unday, July 4, 2010 - part three of our in worship consideration of Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome - and a brief reflection on part of chapter 2. I am also using the lectionary gospel in Luke 10. If you happen to be in town - maybe heading to Tanglewood for the James Taylor/Carole King show in the evening (we'll be there) - why not join us earlier for worship at 10:30 am?As we enter more deeply into St. Paul’s insights in the book of Romans – and put them within the context of both Christ’s gospel and our own culture – I think the key word for today is perspective. Call it God’s unique and upside down perspective – or a vision of life given to us by faith so that we embrace the way of the Cross rather than the simply our own feelings – or maybe just call it discipleship. Whatever words you use, the perspective I am talking about gives us eyes to see beyond the obvious – and nourishing such counter-cultural vision takes practice.
Not long ago I heard about a young
man – a recent high school graduate – who went into the auto parts store down on North Street and asked for a seven-ten cap. The woman behind the counter had no idea what he was talking about and called out to her colleagues: “Anybody know what a seven-ten cap is?” Nobody did… so she asked the young man, “What else can you tell me about this thing?”
• And he said, “It sits right on the engine and somehow or another mind got lost.” “Well, tell what kind of car do you drive?” she continued and was told a Honda Civic.
• “Ok… and how big is this thing?” and he said about three and a half inches in diameter. “And what do you think this thing does?” to which the young man replied, “I have no idea but it’s always there and now it is gone.”
• Totally perplexed the woman behind the counter said, “Let’s try this, can you draw me a picture?” as she gave the young graduate a note pad. And, without hesitation, he draws a circle about three and a half inches in diameter with the number 710 right
in the middle.
At which point the clerk almost fell on the ground because she was laughing so hard. And when she was finally able to gain her composure she said, “Sir, I think what you’re looking for is… an oil cap.” And with a totally straight face the young said, “710 cap, oil cap, I don’t care what you call it, I just need one – and I don’t see what’s so funny about that!” Are you still with me: see what I mean about perspective and practice?
Both Jesus and Paul want us to understand that while doing God’s will begins in our hearts – remember how the prophet Jeremiah put it when he said, “There will come a time when the very essence of God’s way will be written on your hearts not in a book or on a scroll?” – it takes practice.
• Jesus sends his followers out two by two to practice living from the heart; he wants his disciples to learn how to listen for God’s still speaking voice and then respond to it. This is one of the ways that the words of the gospel become flesh, right?
• St. Paul says much the s
ame thing in chapter two of Romans when he uses a woodworking example: If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you or what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up.
Being a Jew (or a Christian) won't give you an automatic stamp of approval for God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. God makes up his own mind. For, example, if you sin without knowing what you're doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you're doing, that's a different story entirely. Merely hearing God's law is a waste of your time if you don't do what God commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.
Now two important insights are suggested here: 1) That we have to learn to see life from God’s perspective – sometimes it is obvious, but often it is not; and 2) Simply knowing the way of God without doing it, doesn’t cut it because God expects the Word to become Flesh. Here’s what I think St. Paul is trying to help us appreciate and practice:
• The way of Jesus – or the perspective of the kingdom of God – is often counter-intuitive.
The way of Christ honors the weak, it values the forgotten, it treats children as wise rabbis and brings everyone to the banquet of God’s love – and for almost every society this behavior is unnatural, right? We build bridges rather than celebrate segregation. We search for peace (sometimes...)
• In the natural order of things, animals leave their sick and weak to perish, but the people of Jesus organize hospitals and hospice and health care. We live and act as if we have another world in view and often become our best selves in doing so.
Not long ago I heard about a young
man – a recent high school graduate – who went into the auto parts store down on North Street and asked for a seven-ten cap. The woman behind the counter had no idea what he was talking about and called out to her colleagues: “Anybody know what a seven-ten cap is?” Nobody did… so she asked the young man, “What else can you tell me about this thing?”• And he said, “It sits right on the engine and somehow or another mind got lost.” “Well, tell what kind of car do you drive?” she continued and was told a Honda Civic.
• “Ok… and how big is this thing?” and he said about three and a half inches in diameter. “And what do you think this thing does?” to which the young man replied, “I have no idea but it’s always there and now it is gone.”
