Old Mystic, March 22, 2009
Numbers 21:4-9
Summary
God has spoken and continues to speak to us through symbols that point to His grace, his forgiveness, and the gift of life. As the serpent lifted up in the wilderness became the symbol of God's compassion, love, forgiveness, and salvation, it also points to God’s supreme revelation: Jesus Christ, our Savior, Redeemer, God with us.
Sermon
Symbols are such an important part of our lives because they point to many cherished things, some that are religious and therefore sacred, and others that engage customs, values, experiences. Many of the symbols that are meaningful to us are cultural. For Argentineans, for example, drinking mate, the South American green tea that is drank sipping from a metal straw out of a hollow gourd filled with the infusion, is a powerful symbol of friendship and community as the drink is passed around in a circle and everybody drinks from the same straw. My experience tells me that the simple idea of sharing the straw makes most Americans cringe!
Religious symbols are more or less clearly defined by traditions. For example, crosses, rosaries, icons, images, and statues are symbols in the Christian tradition that connect us with the Divinity in some sort of way. Needless to say, for us as Protestants and as Baptists, none of these symbols has power in itself (sacramental power); they are just finite symbols that point to ultimate reality and for that reason we must understand their limitations without diminishing the power of the truth they point to. Robert Neville, professor of Theology and Philosophy at Boston University, would refer to them as broken symbols: they effectively engage us in spite of their known limitations.
When we think of a serpent as a symbol we understand better its brokenness. Throughout history and across cultures serpents have conveyed many different meanings such as life, death, protection, danger, and even the power of healing, as in the symbol of modern medicine. In the Christian tradition, the serpent of the Garden of Eden has been a symbol of temptation, deception, and evil and clearly associated with Satan. But at the same time, as we look at today’s story of the Israelites in the wilderness, it becomes a symbol of compassion, love, grace, forgiveness, healing, and salvation. The poisonous, killer serpent has become the saving serpent.
Life in the desert was not easy for the Israelites. In spite of the fact that they had been nomadic, the struggles for survival were taking a toll on them as they kept wandering for years. It must be hard to have to continuously strive to find food and water where they are so scarce. God had provided manna (like coriander seed that tasted like wafers made with honey) and when they got tired of it, quails. God made fresh, drinking water flow from a rock. God protected them and handed them their enemies in battle like when they defeated the Canaanite king of Arad. Yet, they were tired and when people are tired they complain.
They complained in spite of the fact that they had much to be thankful for. Had they forgotten how God brought them out slavery in Egypt? How God protected them from Pharaoh’s army dividing the waters of the Red Sea or how God led them through the wilderness guiding them by pillars of cloud and fire? It seems that either they were not clear about their purpose and destiny, the promise of the land flowing milk and honey, or that they had lost their faith. Lack of faith brings about lack of vision and lack of vision, the loss of meaning, and the loss of meaning, despair and weariness. And people weary and in despair complain.
The Israelites’ complained because they had to go a long way; the text says that they “became inpatient on the way” which was God’s choice and, as usual, it was made clear through Moses, their leader. And their complaint grew to the point when they “spoke against God and against Moses.” “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we detest this miserable food.” So the complaints turned to be sinful as they spoke against God and God’ chosen leader. The narrative is blatant: God punished their slandering with a plague of poisonous snakes that killed many of them.
It may be tempting to focus on the evidence suggested by the text that death and suffering are ways that God has to punish sin. But this is an ancient text for a people with a limited understanding about the nature and character of God. It is perhaps easier to admonish ourselves about the benefits of obedience, submission, and compliance to what we are commanded. That is the simple way. But that view would prevent us from seeing God’s abundant grace, His love, and compassion. We need not regard our sufferings as a punishment for our misdeeds though they may very well related to our own mistakes and failures; we must focus on a God that in his love will always have a way for us—a way to save us.
