Day 230 - The Worries of Leaders and Citizens

A sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN

July 28, 2013
OT reading: 1 Samuel 8:4-18; 12:19-25
NT reading: Romans 13:1-10

People across the political spectrum have used Romans 13:1-7 to debate the role of the State and church and further their arguments.  The heat of the arguments obscure the passage, so we need approach it with much care and study. We have to be mindful of what Paul says about righteousness elsewhere in Romans, because he is making an argument.  We have to ask how the historical context shaped Paul’s writing. On the other hand if we believe the Letter to Romans is Scripture, then its message must speak us today. While Paul’s Jewish heritage may have driven his response in this passage and submission to the state, his basic message about the righteousness of Christ being connects the passage to today’s world. Our challenge is to be sure we understand the message.

Paul was a Jew. In fact, he called himself a Hebrew’s Hebrew. He was zealous in his pursuit of righteousness as a Jew and Christian. Over the years after he responded to the call of Jesus, Paul honed his understanding of righteousness as the vertical and horizontal righteousness we described last week. It is vertical is the sense that righteousness comes from God. Righteousness is Jesus Christ. Jesus’ righteousness is embodied in the Beatitudes, which Paul stated in his way (Romans 12:14-21). It is horizontal in the sense that we are called to walk in the world with the new clothes of Christ’s righteousness. You can remember this righteousness by the symbol of the cross.

How does loyalty to God’s righteousness bear on this passage? Jesus and Paul put loyalty to Christ’s righteousness as the primary duty of a Christian.  Jesus and Paul were faced with a government that proclaimed its own good news, the emperor is the god and savior who brings peace and justice to all the land he conquers.

As the epitome of radical righteousness, Jesus extols virtues such as humility, selflessness, and peacemaking in a culture that saw those as virtues of slaves.  Christ’s death on the cross represents both slavish submission to the state and the ultimate resistance to the state. His resurrection is the actual defeat of the powers of the world.  Is Jesus advocating non-violent resistance to death and Paul submission?

Last Sunday in our sermon, we heard how Paul embraced that righteousness, so I think it is not possible he would advocate backing away from it. In fact, we believe he died in Rome refusing to abandon his Christianity or defer it to Nero. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into this historical situation of Paul. Both Paul and Jesus knew this rule of Rome was a heretical challenge to the very faith of God that Jesus Christ represents but at the same time it is a government instituted by God if we recall our passage in 1 Samuel.

At the time of Paul’s letter, Rome was taxing the people severely. The Greek worlds do strongly point towards compliance with taxation. Rome also was dealing with the insurrection of Jewish zealots in Jerusalem. Common sense would demand that Paul advise discretion. Don’t provoke the authorities or your fragile congregations may be crushed.  There are other similar passages in Paul’s letters where he offers advice that seems to suggest currying favor with the authorities when there was disagreement and controversy within the church that created a public embarrassment. Perhaps Paul offered this advice to submit to the state because he feared from the survival of his small Christian communities?

Or was he responding to his Jewish history? In that early history, the Hebrews became dissatisfied with God and asked Samuel to obtain a king for them.  God gave Israel the king they asked for along with the warning that the king would place unbearable burden on them. The king afer all was a man not God. Every man will rule with all the weaknesses and shortcoming the people have them selves and fail the test of righteousness. In a sense, we could say the Hebrews exchange for their liberty for the security of a king who would protect them. They were willing to have a king to fight their battles, regardless that the king would take their best land; tax the labor of their hands at 10% and take their daughters as concubines.

There is a clear sense in 1 Samuel that the gift of kingship was an irreversible gift by God. 1 Sam 8:9: ⁹Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them,” and 12:25, “But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.”

A person might argue, “Wait a minute, Paul was a Jew and he was talking to a Roman Jewish Christian congregation in Rome. These words about kings pertain to the Hebrews. We don’t have to honor the authority of a king.”  We are gentiles. For that matter, the Jewish zealot might use the same argument, “we are Hebrews, we honor God not Rome. Rome is a foreign invader, not our Hebrew King.”  The zealots we felt this way fought the chains of Roman rule over Jerusalem several times with disastrous consequences of wide spread slaughter and destruction of the temple.

