Back to Basics: Truth

 At first blush, truth may not be one of the things we think about as a basic building block of our life in Christ. Faith sure. Love, we get that. Forgiveness for our sins—all day long. Being merciful, no-brainer.

But truth? Sure, it’s important, but does it really deserve its own sermon in our “Back to Basics” worship series?

Truth may not make it in our top ten list, but it sure makes it into God’s. In Exodus 20, God gives Moses and the Israelites the Ten Commandments, and at least one commandment is directly related to truth: “Do not testify falsely against your neighbor.”

In Proverbs 6, the Biblical writer lists seven things that are detestable to the Lord. Among that list, three are related to honesty and integrity. The Lord finds detestable “a lying tongue,” “a false witness who breathes lies,” and “one who stirs up conflict in the community.”

In John 8, as he is teaching his followers, Jesus says, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teaching. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Truth matters to Jesus, and he says it should matter to us! Jesus says our freedom—freedom from sin, freedom from evil, freedom for a life marked by salvation—all of these are bound up in the truth. Truth, and its companion virtue integrity, should be something Christians care very deeply about, a basic building block of our faith that we think about and attend to regularly.

As he stands before Pilate on trial in the Scripture we read together today, Jesus proclaims, “I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth.”

What is the truth that Jesus testifies to?

Back in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the writer tells us this about Jesus and his mission: “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace; as the Law was given through Moses, so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side has made God known.”

God’s love and grace is the truth Jesus came to share. God’s love and grace is the truth Jesus wants his followers to live by, the truth that will set them free. God’s love and grace is the truth Jesus commissioned and commanded his disciples to be witnesses to.

But, as Jesus’ disciples today, we live in a world where people ask like Pilate did, “What is truth?” In a world of the 24 hour news cycle and sensationalist stories, in a world of fake news and conspiracy theories, in a world or viral videos and TikTok challenges, it can be difficult to discern what is fact and what is fiction. Especially in the last few months, as we collectively have faced a worldwide pandemic and an upcoming national election.

A lot in the world is difficult and confusing. I’ve had more than one conversation with church members, with other pastors, with leaders like educators, elected officials, even district superintendents…it’s hard to know who to trust and who is telling the truth right now.

God created us as intelligent beings with minds that look for patterns in the world, because God created the world with patterns to discover and delight in. Yet, in times like these, we haven’t discovered the pattern yet. In March, we knew little about the coronavirus and how it spread from one person to another. Was it safe to be together if we just didn’t hug or shake hands? Was it not safe to get take out or fast food? Could we touch a surface and pick up the virus? Could you be around other people as long as they didn’t feel sick? As time went on, scientists discovered that the main source of spread was from respiratory droplets and that many people who contracted the virus may never experience symptoms, which meant that wearing a mask could protect us from spreading the virus to others if we had it and didn’t know. And medical researchers are still hard at work to figure out the patterns of the virus to develop treatments and vaccines.

Yet, in the meantime, when patterns are difficult to discover, our brains are searching for meaning, anything that will help us understand the frightening events around us.

Perhaps you too have been disappointed in the number of Christian friends you saw sharing false information on social media about the coronavirus—gargle salt water and it will kill the virus, don’t believe the hype it’s all a government plot to control us, ignore the advice of the vast majority of medical professionals because these two discredited doctors made a video on Youtube proving that masks don’t work.

Beloved…we are smarter than that. God created us with the ability to be critical thinkers. We shouldn’t fall for viral videos like Plandemic. We know that legitimate doctors and professional researchers do not post their findings on Youtube or Facebook with captions like “Watch this before it gets deleted!” or “Share this because the mainstream media won’t!” Come on, y’all!

But, if we are smarter than that, then why do we or our Christian brothers and sisters sometimes fall so easily for conspiracy theories? Well first, let’s be honest…everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. It’s usually exciting and it feels like we have information that others don’t. Conspiracy theories cater to our ego to make us feel like we are “in the know,” and they make us feel special. Second, conspiracy theories help us make sense of a chaotic and complicated world. When something new, like a novel coronavirus, comes along…we don’t have ways to explain it or understand it yet. Conspiracy theories give us a way to understand hard-to-predict, rare events that rock our world. Third, conspiracy theories give us an out. Most often, these far-fetched tales give us a reason to say “This is not my problem” or “I don’t have to put in the work and sacrifice.” Christian writer D.L. Mayfield wrote, “People believe conspiracy theories because it is psychologically easier to believe a singular and unlikely narrative rather than engage in a hard and complicated reality where your own long-term participation is needed.” When God tells us that we are our brother’s keeper and Jesus asks us to love our neighbors, conspiracy theories says, “This isn’t real…so you don’t have to do the hard things for the sake of others! Don’t worry about it!” Conspiracy theories seduce us into sinful and selfish behavior that makes our own comfort and convenience more important than others’ safety and health.