The Israelites changed their minds—that is, they repented. They decided to try a different way; after all, complaints and slandering had not worked. They recognized that they had sinned and went to Moses to ask him to pray to God so the serpents would go away from them. So Moses prayed and God instructed him to make a bronze poisonous serpent and set it on a pole. The serpents did not go away, but whoever was bit by a one of them would look at the bronze symbol and be healed and protected. The very serpent that brought so much suffering to the people became the symbol of salvation.
John the Evangelist picked up this symbol in his Gospel when he said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes may have eternal life.” It is indeed a broken symbol since many of us would find it to be not the most appropriate symbol to point to Jesus. But at the same time it is an indication of the many ways God has to bring us into his grace. The people of Israel had to set their eyes on the bronze serpent lifted up for their salvation, healing, and protection. We, 21st century onlookers, as many generations preceding us, can look at Jesus Christ, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith who… endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Unfortunately, so often we need to be reminded by our own snakes, the snakes that bite us, to remember about God’s love and grace. How many times we only come to God when the desperate circumstance of our lives make us first complain, then slander or even curse, go into depression and despair, and only in the end cry for help? God will find the most diverse, creative, and surprising ways to point to Jesus Christ. God wants us to connect with Him and with His Son in whom He offers salvation and healing.
We are in the Lenten season. It is a time of the year that powerfully points to Christ. It is symbolic of the passion of our Lord, his journey to the cross, his suffering, and ultimately of his victory over sin and death. It is perhaps also a time to pray as the Israelites asked Moses in the wilderness; a good time to lift a prayer of repentance and of changing our minds. and to look in the direction where God is pointing to: Jesus Christ, our savior, our redeemer, and our healer.
Surrendering to God's Wisdom
Old Mystic, March 15, 2009
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Summary
By His Grace and Love God grants us the opportunity to come into his wisdom and receive, understand, and proclaim the saving power of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Sermon
I would like to believe that not everyone in this audience was raised watching the TV series “Father knows Best.” After all, it originally aired between 1954 and 1960! At the same time I would guess that most of us are familiar with the story and must have watched a re-run of this warm family sitcom that depicts life in the 50’s. Jim Anderson, a General Insurance agent portrayed by Robert Young, lives a quiet family life in a middle class Midwestern suburb with his wife, Margaret, and his children Betty, Bud, and Kathy. Those who remember the series can probably relate to the warmth, the simplicity, and the charm of this comedy, which conveyed a sense of the presumed happy life of the times. Father always had an answer for the domestic problems that would emerge in a household like his, understood to be the typical American home. It was sentimental and it assumed a cultural sense of what is right deeply rooted in the American ethos of the 1950’s.
Some have called the comedy rosy and paternalistic, since it relied on a hierarchical understanding of family life, and tended to have an unrealistic view of it. After all, life is not easy and many of the issues we deal with are more complex and pressing than siblings’ disputes about house chores, or missing a high school football game for being out too late the night before. Yet, in its context, understanding that Jim Anderson was a son of his time, his wisdom was good. Father knew best because he had that ability to discern what was right for his family; he had common sense. His gift of human wisdom helped him to be a guide to those who listened to him. What about wisdom in this age? Or in any age? Is there any human wisdom that would lead us to understand the cross of Jesus Christ?
Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, wants to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he makes his case by calling his proclamation, “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” It does not begin with the understanding or the mastering the body of human knowledge about the faith; the acquisition of a mass of information about the “right” Christian beliefs. It requires faith and surrendering to God’s Wisdom—which may be unfathomable—that means, as I put it, coming in submission to an encounter with the Living God. And this very often happens when we are confronted with the harsh reality of the Cross. The stumbling block of the Son of God crucified; the foolishness of Savior that cannot save himself by just walking away. Can we understand it by means of our human wisdom? Does it make any sense? I want to affirm that surrendering to God’s Wisdom, we can understand a few things about human wisdom.
HUMAN WISDOM IS FEAR OF GOD
The book of Proverbs, known as a book of human wisdom, asserts that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” And fear here should not be understood as terror or being irrationally afraid of something unknown; it has to do with that sense of humbling ourselves in recognition of our humanity as we stand at the very presence of the Living God. I like the Message’s rendition of this verse (Proverbs 1:7) that says, “Start with God—the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.”