However, Paul was a changed man who had come to understand the Law in a profoundly different way.  There is no way I can conclude Paul would advise the congregation to do anything to dishonor the two great commands that underlay Christianity, love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Paul had to be conflicted as a Hebrew zealot because he saw no place for violent opposition to the state in Christ.  

On one hand Paul probably did recall Samuel’s words in 12:24,25, “²⁴Only fear the LORD, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. ²⁵But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king,” and his zealous proclamation, “Jesus is Lord.”

Is he thinking submit to the rule of Rome, peacefully if possible, but hold onto righteousness even if the state does not ? Does he understand that acquiescence to the rule of Rome presented only a challenge to the body and pocketbook, as long as one was willing to hold onto righteousness and give to God what belonged to God? Was it because he understood that righteousness is self-giving, and physical well-being is self-serving, not necessarily the same thing.  Jesus said in Matt 10: 24-28, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; ²⁵it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! ²⁶ “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. ²⁷What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  ²⁸Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

This brings us to the modern predicament. Passages such as Matthew 10 and last week’s reading in Romans 12 cannot help but create anxiety when we read Romans 13:1-7. Again, I ask, what is Paul saying to us today? What is the message of this text to our modern ears?

In 1500, both John Calvin and Martin Luther asked that question.  In a revolt against Catholicism, they looked to the state to protect not Christianity, but Calvinism and Lutheranism. Calvin used the Geneva city government to hunt down church members that he felt violated church law and threw them in jail to live on bread and water. A person could be thrown in jail for simply not being able to recite the subject of last week’s sermon.  Martin Luther thought the peasants who were rebelling against the slavery of the feudal lords were violating God’s law. He advocated violently suppressing the uprisings against the feudal system.

Almost 300 years later the founders of our country understood almost the opposite role of the state and personal liberty when they penned the declaration of Independence rather than continue under the rule of King George and the various denominations, saying “that each person is entitled to a separate and equal station by the law of nature’s God, even though governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes as experience shows mankind is more disposed to suffer sufferable evils than abolish the forms that cause them.”

The beauty of the present is we can learn from the past. For example, I can understand John Calvin’s position, though I do not agree with it. He felt he had to use the state to protect the stability of his version of Protestant Christianity. In other city states Lutheran’s; Catholics, and Baptists did exactly the same thing. You had to be really careful about identifying your religious preference when you entered a new town, else you might find yourself in jail or worse, in a bond fire or hanged. The authors of the Declaration of Independence felt that liberty and tolerance may be better for a person than the opposite.

I can understand how people 200-500 years ago could read passages about slaves obeying their masters, reading Jewish texts about the prohibition of intermarriage and suffering their own fear of the uncertainty of change and threat to their existence to conclude slavery was ok and slaves ought to be obedient. I can see how the logic carried them to oppose interracial marriage. In spite of understaning it, I  cannot agree with any of those positions to day, it because it conflicts with neighborly love. We’ve paid the price through the pain of wars and lynchings to find out loving your neighbor is a far better thing.

Conflicting scripture stares us in the face, the Lord in 1 Samuel 12:25, “But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king,” and then Paul’s words in Romans 13:9-10, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law, and in 12:18-19, If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” For Paul, the key was understanding that the entry of Jesus Christ into the world began a new world order in which Jesus is Lord. Civil authority is to be recognized and obeyed now only in so far as righteousness is not corrupted. But disobedience must conform to neighborly love.

This is all theoretical Christianity because we do not live under a repressive government such as the Roman Empire. We live in a time and have a form of government that is making an old truth is becoming painfully obvious, obedience to God cannot take place outside the social and governmental order. To love our neighbor requires we respond with righteousness and to governmental policy and laws.  What makes it so painful is there are no hard and fast answers for exactly what we should do in specific cases.  In the truth of it, the absence of hard and fast answers and the necessity to depend on faithful personal discernment of righteous action is probably the source of the anxiety for most of us. We worry, am I doing the right thing? Is my house member, Senator, Governor, or President doing the right thing? If not, what should I do?