As people who claim Jesus as our savior, we are called to care about the truth because Jesus did. Jesus said he came to testify to the truth of God’s love and grace, a love and grace that teaches us to care for others. When we spread misinformation online or in personal conversation without first checking it out to see if it’s true, we are doing harm to other people. It may be hard to see, but our participation in falsehood has a real impact.

Consider one of the recent conspiracy theories that got some traction among Christians. After the Sandy Hook school shooting, some Christians shared the idea that perhaps this was an undercover operation staged by the government in a plot to take away people’s guns. While some who first shared that idea may admit today that it wasn’t true, that doesn’t mean it’s harmless now. To this day, some die-hard believers still harass the families of the first-grade children who died in the Sandy Hook shooting, children that should be figuring out how to be middle schoolers in the middle of a pandemic right now. What a tragedy that families who lost a child have to deal with such disrespectful behavior!

 

So, when our minds are created to make sense out of the world but things happen in life that just don’t make sense, how do we as Christians, the ones who claim the truth will set us free, make sure we don’t fall for falsehoods and spread misinformation?

While it’s always possible we might get fooled a few times, I’ve found this simple acronym helps me.

THINK before you post. Ask yourself:

·       Is it true?

·       Is it helpful?

·       Is it inspiring?

·       Is it necessary?

·       Is it kind?

Before I elaborate a little more on these, don’t think these rules only apply to social media. I know not everyone listening does facebook or Instagram or even gets on the internet on a regular basis! But don’t tune out of the sermon just yet! These questions are helpful for personal conversations, whether at the kitchen table, on the phone, or through text message! These questions are helpful to filter all of the things we put out into the world…whether it’s something we text or say to one friend or something we tweet for thousands to read.

So, first…is it true?

Jesus asked Pilate if he thought Jesus was the king of the Jews or if Pilate had just heard other people say it. Basically, Jesus asked, “Pilate, where did you get your information from? Did you do your own research?”

Friends, do not blindly accept the testimony of others unexamined. God gave you a brain. Use it! Ask questions. Decide if your news source is trustworthy. Is the person presenting you information mentioning other researchers or thinkers who have drawn the same conclusion or are they the only ones with the “real truth?” If someone is trying to convince you that they are the holders of truth and everyone else is a sheep, friends, they are trying to sell you something or profit off you in some way.

Real quick…here’s a pro-tip. There is a website dedicated to fact-checking social media claims about medical facts or political statements called Snopes.com. The next time you are tempted to share a coronavirus meme or story about a politician you don’t agree with…go to Snopes.com to see if they can help you figure out if what you want to share is fact or fiction. More than once the good people of Snopes.com have assured me that Morgan Freeman is in fact alive and well despite the #RIPmorgan’s floating around the internet that day.

After you ask if it is true, ask “Is it helpful?”

Believe it or not…not everything that is true is always helpful. This question is definitely open to subjective interpretation, so here are some others ways I ask myself if something is helpful:

·       Does it help elevate or add to the public conversation?

·       Does it help others know my heart or communicate who I am at my core?

·       Does it help share God’s love and grace?

If I can answer yes to those questions, then I think it’s helpful.

Next…is it inspiring?

Not everything we post on social media or share with each other right now has to be informative about what is happening in the world. We should be careful to share true things that we have independently researched and verified. But sometimes we just want to share a little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day, like a funny story or an encouraging thought or a photo of our children, grandchildren, or pets, just something to brighten someone’s day.

And I’m here for it! I want to see ALL the pictures of your babies and pets! I want to hear about the things that bring you joy right now! The world needs to hear about the places you have experienced God and love and grace! What a powerful tool social media and personal conversations can be for sharing God’s light and our faith witness!

After these questions, ask yourself, “Is it necessary?”

Some of the best advice I ever got was from my professor and mentor Dr. Meeks who said, “You don’t have to tell someone everything you know.”

Man, I really wish I could go back in time and tell teenage Amanda that she doesn’t have to correct every friend’s grammatical errors because, in fact, that will not make her look smart…it will just make her annoying to other people.

Sometimes the knowledge we have, while true, may not be necessary to share with others. Now, I’ll agree…it may be hard to know when is the right time or the wrong time to share something. We all might think differently about what is necessary. So, I ask myself this question in a way that mimics John Wesley’s 3 rules:

·       Will sharing this do harm? Or will the negative impact of sharing this fact, thought, or opinion outweigh the potential good impact?

·       Will sharing this do good?

·       Will sharing this communicate the love of God?

·       If I can’t answer yes to at least one of those questions, and most of the times if I can’t answer to all three, then I probably won’t post or say something, because for me…it’s not necessary.

Lastly, before you click share or hit post or say it out loud, ask yourself this last question…“Is it kind?”

Now, let’s distinguish the difference between kind and nice.

Kind is not nice.

Nice tells half-truths and white lies to make ourselves and other people feel better. Kind tells the truth even when it’s hard.

Nice will says “It’s fine” to your face and talk about you behind your back. Kind is clear and honest and upfront.

Nice will say “I’m so sorry” or “You’re in my thoughts and prayers” while holding your pain at a distance and never trying to understand the world from another person’s point of view.

