabbits that lived nearby. Nevertheless, we planted a garden, and my brother and I were allowed to choose one vegetable to plant. Me: I chose carrots.
I like carrots.
We were careful if not terribly skilled about it. We cleared away grasses, dug holes, carefully planted seeds, watered them, and did whatever else we were supposed to do to make things grow. It took time, of course, but gradually shoots appeared above the places we’d placed those seeds. Shoots also appeared in places we hadn’t planted seeds, because we weren’t very good at weeding. Shoots didn’t appear above all the places we’d planted seeds, for whatever reasons that seeds don’t grow, which may have included shade, poor soil, and rabbits.
As far as I can remember, I only ate one carrot from that garden. I wasn’t patient enough at that age to let them sit in the ground and grow. I don’t remember being all that impressed with that tiny carrot, but I did eat it. I certainly didn’t get the results of a hundredfold increase over what I’d planted.
Of course, you don’t get that with root vegetables.
I am not a farmer.
Most of us aren’t – with at least one of our families here at Church of the Holy Cross a notable exception. Our daily work doesn’t include planting, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, and starting all over again. I would guess that at least some of you are gardeners, however, and hopefully more successful gardeners than I’ve been, and would recognize that there’s something peculiar about the sower in Jesus’ story.
He’s a very careless sower.
I carefully planted each carrot seed, leaving space between it and its neighbor so there was space to grow. I grant you that carrots and grains grow differently, but this sower seems careless at best. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Instead of carefully calculating how each and every seed is going to be planted and cultivated, the sower just scatters the seed on all kinds of different terrain. I can almost imagine the people around Jesus, many farmers themselves, all dependent on whatever the earth produces, puzzled and even laughing at Jesus’ depiction of the sower. What is this crazy person doing, scattering seed on ground that he knows won’t yield a harvest? Why bother?”
Even ignorant children like I was know that you keep the seeds away from paths and rocks and thorns. Why didn’t Jesus know that?
Well, of course he did.
When Jesus created his parables, he had a technique of starting with something ordinary, something straightforward, something with an ending you could anticipate. Then he introduced something unexpected, out of joint. It’s that moment in the story, that moment when the audience says, “Wait. What did you just say?” that Jesus used to make his point.
That’s why the sower is so careless.
Because we – meaning the followers of Jesus – are not farmers.
Farmers and gardeners have to focus on results. The resources of horticulture are sometimes scarce and often not under the farmer’s control. So they do the best they can to choose proper soil, to nourish the soil as best they can, to protect the growing plants from disease and low water and things that eat leaves. Farmers and gardeners have to concentrate on the sites and the soils that give them the best chance for a good harvest. They may seek to expand their available good soil by breaking up paths and moving rocks and cutting back thorns, but that’s a long-term investment, isn’t it? They don’t plant seed on that land until the hindrances have been removed.
That’s not how the followers of Jesus work. Because we’re not farmers.
The seed, which Jesus described as the Word, gets cast everywhere and anywhere. It shares with actual seed the characteristic that it grows – seeds grow into plants, the Word grows within the human soul to produce more loving, more compassionate people. The Word, which I think we have to understand as being more than simply speaking of God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as emulating God; the Word, which I think we have to understand as displaying the love of God, gets spread to everyone and anyone.
It doesn’t always take. As Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “One can find examples of each kind of response to the word in Matthew’s Gospel. There are many in Matthew’s story who ‘hear the word of the kingdom and do not understand’ (3:19), including the religious leaders who are antagonistic to Jesus’ ministry from the beginning. The crowds respond positively to Jesus, especially to his miracles of healing (9:8; 15:31; 21:8-9), yet turn against Jesus at the end and demand his crucifixion (27:15-23), leaving us to wonder whether they ever truly understood.
“The disciples themselves might be included among those who fall away ‘when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word’ (3:21; cf. 26:56b, 69-75). And the rich young man unable to part with his possessions (19:16-22) provides a stunning example of ‘one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing’ (3:22).”
What I have to emphasize here is that Jesus shared the Word, the invitation, the compassion, the love of God to all of them. More than once. Over and over. Yes, he ate with the sinners and the tax collectors. He also ate with the nice people, the good people, and some of them, I think, grew in the Word themselves. Others did not.