Fear of God is implicit in Paul’s teaching to the church in Corinth. He says, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” The world cannot know God through the wisdom and knowledge of this present system of human affairs! What is science if not just a mechanistic description of a common perception of reality, which may very well serve technology in helping human life on this planet, but does not answer ultimate questions? God in His wisdom chose the message of Christ crucified to reveal his saving love and the hope of the kingdom. For that reason we must humble ourselves before Christ, with a sense of humiliation—healthy fear. Surrendering to the Living Christ, to God, is the beginning of wisdom and entering into a relationship where we’ll taste—just taste—the unfathomable Wisdom of God.
HUMAN WISDOM IS KNOWING THAT WE DON’T KNOW
This May sound relativistic, particularly in a world—including Christianity, that strives for the human knowledge of clean, cut, comprehensible universal truth. We love to make claims about our knowledge of universal truth but, how much can we grasp of them with our limited human understanding? We can perhaps assert that there are universal values. But we can only have a limited comprehension of the depth of their meaning. Paul himself talking about human knowledge when teaching about love said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly; but then we will see face to face.” Human wisdom means acknowledging that we know that we know nothing.
For that reason Paul challenges the wisdom of the Jews and the Greeks. The wisdom of God, the wisdom of the cross, of the crucified Christ, was a stumbling block for the Jews. They wanted a liberator from the oppression of the Romans; a king for eternity—the reappearance of David; they wanted a victorious Messiah, not a pale, suffering, weak, Galilean carpenter who claimed to be a Rabi. And for the Romans? The cross was simply foolishness. Who could believe in a king who did not have an army but just a bunch of fishermen and outcasts from a lost province of their vast empire? But for those who surrender by faith to the message of the cross, it is the power of God. It doesn’t seem to be wisdom; but if we humble ourselves and we admit that we know nothing, we begin to walk in the wisdom of God.
HUMAN WISDOM IS KNOWING HOW TO APPLY THE LITTLE WE KNOW
If the cross sounds foolish, or if it is a stumbling block, we must perhaps ponder what a great love God has for humanity to offer His son to death and death on a cross. Are we beginning to grasp the importance of Love? Love is central to God’s Being and therefore to his wisdom. From our human perspective, loving, in many cases, will seem to be very foolish. And it will often put us in a moral dilemma. Can anyone love a rapist, or a child abuser? Really, I couldn’t possibly see any wisdom in loving such people if love means trusting them; believing them. Only God has wisdom to love all human beings! In fact, God took upon himself all the sin of the world, of all the sinners of the world because he loved the world and wouldn’t withhold any effort to redeem all the people of the world. Is there any other way but surrendering to this incomprehensible wisdom?
We may not know how to love, and be merciful, and how to help those around us in every case. Again, there are many situations in which applying those Christian virtues may be a little difficult. Not everyone “qualifies for the benefits” according to our human book. But if we do love those that we can love, and help those who we can help, and serve those who are within our reach, are we not somehow beginning to apply a little wisdom? Saint Augustine said, “love and do what you like;” quite a risky statement since doing what we like may not always be the right thing. But in the wisdom of love, if in any way that love comprehends the deepest Love of God, then we will have more understanding; more wisdom to do the right thing.