Kind is compassionate, the kind of compassion that reflects the root meaning of the word, to suffer with another.

Kind is what Jesus did…get down with you in the ditch, into the messy but beautiful parts of your life, weep with you when you are weeping, celebrate with you in moments of joy like a wedding.

Jesus’ brand of kind seeks to see the world through another person’s eyes to understand their hurt, their pain, their hopes, their dreams!

I think these questions are important because the way we communicate with others and about others is a direct reflection of our own character, our integrity, our commitment to the truth of God’s love and grace.

As people of God who testify to the truth of Jesus Christ…what we post on social media and say to each other MATTERS! Our words, whether spoken out loud or written in a facebook post, are a witness to the Gospel if we call ourselves Christians.

This week take inventory. Are your posts reflective of your faith in Jesus…or your faith in a politician, a lifestyle, a beauty product?

Am I asking you that every post you make be about Jesus and faith? No…I still want to see your cute puppy pics and read your funny stories and celebrate with you your milestone achievements!

But what I am saying is that what you post on social media reflects your faith. It reflects on our church. It reflects on Jesus. When our posts are filled with hate or judgment or misinformation, we are harming our witness to God’s kingdom. Pilate, the man who asked “What is truth?” is the same man who condemned Jesus to die on the cross even though Pilate admitted he couldn’t find a crime that Jesus was guilty of. Truth matters. The Bible told us so.

Let’s be people who share the truth of God’s love and grace with everything we do…even what we post on social media.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

More than Conquerors

A Sermon Inspired by Romans 8:26-39

Sermon 3 in “Nothing Shall Separate Us” Sermon Series

Today we conclude our sermon series from Romans, and we arrive at the promise that entitled this month’s series – “Nothing Shall Separate Us.” We’ve spent the past two weeks contemplating our sinful nature as human beings, our tendency to do the wrong thing even when we want to do the right thing, and our utter helplessness to resist sin without the saving power of Jesus’ grace.

So when we get to the end of Paul’s 8^th chapter in Romans, it’s like taking a fresh breath of air to read the words that open today’s passage, “the Spirit comes to help our weakness.”

Can I get an “Amen”?

Thanks be to God that even though we are a mess, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come to help us. The Spirit helps us when we aren’t able to choose the good on our own. The Spirit helps us live as God’s adopted children and heirs with Christ and all the responsibility that comes with that. And then, today, we learn that the Spirit intercedes on our behalf and prays for us when we don’t know how to pray.

And, whether we would like to admit it or not, this last promise brings us a whole lot of comfort because prayer is something many of find difficult or elusive at times. It seems embarrassing to admit out loud, and though I know many faithful prayer warriors in our congregation, prayer is tough for a lot of Christians. When congregations are polled, prayer continues to top the list of their top struggles in their faith journey. Even Jesus’ first followers asked him to teach them how to pray!

Sometimes, prayer just escapes us! We don’t know which words to use, and we get tripped up trying to piece together beautiful sentences that we think will be worthy of God’s ear. Or we worry that if we get distracted or we open our eyes, that we’ve lost the posture of prayer and we have to start over. Or, sometimes, we just plain don’t know what to pray for, where to start. Sometimes what we are experiencing in life is so painful, so confusing, so hard that the words just don’t come…or we aren’t sure what the right thing to pray for even is. This is when Paul reminds us of Jesus’ promise that the Spirit is our helper and advocate who will step in and carry the prayers of our heart that sound like sighs too deep for words to the throne of God on our behalf.

The Spirit intercedes, not because our words don’t matter. Of course, they matter! They are important to God. But, the Spirit stands in for us to teach us that words don’t lead us to prayer. The heart leads us to prayer. The Spirit leads us to prayer. Then words follow.

And when the Holy Spirit leads, she leads with love. Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

“Nothing!” the Spirit answers.

When you were a child, were you ever separated from your parents in a crowded place or store? How did you feel? Scared? Worried? Abandoned?

I remember this one time I was worried that I had been left behind. My family had gone to Blockbuster to rent some movies for the weekend. After I picked out my favorite movie to rent, a Shirley Temple variety show, I told my mom I needed to use the bathroom and that I’d be right back. The bathroom was in a separate part of the store, behind a door that led to a water fountain, restrooms, and a private office for employees only. After I finished washing my hands, I walked out of the bathroom and tried to open the door to the main store. LOCKED! I tried to pull harder. Still locked! My mind started to race. What had happened? Did the store close? Was there a fire and the store had been evacuated and all the doors locked behind? My mom wouldn’t have forgotten about me, would she? I turned and turned the door handle until I thought it might twist off completely. Still no luck. It wouldn’t budge. I was practically in tears as I looked up to heaven for help and read the words “Employees Only” written on the door. I turned around and saw another door, the real door leading back to the main store. I grabbed the handle and flung it open to reveal the shelves of VHS tapes and popcorn and candy and my family in the checkout line waving to me to hurry up. I’m sure it was less than 30 seconds in reality, but, to me, the moments when I thought I was separated from everyone else, alone and terrified, felt like an eternity.

