Last Wednesday, I took my last final exam of the semester. The public schools’ last day of classes is a week from tomorrow. Mother’s Day has gone, Memorial Day is just around the corner. The weather is warmer and the days grow increasingly longer. Summer is upon us.
And that means vacations, trips, a time to get away from the usual schedule. This summer, on Monday evenings at Grace Church, I would like to invite you to take a trip with me. Let’s take a trip to Rome.
Reta Halteman Finger shares with us these words about our journey:
“Come with me to the ancient capital of the Roman Empire. It is a spring evening in 56 or 57 A.D. In the crowded warren of streets next to the Tiber River, Christians of one small house church are gathered. They are packed into a space probably smaller than the size of your living room. During the day the room becomes a small shop where cloth or shoes or clay pots or tin tools are produced. But when darkness comes, the group congregates for an agape meal, worship, and study. The highlight for tonight is the reading of a letter from an apostle named Paul. It is a long letter, and it has been carried nearly 1,000 miles by sea and land from Cenchrea, the port city of Corinth, by a deacon named Phoebe, one of Paul’s co-workers (Romans 16:1-2). Phoebe, or a reader she has brought along for the purpose, will read the letter in its entirety.”
Through the next several weeks of this summer, we will explore Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. I invite you not to miss a single week as we explore Paul’s unique correspondence to the Christians of that ancient city.
Most often Paul wrote to churches he had helped to establish. In each case, there has been an issue Paul has written to address, often in the form of a reprimand. But the letter to the Church in Rome is a unique letter.
One of our favorite programs at home is Everybody Loves Raymond. Its a sitcom about an Italian family living in the suburbs of New York City. Marie, the matriarch of the family, saved up her money and paid for the entire family to take a trip to the homeland of their family to visit relatives in Italy.
Debra, her daughter-in-law, would look at the Italian countryside...
at the Mediterranean ocean...
at the crooked and narrow stone streets...
at the ancient stone buildings and the sidewalk cafes...
at the children kicking a soccer ball around in the streets...
at the open market place...
and she would sigh at the collective beauty she found in Italy. Debra was so excited to go to Italy. There was a yearning to see the countryside in her.
Paul had a yearning to go to Italy, as well. But it wasn’t for cobblestone streets or ocean side viewing.
Paul had a yearning to visit the Christians in the church in Rome. What is unique about this letter of Paul’s, is that it is written to a church Paul has never seen, never visited.
Paul longs to go to Rome. In the introduction to this letter, he shares how he wants very much to see the Roman church, and has planned many times to go there. However, at the writing of this letter, Paul has not yet been to Rome, and must first make a visit to Jerusalem.
So why does Paul write to Rome? Why does he write to a church he has yet to visit and is not even going to visit now?
First of all, Paul writes to a church he hopes to visit someday soon. He writes a letter of introduction, a letter of testimony to his faith.
The letter to the Romans is understood best that way - as a personal testimony. Paul shares the essence of his faith and beliefs.
He writes this as a way of introducing himself, and it seems he does so for a couple of reasons.
He writes to express his longing for Rome. And he also writes seeking aide.
Paul longs for Rome, because at that time it is the greatest city in the world, but also because it is the gateway to the west. From Rome, Paul looks forward to evangelizing and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in a missionary journey to Spain. He writes to the church in Rome seeking their financial support.
“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” Paul writes. It is important for him to make his position clear. He writes a carefully constructed summation of his faith, making it clear his beliefs about Christ.
This letter is known as the “Roman Road of Salvation.” In the words we have read tonight, Paul basically tells us why he believes in the teachings of Jesus and what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus means for us.
The issue of faith is important for this letter. You see, what Paul wanted to emphasize is that it didn’t matter if you were a Jew or a gentile. It didn’t matter if you were a woman or a man. It didn’t matter about the position you held in the community.
Paul wanted to emphasize that God’s love expressed in Jesus was open to everyone. It wasn’t a matter of becoming a good Jew. It wasn’t a matter of being a Roman citizen. It wasn’t a matter of being born the right sex or born free rather than being born a slave. Being saved by Christ was open to everyone because everyone is valued equally by God.
Last week, on The Learning Channel, I saw a show about a 19 year old girl who had grown up in the foster care system. She talked about the abuse she experienced as a young girl. She slept on the stair each night. She was physically abused and punished for everything. When she was 8 years old, her mother dropped her off on the steps of an orphanage and told her she didn’t lover her and never had.
She spent the rest of her childhood being shifted from group home, to orphanage, to foster home 40 times in her young life.
She talks about how difficult it was going through high school, always moving and changing schools, sometimes only remaining in one place for 3 or 4 months at a time.
