Pentecost +3

Romans 1: 16-17, 3:22b-31

16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. 27Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.


Recently I attended a wedding of a friend of mine who is a fellow “PK.” In case you aren’t familiar with clergy lingo, the initials “PK” stand for the term “preacher’s kid.” In fact both my friend the groom and the bride were PKs, so you might imagine that the room was filled with quite a few preachers. In fact, the table at which Dave and I sat during the reception hosted 6 clergy people at any given time while we were each up and down speaking to people all over the room as we crazy preacher-types are wont to do. And, since our Annual Conference is only a few weeks away, people were talking about it and what might happen there. Someone mentioned General Conference, too, and a few of the things that happened there. (This makes other single-vocation-heavy parties sound really exciting, doesn’t it?) A colleague and I got into a discussion about the fact that our denomination passed a resolution at General Conference in Texas in April to change our mandatory retirement age of clergy from 70 to 72 years of age. This, apparently, brings into question people who may be turning 70 between now and when the new Book of Discipline and its rules and guidelines take effect in January of 2009. What about people who turn 70 between July 1 and December 31 of this year? Are those people and those months included in our “old” rule that clergy retire at age 70, or could those people be grandfathered in and get the chance to have active clergy status for another 2 years?

If you’re still awake and paying attention, bless you. Your reaction to this conversation may be much like mine. I looked my friend in the eye as she explained this “controversy” to me and said, “Why on earth do we continue to fight outright over issues like this and scratch each other’s eyes out under the table on others that are for more important to the future and integrity of the ministry of the Church?”

Paul, being a man of extensive inner conflict and a tendency to appear to change his mind or at least think differently about issues from one letter and context to another, is a model for us in the church for how to work at resolving conflict. Think about the conflict you experience in your life: within your family, among your friends, in your workplace, and sometimes (though we are unlikely to admit it) in the church. What is it that is usually at stake?

Many times when we find ourselves in the midst of an argument or struggle, whether on a personal level or a corporate one, we find that our own interpretation of the world and the way it is supposed to work is what is ultimately at stake. In Paul’s case, what was at stake for him was his ministry. His critics were making claims that he was leading people away from a true understanding of faith, and their understanding had to do with practicing the law of Moses. In order to be a follower of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, one had to attempt to become Jewish in as many senses of the word as possible. But Paul, who was himself a Jew, was not interested in forcing the particularities of what set his people apart on the rest of the world. It was what was in their hearts that mattered.

Did one believe that God was the one God of the whole universe as the Hebrews had proclaimed long ago as recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4, the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one,”? Did one know for certain that Jesus was the son of the one God who was sent to this world to atone for our sin? Did one have faith that God would remake all of us into the righteousness for which we were intended, the image of the holy and righteous self of God? If you could positively answer these questions, Paul was glad to receive you into the faith; so what was the problem with his practice of acceptance to the others who were out there preaching the faith?

They stood to loose something.

The fight between Paul and his critics was over how to act like true followers of the Way. Which was the most correct way: was one to believe first and then act based on that belief, or was one to practice the law of God as people had been handing it down generation after generation in order to achieve true faith and belief? Was the relationship one we earned or one we received? To believe it was one we earned was to devote oneself to the law and the practice of religion. To believe it was one we received was to devote oneself to the teachings of Paul and the other evangelists who taught the way of Christ: love, acceptance, hospitality, grace. But did this kind of life exist only free from the law of Moses? Not at all. And did the law assume that the ways of Christ had to be legislated in order to be lived out by the people of faith? No. Did the Hebrews stand to lose their identity in the movement of Christ among the people? Did the Gentiles stand to lose their independence and status and face becoming second-class Jewish converts?

Paul gives us a clue to as to the real conflict going on among the newly converted followers of Christ, no matter their background. What they are having the most trouble giving up is the right to be right—about each other, and all the time. As I read Paul, it is less about what they are doing wrong and more about the fact that they accuse, try, and convict one another from their own places of sin and misdeed. Do we continue to do that to each other today?

I fear that we spend far more time examining one another’s sins and misdeeds than our own, just as the people of the early church did generations ago. In the church we do it by trying to choose groups of people to exclude for one reason or another that we pick and choose, deciding to let the flaws in our own character and faith life go (we hope!) un-noticed and, therefore, in tact. One on one we do this by spending a lot of our energy pointing out the flaws in others and passing judgment on each other and each other’s right to a good life. That’s what it is ultimately is about: who will lose life? The good life? The life we have come to know? Compromise means someone looses; meeting in the middle means leaving the place where you are comfortable. And we come again to our old friend and challenger, Paul.

Paul left the life he knew, the traditions he lived, and met Christ on the road, in the middle…of no where, and it changed his life. He lost what he had before; and he gained a life he never imagined for himself. In the struggles of your life, what do you stand to lose? Paul encouraged both the Jews of his own heritage and the Gentiles he came to love to lose those things to which they held so tightly and gain faith in God and new life in Christ. If, in the struggles of your life you stand to lose something, what is it you stand to gain in its place?

Conflict is our way of life. We area really not that different from the earliest Christians. In our society, in our church, and in our private lives, we struggle between haves and have-nots; between one world view and another; between who has the correct interpretation of the Bible and who does not; between who calls God by the correct name and who does not; between who’s individual rights and privileges are the most valuable, between who has the right to life as they want it, and who does not. But in the life of faith, as followers of the Way of Christ, as children of God and companions of the Holy Spirit, we find the promise of God’s faithfulness to be true. In the mist of conflict, we find peace that passes understanding. In the midst of the loss of control, we find that we gain a remarkable and everlasting relationship with God.

And so let’s celebrate that today as we gather around this table to re-member the body of Christ, to give thanks that our shortcomings do not tear us away from God and they don’t have to tear us away from one another. The grace of Christ offers us new life, all of us--relief from our struggles, the chance to forgive ourselves and one another, and peace that passes all understanding. No matter what we lose in the fight in the mean time, we can never gain any reward better than that.

Amen.