When we feel alone and far away from God, Paul’s promise calls out to us “Nothing shall separate us from God’s love, for in all things we are more than conquerors.”

Exactly which things does Paul think we are conquering over? 

Because if I’m being completely honest and transparent, I don’t exactly feel like we are winning at life right now, that we are conquerors over the tough situations we are facing as a world, as a nation, as a community, as a church, as individuals. There is so much that is hard right now, especially in this season of pandemic and the ways it has changed our lives and world and the places where we have realized that we don’t really have control. I don’t feel like I’m conquering right now. Do you?

I haven’t been able to stop people I love from getting sick. I haven’t been able to imagine a creative way to make online worship feel like you are actually together with your friends and family. I haven’t been able to figure out how to perfectly support the police officers I love and trust while at the same time calling for more accountability to protect our black citizens from the harm being done to them. I haven’t been able to design a perfectly safe plan for our kids and teachers to go back to school this fall. And I haven’t found the exact right argument that will get everyone to see that this pandemic and the things we can do to help fight it, like wearing masks, are not a political fight! I sure don’t feel like a conqueror, right now! I feel more like a failure. Who’s with me?

By saying that we are conquerors over hardship, distress, persecution, peril, and sword, Paul is not saying that our power wins against these powers. Remember, when it comes to sin power versus our will power, sin wins! Paul knows the kind of powers of sin, death, and evil that we are up against, and just how powerful they are! What Paul is reminding us is that these are the very powers Jesus battled against in his life, ministry, and death. On the cross, God through Jesus looked sin and evil and death straight in the face and declared that these things would no longer separate God’s people from God’s love. 

Through the power of resurrection, Jesus won our victory over death, over evil, over sin once and for all. By the cross, we have become conquerors. Nothing will ever separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus!

Not the sword of the tongue, the thoughtless speech of gossip that hurts like a swift stab to our hearts.

Not the peril of sexism, when women are physically assaulted or verbally abused, called nasty names by loved ones, colleagues, strangers.

Not the persecution of racism or bigotry.

Not the distress of being separated from one another as we wait for deliverance from the coronavirus.

Not even the hardship of facing our worst enemy—our self—and the lies that we tell ourselves that convince us that we are not worthy of love and that we’ll never truly experience or know God’s love.

No, it’s over these things and more that Paul says “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Through the love of Christ, we will never be separated from God, despite the way we feel or how the world might try to convince us otherwise. If God is for us, who can be against us?

Prayer is one of the faith practices that helps us feel this inseparable connection to God. It’s like a carabiner. Many times, you will see carabiners on rope course or zip lines or rock climbing, keeping people hooked into safety. Or campers and hikers will use carabiners to keep up with something they don’t want to lose, like a water bottle. The carabiner keeps the important item from being separated, from being lost.

Prayer is the carabiner that keeps us plugged in to God’s unending love. Too often, we separate ourselves from prayer because we aren’t sure we are doing it right or we feel self-conscious when we try. But a life of prayer, a life plugged into God’s love for us, is so much more than of grace you say before you eat a meal. Prayer is so much more than bowing your head and closing your eyes and folding your hands. Prayer is so much more than giving God 15 minutes of your time each day spent in quiet. Even though all of these things are important to prayer, they in and of themselves are not what it takes to live a life of prayer.

A life of prayer is just that…it’s life. All of life! To be praying constantly as the Scriptures teach us doesn’t mean we are mumbling prayer words under our breath all the time. It looks more like offering the jumble of feelings, worries, and doubts of our inner thoughts to God throughout the day and blessing them with an “Amen.”

A life of prayer is living in constant awareness of the presence of God in all things, the presence of God seeking to work all things in our lives together for good. To live life as a prayer is to invite the presence of God into your everyday moments, to clip it like a carabiner to your heart. A life of prayer trusts the presence of God will find us through the Spirit even when we forget to kneel and pray. Because nothing,

not death, not life,

not angels, not rulers,

not present things, not future things,

not powers, not height, not depth,

not coronavirus,

not the stories we tell ourselves about our unworthiness,

not our worries, not our doubts,

not our prayer lives or lack thereof,

not a single thing will be able to separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Creation Waits: The Obligation of Freedom

A Sermon Inspired by Romans 8:12-25

Sermon 2 in “Nothing Shall Separate Us” Sermon Series

About a year ago, the new album “Own It” by Christian singer Francesca Battistelli starting making it into my regularly repeated music playlists while I would drive to different meetings or drive to visit church members at their homes or in the hospital. I would sing about breaking up with fear and choosing courage in faith. I would sing that God’s love is as good as it gets in life, so I would choose to trust Him even in the storms of life. But, there was this one song that even as I sang along made me wonder really about the nature of our life as children of God. The song is called “Royalty,” and, as I prayed over this morning’s Scripture and my sermon, this song came to mind once again. 