It is not easy in a government based on individual liberty as ours is, because liberty means different things to different people.  What some see as liberty others see as sinful acts. We just do not all agree which is which. I think our commitment to liberty and freedom has an irony to it. The United States is based on a profoundly noble defense of liberty of the individual. It is a defense that allowed the early settlers to worship as they desired but allowed also some states to deny liberty to some, for example Catholics were denied voting rights in some states in the early Republic, not to mention slavery.

Law and constitutional amendment have enforced more equality and liberty, to the point it exceeds what many think is proper. It has put pressure on the Christian church and conflict in our youth. Unlike the time of Calvin and Luther, we cannot constitutionally rely on the state to defend and enforce all our religious beliefs aggressively if we want a free country; but without righteousness we are lost spiritually.  Liberty and equality, the bedrock of America, may ultimately not be the best defender of faith.

We ought to be anxious whether my government is doing the righteous thing and if it can do it within the law, we should vote that it does.  But when righteous action is not within the reach of a government that protects everyone’s liberty, the obligation falls on us. But we have to admit it, it always has. Samuel’s warning is valid for a righteous Christian. An increasingly secular society and state makes being righteously. Perhaps in a perverse way it is good for the government to increase the protection of individual liberty. Samuel told the Hebrews, “OK you have a king now, but righteousness still rests on your shoulders. Forget that and both you and the king shall fall.) (I am paraphrasing) Paul says “Jesus is Lord.” 

The Christian church now more than ever before, must stand on the righteousness of Christ reflected in its members.  We cannot depend on, or expect the State to defend our faith because the state is a fallible human institution.  We cannot expect the state to defend our faith at the expense of liberty of other citizens.

We must embrace that horizontal part of righteousness armed with Paul’s charge, “⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, , are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 

If we do otherwise, our children may call us hypocrites. 

Day 222 - Do Not Think Too Highly Of Yourself - A Vision of Righteousness

A sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN, July 21, 2013

OT scripture: Habukkuk 2:2-4NT scripture: Romans 12:1-21

In today’s sermon, we will hear what Paul has to say about righteousness at the level of congregation. In the following sermon we will hear what it means on a corporate or political level, and in the third sermon what it means on a social, or interpersonal level.

For these three sermons to make sense, in fact  for Paul to make sense, we must understand Paul's sense of righteousness. Paul has spent the previous 11 chapters talking about a new reality of God’s righteousness, Jesus Christ holding the idea of righteousness and faith described in Habukkuk 2:2-4 ever present in the back of his mind.  Christ is The Righteous One who is a model of goodness; the life of Jesus defines righteousness. God reckoned Abraham righteous by his faith before there was the Law, so too God reckons us righteous through Jesus Christ, regardless of sin. Reckon is judicial language. It means that before a accusation of wrongdoing is even leveled against you, you are reckoned not guilty by the judge. There is no trial or indictment.  This is the the basis of the idea, “saved only by the grace of God," not by works.  Remember, we do not earn righteous it is reckoned - though we may resist it.

Paul says also righteousness is not a call to self-denial in reaction to our sinful nature. Our baptism though the resurrection of Jesus has washed all that guilt away. I think we sometimes over read guilt into salvation as self-denial or self-punishment. There is no room for self-denial because righteousness is a reckoned call to service of the Lord, to self-giving as a consequence of our new life. This is true whether we talk about the person or the congregation. In both cases we are talking about the body of Christ. The body is the place where God’s righteousness is worked out in the world. That can happen only by the total rebirth or transformation into the likeness of Christ. This does not mean just being humble (though it is involved) or perfect (we cannot be so) or that Christians are superior to others. It means we affirm the equality of all God’s children through his grace.

Righteousness has two parts, the model and the practice. I call the model the vertical part. That is grace, our relationship to God’s righteousness, Jesus Christ is the paradigm. I call practice the horizontal part. That part is service or active obedience. It is our relationship to the world in response to grace.

I said that righteousness causes a total change or rebirth symbolized by baptism in which we are transformed into the likeness of Christ. That gives us (and Paul) opportunity to brag but not to think we are superior as Christians because we can only brag about what we cannot control - God’s graciousness that inspires an active faith that might entail suffering. An active faith means we affirm God’s grace and righteousness, not by giving lip service, but living to defend, or demonstrate the equality of all God’s children by our own action. In spite of our common summary presumption that Paul preaches justification only by faith and not works, this whole passage in Romans describes the work of the active faith of a righteous person. Righteousness is active obedience.

