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Sermon: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 24th July 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping Evensong 6pm
Readings: Genesis 29:31-30:22; Psalm 46; Romans 10:1-15
The episodes that precede tonight’s Old Testament reading give a context to the narrative from Genesis 29 and 30 that Peggy is going to read.
Jacob, having secured his old, blind father’s blessing by deceit, wresting it from his brother, set out in search of a wife. When he reached kinsmen among whom it was suitable for him to marry, it was agreed with Laban that instead of paying a bride price, Jacob should serve him for seven years to marry his younger daughter, Rachel. At the end of that time, Laban craftily switched daughters and Jacob found himself with Leah. Laban’s explanation for his deceit was that the culture did not allow the younger daughter to be married before the older. Laban then offered that if the traditional week of wedding celebrations proceeded without fuss, he would give Rebecca to Jacob at the end of the week also to be his wife.
The unscrupulous and deceitful Jacob scored an unscrupulous father-in-law twice over. Little wonder in this context that Jacob felt no love at all for Leah.
I have often commented that having the scripture read well makes such a difference to preaching on a passage. But tonight is an exception! Peggy’s good reading did little to improve the content of those chapters from Genesis or make them more palatable. The passage has unfamiliar customs such as a child being born on someone’s lap being a rite whereby parenthood of the child is given or assumed. The little episode about the mandrakes also needs some explanation: mandrakes were a squishy little plum-sized fruit that were thought to be a remedy for barrenness.
The profound sadness and negative feelings enshrined in the very names given to the children, the deceit, the lack of love to the point of hatred, make this passage salutary mainly in what to avoid! In the modern school context, if I had encountered such a family, I probably would have felt obliged to report them to DOCS!
Let me then move to the reading from the letter to the Romans which I hope will be more fruitful for us. Paul’s letters typically show all the characteristics of any ordinary letter of the period. Many well preserved pieces of papyrus attesting to this, have come from ancient rubbish dumps into the hands of archaeologists. The format was usually a greeting, a wish or prayer for the recipient from the author, a thanksgiving, the particular main contents of that letter in what we would call the main body of it and then final personal greetings. Most of Paul’s letters seem to have addressed particular concerns or situations that had come to his ears. The strength with which some of them are written make it easy for us to picture him in full stride and voice, dictating as he apparently did, to a secretary. Scholars see Romans as being less intense and revealing greater reflection as it addresses key issues of faith for the people in the fledgling church. Some scholars call this a testamentary letter, summing up his theology and making sure it was down in writing as you do with a will. Two of the major issues he addressed in Romans were the status of the law which some accused Paul of abandoning, and the status of Israel as a people – very close to the bone for some of the recipients of the letter!
Our reading tonight from Romans 10 needs to be seen as a section of Romans 9-11 where he asserts that God has not abandoned his promises to Israel. Most of Paul’s letters read as a letter from one friend to another. This one was written to the Christian community in Rome, a church he had not founded nor visited, a church where his name and reputation would have been known. His pre-Damascus road days of enthusiastic persecution of Christians were probably a byword in Rome, where some believers would still have eyed him with nervous suspicion. He was nevertheless really keen to go there to see them. In Acts 19, he is quoted as saying “I must also see Rome.”. It was on his heart as the Lord had said to him in a vision “so you must bear witness also in Rome.”. In the first chapter of this letter, he says to the Romans: “I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” and a little farther on, “I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. In chapter 15, he says “I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain.”. So it was in his mind when in the year 85 he wrote to the Romans from Corinth, in advance of his intended visit which ultimately he was prevented from making by imprisonment in Jerusalem. It is thought he wrote this letter to set out the essence of his belief in the expectation that when he reached Rome, he would find a sympathetic church. It was to lay common ground before his visit. The letter is quite complex but carefully constructed:
Chapters 1-8 deal with the problems of righteousness, that is, a right relationship with God.
Chapters 12-15 deal with practical questions of living
Chapter 16 deals with some personal matters and greetings.
Our reading is in the middle section of chapter 10 which itself needs to be seen as the mid section of chapters 9-11 which deal with problems concerning the Jewish people, God’s chosen people. The beginning of our passage from Romans is very confronting in the way it approaches the reader. In speaking about the devout Jews, Paul writes: “I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened.” Not a good start to endearing yourself to the Romans prior to an intended visit! He goes on: “Being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness.”