Read these lyrics:

“No longer orphans, now sons and daughters

Worthy and wanted, we belong

We are, we are, we are 

Crowned in dignity

We are, we are, we are 

Heirs to majesty

We’re made for victory

We’re given authority

To reign like kings and queens

We’re royalty”

Even though I love the intention behind Francesca’s words, there was just something that didn’t quite sit right with me about the royalty language. I mean, history is full of examples of kings and queens who misused their power and abused the responsibility entrusted to them for their own pleasure or personal gain. When told that her French subjects had no bread to eat, Queen Marie Antoinette responded callously, “Let them eat cake,” and the French revolution and uprising against the monarchy was sparked. King Henry VIII of England changed the religion of his whole country so that he could divorce his first wife to marry another woman. Even King Herod of Israel, in a desperate attempt to hold onto his power, ordered that thousands of Jewish infants and toddlers be slaughtered so that he might kill the baby who had been born to grow up and be the King of the Jews. Certainly, we aren’t made to be kings and queens of God who live like that. Our adoption as God’s children and our freedom in Christ must be for something different!

Paul writes that we are God’s heirs, along with Christ, so that we will suffer and be glorified just as Christ suffered and was glorified. I think we get into trouble when we want to skip past the suffer part and get straight to the glory part, straight to being kings and queens in God’s kingdom without learning how to be suffering servants like Christ. But, of course, it’s natural to want to skip past suffering. But that’s just not the life of discipleship. That’s not life in the Spirit of God. 

As we read about our new found freedom in Christ and our promised inheritance as the children of God, we would do good to remember the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of the one in whose suffering and glory we share.

Jesus was born to an unwed teenage mother. I imagine, as he grew up in Nazareth, there where whispers all around as he walked in the marketplace, “You see Jesus…he’s Mary son. No one know who his real father is, but it sure isn’t Joseph.”

Because of King Herod’s murderous plot, Jesus’ family was forced to flee and seek refuge in Egypt for several years until it was safe to come back to their homeland.

At his baptism, Jesus was proclaimed to be God’s son, yet he was immediately driven by the Spirit of God into the desert to fast and pray for forty days and be tempted by Satan.

The same Jesus who was marked as God’s son by the Spirit at baptism cried out “Abba, Father” in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying for deliverance from the pain and death he was about to experience.

As he died on the cross, a centurion, the Roman solider carrying out the state-sanctioned execution, looked at the suffering Christ and remarked, “Surely, this man was God’s son!”

And, proving his faithfulness endures forever, God raised Jesus from the dead through the power of a father’s love for his son.

As the adopted children of God, we are called to see Jesus whenever and wherever there are suffering people in this world.

We see Jesus in the face of teenage mothers.

We see Jesus in the weary eyes of refugees fleeing their war-torn homes to seek safety in our country only to be separated from their children and locked in cages.

We see Jesus in the bone-tiredness of those living in wilderness moments of life, when all they need is a little food and water and help.

We see Jesus in those who feel like there is no hope left in life and who wonder if the only way out of their suffering is to end it all.

We see Jesus in our brothers and sisters in prison, especially those who the state has condemned to die, including the three men executed by the federal government in the past seven days.

In Daniel, who maintained his innocence and wrongful conviction even up to the last moment before his execution by lethal injection and whose family was not allowed to be present with him as he died.

In Wesley, who was 68-years old, severely brain-damaged and mentally ill, suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

In Dustin, who converted to Christianity during his time in prison, who recognized and repented for the crimes he committed, who was seeking to live a redeemed life through Christ in prison caring with kindness for guards and fellow inmates.

We so often want to skip past the ugliness of suffering and get straight to the resurrection and glory parts of our inheritance as God’s children. But, if we follow a Savior who overcame sin and pain and death, we can’t look past the sin and pain and death happening in the world around us. We can’t look past even the sin and pain and death we find in us.

Last week, we talked about the power of sin in our lives. That sometimes, even when we want to do the right thing, we just can’t seem to do it. We discovered that the antidote for our sin-soaked lives is the rain of God’s grace, the floodwaters of baptism that drown out the power of sin. By the Spirit at work in our lives and the grace of Jesus Christ, we can actually be set free from sin to live as disciples of Jesus. Paul calls this our glorious freedom as the children of God.

Freedom is a concept I think we struggle understanding as Christians, especially as Christians living in America. We claim freedom for all sorts of things. The Bill of Rights names freedoms that should be protected for citizens of the US—the freedom to speak our minds, the freedom to practice the religious of our choice, the freedom to bear arms, the freedom to own property, the freedom to vote. These can all be good freedoms, and I believe they are rightly protected as essential freedoms in our nation.

But these are not the sorts of freedoms Paul has in mind when he writes about the glorious freedom of the children of God. Let’s go back to where we started reading this morning, at verse 12: “So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.” Obligation is not the word that comes to my mind when I imagine freedom, at least not in the ways we talk about freedom as Americans.

