Think And Let Think

Romans 12.1-8 "Paul is addressing Roman Christians as people who have been released from the captivity to Sin by God’s action in Jesus Christ. Having been set free from this oppression, Paul empowers them to act, to respond, to do something. Present yourselves to God. And it all hinges on the therefore. Any time we encounter a therefore, whether in scripture or in life, we need to know what the therefore is there for. The word signals that what comes next depends on what came before. Everything that has come before the therefore has been about God’s doing. God gets all the good verbs. Despite our culture’s constant emphasis on making our own destinies or picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps, Romans (and all of scripture for that matter) proclaims quite the opposite..."

Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32 Paul, as the church moves and grows, is rattling the cages of our prisons to disobedience with the Gospel. It’s as if he is saying that God makes sure we all experience what it means to be on the outside, so that God can be the one to open the door and welcome us back in. God, like the prodigal father, comes to find us in the streets of life with mercy before we even have a chance to say we’re sorry. God, like the prodigal father, is willing to throw a party on our behalf because we are lost and we are found. God has imprisoned all in disobedience, that God may be merciful to all.

I’m not sure why Jesus left it up to preachers to share this news. For preachers, one and all, are a bunch of nobodies, sinners with no hope of their own, scoundrels most of the time. But then again, preaching isn’t something that preachers do, it’s what God does through us. The word of faith that draws near to you even right now in this very moment is not because of anything you have done, and certainly not because of what I bring to the table, but, as Paul says, only because it pleases God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe.

The church has always been a place for truth, but that doesn’t mean we’ve always liked it. When push comes to shove we’d rather consider and contemplate our successes than our sins. And yet, the knowledge and confession that each of us is a sinner in need of God’s mercy can be weirdly and wonderfully comforting. For, it gives us the freedom from pretending to be people we aren’t. The writer Anne Lamott puts it this way, 'Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.'

Baptism, like communion, is not something to be mastered, comprehended, or understood. We can’t wrap our heads around it any more than we can figure out why certain songs give us goosebumps, or why sometimes our laughter leads to tears. Some things, in fact some of the very best things, are mysterious. Maybe that’s what makes them great. The challenge comes with resting in the mystery while the world values nothing but certainty.

Paul is begging us to see that the key to our salvation isn’t positive thinking or more morality or healthier habits. The key to our salvation is Jesus! Our salvation is God’s grace made manifest in the One who frees us from the delusion that we have to save ourselves. The church isn’t in the religion business. Instead, the church is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. All of this, the scriptures, prayers, songs, preaching, it’s not about bringing the bad news that God will only look kindly upon us when we finally get our acts together. Instead, everything we do here is about bringing the great Good News that while we were sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. In the midst of our faults and failures, Jesus rescues us.

Over the years, Paul’s writings and teachings have been often summarized as, “Become what you already are!” And for good reason. In baptism we are deadened with Christ that we might rise with Christ. In communion we put God inside of us that we might be more like Christ and less like ourselves. We are already defined by the grace of God, and nothing can ever take that away. Nothing.

Paul says the Law brings wrath, but the Gospel sets free. Doing all of the right things, and knowing the right people, and making the right choices, sounds wonderful in principal, but turns out to be impossible. We can’t make ourselves righteous, we can’t rectify ourselves, we can’t redeem ourselves. Thankfully, God is completely caught up in the work of doing things we could never do ourselves by giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do no exist. No matter what we do or leave undone God continues to hand over the Good News through letters, songs, preachers, and pulpits until our hearts are strangely warmed and we know, deep in the marrow of our souls, that Christ has taken away our sins, even ours, and has saved us from the law of sin and death.

Pentecost is the promise that we don't have to build a tower into the sky to get close to God; God has come to us. The arrival of the Holy Spirit means we are no longer defined by our mistakes, but only by God’s grace.

The movement that Jesus begins, the adventure of faith we call church, is constituted by people who know we have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatience, by cross and resurrection. The gift of the Ascension, of Christ’s ruling at the right hand of God, is the reminder that we can wait and pray. It’s a gift!