It is about surrendering. It is about faith. God wants us to look at the cross because it is a profound expression of His love as crude, and as horrendous as it may seem. “God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us…” From our human wisdom’s angle it sounds foolish. That is why the whole message of the gospel and of belief is about, faith, about believing God; it is about coming into His loving arms; it is to experience an encounter with the Living God and surrendering to his Wisdom; to Him.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Summary
By His Grace and Love God grants us the opportunity to come into his wisdom and receive, understand, and proclaim the saving power of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Sermon
I would like to believe that not everyone in this audience was raised watching the TV series “Father knows Best.” After all, it originally aired between 1954 and 1960! At the same time I would guess that most of us are familiar with the story and must have watched a re-run of this warm family sitcom that depicts life in the 50’s. Jim Anderson, a General Insurance agent portrayed by Robert Young, lives a quiet family life in a middle class Midwestern suburb with his wife, Margaret, and his children Betty, Bud, and Kathy. Those who remember the series can probably relate to the warmth, the simplicity, and the charm of this comedy, which conveyed a sense of the presumed happy life of the times. Father always had an answer for the domestic problems that would emerge in a household like his, understood to be the typical American home. It was sentimental and it assumed a cultural sense of what is right deeply rooted in the American ethos of the 1950’s.
Some have called the comedy rosy and paternalistic, since it relied on a hierarchical understanding of family life, and tended to have an unrealistic view of it. After all, life is not easy and many of the issues we deal with are more complex and pressing than siblings’ disputes about house chores, or missing a high school football game for being out too late the night before. Yet, in its context, understanding that Jim Anderson was a son of his time, his wisdom was good. Father knew best because he had that ability to discern what was right for his family; he had common sense. His gift of human wisdom helped him to be a guide to those who listened to him. What about wisdom in this age? Or in any age? Is there any human wisdom that would lead us to understand the cross of Jesus Christ?
Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, wants to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he makes his case by calling his proclamation, “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” It does not begin with the understanding or the mastering the body of human knowledge about the faith; the acquisition of a mass of information about the “right” Christian beliefs. It requires faith and surrendering to God’s Wisdom—which may be unfathomable—that means, as I put it, coming in submission to an encounter with the Living God. And this very often happens when we are confronted with the harsh reality of the Cross. The stumbling block of the Son of God crucified; the foolishness of Savior that cannot save himself by just walking away. Can we understand it by means of our human wisdom? Does it make any sense? I want to affirm that surrendering to God’s Wisdom, we can understand a few things about human wisdom.
HUMAN WISDOM IS FEAR OF GOD
The book of Proverbs, known as a book of human wisdom, asserts that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” And fear here should not be understood as terror or being irrationally afraid of something unknown; it has to do with that sense of humbling ourselves in recognition of our humanity as we stand at the very presence of the Living God. I like the Message’s rendition of this verse (Proverbs 1:7) that says, “Start with God—the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.”
Fear of God is implicit in Paul’s teaching to the church in Corinth. He says, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” The world cannot know God through the wisdom and knowledge of this present system of human affairs! What is science if not just a mechanistic description of a common perception of reality, which may very well serve technology in helping human life on this planet, but does not answer ultimate questions? God in His wisdom chose the message of Christ crucified to reveal his saving love and the hope of the kingdom. For that reason we must humble ourselves before Christ, with a sense of humiliation—healthy fear. Surrendering to the Living Christ, to God, is the beginning of wisdom and entering into a relationship where we’ll taste—just taste—the unfathomable Wisdom of God.
HUMAN WISDOM IS KNOWING THAT WE DON’T KNOW
This May sound relativistic, particularly in a world—including Christianity, that strives for the human knowledge of clean, cut, comprehensible universal truth. We love to make claims about our knowledge of universal truth but, how much can we grasp of them with our limited human understanding? We can perhaps assert that there are universal values. But we can only have a limited comprehension of the depth of their meaning. Paul himself talking about human knowledge when teaching about love said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly; but then we will see face to face.” Human wisdom means acknowledging that we know that we know nothing.
For that reason Paul challenges the wisdom of the Jews and the Greeks. The wisdom of God, the wisdom of the cross, of the crucified Christ, was a stumbling block for the Jews. They wanted a liberator from the oppression of the Romans; a king for eternity—the reappearance of David; they wanted a victorious Messiah, not a pale, suffering, weak, Galilean carpenter who claimed to be a Rabi. And for the Romans? The cross was simply foolishness. Who could believe in a king who did not have an army but just a bunch of fishermen and outcasts from a lost province of their vast empire? But for those who surrender by faith to the message of the cross, it is the power of God. It doesn’t seem to be wisdom; but if we humble ourselves and we admit that we know nothing, we begin to walk in the wisdom of God.