We are not farmers. Not when we’re sharing the Word and the love of God.
For one thing, how do we know what kind of person we’re sharing God’s love with? The ohi’a, I observe, grows in places that I would never imagine. So does the Word of God. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Who am I to tell God, the Creator of the earth and all that is in it, what ‘good soil’ looks like? Who am I to decide who is worthy and who is not of the sower’s generosity? Who am I to hoard what I have been so freely and lavishly given? Who am I to look at God’s profligate blessing and call it waste?”
We are not farmers. We are disciples.
And the people with whom we share the love of God are not soil, they are people. You can change soil. Famers and gardeners create fertile soil from paths and rocks and thorns with time and effort. Ohi’a trees transform lava rock into fertile soil over decades.
You can’t directly change people – but people can and do change, and you can support them as they do. You can help them nurture the seeds of God’s Word, of God’s love, of God’s grace within them.
You do it by believing it will grow. What is packed hard may soften. What is stony may break apart. What is thorny may be draw aside. Who knows what impact our love and care added to God’s love and grace may have?
We are not farmers. We are disciples.
Debie Thomas continues: “How I wish that the Church — the Church across the ages, the Church across all cultures, denominations, and circumstances — were known for its absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of weeping in the wake of our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst into colorful, riotous, joyous life.”
Absurd generosity. Like God’s. Like Jesus’.
Let’s do that.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches – intentionally and otherwise – so the sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as presented.
If we planted fields and gardens the way Jesus’ sower scattered seed, it wouldn’t work well. But if we scatter God’s love that way, it might work very well indeed.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking that you might be wondering about the bandage. I did just have to have some skin surgery. It was minor and everything that needs to be removed is removed. You can expect that there will be a bandage (somewhat smaller as the weeks go on) on my brow for the next few weeks.
I am also thinking about the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23). This contains one of Jesus’ best known parables, the Parable of the Sower. It also contains something that is a little less usual for one of Jesus’ parables, that is, an explanation.
Most of the time, Jesus let his stories stand by themselves. In this case, Jesus’ disciples wanted to know what he meant by describing someone who went out and scattered seed in the most unlikely of places. And in some of those places, the seeds simply could not grow or could not thrive. In other places, the seeds sprouted and produced astonishing yields.
Jesus compared the seeds to the Word of God. In some places, the Word of God is simply rejected or choked out. In other places, the Word of God finds fertile ground and bears much fruit.
I think that one of our roles as Jesus’ disciples is to take on that of the Sower. That is, to scatter the Word around. Now, if we were gardeners, and I am not one, but if we were gardeners or farmers, we would be careful about where we placed the seeds. We want each seed to have the best opportunity to produce a plant, to grow, to flower, and to bear fruit. But for the Word, for the grace of God, for the blessings of God, for the description of our loving God, well, for that, the guidance is different, isn’t it? The guidance is: describe the love of God to everyone, whether it seems like they might be thorny soil or rocky soil or good soil, whatever they are.
We will find out who they are by what happens when the Word tries to take root.
We scatter the words. We scatter the love of God. We proclaim the love of God. We display the love of God anywhere and everywhere, so that the love of God may grow around us and bear fruit.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus set his closest associates on the challenging assignment of bringing compassion to those who needed it so. We have the same assignment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth chapters of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 9:35-10:8).
This section begins with Jesus’ observation that the people of the villages that he had met were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. There was more work to be done than he could do himself. He summoned twelve from amongst his followers, and he gave them power and authority.
He appointed them to be ambassadors of the movement, to go out and visit these other villages. There, he directed them, proclaim the good news that the realm of God is drawing near. Cast out the demons, heal the sick, and by the way, make no preparation as you go. Don’t save any money, don’t bring even any extra clothing.
It was, and it is, a tough assignment. I would argue that we as disciples today: we are the heirs of those twelve. We are still asked to do something about bringing the reign of God closer to being in the world. To do what we can for the sick, to comfort those who are pressed by evil spirits, and to assist those who are pressed by evil people. We continue in this long tradition of seeing what is wrong in the world, and bringing good news and good action to those who suffer to those in need.