• Totally perplexed the woman behind the counter said, “Let’s try this, can you draw me a picture?” as she gave the young graduate a note pad. And, without hesitation, he draws a circle about three and a half inches in diameter with the number 710 right
in the middle.At which point the clerk almost fell on the ground because she was laughing so hard. And when she was finally able to gain her composure she said, “Sir, I think what you’re looking for is… an oil cap.” And with a totally straight face the young said, “710 cap, oil cap, I don’t care what you call it, I just need one – and I don’t see what’s so funny about that!” Are you still with me: see what I mean about perspective and practice?
Both Jesus and Paul want us to understand that while doing God’s will begins in our hearts – remember how the prophet Jeremiah put it when he said, “There will come a time when the very essence of God’s way will be written on your hearts not in a book or on a scroll?” – it takes practice.
• Jesus sends his followers out two by two to practice living from the heart; he wants his disciples to learn how to listen for God’s still speaking voice and then respond to it. This is one of the ways that the words of the gospel become flesh, right?
• St. Paul says much the s
ame thing in chapter two of Romans when he uses a woodworking example: If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you or what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up.Being a Jew (or a Christian) won't give you an automatic stamp of approval for God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. God makes up his own mind. For, example, if you sin without knowing what you're doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you're doing, that's a different story entirely. Merely hearing God's law is a waste of your time if you don't do what God commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.
Now two important insights are suggested here: 1) That we have to learn to see life from God’s perspective – sometimes it is obvious, but often it is not; and 2) Simply knowing the way of God without doing it, doesn’t cut it because God expects the Word to become Flesh. Here’s what I think St. Paul is trying to help us appreciate and practice:
• The way of Jesus – or the perspective of the kingdom of God – is often counter-intuitive.
The way of Christ honors the weak, it values the forgotten, it treats children as wise rabbis and brings everyone to the banquet of God’s love – and for almost every society this behavior is unnatural, right? We build bridges rather than celebrate segregation. We search for peace (sometimes...)• In the natural order of things, animals leave their sick and weak to perish, but the people of Jesus organize hospitals and hospice and health care. We live and act as if we have another world in view and often become our best selves in doing so.
In a collection of very challenging and wise essays entitled, The Death of Adam, novelist Marilynne Robinson – who wrote both Gilead and Home – reminds us that in our best and most deeply faithful selves, those who follow the way of Jesus practice an ethics of compassion that defies the so-called natural selection of Darwin, Nietzsche and others because we see life from a different perspective.
• “We may see as through a glass darkly now,” but we always begin by
looking for the sacred within the secular, the holy within the human, the extraordinary within the ordinary.
• Robinson says: The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. But it is not in our nature to stop harming ourselves. We don’t behave consistently with our own dignity or with the dignity of other people… so the Bible reiterates this endlessly.
No wonder our perspective in Christ always incorporates the blind and the lame, the wounded and the maimed: while the so-called “realistic” or even “market-driven” voices say, “let them die because they drag us all down and cost too much,” we, following Jesus, say: we are a part of the same body. What hurts one hurts us all – so we will carry our brother and nourish our sister even when there is no obvious benefit and tons of cost – for this is the way of the Lord.
• Are you still with me? St. Paul and Marilynne Robinson – along with John Calvin and so many others in our tradition – remind us that we have to practice the way of Jesus.
• As she likes to say: we are more than DNA striving to create more DNA. We are those created in the image of God just a little below the angels – but we must learn to see it and claim it and nourish it.
That is St. Paul’s first insight and the second is equally vexing: just becaus
e we’ve claimed something of God’s grace for ourselves – calling us children of the Lord as Christians or Jews or Muslims or whatever – if we don’t give shape and form to that claim, we are phonies. As Bible scholar Paul Achtemeier has written:
What we’re talking about is appearance as against reality… human responsibility and the connection between what we say and what we do… for the appearance of doing what is right is not enough… God is not fooled by such pretense… so let us acknowledge that grace is not a message of indolence or irresponsibility… rather it is a summons to accept responsibility for one’s acts and act in a manner that strengthens God’s love in the world.
Take, for example, today’s worship: many people say they believe in God but rarely take time away from business or pleasure to worship the Lord. It takes practice – prioritizing – and perspective for the Word must become Flesh. Or you might say it takes some effort. I think of another story about a Midwestern preacher who got a note in his email from a woman who was terribly dissatisfied with the choir.
