“Have I told You Lately....”
Romans 8:1-11
Given my family background,
it might not be a complete surprise to hear that Van Morrison and Sinead
O’Connor are two of my favorite singers.
They both come from Northern Ireland.
I well up with tears when I hear her sing “Danny Boy,” and Morrison’s joyfully
mystical approach to singing and writing – an approach in which God’s presence
is always seems to be there – is both comfortable and enjoyable for me.
Some years ago the two of
them did a duet on the Letterman show singing “Have I Told You Lately That I
Love You.” Some people have said that
Morrison is clearly singing about God, but in this instance it’s not all that
clear. Sinead tries to approach it seriously,
and Morrison starts out singing it as a straight ballad but eventually he
starts to play with the lyrics and the sounds in his inimitable style. At one point he launches into a jazz-like emphatic
phrase singing “You! You! You!” over and over punctuating her singing.
When I read the words in
Romans 8:1-11 and saw how often Paul repeated the second person pronoun “you”
my mind flashed back on Morrison’s “YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU!” Paul -
in his own way – is asking if “you” accept that God loves “you.” That God has redeemed YOU. That God has set YOU free from the bonds of
sin and set YOU into a new life. That
God accomplished all of this for YOU when Jesus was resurrected by the Spirit
of God.
In that opening, when Paul
talks about “you” having been freed from the law of sin and death, he means
you. Individually you. It’s a personal gift from God to you. Have I told YOU lately that God loves
you? Has it sunk in? You have been set free from the limitations
and deadly conclusion of the sin-filled perversion of the Law that left you in
a hypocritical competition with those around you to see who could become the
most righteous, the most pure, the most holy on the basis of your own wonderful
efforts. That’s what the flesh did to
pervert the Law.
We sometimes have a reflexive
response when we hear Paul talk about the sins of the flesh. For Paul the chief sin of the flesh is not
gluttony, or avarice, or even fornication or adultery.
The chief sin that perverted
the goodness of the Law is the original sin – it’s the effort to make ourselves
like God; it’s the effort to think that we are better than everyone else. It’s what happens when we doubt God’s
faithfulness and decide that we don’t need God anyway. It’s what happens when we turn life together
into a competition with the game rigged in our favor to prove that we are the
best. It’s what happens when we take the
goodness of God’s Law and turn it into a club to beat one another over the
head.
That’s what Paul means here
when he speaks of the damage done when we are in the flesh.
English is a very imprecise
language. I don’t mean that it’s a
poetic language necessarily – although it can be. It’s an imprecise language that requires that
we look at context not just words themselves.
That’s why legal documents are sometimes so convoluted. It can take a lot of effort to actually use
our vocabulary to say what we really mean to say.
That imprecision sometimes
causes confusion when we are translating from an ancient language into
English. In verse 2 of our reading from
Romans 8 it says: “For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the
law of sin and of death.” In the Greek
the pronoun is singular. Paul is saying
that YOU – each one of YOU – has been set free.
Our faith and our redemption
starts with our individual relationship with God. You – individually – must make your decision
to accept the Gospel that has set you free.
You – individually – must commit your life to obedience to the law of
God. You – individually – must absorb
the realization that God is God and you are not!
In the life and triumph of
Jesus God has shown us a better way than the egocentric competition with one
another and against God that has marked the flesh since the Fall. In Christ we have been shown faithfulness and
obedience to God and we have been reminded of the way God wants us to live:
selflessly, kindly loving one another.
Just as Jesus poured himself out even to the death for our sakes and for
the glorification of God, so too we are called to pour ourselves out for one
another.
It was the selfish, prideful
arrogance that has characterized humanity since the Fall – that infected our
very flesh – that perverted God’s good Law meant to show us a better way of
life. Jesus told us that he had not come
to do away with the Law. In the Great
Commandment that he gave to us he offered us the opportunity to start anew in
Godly obedience and faithfulness to our creator by seeing the overarching key
to understanding the Law. Love God and
love one another as He has loved us.
Once that point has been
made, Paul’s Greek and our English get a little out of sync. The final paragraph of this reading, the one
I read to you twice, is now addressing the community in which we are to live
out this faithful obedience. The “you”
in verse two is singular in the Greek, but all those “you’s” and “yours” in
verses nine through eleven are plural.
He has shifted to what is in each of us – Christ’s Spirit - to what then is lived out among us – Christ’s
Spirit.
In Christ we have been called
to continue the work of reconciliation begun by Christ. We are called to live our communal lives –
our congregational lives – in a way that absolutely shows the world that the
Spirit of Christ is not only in you and me but is also among us as a community,
as a congregation. We continue the work
of reconciliation by coming together as individuals in whom Christ’s Spirit
rests and being reconciled one to another within this congregation. To do that is to show God’s glory to the
world. To fail to do that is to be
“hostile” to God.
Our western individualism is
contrary to the description of a Christian portrayed by Paul in his
writings. We want to believe that the
only thing that matters is that “I AM SAVED!”, but that is just the starting
point. If the Spirit of God dwells
within you, then you are incited by that Spirit to spread the news of our
redemption and the demand from the Lord that we live reconciled to one another
as we have been reconciled to God.
You can’t live out your
Christian life in isolation. You can’t
live out your Christian faith and believe that being proven more right or wiser
or more chosen than the person sitting next to you is all that matters. Elsewhere in Romans Paul puts that idea to
rest once and for all. In chapter three
he quotes from several verses from Isaiah and the Psalms starting with: “There is no one who is righteous [Psalm
14:3].”
Paul faced newly converted
Christians who still wanted to make distinctions and categories of sanctity and
holiness within their newly constituted congregation. He says: “For there is no distinction, for
all sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and then adds, “being set right
freely by his grace, the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. [Romans 3: 23-24,
translation by Robert Jewett]”
That’s Paul’s version of that
love song. God’s grace is freely given
so that we have been redeemed in Christ Jesus.
“YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU!” You cannot
earn it. It doesn’t give you any special
status. It’s offered freely to everyone.
We who have heard it and accepted it as a loving reality have the
obligation to tell it, to show it, to live it by the model of this congregation
and bring it to those who haven’t yet recognized that God’s grace is intended
for them as well.
Have I told you lately that
God loves you? YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU!
Amen.
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