Proclaim the good news that the realm of God is near. Bring healing and comfort and assurance, and you will be doing the work of Jesus.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus compared himself to a shepherd, one whose sheep recognized, and one who knew all the names of the ones he cared for.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 10:1-10). This opening section leads toward one of the better known “I am” statements in John’s book, when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.”
Leading up to that, Jesus spoke about how sheep recognize their shepherd and how shepherds know the names of their sheep. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said.
Names were extraordinarily important in the ancient Middle Eastern world. Moses wanted to know God’s name. Adam gave names to the animals in the Garden of Eden. And Jesus was given a name which means salvation.
Names were important. Names still are important.
Someone who knows you is somebody who will remember your name. Somebody who values you will work to remember your name. Someone who loves you knows your name.
Jesus told those folks 2,000 years ago that he knew their names, that God knew their names. And through John, Jesus still speaks to us 2,000 years later to reassure us that God knows our names. God cares about us. God loves us.
That’s what I am thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
When Jesus met a woman at a well in Samaria, it turned out that they both had something to offer to one another: Refreshment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42): the conversation between Jesus and a woman he met at a well in Samaria.
The conversation started with Jesus’ simple request that she share some of the water she was drawing so that he could have a drink. It went from there to matters much deeper — deeper even than the well, if you like. It went to spiritual matters. It went even to the identity of the Messiah, the Deliverer, the one who was coming.
Unlike lots of other conversations, Jesus actually acknowledged to the woman that he was the Messiah.
The conversation was persuasive enough that she went back to the town and invited her neighbors to meet him. She said, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. He couldn’t be the Messiah — or could he? Come and see.”
It occurs to me that this story is about refreshment. It started with Jesus asking to be refreshed with the literal water to be drawn from the well. It continued with the refreshment that Jesus offered to this woman and to her neighbors: refreshment of the spirit.
He offered and delivered not just an acceptance, but also real valuing for her and for those around her, despite the fact that she was a Samaritan, despite the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that there were a number of things that should have kept them distant from one another.
Yet they refreshed one another.
I think refreshment is a central activity, a central calling, a central obligation, if you like, of the life of faith. We are not simply here to be ourselves. We are here to support one another, to be a community, to be a family, if you like. In that family we refresh one another. We provide refreshment such as water, food, shelter. We provide refreshment emotionally and relationally. And when and how we can, we offer refreshment for the spirit: that living water of which Jesus spoke that flows through our very souls and renews our lives.
Refreshment.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
As he sat down to write his letter to the church in Rome – or perhaps as he stood to dictate it to the scribe, Tertius, who offers greetings at the end of the letter – the Apostle Paul had an agenda. He planned a trip to Spain. He had travelled a lot in the years since the risen Jesus summoned him to proclaim this good news. He hoped to go even further, to the place Clement of Rome, writing at the end of the first century, called “the farthest west.”
Along the way, said Paul, he wanted to visit the Christian community in Rome.
Unlike his other letters in the New Testament, Paul wrote this letter to people he didn’t know. He hoped for their assistance, I’m sure: a place to stay during his visit. He said he looked forward to preaching the gospel, so I’m sure he planned to do the same things he’d done in cities and towns across modern Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. He wanted to meet people he’d heard good things of, names that had reached his ears across the Mediterranean Sea.
The Letter to the Romans was Paul on his best behavior, writing to strangers, trying to make a good impression.
Paul knew, and the Romans knew, that their church had had problems. A major one was that there’d been fights in the streets. The Emperor Claudius had banished Jews from the city of Rome on because of “disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus,” which most scholars interpret as dissension between Jews and Jews leaning into the new understandings of Jesus. The chances are very good that most if not all of the members of the Roman church had been shut out of the city, though it’s unknown for how long.
That probably wasn’t the Roman church’s only problem. Romans has sixteen chapters. The last chapter is a long set of greetings. Chapters twelve through fifteen contain a typically Pauline set of advice including, “Let love be genuine,” and “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Except for his opening introduction, he gave the rest of the letter: his time, his consideration, and his considerable focused attention, to one question: What difference is there, if any, between God’s relationship with Christians of a Jewish background and God’s relationship with Christians of a Gentile background?