HUMAN WISDOM IS KNOWING HOW TO APPLY THE LITTLE WE KNOW
If the cross sounds foolish, or if it is a stumbling block, we must perhaps ponder what a great love God has for humanity to offer His son to death and death on a cross. Are we beginning to grasp the importance of Love? Love is central to God’s Being and therefore to his wisdom. From our human perspective, loving, in many cases, will seem to be very foolish. And it will often put us in a moral dilemma. Can anyone love a rapist, or a child abuser? Really, I couldn’t possibly see any wisdom in loving such people if love means trusting them; believing them. Only God has wisdom to love all human beings! In fact, God took upon himself all the sin of the world, of all the sinners of the world because he loved the world and wouldn’t withhold any effort to redeem all the people of the world. Is there any other way but surrendering to this incomprehensible wisdom?
We may not know how to love, and be merciful, and how to help those around us in every case. Again, there are many situations in which applying those Christian virtues may be a little difficult. Not everyone “qualifies for the benefits” according to our human book. But if we do love those that we can love, and help those who we can help, and serve those who are within our reach, are we not somehow beginning to apply a little wisdom? Saint Augustine said, “love and do what you like;” quite a risky statement since doing what we like may not always be the right thing. But in the wisdom of love, if in any way that love comprehends the deepest Love of God, then we will have more understanding; more wisdom to do the right thing.
It is about surrendering. It is about faith. God wants us to look at the cross because it is a profound expression of His love as crude, and as horrendous as it may seem. “God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us…” From our human wisdom’s angle it sounds foolish. That is why the whole message of the gospel and of belief is about, faith, about believing God; it is about coming into His loving arms; it is to experience an encounter with the Living God and surrendering to his Wisdom; to Him.
A covenant of Faith
Old Mystic, March 8, 2009
Romans4:13-25
Summary
God offers a covenant to all those who want to be God’s righteous children. It is a pledge and a promise that implies deliverance, a future of hope, and a creative role now and in that future. We can only receive the opportunity of that covenant by faith; unconditional faith in God who becomes human, goes to the cross, and is raised from the dead the third day because of his gracious love.
Sermon
Who has not heard the admonition, “You ought to play by the rules.” Indeed, a very good piece of advice. Rules provide a structure, direction, a process and a number of procedures to fulfill a task, or comply with the norms of society, and make life easier for everyone. A simplistic approach to life-in-community would be to repeat to each other, “Follow the rules.” Needless to say, we live in a world that needs law and order and we have a sort of “social contract” that compels us to abide by the law—whether carefully crafted or inherent to our nature, as it is often accepted as “given” by many. And anyone, who faithfully and reasonably stays within the constraints of the laws of the land, can and will be considered a law-abiding citizen. Now rules, as they are often subject to human creation and interpretation, within the limitations of our humanity, very often fail to accomplish what they are supposed to achieve. For that reason, perhaps, we have a Congress and we elect our representatives to that congress, in order to revise, re-formulate, and update the rules. Simply because after some time rules may change or they need to change; they are imperfect for the pursuit of life; for the building of community; for shaping the future.
I love playing games and when I do, I try to carefully follow the rules. One of my favorite board games is Monopoly and I must confess with a mixture of pride and shame that I have earned a reputation of being good at it to the point of disgusting anyone who dares to oppose me in playing this game. As you may know, the game consists in buying land, building property, and charging outrageous rents to any unfortunate player who happens to land on any piece of the board that I own. Who wins? Whoever takes everything, owns everything, and leaves the other players with nothing. My grandchildren Sakari and Jose became my latest victims this past summer. What could I do? The kids wanted to play a game with grandpa! Why am I so good at this game besides of the fact that I have been quite lucky at rolling the dice? The secret is perhaps that rules can be pushed to the extreme for our own benefit. So I become a sort of wheeler-dealer, as the game allows it, to get what I want without breaking the rules. I get what I want, I win, but everybody else loses. Unfortunately, so it happens very often in the game of life when the rules fail to those who lose.