So often, when we talk about freedom in the US, it’s usually a freedom based on our own personal desire – “I’m free to do as I please.” Or it’s an excuse for our decisions and actions – “Hey! It’s a free country, right?”

But, when it comes to freedom in Christ, Paul is making a different argument. Through the forgiveness we have received by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we are free to choose to live lives shaped by obedience to the Spirit of God, just as Jesus did. In fact, we are free to choose suffering, to give up our American concept of freedom as self-determination, and for the glory of God to make choices that benefit our neighbor, rather than to fulfill our selfish desires.

Friends, if the posts I have seen on social media in the past three months truly reflect the hearts and minds of Tennesseans, then we are in trouble! I’ve read all sorts of posts that talk about personal freedom during this pandemic…the freedom to NOT wear a mask, the freedom to gather for worship even if it isn’t safe, the freedom to do as you please because “Hey, it’s a free country!”

That may be true, but you, child of God, you have been adopted by the Spirit into a different type of freedom.

You have been adopted into a freedom that puts on a mask whenever you step into public places and remembers these words of Scripture: “But in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3)

You have been adopted into a freedom that honors another person’s worry or fear that causes them to not come to in-person worship and treats them with love rather than contempt because you remember these words from Scripture: “Watch out or else this freedom of yours might be a problem for those who are weak.” (1^st Corinthians 8:9)

You have been adopted into a freedom that chooses to stay home and to follow whatever other measures public health officials and medical experts recommend to slow the spread of this novel coronavirus as you remember these words of Scripture: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14).

Y’all, when we refuse to make these sacrifices to help end this pandemic, our human sin and selfishness is on display for the world to see. The CDC director Robert Redfield said just this past week that if everyone in the US wore a mask, the coronavirus pandemic could be under control within four to eight weeks. 

Church, if we want to show the world our love for God and our love for neighbor, THE TIME IS NOW! We need to embrace these sacrifices and lead by example. I’m already proud to share that members of our return task team have set us up for success in returning to church under the safest circumstances possible. And members of our church have shared with me that our neighbors are noticing, and some plan to visit our worship service when they feel comfortable because of how seriously and thoughtfully we are handling the pandemic. Wow! This is how we love our neighbors.

I’m proud that we, as a church, are taking on a huge endeavor to support our teachers and our students by donating cleaning supplies and school supplies, to save teachers a little of what they would spend out of their own pockets to buy what the school and some families can’t afford to provide. What a witness to show our commitment to 

build the kingdom of God in our community!

By the Spirit of Christ living in us, we are free to choose to live cross-shaped lives.

A cross-shaped life chooses good for the sake of the other rather than for the sake of the self.

A cross-shaped life lay down its own freedom in order to offer freely the good news of the Gospel.

A cross-shaped life remembers that the coming glory of God’s kingdom will outshine the present suffering of our lives and creation so we can endure with hope and we can wait with patience.

Even creation is waiting for us, children of God, to usher in God’s kingdom through our cross-shaped living.

This is the hope of our inheritance, friends: the God who was faithful to raise Christ to life again after he was obedient to death by the cross, that same God will be faithful to us and will glorify us.

So may we use our freedom in Christ to submit ourselves to obedience in the Spirit and choose to live a cross-shaped life full of the love for God and for neighbor.

May it be so, and may it be soon.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Amen.

The Do’s and the Don’ts of Grace

A Sermon Inspired by Romans 7:15-25a

Sermon 1 in “Nothing Shall Separate Us” Sermon Series

Is it just me, or does this portion of Paul’s letter to the church of Rome sound more like a tongue twister than a Scripture lesson?

“I don’t do what I want to do and                                                                

I do do what I don’t want to do,                                                                    

so if I don’t do what I want to do,                                                                

is it me who does it                                                                                      

or is it sin that does it,                                                                             

and who is gonna help me not do what I don’t want to do                             

and do do what I want to do?”

If it’s this hard to wrap our tongues around what Paul has written, then what hope do we have to wrap our minds around what he’s actually trying to say?

Maybe it would have been easier if Paul had just cut to the chase like they do in the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, “Hi, my name is Paul, and I’m a sinner.”

It doesn’t help our confusion that we started reading Romans in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of the letter. Romans is 16 chapters long, and there are 25 verses in the 7^th chapter, and we started reading at verse 15 where the first words we hear are “I don’t know what I’m doing.” It’s kind of like we only started listening halfway through a movie or a news story or a sermon so that we are paying attention at the end and we see the happy ending or hear the reporter’s sign off catch phrase or listen to the preacher say “Amen,” but we aren’t so sure how we got there or what’s really important anyway.

So fully relying on God’s grace and your patience, I think it’s important we learn a little bit more about Paul’s letter to the Romans so we can understand all this business about the do do’s and don’t do’s of grace.  