It was a knotty problem. As Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “In Romans 3:29 Paul asked a provocative question: is God the God of Jews only? Or is he not also the God of Gentiles? In contrast to every attempt to claim God as ours, and ours alone, Paul says that in Abraham God loves all people equally. In the famous words of this week’s gospel, God so loves all the world (John 3:16). Our tendency is to fear the other, to marginalize the strange, to dismiss all that is different from who and what we know.”
That’s true now, and it was true in the first century. Jews had long regarded their relationship with God as unique. God might have created the world, but had only entered into covenant with one group of people. On the other hand, Romans – especially those dwelling in the city of Rome – regarded themselves as the greatest people ever. Most people living in the Empire were not Roman citizens and lived under different laws. Roman citizens, for example, could be executed for treason but they could not be crucified.
The Roman church included both Jews and Romans. Some of the latter would have been citizens and some non-citizens, adding another layer of class distinction to an uncomfortable mix, with everyone wondering: How does God really feel about that person on the other side of the room?
That’s why Paul got so excited about a revolutionary idea: that a relationship with God could be established not by living in the right place, not by divine selection, not through ritual observance, but through faith. Anyone could make the decision to trust in God. Anyone. “For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us)…”
Not only for me. Also for them. Not only for us. Also for them. Not only for the select of Rome. Also for Spaniards. Not only for the Jews. Also for the Greeks. Not only for the men. Also for the women. Not only for today’s believers. Also for tomorrow’s believers. Not only for people of the “Christian” nations. Also for the people of the non-Christian nations. Not only for the rich. Also for the poor. Not only for the powerful. Also for the marginalized. Not only for the respectable. Also for the discounted. Not only for the Americans. Also for the Iranians. Not only for the Republicans. Also for the Democrats, and the Independents, and the Greens, and the Libertarians, and so on. Not only for the people who agree with me. Also for the ones who don’t.
Let’s face it. God gets along better, with more people, than I do.
As Lucy Lind Hogan writes at Working Preacher, “Paul had experienced God’s amazing, unbelievable, overflowing love and forgiveness. How could God, in Jesus Christ, have forgiven him for all the evil that he had done? How could God accept the one who had sought to murder the disciples of Jesus? Because that is who our God is. For Paul, justification by grace was a theological concept only after it had been a life changing, throw-you-to-the-ground, awe-filled experience. God had offered him new life, and he had believed.”
These are anxious days. Hold on to that core of trust and faith: God loves you just as much as Paul or anyone. God loves you.
God also loves us. And God loves them. No matter who “we” are. No matter who “they” are.
Not only for us. Also for everyone.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while preaching, so the sermon prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
As Matthew described it, Jesus began his ministry by teaching the good news of God’s realm, summoning people together into it, and bringing people healing. This is the core of Christianity.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 4:12-23), his account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
That ministry began when John was arrested. Jesus returned to the region of the Galilee. He then went and recruited the first of his disciples — Peter and Andrew, James and John — from where they had been fishing in the sea of Galilee. He taught in the synagogues. He proclaimed the good news of the Realm of God, and he cured the sick, any who came to him with some kind of a disease.
I think you can argue that this is the essence, not just of Jesus, but of Christianity. It is founded in the teaching (and the teaching of what?): the teaching of Good News, the teaching of God’s nearness, the teaching of God’s forgiveness, the teaching of God’s love.
And how do we express that love? We express it through healing, through comfort, through gathering people together, through building a better society, a better world.
There are so many ways to understand “Messiah,” “Anointed One.” The most obvious ones are to connect anointing with the creation of the monarch, or the appointment of a general, the selection of a leader of war. But Jesus, though he was the Messiah, simply didn’t go in any of those directions. He accepted baptism rather than an anointing with oil. He brought healing rather than war. He preached good news rather than condemnation. He spoke of repentance in order that people would find their way to full participation in the Realm of God.
“Come with me and I’ll make you fish for people,” he said to those first four followers. Fish for people not so that they might be consumed, but so that they might thrive.
This is the essence of Christianity: Teaching. Teaching good news. Summoning people together. And seeing that as many as we can find their healing.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