Paul wants to convey the message of the gospel to the Romans and his argument is that the law does not bring us home. Rules, though helpful, are just a rudiment; elementary means to a greater end. The apostle writes to the Christians in Rome: “The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” In other words, the greater end of conquering the world—for lack of a better term—will only be reached by means of righteousness and righteousness that comes by faith not by the law or, as I put it before, by following the rules. Needless to say, with God’s righteousness the rules make sense! Once again, faith is at the center. Faith as it was exemplified by Abraham for who “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.” God had promised Abraham that he would inherit the world and Abraham believed God.
So God established a covenant; a gracious pledge; a glorious promise. Not only to Abraham and his descendants—whether they stubbornly pledged allegiance to the most insignificant detail of the Law of Moses or not—but to all those who exercise, who employ, who use their faith to seize God’s promise. God offers a covenant for us to take that promise. From our human perspective, it is a covenant of faith and faith in Him who raised Jesus from the dead and who handed him to death for our trespasses and raised him for our justification. Let me share with you three aspects of this faith.
I. FAITH IS OPPORTUNITY
Freedom is one of the most precious gifts that God gave us to accompany our faith. God wants us to make choices, fruitful creative choices, the right choices, but choices nevertheless. God does not want to constrain us with laws and rules and principles to keep us on track. In fact, Paul himself, when referring to the Mosaic Law in his letter to the Galatians, said: “The law was our disciplinarian until Christ came… But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” The law was like a nanny for small children; with some basic rules to keep us on track. By faith, now, we have come to the freedom of the children of God! Therefore, faith is the opportunity God gives us to join Him in what he is doing and what He wants to do in the world.
Faith is opportunity also because we have been made to live by faith. Faith is built in our lives. We can call it a gift, a very basic gift we have been endowed with. It is the ability to believe; the strength to keep on going; the drive to move in a particular direction even when we may not know whether it is the right direction. So when we are called by God to have faith, when we are challenged by Jesus to believe, it our opportunity to become what God want us to be; to go where he wants us to go; to do what he wants us to do. And we better believe it: that is good because God makes it good. Abraham believed God and, as he seized the opportunity he saw his faith grow as he gave glory to God. Let us now move on to the second aspect of Faith.
II. FAITH IS RIGHTEOUSNESS
Righteousness is a very powerful word. Who possesses the wisdom, the discernment, or even the “right” to make a call about what is the righteous way, especially when we deal with conflicting views about moral issues? It become even more challenging when we want to argue with the Bible as our foundation and most of us know that there are different and quite often conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the Scriptures. In fact most of us can become very good in showing the “narrow way” when it comes to “Biblical prescription.” But God’s revelation is something to be experienced not to be prescribed. The Bible is not a “recipe book” where we can discover some sort of a secret formula or a code for a happy or successful life and therefore by following some steps we will win. Please, do not misunderstand me; it does provide us with a moral and theological framework. But the root of righteousness is in our faith in God, and his Son, and the Holy Spirit! Through the message of the Bible we encounter the Living God and in our personal experience of communion with Him we find His love and begin to have a grasp of His righteousness.
By faith we believe that things need to be right, that can be right, and that will definitely be right one day. By faith we believe that we will find our own way to righteousness, even if we are not sure about what is right, especially in these days when many traditional views are being challenged. Can we affirm that love is never wrong? Can we believe that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things?” This is the high road; the road to righteousness. Love is God’s way to righteousness! Because of God’s great love, Jesus went to the cross so we can have redemption and forgiveness. By faith we believe in the possibility of righteousness because it is part of God’s covenant.
