August 3, 2008

Scripture:         Romans 9:1-5

Sermon:           “Dying to Reach You”

            Chapters 8 through 11 of Paul’s letter to the Romans deals with a very touchy subject for Christians and Jews.  What are we, who are believers in Jesus Christ, to make of the fact that Jews largely do not see Jesus in the same way that we do?  Oh, it’s a touchy subject.  After all, Jesus was as Jewish as they come, you know.  And the title we bestow upon him, the Christ, means that we believe he is the Messiah.  That’s what Christ means.  It’s a Greek word.  Means “anointed” like you’d anoint a king with oil.  The Hebrew word for that same thing is Messiah.  So, you can’t very well say “Jesus Christ” without some notion of what he was anointed king over.

            Yet, the dilemma is that by and large the Jewish people did not come to see Jesus in the way that we do.  Outside of the very first followers of Jesus, who were all Jews, most folks who came to follow Jesus after his death and resurrection were Gentiles—which means not-Jewish.

            Go ahead and turn to chapter 9 of Romans where we’ll read verses 1 through 5.  That’s page 211 of the New Testament in the pew Bibles.

            The truth is that this question has haunted Christians and Jews for some 2,000 years.  The results have been disastrous at times.  So, it’s not a subject to take lightly.  Paul’s eventual conclusion with the whole thing is that if God has the power to raise Jesus from the dead, God can certainly restore the people Israel.  So, he leaves it in God’s hands in order to focus himself on his Gentile mission.

            I do much the same, to be honest with you.  The question of salvation for Jewish people is something that I leave with God.  Like Paul, I’ve gained such a wonderful enrichment of my own life through Jewish folks that I can’t say God isn’t still doing wonderful things through them.  My life would be incredibly diminished were it not for the deeply committed Jews that I’ve known and loved.  So, I am thankful for them and their faith.

            Paul wrestles a bit more than I do with the question.  And here in our scripture lesson we get a taste of that.  Of course, Paul was himself a Jew.  So, he’s got a more personal connection to the dilemma than we do.  Listen to what he says here.  This is the word of the Lord…

            I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.  They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever.  Amen.

            The anguish in a man’s heart.  You know there are times when Paul really lets his guard down and tells us what’s happening inside his soul.  It’s not all stern words and lofty explanations of who Christ is and what we gain from God.  Sometimes Paul bares his soul.  “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.”  He’s hurting.

            You ever been there?

            I know a kid.  I say kid.  He’s a man child.  This will be his senior year in high school here in a couple of weeks.  And he’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 270 pounds.  Offensive lineman for his school’s football team.  But, just as gentle as they come.  Some college or university is going to snap him up soon and be pleasantly surprised at the compassionate leader that he is.  Great young man.

            He said recently that his girlfriend’s parents didn’t want her to go out with him anymore.  And that doesn’t make much sense to me because you’d be hard pressed to find a better guy.  But, the truth is that they’re not comfortable with the fact that she’s white and he’s black.

            So, he’s hurting.

            They don’t want her to date a black guy.  I don’t know why.  But, that has to be especially hard for this one because he comes from a family with a black father and a white mother.

            He said that he never knows where he belongs.  Doesn’t know if he should sit with the black kids at lunch or the white kids.  It’s like he’s never black enough and never white enough.  And sometimes that makes his life seem like he’s lost between two different worlds.

            I know the anguish in his heart.  And I guess it’s something like Paul’s anguish.  You know, he’s never Jewish enough and he’s never Gentile enough.  He’s caught between two different worlds.  And neither world can fully accept Paul.  The Jews aren’t happy with him.  The Gentiles aren’t happy with him.  And those folks together don’t seem too happy with each other.

            The great irony is that folks aren’t supposed to act this way.  It’s not supposed to matter.  Shouldn’t make any difference who your parents are.  It makes me wonder if Paul isn’t writing something very personal when he says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:28)  Maybe he’s trying to figure out his own place in the world, too.

            It’s not supposed to be that way.

            So, why is Paul always trying to convince Gentiles that they’re just fine the way they are, that they don’t have to be Jews in order to be worth anything?  Listen to him.  Arguing.  Arguing to the Romans.  Arguing to the Corinthians.  Arguing to the Ephesians.  The Galatians.  The folks over in Philippi.  The Colossians.  Just Gentiles all of them.  “Don’t we have to be circumcised?  Paul?  We have to go through that whole painful process, right?  We have to be circumcised?”

            And he’d comfort them, like he was trying to fit in amongst them.  Just a regular guy.  Not a Jew.  Not a Gentile.  Just a man.  “No.  You don’t have to be circumcised.  That’s not what faith is all about.  You don’t have to do that.”  He flat out said to the Corinthians, “Circumcision is nothing…” (1 Corinthians 7:19)

            Arguing.

            “Well, what about all those laws?  I can’t eat this.  I can’t eat that.  No pork.  No shellfish.  What is that?  Are you serious?  Paul?”

            You know, he was just never quite Gentile enough for folks.  They were always trying to figure him out.  He’s a Jew, you know.  And that’s different.  No matter how hard he tried to convince them it didn’t matter.  There it was.

