August 28, 2011
It Ain’t Easy - Jeremiah 20:14-18, Romans 12:1-8
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadIf you came to Church in a good mood, or if you thought you would leave here in a good mood, or if you came to be “lifted up,” then I just completely ruined it for you. Sorry about that. Don’t blame me, though. Blame Jeremiah. And if Jeremiah was here, he would emphatically say not to blame him, but to blame God. It’s true that Jeremiah 20 is Jeremiah’s own ranting, but it’s also true that Jeremiah had a lot to rant about. He never wanted to be a prophet. Clear back to the first chapter, he wanted to do something else. But no, God wouldn’t have it. Back in Chapter 15, he said it was just too hard. He had been ostracized. His own friends were out to get him. He was the loneliest man in the entire world. In Chapter 20, he cursed the day of his birth. He cursed his own mother for giving birth to him. You remember when the nurses used to come out of the delivery room and tell the father that the baby had been born? Jeremiah cursed that guy, too. On one hand, if you’ve had a bad week, just be thankful that you aren’t Jeremiah. On the other hand, though, if you really want to be a Christian, if you really want to follow God, if you want to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ, then Jeremiah might well become your best friend. Self-help sermons are popular these days, very popular. But I can assure you that self-help preachers conveniently ignore Jeremiah, and they ignore what we all know to be true, and that is that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is hard, hard work. Grace is hard work. It never has been, and never will be, easy.
Paul very likely ended up dying for it. And the Romans, to whom he wrote this letter, very likely were the ones who killed him. The underlying current that runs throughout Paul’s letter to Rome is the bitter differences between Gentile and Jewish Christians. Jews claimed to have had all the promises of old. They had been God’s chosen people for a long, long time. They had lots of reasons to boast. And besides, do you know that little tid-bit in the Bible called the Torah, or about half of Exodus all the way through Deuteronomy? Does anybody have that not included in their Bibles? Well who, then, were the Gentile Christians to ignore all of that? Jesus didn’t. And yet, the Gentiles would say, maybe he did. Jesus got in trouble all the time for breaking one of those laws. If Jesus could tweak them some, then so could they. If they didn’t want to be circumcised, they didn’t have to be. If they didn’t want to do all that ceremonial washing, then they didn’t have to. Jesus didn’t. And if they wanted pulled pork barbecue, then they could eat all they wanted. There were two very distinct sides, and the Church was rife with division before it was even started.
And here come Paul telling us that it’s not about works, or accomplishments, or last names. It’s about grace through faith. Grace is the great equalizer. If we have any reason at all to boast, Paul wrote numerous times, it’s because of grace and not works. It’s all about grace. At the end of the day, grace wins out, which is wonderful news. But, gone is the day when we can claim superiority. Gone is the day when there is an “us versus them.” Gone is the day when we can say that we are any better. We are all, every single one of us, from capital murderers to Mother Theresa, sinners standing desperately in the need of grace. The Gospel is that God gives us that grace. The work, though, is that we’re all equal now. Because we’re all equal, because we’re all family in the Kingdom of God, because we’re all God’s children, and because grace is infinitely abundant, we have to live in a way that radiates that grace. So we can never think too highly of ourselves, and we can never think too lowly of others. And that, friends, is hard work.
I am certain, after all, that Paul is talking about more than our knacks. We all have knacks in the Church, right? Paul even says that here, and he also says that in 1 Corinthians 12. “For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” I am almost certain that Paul is talking about more than our knacks. I am called to preach, for example. I believe that God given me some gifts for that, and that’s one of my functions in the Church. Glen Litaker is called to work on the grounds. He’s good at that kind of stuff. Martha Osborne works in the kitchen. David Osborne cooks BBQ. Now, I have never jockeyed any of them for any of that stuff. I have never gotten my nose all out of joint because David, for example, was the head honcho of the barbecue and I’m not. I’ll show up out there when do all that, pretty much just to hang out. You don’t want me cooking barbecue, or anything for that matter. So I let you do it and I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t attempt to do what Glenn Litaker and Wray Moxley do, either. I don’t hang light fixtures and strip floors and fix HVAC systems. I let them do that. And, come to think of it, I have preached here almost every Sunday for three and half years, and never once during that time have any of you ever jockeyed for this pulpit.
Is that what Paul is talking about? Is that the oneness for which Jesus Christ died? If it is, then it’s really no big deal. But remember, Paul is writing this letter to two factions who were at war together, in some cases literally. And, both sides had good arguments. Both sides had the Bible to back them up. Both sides loved God very much. Both sides were trying to be faithful. And yet the conflict was bitter, and had been bitter for centuries. That’s what I think Paul is talking about. So not only then, according to Paul, must they stop killing each other. They actually have to find a way to be the Church together. They have to find a way to see that the unity that both sides had in Jesus Christ, even if one side did not even accept Jesus Christ, was greater than what divided them. Romans is Paul’s primary theological treatise. If you want to know what Paul thought, if you want to see the book that almost singlehandedly defined what the Church has believed for 2,000 years, Romans is a pretty good place to go. But yet, maybe even more than that, it’s also a bridge between two people who hated each other. If what Paul wrote in Romans is true, then the “hated each other” bit is impossible.
The mainline Church is in a period of crisis right now. It doesn’t matter what flavor you are. Liberals, conservatives, moderates, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists… pretty much everybody is in a period of crisis. We are not in the cultural center like we used to be. We just aren’t. Those days are long gone, and they are not coming back. And so, like the Church of Paul’s day, we’re becoming more and more of a minority Church. And, like the Church of Paul’s day, we’re having to ask many of the same questions that Paul asked. And, we’re having to get over ourselves. I mean that. And, like the Church of Paul’s day, we’re having to figure out the answer to how we get along with people in the Church who we really don’t like, and who we don’t agree with. And we’re having to find ways to get along with people out there, whom we don’t like, and whom we disagree with.
The easy answer is to forget all those people and do our own thing. There is a reason that the Church has split umpteen thousand times, and that is because splitting is easy. I think that maybe one the Church’s primary problems is that we think too highly of ourselves, and therefore we think too lowly of others. Maybe the others are liberals, and we just assume that they could care less about God (which is not true). Or, maybe the others are conservatives, who are just heartless, mindless legalists (which is also not true). Or, maybe the others are people who like contemporary worship. They have just thrown God right out of worship (not true). Or, maybe the others like traditional worship who have no heart and soul and no real relationship with God (not true). Or, maybe the others have just moved here, and even though the live a stone’s throw from us, have nothing to do with us, because we’ve had nothing to do with them. We want them, but on our own terms.
That can’t be, Paul writes, because every single one us is here only because of God’s grace. It Christ, we are all equal now. There is no them, and if there is, they are no worse than we are. That is hard, hard work. I really do think that much of human survival is finding a them. If you want to get elected, go out and find a “them” somewhere and really live it up. You’ll go far. If you want to preach the Gospel, though, then there is no “them.” “Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is peace and his Gospel is love. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in his Name all oppression shall cease.” That’s the third verse to one of our favorite Christmas carols, Oh Holy Night. If you think about it, it’s a radical proposition. It’s the Gospel, and it’s the best news we’ve ever hard. It’s also the hardest challenge we’ve ever had. I hope we’re up for it, for our sake, and for their sake…, for God’s sake.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