Paul’s sense of being reckoned righteous empowered him confidently to affirm his equality with the Apostles. Consider what Paul said in Galatians about his history before he set his first foot in the Mediterranean ministry. Here is a brief excerpt:

 ^1:11“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; ¹²for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ… ¹⁸Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days;… ^2:1Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem… ⁶And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those leaders contributed nothing to me. ⁷On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised…⁹(and) the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.”

Paul did not claim superiority but equality.  He defended his obligation to carry the Gospel to the gentiles according to the revelation he experienced. Clearly this passage shows he retained and redirected the zeal he exhibited as a Pharisee pursuing Christians to proclaim the Gospel. You can tell Paul was a Christian zealot.

Paul said he was called to this Apostolic zeal by a revelation. Except for this passage, we know absolutely nothing about specific accomplishments of Paul in his first 14 years while he labored in Syria and Arabia. Were there miracles?  Did he bring hundreds into the fold? We only can conclude whatever work he accomplished with God’s help, his righteousness impressed the Apostles enough to affirm his revelation and consent to his ministry to the gentiles.

What does Paul say is righteousness’ claim on us?  Every Christian who (must) affirm the equality and importance of every other Christian and welcomes them reflects that righteousness.  Paul intentionally uses ambiguous language about the body. By “every Christian,” he means both each person and the congregation as a body with many members. “Every Christian” is each one of us in the room and us as a collective whole of all congregations.  Paul says (in 12:2) we (both people and the several congregations) have different gifts but he says first we ALL share a common righteous obligation, “do not be conformed to the world but (be) transformed by our rebirth that we may know what is good and acceptable and perfect in God’s eyes and do it.”

Only when we all bring our own particular strengths to the power of the congregation can it fulfill the obligation to proclaim the Good News. To do this depends clearly on the behavior of each person and the congregation. He really shines the light on righteousness in the next verses: “let your love be genuine, hate what is evil; hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection so that you compete with one another to shower this honor on the other.” And then 12:11 really turns up the heat: “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.”

Paul is thinking, “do I have to repeat myself?” We cannot be of the world and zealously fulfill our obligation if we are transformed by grace.

These next verses, 12:14-21, convince me that in those first fourteen years he spent in Arabia, Syria, and Antioch he learned much of the oral tradition of Jesus’ life. (We know Paul's letters preceded the Gospels, and perhaps Paul besides on the road to Damascus,  may have seen Jesus only once, on the cross.) In his own letters Paul spoke of “the tradition handed down by others” implying the Apostles and unnamed others. He quotes early hymns that are basic creeds of belief. (In the early church, hymns were a formal liturgy somewhat like creeds, see Philippians 2:5-11, for example.) Here in Romans 12 Paul preaches righteousness by quoting this handed-down tradition:

14  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 

15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 

16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 

18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 

19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 

20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”

 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals.

Now listen to these verses from elsewhere in the NT:

 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

These are the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3-12. Do you hear the similarity?

How can I put this righteousness that is reckoned to us into a real-life situation that illuminates both Paul’s exhortations for active obedience and acknowledgement that we live under the burden of sin?

I usually avoid preaching about most current events because many of the controversies either defy simple solution, all the facts are not in, or proper words are so hard to find that every discussion seems to cause disunity and do an injustice to Christian compassion. But Paul says righteous peace demands we trust our fellow Christians and try to find peace and justice in the world. As I have struggled with Paul in Romans (Paul and I are not always on good speaking terms) Chapter 12 seems to point to the whole tragedy of Trevon Martin and George Zimmerman. Virtually all my pastor-friends have discussed it in a sermon, or are about to do so. Some are liberal, some are conservative. I’ve heard some TV evangelists preach flippantly about it and that really pains and embarrasses me for our church.  This affair is a tragedy in the purest sense of the word. It is the story of a sorrowful, heroic struggle with sin that leaves no winners and the downfall of two men. It is a tragedy that begs for a Christian perspective on righteousness.