III. FAITH CONQUERS THE WORLD
It is interesting that Paul, when speaking of God’s promise to Abraham, speaks of inheriting the world, which is a very inclusive word if we think of how that promise was framed in the Old Testament; a pledge to give him land and descendants. It can be interpreted that for Paul the world is an encompassing reality. It means life, creation; the heavens and the earth; the natural and the supernatural; all things created—much more that land and descendants. The world is ours and by faith we are inheriting it; by faith we are called to conquer it. This conquest, however, is not a conquest by force or by the exercise of human power. The world needs love; the kind of love that brings righteousness.
And the world is crying out for help. Paul himself said in the same letter to the Romans, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now...” and it “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” The children of God need to emerge and with loving, creative, and transforming power claim back God’s creation. It is by faith that we, folks from OMBC, can begin to make a difference in a world that needs love. We have the faith and it will grow if give glory to God as Abraham did.
We are in Lent and very soon Holy Week and Easter will be here. The season is always a good reminder that God, in His great mercy, has offered us a covenant. It is a pledge to save us: to restore us; to re-create us; it is a promise of life in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. We can embrace that covenant by faith and become co-workers with God. It is a covenant of faith.
Romans4:13-25
Summary
God offers a covenant to all those who want to be God’s righteous children. It is a pledge and a promise that implies deliverance, a future of hope, and a creative role now and in that future. We can only receive the opportunity of that covenant by faith; unconditional faith in God who becomes human, goes to the cross, and is raised from the dead the third day because of his gracious love.
Sermon
Who has not heard the admonition, “You ought to play by the rules.” Indeed, a very good piece of advice. Rules provide a structure, direction, a process and a number of procedures to fulfill a task, or comply with the norms of society, and make life easier for everyone. A simplistic approach to life-in-community would be to repeat to each other, “Follow the rules.” Needless to say, we live in a world that needs law and order and we have a sort of “social contract” that compels us to abide by the law—whether carefully crafted or inherent to our nature, as it is often accepted as “given” by many. And anyone, who faithfully and reasonably stays within the constraints of the laws of the land, can and will be considered a law-abiding citizen. Now rules, as they are often subject to human creation and interpretation, within the limitations of our humanity, very often fail to accomplish what they are supposed to achieve. For that reason, perhaps, we have a Congress and we elect our representatives to that congress, in order to revise, re-formulate, and update the rules. Simply because after some time rules may change or they need to change; they are imperfect for the pursuit of life; for the building of community; for shaping the future.
I love playing games and when I do, I try to carefully follow the rules. One of my favorite board games is Monopoly and I must confess with a mixture of pride and shame that I have earned a reputation of being good at it to the point of disgusting anyone who dares to oppose me in playing this game. As you may know, the game consists in buying land, building property, and charging outrageous rents to any unfortunate player who happens to land on any piece of the board that I own. Who wins? Whoever takes everything, owns everything, and leaves the other players with nothing. My grandchildren Sakari and Jose became my latest victims this past summer. What could I do? The kids wanted to play a game with grandpa! Why am I so good at this game besides of the fact that I have been quite lucky at rolling the dice? The secret is perhaps that rules can be pushed to the extreme for our own benefit. So I become a sort of wheeler-dealer, as the game allows it, to get what I want without breaking the rules. I get what I want, I win, but everybody else loses. Unfortunately, so it happens very often in the game of life when the rules fail to those who lose.
Paul wants to convey the message of the gospel to the Romans and his argument is that the law does not bring us home. Rules, though helpful, are just a rudiment; elementary means to a greater end. The apostle writes to the Christians in Rome: “The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” In other words, the greater end of conquering the world—for lack of a better term—will only be reached by means of righteousness and righteousness that comes by faith not by the law or, as I put it before, by following the rules. Needless to say, with God’s righteousness the rules make sense! Once again, faith is at the center. Faith as it was exemplified by Abraham for who “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.” God had promised Abraham that he would inherit the world and Abraham believed God.
