We celebrated Reformation Sunday at Bethany this weekend. Here is the audio recording and the manuscript from the sermon I preached based on the selected text from Paul's letter to the Romans.
Blessings,
Travis
Romans 3:19-28
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.
About this time 496 years ago, a young German theologian was in the midst of changing the world. We cannot say for sure, but in the days leading up to October 31, 1517, we can image a young Martin Luther bent over his desk, scratching on a piece of parchment furiously by candle-light, composing his now famous 95 theses. Through his study and teaching as a professor at the University of Wittenberg, Luther had discovered cracks in the church’s theology, its very understanding of God. Luther, a monk who had spent years fearing an angry and unmerciful God, had stumbled upon words in scripture that painted a much different picture of God. Words that pointed to a loving and merciful God. Words that pointed to the work of Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection is good news for the whole world.
Some of those words that set Luther’s theological imagination on fire are the very same words we just heard in our midst this morning. I read them not five minutes ago. Words from the apostle Paul. While we have no idea of the exact date Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, we can image that almost two thousand years ago, in the very shadow of Christ’s death and resurrection, Paul sat hunched over a piece a parchment, scratching out words furiously by candle-light. Paul was composing a letter to the followers of Jesus, and those who were curious, in the city of Rome, a community he had never personally visited, but one he hoped to one day meet. Paul put together a letter, a detailed argument of his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to persuade the good folks in Rome that his mission of spreading the Gospel was indeed valid and in line with what Jesus himself had come to earth to do. Paul was writing to a group of people he had never met with the intensity of one defending the most important case of his life. This is one of the latest letters we have from Paul, and the fullest articulation of his theology of the good news of Jesus Christ. And right at the heart of it all is the word redemption.
If we look at Paul’s writings closely we’ll see that the argument is flowing towards Paul’s statement about “God’s grace as gift.” The argument about the righteousness of God hinges on the work of Jesus Christ. And this work of Jesus Christ is articulated in one word by Paul; redemption. Now this is a fifteen dollar word. Though it may not seem like it, this word is one of the more complex ideas of the entire passage. This word [ἀπολυτρώσεως (apolutroseos)] redemption is a big theological concept for our lives of faith and in the Greek text. [This word literally means “buying back a slave or captive, making them free by payment of ransom.” It is a word that develops late in the Greek language and points to an economic arrangement that focuses on slaves and prisoners of war.] For us today it gets lost in the shuffle of big words and a dense argument. But for Paul and his audience it opens a window to the rich history of what God has been doing all along. It is not so much a word as it is a story. The story of our salvation.
[The simpler form of this fifteen dollar Greek work is λύτρov (lutron) and can mean “to set free,” to “redeem,” or to “rescue.”]
We have to go all the way back to Abraham to hear it first told. God promises old, childless Abraham that his children will out number the stars, and there is great joy. But mixed in that joy is a prophecy that points to 400 years of slavery. But in that moment, there was already the hope of redemption. The LORD had spoken.
It came to pass that the children of Israel did indeed spend 400 hundred years enslaved in Egypt. But God heard their cries and remembered the promise. The people waited. And in what must have seemed like a moment of apocalypse, God acted. The sun went dim, the waters turned to blood, and the people fled under the cover of darkness. They traveled by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Their redemption came in an outstretched hand and the stilling of waves, sheltering a way through the sea. God redeemed the children of Israel, and the Exodus would be their hope for salvation forever more. The people would tell of it to their children, generation to generation, and the Exodus would be the promise of hope to the people. Even in the exile of Babylon, some clung to this hope. Isaiah spoke of the one who would come to fulfill the promise, the one would who execute justice and righteousness and redeem the people once and for all.
One would indeed come to redeem the whole world. God would remember the promises made to Abraham and his descendants forever. God would look with favor upon the lowly. God would fill the hungry with good things. Hope would come in the form of a baby, born to Mary. He would grow to preach and teach and minister. He would eat with sinners, dine with tax collectors, and stand toe to toe with the religious leaders, calling for life in the face of death. The powers of the world would lead him to a cross, thinking they would have the last word, that death would silence Jesus, but God remembers the promise. God brings redemption. Jesus Christ is our hope, our new life, and our salvation forever more. Jesus Christ is the one who was and who is and who is to come. He is our beacon of hope when darkness sets in and the one who guides the church in this world. And today as we celebrate the reformation, we cling to Christ, and Christ remembers.
Christ remembers. That was the message Paul was trying to communicate. Tucked away in this passage is a hotly disputed phrase. For centuries it went unnoticed, but in recent years, scholars are lifting up the phrase “faith in Jesus Christ” as a crucial part of Paul’s argument. And here the meaning of the Greek is grey to us. Even the translators of the New Revised Standard Edition of the Bible (NRSV) place the alternate rendering in a footnote. The phrase in verses 21 and 26 that we heard as “faith of Jesus Christ” can also be translated as “the faith of Jesus Christ.” And here we have a glimpse of the magnitude of God’s grace in action. The phrase is ambiguous in Greek, and perhaps Paul meant it that way. But if we render it as “the faith of Jesus Christ,” we have a image of Jesus as the one who trusted in the history of God’s redeeming acts in the world. We have a picture of Jesus who has faith in God’s plan for redeeming the whole world through his death and resurrection. And as people of the resurrection, we know that Jesus had trust in this plan until the very end, when he was hung on a cross for the world to see. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ is the most important event in this long story of God’s redeeming the world. This is our story. We come together to worship and Christ remembers.
Christ remembers. It’s a story we tell when we gather at the font. We come to these waters, these ordinary waters, clinging to the promise of God. God promises to be here. God stirs up these waters, turning them from ordinary to life giving. In these life-giving waters God gives us a new identity, one that is not bound by sin, but one that is wrapped in the love of Christ. No longer are we slaves to sin, but set free and given the name children of God. In these waters we cling to Christ and Christ remembers.
Christ Remembers. This is the story Paul was telling. This is the story that Luther discovered in the depths of his own darkness. And I am not sure he would like all the pomp and circumstance of Reformation Sunday. I think he would fear that we would loose sight of what’s most important; Christ. There is a painting that hangs behind the alter in the church where Luther was pastor in Wittenberg, Germany. I have a copy of it in my office. To me it points to the heart of Luther’s theology. On one side there is Luther, his hand firmly planted on the Bible, the story of our redemption. The other is pointing to the center of the painting. On the other side you have the people of Germany. In the middle hangs Christ on the cross. Luther’s reminder for us today is that Christ is at the center of our story. Christ is our redemption now and forever. In highs and lows of life, from this place out into the world, we cling to Christ, and Christ remembers.
No comments:
Post a Comment