March 8, 2009

Our biblical text today comes from the weighty letter of Paul to the church in Rome. Written at the height of his career in the mid 50's first century, this sixteen chapter letter is Paul's longest, and some say, his most influential letter. Paul planted churches in many towns in the northeastern Mediterranean area, but he did not plant the church in Rome. In the first chapter of this letter we hear of his intent to visit this church soon. In this letter, Paul writes extensively about the theme of salvation through Christ. He is working out a theology for the early church to make sense of not only Christ's death, but also his connection to the Jewish faith and the non-Jews' inheritance of that legacy. Deeply important to Paul is a theology of salvation that reaches all the way back through history to Adam, through Abraham and Moses. In addition, a lot of Paul's work at this time was collecting money from the newer Gentile churches and sending them back to the beleaguered Mother church in Jerusalem. He was constantly hoping to unite the Jewish and Gentile churches that were often in opposition to each other.

So, that is the context of the letter which we focus on today. In the text assigned for today, Paul is working out his theology of how salvation rests on faith rather than adherence to the Law. Now, we know that the Law was an important part of the Jewish tradition. Big and small, laws and rules were carved out, not to just control behavior, but to help this religious community know the right path. There was supposed to be some comfort in living rightly and within the bounds of your tradition. The interesting thing, though, is that Paul, and many others by this time, had figured out that people cannot remain perfect adherents to any law. In fact, as Paul delineates, "the law brings wrath." So instead, Paul is working out a theology of faith whereby we are the sons and daughters of righteousness, not by observing the law perfectly, but through our faith in God who has made promises to us.

Think about what an early radical thought that was. Instead of all the responsibility on us to get it right, we are to focus on God who makes promises and trust in that God. Somehow it feels more passive that doing things a certain way, doesn't it? It's more of a mindset and an orientation of our lives than a specific adherence to a certain list of do's and don'ts.

And Paul uses Father Abraham as his example. Think back, he says, all the way back to Father Abraham, who was called on by God to leave everything and become the Father of a new faith. Through Abraham, God was going to bring ancestors in great multitude. Nothing in Abraham's life indicated that this would be easily done. Abraham was from the land of Ur in modern day Iraq - far from the Promised Land. He had no wealth to speak of; Oh, and he was old and his wife was old!! Nothing wrong with being old, except for when God was intending to use your body and your offspring as the beginning of a new people.

There was almost nothing in Abraham's life to signify that this would be a success - no wealth, no land, no children, and no youthfulness. The only thing that Abraham had was his faith and trust in God. Abraham was "fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised." (Romans 4:21)

Paul, despite his tediousness in working out his theology with great repetition, is focusing on a really important theological concept: can we earn our way into our inheritance or do we receive our inheritance from our God who makes the initial promise? Any of us who have tried to earn our way into something has probably figured out that no matter how hard we try, we can never truly do it perfectly. Some of us try to kill ourselves trying to do so, and are probably pretty close to doing it. But ultimately, according to Paul, we will fail. We will fall short, we will not be perfect. Look at your Lenten disciplines. Have you adhered to them perfectly? Imagine that kind of perfection demanded in every area of your life!!!

Instead Paul draws our attention to Abraham who trusted in God over and over again. Sometimes he argued with God - as in the story of whether or not God would destroy Sodom; sometimes he didn't understand what God was up to - remember the time that God asked him to be willing to sacrifice his only son; Throughout it all, Abraham kept his eye on the promise of God despite what it may have looked like to others.

I'd like to give you a couple of example of people keeping their eyes on the promise despite the realities of their lives. I'll start with a simple example and move to a more global one. The first is my Aunt Eva. Eva was a nurse in World War II. She is a no-nonsense Yankee who, I'm sure, was a no-nonsense nurse. She was the type who got her job done with almost perfection. In her experience as a girl growing up during the depression and then serving in a major war, she never forgot the leanness of both of those experiences. She was not ever an extravagant person. I remember going to her duplex as a young girl. She had a tiny kitchen with a very complicated trash system. She had recycling for tin, she had food recycling for the compost, she had a bin for glass and then she had regular trash. It took 5 minutes to throw away your trash. She separated things and recycled decades before anyone else did. She was unyielding about this and she expected every houseguest of hers to be so as well. Well, today as I take the lid off beans or tuna cans, I think of my Aunt Eva. Even through years of great excess and waste, she knew that we were always called to exercise restraint and to be frugal.

My second example of people keeping their eye on the promise despite the reality around them is Jack Blackburn. Jack, who recently died and was profiled in Jake's UVA Alumni magazine, was a member of my church in Charlottesville. He was kind of the Don Hughes or Ken Biery of our church - he was a well-respected and upstanding business man, father and husband. Jack Blackburn was also a southern gentleman who was the Dean of Admission of the prestigious University of Virginia, just a block away from our church. He was dean for nearly a quarter of a century. "More than half of U.Va.'s living alumni were admitted to the school under his watch." (UVA Magazine, Spring 2009 p. 10)

Between 1958 and 2009 he helped to steadily diversity the student body from southern white men to an increasingly diverse and international student body. Currently, 58% of the student body is women. He actively recruited international students once Virginia law allowed it in the mid 80's. He also endured lawsuits and personal threats in the late 90's while trying to increase the presence of African American students on campus. As a result, "U.Va.'s African-American students annually graduate at the highest rate of any public university in America." (Ibid., p. 11) You can imagine the trust that Jack Blackburn had to maintain throughout those huge changes and the obstacles to those changes.

My third example came from an unusual place this week. I am a huge fan of the late, late night talk show host Craig Ferguson. I appreciate his Scottish accent, his silly sense of humor and his take on American life as one raised in a different culture. His guests range from a comedian Robin Williams to Paris Hilton, from Dee Dee Meyers to popular yet obscure authors. This week he had on as his guest Bishop Desmond Tutu. It was a little jolting to see and hear his interviewing one of the most depthful and soulful men of our era - Craig Ferguson is silly and sometimes his humor is about the level of an adolescent. But other times, his intelligence comes through and his analysis is rather thoughtful. So, here he is interviewing and allowing us to hear the words of Desmond Tutu, who is being asked about things like faith and forgiveness, evil and suffering, humanity and God. Over and over again Desmond Tutu reaffirms the goodness of humanity despite the atrocities that we are able to do at times. He believes in the ultimate victory of God's goodness in this world, even if we have to slog through years and decades of evil and hell to get there. Desmond Tutu never allowed himself to believe that God's vision for our world would not prevail in his country or anywhere else. He has lived his life with that vision and he has built his successes with that certainty. Being a clergyman, Tutu is able to articulate so eloquently that it is not his success that we should admire, but it is God's vision and power that we should hold up when goodness prevails.

Like Father Abraham, we are invited to come on a journey with our God; a journey of faith where despite all appearances or odds, there is change and growth and movement towards full humanity for all. That is what Paul preached in the first century and that is what we preach in the 21^st century. May we have the faith to believe that God can work through our lives and use us to accomplish God's unfolding plan of grace for all, through us as well. Thanks be to God! Amen.