We have one young African-American teenager who was unarmed, except for a bag of skittles, walking in a neighborhood at night in the rain with his hood pulled up apparently heading to a relative’s home.  Maybe he is angry, hot-headed and tired of being harassed by white folks and treated with suspicion because of the color of his skin. Maybe he was paranoid he was going to be robbed, or carried a grudge against “white folks.” We will never know except we know his possible history with drugs did not cause it. Perhaps stereotypes, his anger and real experience  (there had been break-ins in the neighborhood) had occurred the transformed him into a threatening presence to Mr. Zimmerman in the night rain. We will never know.

We have an older young Caucasian/Hispanic man who by public account wants to be a policeman, seems to be preoccupied with judging right and wrong, is frustrated some have "gotten away," carries suspicion and aggression in his heart and a gun on his belt rather mercy and peacemaking.  We had two persons with just the “right” mix of complementary weaknesses meet that night to create a tragic disaster.  

And disaster is exactly what happened. The young unarmed man is dead. The older man will likely be haunted by the burden of the young man’s death because the whole affair was avoidable. If both Mr. Martin and Zimmerman had lived peaceably, as Paul says, “as far as it depended on each of them,” if Mr. Zimmerman as Paul said, had “left space for the vengeance of God” were it needed and had lived in harmony with the world; “not being haughty, but associating with the lowly; and not claiming to be wiser than others;” if Mr. Martin had lived by the exhortation of Paul and Jesus, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them, and do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all,” then I am confident Mr. Martin would be alive, and Mr. Zimmerman would not carry the unnecessary death of another person on his conscience.

I can say the latter with some confidence that death will haunt Mr. Zimmerman if he is a compassionate Christian. I’ve met others in that situation. Recently I sat next to a young man who has just gotten out of jail. Homeless and with no job, he has just arranged to move to a church sponsored organization to get his life together. We are driving him to his probation officer Monday to obtain all the paperwork to make it happen. He told me this about killing. He said his whole family was involved in the meth trade and he was addicted by the time he was 12. He said, “I did a very, very bad thing when I was 13 years old.  My stepfather was a bad man and meth made him especially abusive. One day he was beating up my mother so badly that I got a gun and killed him.”  He spent his next years in juvenile detention because of it.

This is what makes his story relevant to Mr. Zimmerman. My young man said he resorted to even heavier drug abuse trying to blind his mind to the fact he had killed a man. He was arrested again for making and dealing drugs and sent to prison. His whole family is now either dead or in prison. He has  been clean for some time and is focussed on positive change. He realized drugs didn’t do anything but make him feel worse for what he had done. He said that no matter what, killing his stepfather will always haunt him. He said he can live with it only by his faith that gives him the hope of forgiveness.

His stepfather’s death was as unnecessary as Trevon Martin’s. Trevon Martin knows now the end of pain, but it is just beginning for Mr. Zimmerman. We can only pray he finds the path to the righteousness that this young man who killed his stepfather found. This is exactly the tragedy of sin that Paul is talking about. There is no winner but Satan in this affair.

We should never forget that the scriptures may speak of particular social and economic conditions and times gone by, but they are relevant today. The reality of Paul’s message is as important today as it ever was. Holding onto the zeal of Christ and never, ever forgetting to avoid thinking too highly of yourself at the expense of your neighbor is not a theoretical nicety but a consequence of righteousness and grace.  Paul, the Pharisee zealot answered Jesus’ question “Who is my neighbor?” The neighbor is the one who helped another due to active righteousness.  AMEN.

Day 222 - My Love/Hate Relationship with Paul

At the encouragement of a few members of our congregation I have undertaken to preach a few sermons based on Paul’s letter to the Romans. As a result, it seems necessary that I offer a few words about my task because frankly, Paul and I haven’t always had the best of a relationship. I suspect I am not alone in this boat. Whether you recognize it or not, neither have you, the reader. I offer this short reflection humbly only to stimulate your reconsideration of Paul and to point you towards some further reading.

