Pentecost +13

I guess I could come up with snazzier titles for my sermons. Its just that sermon titles tend to be...

a. misleading sometimes, and
2. (for all you "Mad About You" fans) a little cheezy!

So, here you go: for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost...

Romans 10:5-15
Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”


I believe the church has become ashamed of the message we have to proclaim. Would you agree?

Think for just a minute about the first time you ever came to a Christian church, or the first time anyone ever told you the story of Jesus—of his life, death, and resurrection. Or remember the first time someone invited you to go to church and you went and had a good experience. Or, if you spent some time away from the church and then decided to come back and give it another try, what did that first time back feel like?

You see, I believe that we are gathered here today to proclaim in some way, whether it be in great praise and thanksgiving, great fear and trembling, or great doubt and trepidation, to acknowledge that Jesus is, indeed, the Son of the living God, and that the Holy Spirit has compelled us to come here to pray, hear the Word of God, and give God thanks and praise for life. But what happens when we leave here?

When Paul writes to the Romans, he writes to a group of people whom he does not already know. He did not establish a church in Rome. In fact, he never made it there. All the recipients of his letter may have known about Paul was the reputation that preceded him: a zealous Jew turned zealous Christian. As strongly as he persecuted followers of Jesus he now persuaded Gentiles to become followers of Jesus. People probably knew that he preached with great commitment and fervor for Christ—the same Christ whom he publically called a contradiction to the faith of his birth and the Law of his God and his people. Once, he believed only one people could have access to or relationship with God. Now he preached that anyone and everyone could have both, and not even through the practice of the Law exclusively but now through the practice of the heart: the belief that God had reached out to us in sending Christ into the world and acted in ultimate selflessness and love for us by raising Christ from the dead. Belief in that and the statement of that belief was Paul’s new message. And he was no longer presiding over the persecution of people in order to get them to surrender to his long-held beliefs. He, instead, had surrendered himself to his own long-held practices in favor of the new thing God was doing in his life through his encounter with the risen Christ.

Now its true that many of us do not have such a dramatic experience of faith as Paul had. Not many of us encounter Jesus in a great flash of light across the sky while journeying in the desert. Some of us do have deeply personal encounters with Jesus in many life situations, but not many of us respond the way that Paul did to his converting encounter with Christ. And we are not all called to proclamation the way Paul was. In this economy, it would be difficult to give up the livelihood many of us are lucky to have and go to places we had never been and where we had little or no acquaintance to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And yet, the relationship with God, that assurance of God’s presence with us and love for us, that hope that God will provide safety and harbor for us against all things that seem negative and threatening—that is as real for you and me as it ever has been for anyone, especially today when there are so many reasons why we could all be somewhere else today, right now, and we have all chosen to be here. That presence, that knowing of God in our hearts, that belief that Jesus really is who he says he is—it has us here now, week after week, to pray, to connect with God. And Paul’s message for us today, God’s Word to hear this morning is hooray for us for making room in our lives for this when so many others don’t…now: what comes next? How do we go out and share this with the world who needs to know that there is belonging in the love of God, that God loved us enough to send Christ into the world for life, death, and then resurrection so that we could see, experience, and believe the love of God which passes all understanding?

Paul knew that in Rome there were folks who needed to hear the gospel. There were people there who had heard about Jesus but did not truly know him. And to truly know him is to truly know that he is the Son of God who came to us, loved us, healed us, taught us, initiated us into God’s ultimate reign which—although supported by the Law God had given was not subject to it—and returned to prepare heaven and earth for God’s presence with and for us. People in Rome, people in Corinth needed to hear that. He found a way to use who he was, the gifts for commitment and strength and perseverance he had been given to share that message. People in Atlanta, in your workplace, in your family, among your friends need to hear and know that message. And so today, allow yourself to be confronted with the call that is issued to us in this passage: “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?” It is hard for us to know how we as individual Christians are sent to proclaim the message that Jesus is Lord. Perhaps it is because we are not sure what that means for us individually. Perhaps it is troublesome language in our time and context. Perhaps we fall into the belief that only those called to preach are given the necessary tools or gifts to proclaim Jesus to others.

But Paul calls us all to proclamation. What are the ways that we, as individual Christians, whether or not we are called to preach, proclaim the Word of God that Christ has come for us all? The final verse of this passage says that the feet of the messenger of the Word are beautiful—that the calling to proclaim the Word of God in Christ is a task of great beauty, great importance, and great responsibility. How shall we accept this task and accomplish it?

"Preach the gospel. And if necessary, use words." The words of St. Francis of Assisi have been quoted and used for hundreds of years to help people understand the work of proclaiming the gospel. I myself have seen and experienced far more sermons that I remember than those I have heard. ‘Why is she saying that about her own profession?’ you may be wondering. But how many preachers do you know who stand in pulpits every Sunday morning with stoles around their necks? And how many do you know who work in banks, in advertising, in public schools, as lifeguards or museum curators, as social workers and professional musicians? When do you have the opportunity to preach? To proclaim the gospel you have come to know to be true and in which you have the utmost faith? When do you have the chance to let your life show that you believe in Jesus as the loving Son of God who loves the whole world more than we could ever imagine possible and who longs for all of us to connect or reconnect with God and God’s love? When does your life and witness make someone else want to hear more or want to believe? Do your Monday through Saturday decisions, actions, and words demonstrate your Sunday faith?

It is a tall order: the commandment to share the gospel message we have come to know with the world around us. And it is especially hard now when the church has so much for which to be ashamed. As Paul says to the Romans, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” And not only is it in you, but the task of sharing it is work that is, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, beautiful upon the mountains. This is not a calling of which we should be afraid or ashamed but to which we should be drawn. Are we? Are you?

What would it take in your life for the gospel, the story of Jesus and God’s love for the world lived out in him to be the most beautiful, important, and satisfying work you could ever practice? What would you need to put aside?

Friends, the calling is now. The church needs you more than it needs me out there proclaiming the love of God. The church is not just law, but it is love and grace, and our “Rome” out there needs to hear and see in us the proclamation of that love and grace. In kind words when you feel like using selfish ones, in thinking about and working for the good of the whole sometimes in spite of or in place of your own good, in reaching out to people you don’t want to be around, in making relationship with people who think and feel differently than you about just about everything, in making space for people who don’t seem to belong anywhere else, and in all things letting God be shown through your life—when we do this “they” will hear, believe, and come to proclaim in their own worlds.

And we will be that much closer to helping God’s reign over all things really come true: justice rolling down like waters, righteousness like and ever-flowing stream, and all the things we see going wrong today finally becoming right. We can help. We can do it. As far as it depends on us, the church doesn’t have to be ashamed anymore.

Now that is something to which I can say, “May it be!” “Amen!”