Then she came to a residential school for orphaned children. There, one couple who worked at the school took a particular interest in her. Every Sunday they came to the school, picked her up, and took her to church. This is what she had to say about the experience:
“I can never thank them enough for what they did for me. Church was the one place where everything was different. I looked so forward to it each week. For 3 hours every week, I could be normal, just like everybody else. The people there didn’t care that I didn’t have a home. They didn’t care that I didn’t have a family or parents. They were just glad I was there, and treated me just the same as everybody else. That couple did the most wonderful thing for me, taking me to church with them.”
That’s the kind of leveling of the playing field Paul was talking about.
“The gospel...It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
Whatever life experiences alienated people, separated individuals from belonging, isolated them and told them they couldn’t be a part of the family of God. In this letter, Paul writes to make it clear that the only thing necessary to receive salvation through Jesus is faith in him.
There’s a distinction I’m making here. Over the last several hundred years, people have read this letter and seen a distinction made between the things we do trying to be a good person and the saving grace we receive through faith. Its not about what you do, its about grace - the gift of life from God, and believing in that gift.
But that’s not the distinction Paul is making. It’s about identity, belonging, worth...inclusion. Paul is making the point everyone belongs.
Can you see the distinction in the understanding of those words?
One of my favorite stories is written by Victor Hugo. I wonder if he realized the masterpiece of human dejection he was creating in Le Miserable. I wonder if it was human dejection that Victor Hugo himself had felt.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the entire story is made of characters rejected by society as being worth anything. The police of chief was born in a french prison. He obsessed on his duty as an officer because it was the only way he was valued at all.
There is a woman alone with no way to earn an income or survive. Eventually becomes a prostitute and has a child. The child is essentially sold into slavery.
And the lives of all of these characters is wrapped up in one Jean Valjean. Jean Vajean is a convict. He received a 19 year sentence on a galley ship for stealing a loaf of bread to eat.
The most touching part of the story to me happens when a discouraged, hungry, tired, and cold Jean Valjean finds himself at the door of a country priest. He had some money, but at each place he had stopped to rest or to eat, they had kicked him out. They wouldn’t let him stay because he was a convict. It was a hard-hearted Jean Valjean the priest receives, and a surprised Jean Valjean when the reception he gets from the priest is different from the one he has gotten from everybody else:
A surprised Jean Valjean exclaims:
"You are good; you do not despise me. You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man."
The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother."
For 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.
Everyone belongs.
Reading these words about faith has drastically changed the lives of individuals who have drastically changed the life of the church and impacted each one of us, even though we may not realize it.
One of the earliest leaders in the church Augustine,
who struggled with what he knew to be truth about Christianity and the immoral lifestyle he was living,
read these words from the 13th chapter of Romans:
“Let us conduct ourselves properly, as people who live in the light of day - no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy. But take up the weapons of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop paying attention to your sinful nature and satisfying its desires.”
At that moment his life was changed, and he became the father of the universal, catholic church.
Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation struggled with his inability to keep from sinning. It seemed no matter how hard he tried, he would eventually end up doing the wrong thing. Luther felt his failure indicated that his salvation was not real. He lack assurance that he was truly saved, a true child of God.
He read the very words we have read this evening:
“For in (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."
And finally, he found the peace he searched for know it was his faith in Christ that saved him.
John Wesley, the father of the Methodist church, also struggled with his faith, even though like Martin Luther he was a minister. He found his heart strangely warmed when he heard Luther’s comments on this letter to the Romans being read. He heard Martin Luther describe “the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ.”
John Wesley knew who Jesus Christ was. Now he believed in him.
“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” writes Paul.
What is the gospel?
It is the power of God
whose purpose is the salvation of everyone:
Jew & Greek, rich and poor, prostitute and convict.
It is the power of God whose purpose is salvation for everyone through faith.
It is God’s righteousness revealed, even when we fail to behave in righteous ways ourselves.
Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean is much like Augustine, Martin Luther and John Wesley. Even though he might wish not to, he can’t help himself. His poverty get the best of him.
The priest gives him a bed to sleep in for the night. But before first light, Jean Valjean has made off with the priest’s silver spoons and forks, and left in the middle of the night like the thief he was.
Unfortunately, the police catch up with him, and they take Jean Valjean back to the home of the priest to retrieve his accusation and condemnation. He is guilty. But look what happens:
"Ah! Here you are!" He exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace...The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:--
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man."
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
What is the gospel?
“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."
A living faith.
I wonder, if we were to try tonight, if we would be able to describe our faith, outline our faith, speak our beliefs as clearly and as conclusively as Paul has in this letter, could we. Could we verbalize a faith that is alive? Do we have a ‘living” faith as Paul had when writing this letter?
People’s lives have been drastically changed by Paul’s faith story shared here. They in turn have helped to shape and change the people WE can be by the same “living” faith.
I invite you not to miss a single Monday evening. Perhaps as we go along, we will find ourselves transformed, drastically changed as well.
In Jesus name, Amen.