So God established a covenant; a gracious pledge; a glorious promise. Not only to Abraham and his descendants—whether they stubbornly pledged allegiance to the most insignificant detail of the Law of Moses or not—but to all those who exercise, who employ, who use their faith to seize God’s promise. God offers a covenant for us to take that promise. From our human perspective, it is a covenant of faith and faith in Him who raised Jesus from the dead and who handed him to death for our trespasses and raised him for our justification. Let me share with you three aspects of this faith.
I. FAITH IS OPPORTUNITY
Freedom is one of the most precious gifts that God gave us to accompany our faith. God wants us to make choices, fruitful creative choices, the right choices, but choices nevertheless. God does not want to constrain us with laws and rules and principles to keep us on track. In fact, Paul himself, when referring to the Mosaic Law in his letter to the Galatians, said: “The law was our disciplinarian until Christ came… But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” The law was like a nanny for small children; with some basic rules to keep us on track. By faith, now, we have come to the freedom of the children of God! Therefore, faith is the opportunity God gives us to join Him in what he is doing and what He wants to do in the world.
Faith is opportunity also because we have been made to live by faith. Faith is built in our lives. We can call it a gift, a very basic gift we have been endowed with. It is the ability to believe; the strength to keep on going; the drive to move in a particular direction even when we may not know whether it is the right direction. So when we are called by God to have faith, when we are challenged by Jesus to believe, it our opportunity to become what God want us to be; to go where he wants us to go; to do what he wants us to do. And we better believe it: that is good because God makes it good. Abraham believed God and, as he seized the opportunity he saw his faith grow as he gave glory to God. Let us now move on to the second aspect of Faith.
II. FAITH IS RIGHTEOUSNESS
Righteousness is a very powerful word. Who possesses the wisdom, the discernment, or even the “right” to make a call about what is the righteous way, especially when we deal with conflicting views about moral issues? It become even more challenging when we want to argue with the Bible as our foundation and most of us know that there are different and quite often conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the Scriptures. In fact most of us can become very good in showing the “narrow way” when it comes to “Biblical prescription.” But God’s revelation is something to be experienced not to be prescribed. The Bible is not a “recipe book” where we can discover some sort of a secret formula or a code for a happy or successful life and therefore by following some steps we will win. Please, do not misunderstand me; it does provide us with a moral and theological framework. But the root of righteousness is in our faith in God, and his Son, and the Holy Spirit! Through the message of the Bible we encounter the Living God and in our personal experience of communion with Him we find His love and begin to have a grasp of His righteousness.
By faith we believe that things need to be right, that can be right, and that will definitely be right one day. By faith we believe that we will find our own way to righteousness, even if we are not sure about what is right, especially in these days when many traditional views are being challenged. Can we affirm that love is never wrong? Can we believe that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things?” This is the high road; the road to righteousness. Love is God’s way to righteousness! Because of God’s great love, Jesus went to the cross so we can have redemption and forgiveness. By faith we believe in the possibility of righteousness because it is part of God’s covenant.
III. FAITH CONQUERS THE WORLD
It is interesting that Paul, when speaking of God’s promise to Abraham, speaks of inheriting the world, which is a very inclusive word if we think of how that promise was framed in the Old Testament; a pledge to give him land and descendants. It can be interpreted that for Paul the world is an encompassing reality. It means life, creation; the heavens and the earth; the natural and the supernatural; all things created—much more that land and descendants. The world is ours and by faith we are inheriting it; by faith we are called to conquer it. This conquest, however, is not a conquest by force or by the exercise of human power. The world needs love; the kind of love that brings righteousness.
And the world is crying out for help. Paul himself said in the same letter to the Romans, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now...” and it “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” The children of God need to emerge and with loving, creative, and transforming power claim back God’s creation. It is by faith that we, folks from OMBC, can begin to make a difference in a world that needs love. We have the faith and it will grow if give glory to God as Abraham did.
We are in Lent and very soon Holy Week and Easter will be here. The season is always a good reminder that God, in His great mercy, has offered us a covenant. It is a pledge to save us: to restore us; to re-create us; it is a promise of life in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. We can embrace that covenant by faith and become co-workers with God. It is a covenant of faith.
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