Have you ever heard of the Pentecostal preacher,Jimmy Swaggart. Let me tell you. That guy is good. Let me tell you how good.
One Sunday morning, many years ago, I flipped on the
TV before heading over for worship, and there Jimmy was, preaching away. I thought.
I have a few minutes, I’ll take a look.
Maybe I’ll pick up some preaching tips.
I don’t remember exactly what he was talking about, but he was
definitely talking about Jesus, and doing a bang up job of it. He
get me all fired up. I was saying That’s right! Preach it brother. I’m with you!” Then somehow, somewhere, a detour
occurred. I can’t even tell you
when. I was
rolling along “Yes, Jimmy, Jesus loves us, and that modern art, it’s of the
devil.” Woooahh! What did he say? Modern art, really? How did he get there?
Has that ever happened to you? You’re talking with someone, and you are
thinking. We are both on the same
page. We agree on everything. But then a detour comes, usually a shocking
one. “And you know that whole moon
landing it was a hoax.” Or “Those
dadgum Israelis, they were the ones behind 9-11” And
you are like. “Where did that come from?”
But sometimes those detours don’t take us away from
the truth. They lead us closer to it. One Christmas, when I was in seminary, we
went for a family reunion in North Carolina.
I was talking to my sister after dinner one night, about my newly
awakened feminist consciousness, and how troubled I was by our conservative
uncle Charles, who didn’t even believe women could serve as church elders. How sad. We seemed to be on the same
page. Then the twist came. She said; “I hear what you’re saying. But I noticed. Tonight at dinner, there was only one man,
who went in to help the women clean up.
It was Uncle Charles. You sat with all the other men and didn’t lift a
finger. What’s up with that?” Her detour nailed me, and I’ve never
forgotten it.
Those sorts of detours wake us up, even save us from
the worst of ourselves. That’s the sort
of detour Paul takes here. A detour that
shocked his hearers, but that woke them up to a reality they desperately need
to see, that we need to see. What is
that reality? That religion might be
the worst thing you could possibly get. How can that be so? In these words, God shows us the way. Let’s listen and hear what God has to
say.
How can religion be the worst thing you could
possibly get? In these words from
Romans, God shows us. Religion can blind
you to the reality of who you really are, so you see only the surface, and miss
everything that lies beneath. But if religion blinds you, how do you see the
truth? You look at where religion,
especially the religion of the Bible points, to the One who was cut off for
us.
So how does religion blind us? Paul shows us here how it does by delivering
a brutal detour. Just a few sentences
before, he has been delivering this brutal condemnation of the worst of Gentile
culture, the idols, the temples, the sex orgies. Paul slams it hard. Now at this point, as people were hearing
this letter, because these letters were read publicly like a remote sermon, two
groups of Christians were listening.
One group, the Gentile Christians, had to be feeling a little bad, as
Paul pointed out all the ugliness. But
the other group, Jewish Christians, had to be loving it. In fact, for this section, Paul was doing his
version of one of the most popular synagogue sermons of the day, basically, you
could call it, the “those nasty Gentiles” sermon.
But then Paul takes an unexpected detour. Just as the Jewish Christians are going, “Yeah,
preach it, Paul, those nasty Gentiles”
Paul then goes, but hey you Jewish Christians, you’re no better than
they are. The Jewish Christians must
have been going, “What?! We’re as bad
as those orgy giving, idol worshipping Gentiles? You have got to be kidding, right?” But Paul is not kidding at all. He is pointing to one of the most important
realities that every human being has to face.
No one is okay. In fact, everyone
is pretty far from okay.
Now before we dig into why this is true, let’s take
a moment to think about how unique that perspective is. Some folks like to think, well, “I’m
ok. You’re ok.” But
when you look around at the world as it is, does that really hold any
water? Let’s face it, things in our
world are not ok by a long shot. And
then you have folks, too often religious folks, who go. “I’m ok, but the rest of you are so not ok.” And that’s how you get everything from
self-righteous jerks to Isis. But Paul
is saying simply this. “I’m not ok, and
neither are you. Nobody is ok. That’s the problem”
A week or so ago, I was talking to someone who knows
me pretty well, and she was saying. “Ken,
you are a really good person.” And I
said, “Oh that is so not true. I am not
a good person, not by a long shot.”
Now, I don’t have some sort of terrible self-concept. I just get what is Paul is telling us. “I’m not good because nobody is.” And the danger of religion, at least as
many understand it, can lead you to think you’re good when you really are
not.
But isn’t that a bit much? How can you say that everybody is not good? Because good is so much more than lots of
folks think. Paul gets that. That’s what he is trying to tell us on all his
talk about the law. You see. God didn’t give the law to deliver a bunch of
dos and don’ts. God gave the law to paint a beautiful picture
of who God created every one of us to be.
And once you see that picture, really see it, you’ll know. That ain’t you.
Folks can look at things like the Ten Commandments, and
just see the surface. But do you know
the rule about icebergs? For whatever you see on the surface, there is 90% more underneath. The commandments are like
that, an iceberg. If you look only on the surface, you’re
missing almost everything. But religion, at least as lots of folks understand
it, can lead you to look only there. And
because all of us are trying to make ourselves look good, that’s where we want
to look anyway. We want to see the law
simply as a list of external actions. That
way, if we check them off, we can think.