What is helpful to understand about Paul’s letters in the New Testament is that Paul is most often writing to specific communities of faith. He is writing letters to churches that he, Paul, helped to start as a missionary and evangelist. After his conversion to Christianity, Paul spent his life sharing the good news of Jesus all over the Roman empire. Wherever Paul spent time preaching the gospel, he helped to start a church. So, that’s why when you read most of Paul’s letters, they begin with a greeting like, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!” And they end with promises to visit again soon or with instructions to say hello to certain people. Reading a letter in the New Testament is really like opening someone’s mail from two centuries ago.

But Romans is different because Paul didn’t help start the church at Rome. Most scholars believe that Paul wrote this letter to the Christian church as an introduction of who he is and how he understands the Gospel, writing to maybe ask for their financial support for his mission work or for their help and prayers while he was in prison (which he was many, many times).

So, in Romans, Paul explains thoroughly how God has offered salvation to the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He starts all the way back at the beginning with Adam in the garden of Eden and the first act of sin and disobedience against God and then he painstakingly sweeps through the history of time, recounting how even when humans disobeyed and sinned and turned away from God, God was faithful over and over again to the covenant. In other words, God is righteous—God does what God said God will do. We humans – not so much.

And so we need help! Our whole life is distorted, is bent out of shape, is out of whack because of sin. Paul writes in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” If you were raised in the church (or if you were raised in the South), you have heard that Bible verse before, and you may even know it by heart.

But that’s only half of the sentence. The very next verse says, “But all are treated as righteous freely by God’s grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.” And that’s the gospel in a nutshell for Paul.

All of us are sinners. 

Every single one.

None of us can be righteous on our own. We just can’t. Sin has messed up our lives, our hearts, our souls, our world.                                

So we need help!

God is righteous, so God sent his son Jesus to pay the price for our sin, because we couldn’t. And God offers this gift, our sin being cancelled, to us freely! It costs too much. We could never afford it. So, God just gives it to us because that’s who God is—righteous and loving and full of grace. THANKS BE TO GOD!

Paul continues, then, to teach that since we are sinners saved by grace, we have been given a new life in Jesus Christ. And a new life requires a new lifestyle. Once we were a people under the oppression of sin, but now we live under a new system—the system of God’s love, forgiveness, and grace. We have a new identity in Christ, and it’s time for us to give up our old sinful ways that lead to death and begin the life journey of following God’s way that leads to life, to transformation, to discipleship as a follower of Jesus.

So, after all this talk of a new life and freedom from sin in the first six chapters, we might expect Paul to move on to talk more about grace upon grace and the love and peace that God grants to us and then about the possibilities of the new life in Christ...but instead Paul is still going on about the power of sin and our inability to do the right thing even when we know what it is, even when we want to do it.

Come on, Paul, give us a break here. Who wants to talk of sin and failure? We don’t have to worry about that anymore because of Jesus, right?

But Paul is wrestling with a huge question. You see, Paul was a faithful Jewish man before he became a Christian. Not only was he a devout Jew, but he was a Pharisee. Remember Pharisees are the religious rule keepers that Jesus is always getting into trouble with in the gospels. Pharisees were scholars of God’s Word, the faithful people who meditated on God’s law both day and night and delighted in it. From his experience with God’s Word, with knowing by heart the laws God gave to God’s people to help them live a righteous life, Paul is wrestling with this big question in his newfound freedom from sin and death in Jesus Christ: “Why would God give us the law if trying to follow it couldn’t save us from death? And if God’s law can’t save us, does that mean that trying to follow it is bad or evil?”

To this second question, Paul immediately answers “No!” In fact, it is right to embrace God’s law because God’s Word is holy and just and good. It just turns out, that as human beings, we can’t help but be seduced by sin, so that not even God’s law can rescue us from being trapped by it.

But we know that, don’t we? Jesus said that the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. In fact, Jesus said that all of the laws God ever gave to God’s people are summarized in those two statements:

Love God. 

Love your neighbor.

So, I ask you, how many weeks have you fallen short of those commands after you leave this space of worship? If you are like me, you haven’t always lived up to this goal of loving God and loving neighbor perfectly throughout the week. Let’s be honest…we don’t even make it to the parking lot after worship sometimes without breaking one of those commands.

Are we just that bad? Are we just not trying hard enough? Is it really just a matter of trying harder to get our actions to match our words? This is exactly the pickle that Paul finds himself in when we read today’s tongue-twisting passage in chapter 7.

Since God’s law is good and holy, that can’t be the problem with human nature. But if I’m trying with all my might to follow God’s good instructions on how to live my life, why do I keep falling short? 

Paul is describing that very human struggle in which, sometimes, we just can’t seem to help ourselves and stop. Paul is describing the battle of our everyday lives, of trying to live up to our good intentions but never really, never fully achieving what we set out to do.

It’s like in elementary school, when you have made up your mind to sit with the new kid at lunch or play with the lonely person on the playground, but you find your body steering you away from what you want to do, what you made your mind up to do and, instead, your feet take you toward the lunch table filled with familiar faces or the monkey bars where the cool kids are hanging out. You knew what was the right thing to do...and you even really wanted to do the right thing, but at the last moment, for some reason deep down that you don’t even really understand, you chickened out.