Paul writes to the church in Rome that faith comes from what is heard and what it heard comes through the preaching of Christ. The story has the power to change everything. It changed everything for Paul! The man who agreed to the stoning of Stephen now stands surrounded by stones that invoke his proclamation. He is compelled to preach in order to set the people free and bring about the end of religion. That’s an odd way to put it. But Christianity isn’t a religion. Or, at least, it’s not supposed to be. Religion, properly understood, is a set of habits, practices, or tradition that are done in order to achieve something, usually from the divine. Basically, if you do x then your god will do y. Christianity, however, is the Good News. It is something told to us about what is already finished. Christianity frees us from all the shoulds and musts that we might turn to the Lord who first turned toward us in Jesus Christ.

The story of the Gospel is a promise that no one is outside the realm of God’s mercy, that the worst thing is never the last thing, that grace is greater than our sin.

Living for other people is a completely radical and bonkers idea. Getting rid of possessions so that others can benefit is a wild and far cry from how things are supposed to work. Holding all things in common isn’t normal. It’s therefore not surprising that the disciples in Acts constantly find themselves in trouble - the kind of conflicts that John Lewis called good trouble. It’s good trouble because the church is, was, and always will be counter-cultural. All of these things described in Acts sound like the beginnings of a political revolution. We just have another word for it: Gospel.

The Gospel has a way of digging itself in, commingling with all of our thoughts about how things are supposed to be. The Good News declares that God has changed everything, we only need to act accordingly. In short - the people are moved to move upon hearing the story. That’s what the word “repent” means after all, it’s a turning or a returning to something. And that something has a name: Jesus.

It’s a confounding image to take in - these ragtag disciples tripping over themselves in the streets, drunk on the Spirit. It must’ve garnered quite the crowd. However, none of the twelve, Peter included, had much to show for themselves. No exceptional credentials, no fabulous degrees from Jerusalem University, no financial capital to invest. They have nothing, really. Nothing except a message. And, thankfully, the message is always greater than her messengers...

Notice: On Easter, Jesus’ response to the sins of his followers isn’t to berate them or judge them or even damn them. He doesn’t give them a list of things to do, or programs to start, or even prayers to pray. Instead, he just comes back to them, to us, with love. How odd of God. Easter invites us to do nothing more than trust that the Good News really is that good - that God in Christ refuses to abandon us regardless of how good or bad we may be. If Easter becomes anything less bizarre than that, then we can’t call it the Gospel.

Perhaps a night like tonight would be easier to handle had Jesus offered himself to the eleven but not to Judas. Maybe it would sit better with us if Jesus had drawn the line between those who are in and those who are out. But no, there’s our Lord caressing the feet of his betrayer, who will shortly use those feet to march out of the room and deliver Jesus to death. Maybe this is Jesus’ way of parabolically embodying another commandment - to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If we assume that being Christian is somehow synonymous with do-goodery, victorious virtue, and modest morality, then this night is a rather robust rebuttal. If we think that, as Christians, we sit at Jesus’ table with clean hands and a spotless resume, if we think that our feet are washed because of our good behavior, well, then we’re wrong. John is begging us to see the scene, to take it all in, the feet, the hands, the hope, the loss, all of it. It’s a ringing reminder from the strange new world of the Bible th

Karl Barth once said that “To clasp our hands in prayer is a beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” When Jesus enters the holy city the crowds sing their prayer, much like we sing and pray before we come to the Table: Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Do you know what that word means? Hosanna? It means “Save us!” The crowds call for salvation, for Jesus to save them and, by the end of the week, that’s exactly what he does...

That Jesus teaches us how to pray is the wild declaration that God wants us to speak up, to voice our opinion, to ask for God’s intervention. And the claim of prayer is far more astonishing than we make it out to be as we mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer every week - the author of the cosmos listens and acts according to our prayers! Therefore, let us boldly pray prayers that are big enough that only God can bring them to fruition.

It’s one thing to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses,” and another thing entirely to add, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness always comes at a cost - it’s not cheap and it isn’t easy. The hurt we experience is consequential. Therefore, when Jesus teaches us to pray this way, he’s not implying that we should shrug things off as if they don’t mean anything. It’s just that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, refuses to let sin be the first and last word in our story. Instead, the first word and the last word is forgiveness.