Paul makes a strong contrast: there is the free gift of righteousness, a right relationship with God, based on who Jesus was, what he did and said and then there is the misdirected way of trying to achieve a right relationship with God. It was this that his fellow Jews still clung to. They were harking back to the old dispensation and were ignoring the grace God now offers under the new dispensation in Christ. The grace of God in Jesus has superseded the old demands of the law. That was the essence of the good news for them; it is the essence of the good news for us.
In the passage, Paul cites parts of Deuteronomy which were speaking about the law. Deuteronomy had been making the point that the sense of God’s will was not a set of rules, but something that can be in people. Paul takes the same idea and relates it not just to God’s will being in people, but to the risen Christ being within, indwelling. The Word that Paul preaches, once people believe it, gets right into their hearts and minds to have a dynamic effect which the system of obedience to the law did not have. The passage is really Paul’s expansion of the doctrine of the new covenant and he alludes to some of the key elements in early Christian preaching. Confessing Jesus as Lord is really asserting that Jesus is the person and the place where we best understand who God, the Lord is. This is probably one of the underpinning ideas of the late Bishop John V Taylor’s marvelous book with the marvelous title “The Christ-like God”. This conviction about Jesus begins with faith and with the mind and continues into open acknowledgement.
The Jews’ focus seemed to be on their special place in God’s eyes. Paul’s focus is not on that. It is rather on God, the Christ-like God and God’s Christ-like nature. Paul’s theology is informed by seeing the being and nature of God as full of grace and love. This is why the law is superseded. This is why there is now no discrimination between Jew and Gentile. God’s compassion and love transcend differences and reject favouritism. Paul underlines that he is not abandoning scripture by heavily quoting the Old Testament and reapplying the principles he finds there.
It is not hard to see how confronting some of Paul’s statements would have been to those who saw themselves as among the exclusively elect of God and who were self-satisfied that they kept the law more scrupulously and rigorously than their neighbours. Paul had not abandoned the Law. He saw its framework still set and relevant but its power to condemn had gone. And, on the other side of the coin, its power to justify had also gone. It had lost its power and its hold. For the devout Jew, for whom the Torah, the Law, was all important, Paul’s claim that it was superseded was devastating. Still today, the Jewish festival of Sukkoth finishes with an emphasis on the Law. It is the festival of tabernacles and celebrates harvest thanksgiving and the forty years of God’s people in the wilderness. The 7 th and final day is called Simchat Torah and embodies rejoicing in the Law. The Torah scrolls are taken out of the Ark and are carried around the synagogue in procession, accompanied by singing and dancing. To say that faith had superseded dependence on obedience to the Law must have been devastating indeed for many of Paul’s hearers. It is not just a new idea, but an idea that involves giving up the old idea as no longer determining the course of life.
Works are now seen not as being performed in an attempt to persuade God of people’s righteousness, but they flow in grateful response to God’s love. They are undertaken as part of the privilege of God’s people being involved with God in showing that love to others.
So what do we take away from Paul’s letter tonight?
The relationship between God and his human creation is no longer the relationship between creditor and debtor. Because of Jesus and his work, men and women are no longer faced with the task of striving to satisfy God’s justice, but can simply accept God’s love; no longer faced with winning God’s favour but accepting the grace, love and mercy God freely offers.
The reading tonight really sums up the core of the very early Christian creed. We must confess that Jesus is Lord. It is important to emphasise the word “Lord” rather than the word “confess”. It was the word used for the emperor, the word used for God. It ranks Jesus with them and it gives him supreme place in our life. It sets him apart as unique. In some ways it is more a matter for the mind than the mouth.
We must, secondly, know not just that he lived, but that he also lives.
Then there is the need for us to let our belief be known in deed and word.
The Jews would find it hard to believe that the way to God was not through obedience to the law. For us, this doctrine serves not to push us from a misdirected slavishness to obedience to the law, but serves to give us confidence and assurance in our faith. It had been there in the Old Testament. Isaiah in chapter 28 verse 16 said “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame and Joel in chapter 2 verse 32 said “All who call upon the name of the Lord will be delivered.”. No scrupulous obedience to the Law is mentioned. There is no thought of this deliverance being restricted to the Jews.
We then are called to have confidence in the faith to which we are called, the rightness of our relationship to God, God’s gift to us by grace. Let us then grasp it, with thankfulness and live our lives in joyful response of service to God who loves us and gave his Son for us.