So he invited her to come to his office and talk the problem over with him. She accepted and brought to his attention a number of ways that the whole music program of the church could be strengthened. Gratefully, the preacher celebrated the wisdom of her ideas and said, “You are really creative and your ideas make a whole bunch of sense. In fact, I think that you are the person t
o head up this recruitment plan: will you take the job?” To which she said immediately, "Oh, no, I don't want to get involved. With my hobbies and golf and the hours I put into other things, I just don't have the time. But I will gladly advise you any time.
The preacher's answer was classic and completely in the mode of St. Paul: "Good, gracious, lady, that's the problem I have now. I already have 400 advisers. What I need is someone who will do the work."
What a huge harvest – and how few the hands,” Jesus said. In Peterson’s translation he continues saying: “So get on your knees now for the time has come to ask the Lord of the harvest for workers.”
• Dear people of God, we come to Christ’s open table to learn – to practice following the way of the Lord rather than our own feelings – and to be filled from the inside out by grace.
• We don’t come to express an opinion – or to put on a show – we come to be healed and loved and then sent out to share the blessings.
So, in Christ’s name and in Christ’s way, I invite you all: come for all things are now ready…
• “We may see as through a glass darkly now,” but we always begin by
looking for the sacred within the secular, the holy within the human, the extraordinary within the ordinary.• Robinson says: The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. But it is not in our nature to stop harming ourselves. We don’t behave consistently with our own dignity or with the dignity of other people… so the Bible reiterates this endlessly.
No wonder our perspective in Christ always incorporates the blind and the lame, the wounded and the maimed: while the so-called “realistic” or even “market-driven” voices say, “let them die because they drag us all down and cost too much,” we, following Jesus, say: we are a part of the same body. What hurts one hurts us all – so we will carry our brother and nourish our sister even when there is no obvious benefit and tons of cost – for this is the way of the Lord.
• Are you still with me? St. Paul and Marilynne Robinson – along with John Calvin and so many others in our tradition – remind us that we have to practice the way of Jesus.
• As she likes to say: we are more than DNA striving to create more DNA. We are those created in the image of God just a little below the angels – but we must learn to see it and claim it and nourish it.
That is St. Paul’s first insight and the second is equally vexing: just becaus
e we’ve claimed something of God’s grace for ourselves – calling us children of the Lord as Christians or Jews or Muslims or whatever – if we don’t give shape and form to that claim, we are phonies. As Bible scholar Paul Achtemeier has written:What we’re talking about is appearance as against reality… human responsibility and the connection between what we say and what we do… for the appearance of doing what is right is not enough… God is not fooled by such pretense… so let us acknowledge that grace is not a message of indolence or irresponsibility… rather it is a summons to accept responsibility for one’s acts and act in a manner that strengthens God’s love in the world.
Take, for example, today’s worship: many people say they believe in God but rarely take time away from business or pleasure to worship the Lord. It takes practice – prioritizing – and perspective for the Word must become Flesh. Or you might say it takes some effort. I think of another story about a Midwestern preacher who got a note in his email from a woman who was terribly dissatisfied with the choir.
So he invited her to come to his office and talk the problem over with him. She accepted and brought to his attention a number of ways that the whole music program of the church could be strengthened. Gratefully, the preacher celebrated the wisdom of her ideas and said, “You are really creative and your ideas make a whole bunch of sense. In fact, I think that you are the person t
o head up this recruitment plan: will you take the job?” To which she said immediately, "Oh, no, I don't want to get involved. With my hobbies and golf and the hours I put into other things, I just don't have the time. But I will gladly advise you any time.The preacher's answer was classic and completely in the mode of St. Paul: "Good, gracious, lady, that's the problem I have now. I already have 400 advisers. What I need is someone who will do the work."
What a huge harvest – and how few the hands,” Jesus said. In Peterson’s translation he continues saying: “So get on your knees now for the time has come to ask the Lord of the harvest for workers.”
• Dear people of God, we come to Christ’s open table to learn – to practice following the way of the Lord rather than our own feelings – and to be filled from the inside out by grace.
• We don’t come to express an opinion – or to put on a show – we come to be healed and loved and then sent out to share the blessings.
So, in Christ’s name and in Christ’s way, I invite you all: come for all things are now ready…
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