Often it seems like I’ve been dragged into a Paul vs. Jesus moment, or drawn into a battle of proof texts where someone uses Paul, or one of his disputed letters, to prove a point of the role of women in worship, where homosexuality stands in the spectrum of sin, where his experience of “revelation” justifies a spiritual relativism, where people overwork his “faith without works” (especially Presbyterians) so that we lose sight of the evidentiary demonstration of faith by love of our neighbor, and as a basis to focus so tightly on a theology of punishing personal guilt.

But then I began to read Paul carefully, and to utilize some really insightful commentaries and books on Paul. I particularly point to the extended comments of James D. G. Dunn in the Word Biblical commentary; Paul J. Achtemeier’s commentary in Interpretation; Carl R. Holladay’s treatment of Romans (and the Pauline Letters) in A Critical Introduction to the New Testament;  Michael J. Gorman’s Reading Paul and a nice, short article by Peter L. Samuelson, A New Vision of Righteousness: Paul’s Exhortations in Romans 12-15 published in Word & World, (1990). (The latter influenced the path of this sermon series.) Last, but certainly most important was the good night’s sleep that let the Holy Spirit stir the pot chock full of those author’s reflections. When I wake up thinking about a subject I've struggled with, I usually find "something happened."

To begin, we cannot appreciate Paul’s "world view," much less his message about sin and the forces of culture that oppose Christian activity of the believer without understanding that Paul, a gentile Jew is a Hebrew’s Hebrew. From his earliest childhood he was steeped in Greek culture and Judaism until it became his intrinsic nature. He was educated a Pharisee in Jerusalem. We must never forget Pharisees were zealots who pursued and defended the purity of Judaism. He was full of zeal, it fueled his early pursuit and persecution of Christians as Jewish heretics. It remains a fire in him as he pursued Gentiles (and perhaps Jews of the Diaspora) to proclaim the new message of Christ.  We need to put aside our modern (negative) understanding of zealotry and the whole line of thinking best represented by Barry Goldwater's famous comment, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Zealotry to Paul is not fanaticism about politics, persecution or religion, it is the pursuit of a pure and true commitment to being part of the body of Christ.

We must understand that for Paul, every committed Christian with priorities in order is a zealot in pursuit of proclamation, peace and purity and love of humankind for Christ's sake. Conflict within the church is anathema to Christ and also to Paul because the congregation is the body of Christ, both corporately and personally. Anything that presents to the world an adverse view of a Christian is a sin. Hence we have an obligation to "walk the talk."

The transformation of a Pharisee zealot  to a Christian evangelist is a powerful, if not rationally inexplicable transformation.  It requires a total “reset” of Paul’s theology that brought all people into God’s fold, yet does not abandon the covenant between God and the Jew. This can only happen through the covenant with Abraham, the father of all nations. For Paul, his agony was that his own people, even Jewish Christians, were predominately resistant to that covenant and persecuted him.

Paul clearly forces us to come to terms with the meaning of revelation of the Holy Spirit, but he leaves the subject a little unsettled. On one hand we are expected to embrace the reality of his confrontation with Jesus on the Road to Damascus as a Divine experience. There are no witnesses or testimony about it but his.  Yet we must also embrace his felt need to gain validation of this revelation-inspired ministry by the Apostles in Jerusalem.  

Paul’s reliance on handed down tradition of Christianity is also an always conveniently ignored though obvious issue. There were no written Gospels during Paul’s time. Most if not all his letters predate the four Gospels. Yet when one reads Romans 12 and hears the Sermon on the Mount ringing in the background, we cannot escape the fact that Paul was exposed in his fourteen years in the desert in Arabia and Syria to the fundamental oral tradition that preserved the essential elements of the life of Jesus. Paul is intimately aware of the recalled words of Jesus. (Was he in the crowd at the crucifixion?)

To read Paul's letters faithfully, like any scripture, requires prayerful thought and spiritual guidance. I pray that I am doing Christ and Paul justice in my next three sermons. They will be (working titles):

1. “Do not think too highly of yourself,” a reflection on Romans 12:1-21 that addresses the role of Christian community.

2. “Subjection to Authority,” a reflection on Romans 13:1-10 on why neither the leader or the citizen should sleep easy.

3. “Hospitality,” a reflection on the Honored Guest, or why the congregation keeps its doors unlocked, ” based on Romans 14:5-9

Grace and Peace,

Henry