            And all of that trying to be one with the Gentiles didn’t sit very well with Jews, either.  Some of the folks back in Jerusalem wanted to have a word or two with Paul about the matter.  They were shouting.  You can read about it in the book of Acts.  They said, “they’ve all just got to be circumcised!  They’ve got to keep all the laws.  Look at what those Gentiles eat!”  (Acts 15: 5)  It’s like they were saying, “Why do you even say the name ‘Jesus Christ’, Paul?  If he’s Christ, he’s got to be the anointed king of something, doesn’t he?  Those folks have to be Jews, Paul.  They’ve just got to be Jews!”

            He couldn’t be Jewish enough for some folks.  Couldn’t fit in with his own people.  Couldn’t fit in with anybody else, either.  Just stuck in the middle where there isn’t supposed be any difference between folks.

            So, he’s hurting.  And the worst part for him was that most of his own people didn’t want to hear anymore about this Jesus he was so excited about.  The biggest part of who he was slipping away.  His people.  His parents people.  The people he grew up with.  The traditions he learned.  It all seemed to be slipping away.  And the harder he tried to say that being Jew and Gentile didn’t matter anymore because of Jesus, the more he watched as Jesus became another way Jews and Gentiles just didn’t seem to mix.

            “I almost wish that I was accursed, cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people.”  That’s what he said.  And, boy that’s a lonely, gut-wrenching place to be.  You love somebody so much that you’d just give your own life in order for them to find the hope you’ve got.

            I hear y’all talk about this all the time.  You don’t use words like Jew and Gentile.  But, y’all talk about this a lot.  Instead of Jew or Gentile, you use words like “husband”.  Words like “my best friend”.  You say things like “daughter”.  But, I hear you.  And you sound like Paul.  Because somebody you love seems like they’re just hopeless, lost.  And there are times when you, too, say you’d do just about anything to see them discover the power of God in their lives.

            Well, what do you do with that?  What do you do when you see somebody drowning and you can’t quite reach them to pull them to safety?  You find yourself caught between the world of your own hope and the world of somebody that you love with all of their hopelessness.  What do you do with that?

            You know, like Paul does, that you can only try to share good news with them so much.  I mean, listen to Paul.  He’s so frustrated.  He can’t get the people he loves to listen.  “I’ve got this hope in Jesus Christ!  It’s the free gift of grace from God.  And the people I love won’t listen to me anymore!”

            What do you do with that?

            How I wish I had the answer.  And I think that is what Paul is saying.  He wishes that he had the answer, too.

            What do we do with all of this hope in Jesus Christ?  We’ve got folks that we love and they’re just going through it, you know.  What is it that we’re talking about?  Addictions?  Let’s be real, here.  We’re watching folks we love lose their lives to alcohol, drugs, gambling.  Yeah, we’ve got addictions.  And we’ve got young girls who don’t believe their worth.  And some of them have eating disorders, you know.  Some of them are searching for acceptance and they’re finding it through relationships that don’t amount to anything but trouble.  And we’ve got all of this hope we’re talking about, living, experiencing.  We find ourselves, like Paul, just dying to reach folks.

            I’ve got our church’s prayer list in my office.  Do you keep it nearby?  I read through it every day.  Prayers.  But, you know, these are the folks we know we can talk about.  Illnesses.  Grief.  Serving overseas.  But, I’ve got this other list.  It’s the stuff you share with me in private.  The folks whose stuff is too personal to share.  Goodness, there’s some broken souls in our lives.  Broken.  And we’ve gone through the bit of telling them about faith.  What’s left?

            Do you see what’s eating at Paul here?  Great sorrow, he says.  Unceasing anguish in the heart.  Yeah, we know where he’s coming from.  It’s not Jews and Gentiles we’re praying about.  It’s family.  It’s friends.  It’s that face staring back in the mirror.  What do you do with that?

            Now I’m going to say something that might just strike you as pithy.  Just some words, you know.  They’re not.

            There’s one word at the very end of what Paul says regarding his struggle over the unbelief of his own people.  Just one little word.  Right there at the end of verse 5.  Do you see it?  Last word we read together.  Paul lays out the depths of his broken heart.  And he goes on to point out all of the blessings the people have that he’s so broken up about.  Good people.  Promising people.  But, for Paul, he sees them as hopeless.  And at the end of all that he says one word.  He says, “Amen”.

            Amen.

            By God, the man was praying.  He finished it with “amen”.  He was praying.

            And maybe that’s where we have to leave it—with our prayers.  We’ve done what we can do.  We just keep on loving and keep on praying.

            That can sound easy.  It can sound pithy.  Just pray for them.  But, maybe it’s a great act of trust, too.  A great act of trust to believe that only God can reach folks in their despair.  A great act of trust that, if this is the God who formed the earth out of imagination, if this is the God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, then this is the God to whom we have to trust is capable of reaching the people we love, too.

            What I want to say is that when we pray, we allow ourselves to enter into the life of God.  We think of it as a time to list all of the things we want.  And we miss the point, don’t we?  What if we prayed as if we were trying to let God help us understand ourselves and what is happening around us?  Isn’t that what Paul is doing here in Romans?  Trying to understand?

            And I see this wooden cross where a man is hanging to die.  And I see God with hands outstretched, saying, “I’m dying to reach you!”

            I can’t say that we’ll see everybody discover faith, life, hope, and blessing.  And that’s oh so hard.  But, I can say that we are joining with God to try to reach everyone in love.  And that God is eternally with us in that.  May God bless us with hearts of compassion and the hands of Christ.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)