Pastor Jim's Sermon For Today

Christ United Presbyterian Church

Trinity Sunday                  May 26, 2013

Romans 5:1-5 - John 16:12-15

The full text of the sermon is below.  If you prefer to listen to the sermon, click on this audio link:https://www.box.com/s/czoof97gj892ndtwlzxy

Throughout much of Jewish thought prior to the time of Jesus, suffering – in almost any form – evoked the response:  Why? What went wrong? Who sinned?  Why did God allow this?  What can we do to undo it?  What sacrifice does God demand?  What ritual must we perform?

A separation was assumed between the realms of God and humanity.  If we suffered it had to be because God was angry, and we weren’t sure how to approach God with the problem.  Within the great Temple was an area called the Holy of Holies.  Ordinary people were never allowed to approach this place in which God was believed to touch the earth.  It was curtained off from the rest of the Temple, and the priests only entered one day a year. 

In the midst of Christ’s crucifixion, something happened that we don’t pay enough attention to. In Matthew, Mark and Luke it says, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two.”  In the death of Jesus, the curtain that was meant to separate us from God’s presence was torn in two.  Through the crucifixion, the barriers that we thought blocked the way to our return to God’s presence were destroyed.  In that moment we were justified before God through the suffering of Jesus Christ.  And now we are justified by faith – the faith that in Jesus we have been returned to God’s presence. Christ has opened the door to God’s kingdom for once and for all. 

That’s a lot of theology!

You can’t read Romans without encountering a lot of theology.  Paul spends the first four chapters of Romans trying to explain the new relationship that we have been given with God through the life and victory of Jesus, and he takes it all the way back to Abraham to explain that we have always been justified by faith – not works. 

But we got it wrong for centuries.  We had to have something tangible to nurture our faith so we kept devising our own procedures and we kept getting it wrong.  We kept building systems of logic and ritual that somehow made us feel better, but it never changed our hearts.

Paul spends four chapters explaining all of this and clarifying the tangible gift that God gave to us in the life and victory of Jesus.  In probably the heaviest theological rhetoric in all the New Testament, Paul explains God’s love, the gracious gift of Christ’s sacrifice, and the fact that the gift is a product of God’s love, not anything that we have earned.

Is this something new? No!  It is the way God always wanted us to be in relationship to God.  It is the manifestation of all that God wanted for us always.  And if God had to give up His Son for our sakes, to defeat the powers of death and the world, then that was the ultimate tangible sign of God’s love for us. 

And after four chapters trying to set the basis for his message of the Gospel, Paul says, “Therefore….”

“Therefore….”

“Therefore ... we have peace with God.”  Up to that point this sounds pretty good.  It’s a little dense in places, but essentially we get everything we ever wanted and Jesus did all the work.  What could possibly go wrong with this arrangement?

Well, in the very next sentence Paul brings up “suffering.”  Where did that come from?  I thought we had just been given a free pass into paradise.  Paul brings up suffering for two reasons.  He wanted to make it clear that suffering in this world didn’t mean that God was angry with us.  It didn’t mean that we had sinned – or our parents or our grandparents.  It means that suffering – just as Christ suffered – is going to be the death’s powerful push back against our proclaiming the new life of the Gospel.  

The battle which Jesus waged on our behalf against the powers of death was begun on the cross, and now we must work to finish it.  We are called to spread the Gospel of new life and when we do we shall share in Christ’s suffering, Christ’s sorrow for this world.

Some people read this and ask: “Do we need to be physically abused and murdered for the sake of the Gospel like Paul and the other martyrs?”  Maybe.  There are Christians throughout the world today who put their very lives at risk to talk about the Gospel.  When Paul speaks of his sufferings he is certainly facing physical, even mortal, danger.

Paul uses the word that we translate as “suffering” more than any other writer in Scripture.  In some cases it means mortal danger, but it can also mean a great many real afflictions that even in this society we may face:  persecution, imprisonment, derision, poverty, hunger, sickness, mental illness, great sorrow, anxiety, depression.  The list could go on. 

The Greek word “thlipsis” might be reduced to this:  anything that puts undue pressure on our heart or our soul.  It’s the way the powers of death tempt us to turn away from the new life that we have been offered.  It’s the things that are thrown at us to make us doubt God’s love.

Paul commends us to learn from those sufferings.  Not to look for blame.  Not to turn from God’s love.  Not to lose the faith that we have been given in the tangible gift of Jesus’ life.  Not to let the powers of death and world turn you away from the love of God and the new life that Christ has brought to us. 

Paul commends us to learn from those sufferings.  Paul talks about “endurance” or “perseverance.”  It’s really what we might call “patience.”  The promise of God to us in the New Testament; the hope of the entire Gospel message is not that we will instantly be made safe from harm and free from suffering.  The hope of the New Testament is this:  that the day is coming when Christ will return for us all to begin the total reign of God’s kingdom here – on earth.  And we have been charged with preparing the world for that day. 

As we work to prepare the people of God’s creation for the full reign of the Lord, the powers of death and the world will resist us.  Obstacles will be placed in our way.  Suffering. Pain. Sickness. Anxiety. Poverty. Sorrow. Even the threatened destruction of parts of Christ’s body, the church.  Congregations will face discouragement, opposition, the threat of financial disaster and dissolution.  We will constantly be tempted to turn away from our mission and give up on power of Christ’s body on earth, our church.

Paul says, don’t look for blame; don’t give up.  Be patient.  Focus on the mission and the message of the Gospel.  Seek first God’s kingdom.  And out of the suffering will come the true presence of your character.  Out of the suffering will come the reassurance that God’s will shall prevail and you shall be made ever stronger in the faith.

The strength of that character – tried and tempted by the powers of death and the world – will return your hope and the sure belief  that we shall have made all the earth ready for the return of God’s kingdom indeed.

Paul tells us with confidence “that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” 

We sometimes think that God’s grace produces only good things that we can enjoy.  God’s grace does produce only good things, but some of them will make us very uncomfortable.  God’s grace will put us into situations that will make us uncomfortable.  God’s grace will take us to places where we are uncomfortable in the extreme.  And God’s grace will bring us through to a new place, a new life that we might never have realized we could achieve if God’s grace had not been there to bring us through all those uncomfortable places.  Jesus said you will do incredible things through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit which I leave with you.

You will do incredible things, through the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit. 

You.  Yes, you!

Amen.