Sermons

The title for the sermon this morning reminds me of a very popular book of decades past called "The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It sounds like a book for Harley Davidson enthusiasts but it is actually a book about the "nuts and bolts" of something else - spirituality. Whether one agrees with the proposed "nuts and bolts" of the author's spirituality, it is still a book that makes evident that there are parts that make up the whole of any spirituality.

Spirituality does not come down, through, or arise in us as a whole piece. Assumptions are made about which parts are valuable and how the parts get put together to serve an agenda. Make no mistake the way the parts of any spirituality get put together always depends on the agenda.

And I don't say this sneeringly, it is just the way things are. You, I, the layperson or pastor down the street - each of us has an agenda even if that agenda is to stay as open as possible to let the evidence take us where it will. 

Although honestly, more often than not our intentions are nowhere near so noble. We are hardly open for change or challenges; it is too unsettling. But worse yet once our minds are made up; they are made up for everyone else as well. Oh, we will say that isn't true but . . . from what I can tell Congregationalists only claim to be more flexible.

We say - I know I do - how ours is a "big basket" - yes, fine until someone steps on someone's "sacred cow" or space and then watch as cracks begin to appear. We find then that the "big basket" is more self-delusion or even a façade than something substantial and sustainable. O.K., I am jumping down from my soapbox now.

My point is that the parts and how we put them together has everything to do with what kind of agenda or vehicle we see getting us down the road.  This brings me to Jack Van Impe. How many of you have seen Jack Van Impe and his wife and side-kick Rexella on television? I don't think you would soon forget them. I have not seen them for a long while, but I certainly haven't forgotten them.  I used to take perverse pleasure in watching Van Impe and Rexella. 

Van Impe is a "one trick" pony. He wants to be the coach driver into the Apocalypse, although this is not so much a trick as his obsession. His "one trick" is that he takes verses of Scripture wholly unrelated to each other out of the context of their biblical use and strings them together as "proof texts" for his singular point, always the same - the Apocalypse is coming and if you don't get on the right side of things . . . let's just say you will wish that you had.

Now that I think of it; he reminds me a lot of Paul in his letter to the Romans. Paul's final leveling of the spiritual field of play between Jews and Gentiles is a generous recitation of unrelated Torah scriptures strung together as if one speech, as he coyly begins, "as it is written" . . . yeah, written Van Impe style. He concludes his Torah review with words laying bare his agenda: "For no human being will be justified in [the Lord's] sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin."

You might guess from this verse that Paul and James didn't get along very well and this appears to be the case. James argues that deeds or works are critical to be a follower of God, while Paul says something different because his agenda is to back down self-righteous Jews so to include Gentiles in God's plan.

That's right - I suggest that Paul's strong move toward "faith" is due to his personal desire to bring into the fold non-Jews who have no connection with the Jewish Law and its requirements.

Paul can't get the Gentiles into God's plan of salvation on the basis of works, by the time he convinces them to all be circumcised, learn and more importantly keep all the commandments and statutes of the Law - well there just isn't time - the end is coming, judgment is at hand. Works just won't do.

Paul gets the brilliant idea, and it is a brilliant stroke, to link discipleship to "faith" rather than deeds. Deeds won't get the Gentiles there - there isn't time. "Faith" is a suitable replacement - a common denominator of Jew and Gentile. Paul's faith is in Jesus' streamlined message of the commandments and, especially, Jesus' promise to return soon, turn the social world of Jews and Gentiles upside down and form a Kingdom of love on earth.

This, I believe, is what leads Paul to make that fateful break with deeds (for all time thereafter and not wholly in a good way as things go along) and stake a claim for faith as the path to the coming Kingdom.

I want you to sit there and imagine how world-upsetting, ground-shaking this sort of reasoning is to hear for the majority of the men sitting in the church that day whose "Bible" is the Torah. They hear Paul's words: "But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed . . . the righteousness of God [is attested] through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." Jesus brings, in part, and will bring fully very soon God's righteousness to the world; it is love and no longer personal obedience to the Law of the Torah. If you love, the Torah is fulfilled.

Just imagine all your life you have lived faithful to a different sort of command. This one from the Torah:   "You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess."

What is a good Jew that wants to follow Jesus to do? Stay true to Torah or follow this novel theory of this upstart Paul on a new and dangerous path? What would you do? How does Paul encourage a decision in favor of the new and dangerous path?

Before I answer this last question I want to go in a different but related direction for a moment. I imagine it occurs to you as you read along in Romans 3 that Paul is the spiritual ancestor of the evangelical. It is rather apparent isn't it?

Romans 3:21-26 reads like an ancient version of the "Four Spiritual Laws," which became known to me as a youngster working with Campus Crusade for Christ. It goes something like this: God has a wonderful plan for your life. God sends Jesus as a sacrifice that only God is holy enough to make on your behalf in order to bridge the gap between God's goodness (righteousness) and human sinfulness (unrighteousness). The purpose is to give you a choice. Before God's act in Jesus you were bound for hell; now you have a choice. Believe that Jesus is God's only son who died in your place on a cross to save you from your sin so you can go to heaven to be with God or you can go to hell. There are then two circles - two choices - and the warning to choose wisely. This is as I remember it.

More importantly than modern evangelicals saying this, they will argue that this is what Paul is saying as well and I've got to admit it certainly sounds like it. But then I got to wondering why does it sound like it? Many say, it's true this is the difference between Pauline theology and Jesus more earthy theology.

I am not sure that we have to draw this distinction. Maybe all we have to do is read Paul's words without getting confused by how they have come centuries later to be read by those with a particular agenda. If you read Paul's words with the "four spiritual laws" in mind, it seems pretty self-evident that Paul is the first evangelical. 

But is he? Well, I don't think so and here is why. Paul is a good Jew and so writes of Jesus' in sacrificial terms. Sacrifice is the keystone of many tribal faiths and Judaism among them. But Paul, I suggest does not raise Jesus' sacrifice as appeasement to a distant god but rather as an example of the righteousness as obedience to Jesus' God required of the new citizen that will inherit the Kingdom to come. Paul believes Jesus' promise to come again and transform the present world into something new, peaceful, and just - not a new life somewhere else in the universe.

Paul's "faith" in Jesus is a trust in the path to the coming Kingdom whose citizen must be marked with righteousness because God is righteous. Jesus not only tells of but shows what kind of righteousness is required of the new citizen. James' path to this Kingdom is deeds, but Paul's path to this Kingdom cannot be because his agenda is different. Paul believes there just isn't time to get everyone on board with Torah demands, and he wants to get everyone on board.

Paul's agenda dictates his path and he falls upon the simple but inclusive idea of "faith." He believes that everyone, even the "dogs" of Matthew, have the opportunity to be citizens of this Kingdom on the way that Jesus will inaugurate. All you have to have is the faith to see it coming.

So given Paul's agenda, how does Paul encourage the Jews, already shaken by what they have heard, to embark on this new and dangerous path with the Gentiles? He uses common sense. He shows them the "faith" of their ancestral father, Abraham.

This is how I see Paul raising faith up as the path to righteousness. Amen.

For the next two weeks - we have special services - a Taize service, Palm Sunday with a children's Pageant. On Easter Sunday, we will return to Romans and Paul's Torah example of faith.