Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008

14 Pentecost A 08

August 17, 2008

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

The Reason You Got Picked

I’ve always been resistant to being a minister. I just couldn’t believe that any church in its right mind would want an ex-crazy person as a preacher.

Then I met other preachers and I felt better.

The great privilege God has given me to carry out this ministry isn’t really for your sakes, but for mine. God is working on me and has therefore called and commanded me to carry out this ministry. I can’t speak for other preachers, but God didn’t make me a preacher because I was holy, but because I wasn’t.

Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think you’re here in the church not because you’re good but precisely because you aren’t?

Paul has been wrestling in these last chapters of his letter to the Roman church with the problem of Jews who don’t believe in Jesus. Last week’s sermon, which everyone will probably remember as the Beatles sermon, was really about the problem of people who cannot believe in the risen Jesus. How can they encounter him?

We said that everyone who believes in Jesus has a story about him and his impact on their lives.
The reality is that the most powerful story you have to tell about Jesus will always be about your weakness, your failure, your sin.

Doesn’t our heart still beat when we sin? Don’t our lungs keep sucking in life-giving air? Doesn’t our magnificent brain and nervous system splendidly deliver a plausible story and a straight face to go with it when we lie? Doesn’t our adrenaline flow freely when we are murderously angry? And doesn’t our plate come back full all three times every day even when we are selfish and thoughtless about the poor?

Doesn’t the world keep spinning at just the right angle and doesn’t the weather refrain from wiping us all calamitously out even when we are dropping bombs on each other?

Nothing can separate us from God’s love. His promise to us is irrevocable. There is nothing we can do to stop him. Those whom he wishes to save, he will save, and for some reason, he particularly likes to save the ones who hate him the most.

Why is this?

I don’t know.

But it may be that because of my stumbling others are lifted up. And how much more will they fall to their knees in awe and love if he saves me, even me?

We started very early in this sermon series on Romans speaking about God’s peculiar love. Christ is the embodiment of that love, not just two thousand years ago, but as we sit now in the room, quietly enjoying the rich and outrageous gift of life given to us, God’s creatures, with a very specific mission, a mission we creatures really have done almost nothing to carry out. Quite the contrary.

So when it comes down to me, when it comes down to you, what does it come down to?

It comes down to that thing you can’t help.

Maybe you’ve already faced it, maybe God has already removed it. Or maybe it’s still with you.

Here’s the story. You have a problem, something you can’t help, something over which you just can’t seem to find any control. I’m saying, Paul is saying, and maybe the Holy Spirit is saying this morning that that thing, that little thing, is why you are here. You have been brought to this church because you have that problem, because that tribulation belongs to you, because that particular demon has you in its clutches.

You know that it’s an offense against God, and probably against your neighbor as well. You don’t want to be caught up in it, but you just can’t help it.

Paul says that God has imprisoned you in disobedience so that he can be merciful to you. I suppose that’s one way of putting it. God more likely has allowed you and me to imprison ourselves, in order that he will have the opportunity to set us free.

That’s why you’ve been brought here to this community. That weakness is going to be the centerpiece of the story of Christ’s victory in your life. It’s going to be that particular weakness, that embarrassment, that shame, that is going to end up being the locus of your ministry at Philippi. By going through what you have gone through or are going to go through, you are equipped with a story, the story of the power and love and majesty of God.

And so, I invite you this morning to give it up. Just surrender. The battle is over. The thing you can’t win against, well, it’s time to admit you’re beat. It’s time to offer it up to God.

Because it is that particular prison God wants to let you out of. It’s that particular fault he wants to surgically remove. It’s that particular story he wants you to be equipped to tell.

Because there are so many others out there waiting for us. So many are waiting for the revealing of your story. There are twenty people out there who will hear your story and think: “if it can happen to him, it if can happen to her, maybe it can happen to me.”

But none of those people will be inspired by your sense of duty or your vague idea that it’s good to go to church, or that you feel better or cope with difficulty more easily because of church, or that the church is a pleasant and supportive social club for you, or even that you get a pleasant sense of exaltation by going.

Because they can tell you they fulfill their sense of duty to the community at other places than the church, they find ways to cope with difficulties through food or the bottle or an entertaining TV program or a nice country club, they can get a pleasant sense of exaltation by wandering around in nature. There are even special twelve-step programs that will solve difficult addiction problems.

But the unique thing the church does that none of these other places can do is facilitate the explicit encounter with God through Jesus Christ. And the distinct and unique presence of God in Christ is manifested in your transformation. God transforms you through Jesus Christ.

Those people will be struck and inspired because you will share with them that you were lost but now are found, was blind but now you see. The reason they will be struck by that is that there is nothing else in their lives or on their TV’s or out on the bay or in the grocery store or at the McDonalds or at the Galley or any volunteer organization that will transform them from the soles of their feet to the crown of their heads and set them free forever.

When people behave in outrageously merciful or gracious or generous ways, this speaks of transformation, because it is not the kind of behavior typical of the human being.

When people make themselves unpopular because they challenge some conventional wisdom that condones injustice, people notice, because it means that such people have been changed in some way, since it is more normal for folks to go along to get along.

When people are transformed, other people notice. When people are transformed, other people think about God. When people are transformed, other people come to believe.

Paul is teaching us this morning those people in our lives, maybe ourselves, that not only don’t get it but appear to be beyond forgiveness, beyond mercy, beyond grace. He is saying that God not only is able to save anyone he wishes to save, not only that he will, but that the very brokenness and hopelessness of each situation is the very stage on which we can display his mighty power.

This is the reason we bear with one another as a Christian community. Not because we agree with each other, not because we are all alike, not because we have all arrived at the happy place, but precisely because we don’t agree, we are not alike, and we have not arrived. In striving together to know and follow Christ, each one of us hopes to be set free, and live to tell about it.

Amen.