I’m doing ok. I’m good. But the law goes so much deeper than
that.
That’s how Paul can say even to the most devoutly
religious person listening in that room in Rome, you are doing the same things
even the worst Gentiles do. Just look
at the list he gave of all the bad things Gentiles do in Chapter 1. What are some of the things he put
there? Envy, deceit, craftiness,
boastful, inventors of evil, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless; these are
not so much things you do as attitudes you have. And that’s the point. Living out the law, being good, isn’t simply
about not doing bad things, it’s about a life filled with such love, kindness, honesty,
and every other good thing that bad things simply have no room at all to even
be thought of, much less get done.
Look at how Jesus talks about the law, about being
good. In the Sermon on the Mount, he
said. “You know that commandment. Thou
shalt not murder. I tell you if you say
to anyone, Raca, then you’ve broken it.”
Now what does Raca mean? Is it
some sort of insult? No, it actually
means nobody. Jesus is saying. If you treat another human-being as if they
don’t matter, you’ve broken this commandment.
If you see someone and think, well, they’re not important, you’ve broken
this commandment. In fact, if you don’t
see every person who enters your life as of infinite value and importance, you’ve
broken this commandment. Now how can
that be murder? Because murder is simply
the end result of an attitude that begins in the heart. The murder is only what you see on the
surface, but what you don’t see is the 90% of what lies underneath. That’s the 90% of the picture that the law is
pointing to. It is pointing to the
picture of what every human being is called to be, and that picture goes way
beyond just not killing people.
Now how many of you can say that you’ve treated
every person you have ever encountered as infinitely valued and important? Well, then according to Jesus, and he should
know, you’ve broken this commandment.
And you don’t have to even have the Bible to know this. Everyone knows this.
It’s why Paul can say, even the Gentiles have the
law written on their hearts. Why? Because, as the Christian writer, Francis
Schaeffer, once put it, every one of us has a sort of hidden recorder in our
hearts. Why? So when we stand before God, and go, “Woah,
God, I had no idea about these commandments things. You can’t hold me to that standard. I had no idea it even existed.” And God will go. “Oh you didn’t huh?” Then God will pull out the secret recorder,
and it will have on it every moment, when we thought or said, “He shouldn’t
have treated me that way.” “What she
just did to me there was so totally wrong!”
And God will be like. It sure
looks like you held everyone else to that standard, so why can’t I hold you.”
So if this is the picture of who God calls us to be,
this beautiful perfect portrait of a human life, how do we ever get there? Strangely enough, God points us to the answer
in, of all things, a religious ritual. That’s why Paul starts talking about
circumcision. That ritual points us to
the answer we need.
In the beginning, God made his first covenant with a
man named Abraham. What God meant by
covenant is that God wanted a real, intimate relationship with Abraham and his
wife, Sarah and their family. And to
symbolize this relationship, he asked for the ritual of circumcision. Circumcision acted for Abraham much the same
way that Baptism works for Christians.
But baptism can be a little easier to understand, the washing of sins,
death and resurrection, all that stuff.
But what can circumcision mean?
Well, in ancient times, to seal an agreement, you
didn’t sign some paper. Instead, you
acted out the penalty. So, for example,
to seal one type of agreement, you walked between cut up animals. In that ritual, you were saying, if I break
this agreement, then I will be cut up like this. Circumcision served the same purpose. God
said that as faithful as I am to you, you must be that faithful to me. And if you break that commitment, you will be
cut off. You will be cut off from relationship
with me, from the abundant life I yearn to bring you. But here’s the problem. If you know the story, Abraham is not
faithful to God almost immediately, yet God still stays faithful to him. In fact, everyone who follows after Abraham
messes up. So how can God keep the relationship? Why hasn’t God cut them off, cut us off?
In a few verses in Paul’s letter to the Colossians,
he gives us the answer. There he says to
Gentiles, that you have received a circumcision but not by human hands. You have received the circumcision of
Christ. What does Paul mean? He is saying.
Jesus was circumcised for you. He
was cut off so that you could be brought in.
He paid the penalty of the broken covenant. He lost the relationship with God so that you
might gain it. But Paul goes further. He says, now you rest
in this circumcision of Christ. He has
given you a new heart, a new intimacy with God.
What does this mean? When the law
paints this beautiful picture of who a human being is called to be, it is not
just painting some generic picture. It
is giving us a picture of a person, Jesus.
And when you believe in what
Jesus has done for you, this picture begins to live in you. Jesus’ beauty becomes part of your life. In
fact, when God looks at you that is the picture he sees. He sees you through Jesus. And when you see what Jesus has done out of
love for you that will cut you to the heart.
It will start to change that heart into something more than you could
have imagined or dreamed.
So yes, you are not okay. I am not okay. But in Jesus, you become that. You become who
God created you to be. And until that becoming
is complete, you can rest in what Jesus has done for you. You don’t need religion to justify yourself. Jesus has already done it. You simply trust that it is true, that he cut
off so that you would never be. And as you
trust, Jesus gives you the freedom to fail.
And that freedom to fail, gives you what religion can never give.
Paradoxically, that grace frees you to grow into the very good creation that
God made you to be.
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