Or it’s like when you get in an argument with someone you love, and just about the time you start raising your voice and saying mean things just because you know those words will hurt the other person right here, you think to yourself “What am I doing? This isn’t worth it. I don’t even mean what I’m saying. I’m embarrassed of the way I’m acting. I don’t want to be this person,” but still, even knowing all this, even silently admitting it to yourself in the middle of the fight, you dig in deeper and you keep going, you keep yelling, you keep saying hurtful things...you don’t stop and you don’t know why.

Even when we know the right thing to do, the thing that God would want us to do, we can’t seem to do it, to turn our good intentions into justice,  into loving actions. Try as hard as we can, we can’t seem to always do the right thing even when we try really hard. It’s like climbing a tall hill made of sand. As the sand keeps sliding under your feet, you put in a lot of effort, but you don’t get anywhere. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out! 

WE NEED HELP!

And Paul gets that. Paul knows that we are way out of our league when we try to be righteous and good on our own, because sin is so much more than just breaking rules or doing bad things. Sin is a real and seductive power that distorts our relationship with God and, therefore, our relationship with everyone and everything else. Sin is a turning away from God-centeredness to self-centeredness. Sin makes itself at home in our hearts as human beings, living in our bodies like a parasite, destroying us from the inside out until we can remove it and replace it with something stronger.                       

No wonder we keep messing it up. When it comes to will power versus sin power, sin wins.

Sin is even so sneaky and powerful that when we are really close to doing the right thing, just when we think we are finally following God’s law and Jesus’ commandments, that’s the exact moment when sin sneaks in! Sin invades and twists our good intentions into serving sin’s purpose—pain, destruction, death. Let me tell you about my friend Faye, who was a recovering alcoholic and an active member of the Alcoholics Anonymous community before she passed away. When Faye first told me this story, it was so powerful to me, that I asked her if I could have her permission to share it in my preaching and teaching without using her name. And Faye said sure, but she insisted that I use her real name, and so I will.

When Faye started attending AA meetings, she found out just how someone can want to do the right thing and end up doing the opposite because of sin. She told me this story, “When I first started working the 12 step program, my sponsor asked me who I hated the most in the world. After I told him, he told me to pray for that person. A few weeks later, I came back and told my sponsor that I couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t pray for this person I hated. I was getting too upset, too angry, too dangerously close to taking a drink again. My sponsor asked me what I had been praying for. So, I told him. I told him that I was praying for this person that I hated to get what was coming to them, for God to punish them, to make sure they couldn’t hurt anyone else. My sponsor said, ‘You’re not doing it right, Faye. That’s not praying for the person you hate; that’s just asking for God to hate them too.” So, he told me to start praying that my enemy would get all the good things in life, that they would be happy and be at peace. It wasn’t until I could pray for the person I hated most in the world to get all the things out of life that I wanted—happiness, peace, serenity—that I could find those things for myself.’”

Even in her best intentions to pray for her enemy, sin overpowered Faye’s will and brought her dangerously close to drinking again, to losing her sobriety, and to losing the ability to forgive herself and others.          

But, here’s the good news…we are not in this struggle alone. 

Everyone else is human just like we are. Yes, we are a complete and total mess, but 

so

is 

everyone 

else.

But, in order to see the fullness of God’s grace, to really understand just what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, we have to understand our complete and utter failing as human beings. We have to realize that trying to do the right thing without relying on God’s grace is like fighting a losing battle. There are forces, like sin and death, that are at work within us, like parasites, that we just can’t win against on our own. Our will power may be strong, but it isn’t strong enough. We need a transplant of something stronger.

Paul diagnoses our sin-sick souls, but he also names the cure that we desperately need. We need the spirit of Christ dwelling within us. And, as Paul says, thanks be to God that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, can and does do something about our helpless state.

Through the cross and resurrection, Jesus has set things right. He’s fixed the problem.

Now, we just have to show up at the Sinners Anonymous meeting. We don’t have to pretend to be perfect, anymore. We don’t have to act like we can fix all our problems by ourselves. I’ll let you in on a little secret. We weren’t fooling anyone in the first place anyway.

Because of grace, we can admit that we are powerless in the face of sin. We are unable to overcome by sheer will power. We can admit that because of sin our lives are unmanageable. We don’t do what we want to do to and we end up doing the sorts of things that destroy our lives and relationships. We can surrender ourselves to the higher power of Jesus Christ and accept God’s gift of grace and forgiveness that enables a new future, free from the bondage of sin. We can gather together here, among friends who experience the same problem, and admit our mistakes and find welcome and support. We can celebrate the small victories, the times when, by the miracle of grace, we follow God’s guiding Spirit within us and choose life and peace and love. We can live one day at a time and view our mistakes of yesterday like God does, from the viewpoint of redemption. We can rest assured that even though we cannot rescue ourselves from sin and death, God has stepped in once and for all to restore our sanity and to transform us from the inside out.

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.