There is a lot of action in this part of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Ascend into heaven. Descend into the abyss. Word is on your lips and in your heart. Beautiful feet that bring good news. No standing still for Paul. The good news of God in Christ is something that must be acted upon. One confesses with the mouth a belief that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Paul continues to be concerned with “the law” – the teachings of the Torah as revealed and fulfilled in Christ and how those teachings are to be understood and part of our life now that Jesus has come to earth.
Kyle Fedler, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Huntingdon College, says that the “incarnation represents the very purpose of the law, namely, uniting us with Christ” (Kyle Fedler in Feasting on the Word, Year A, volume 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 330). We are an incarnational faith – we believe that God has been made known to us most clearly in the person – the human person- of Jesus. In ways that we do not quite understand, Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Through our belief that Jesus and God are connected in ways that, for most of us, defy logic, we learn that God loves us and desires to be an integral part of our daily lives. Fedler writes that “being a Christian involves the development of a certain kind of character. And the shape of that character is by the story we tell about God’s ongoing journey with human beings from the beginning of time until the end of time. To live the Christian life”, Fedler continues, “we must see the world through the lens of the Bible, the book that tells the story” (Kyle Fedler. Exploring Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), x).
Paul is an important means through which we see the world from a Biblical lens. He wrote or is credited with writing most of the New Testament other than the Gospels. For many, Paul’s writings have been problematic because they are often seen as presenting a black-and-white, this-way-or-the-highway approach that is often at odds with our society and our culture. In Paul’s context of early first century, struggling to explain the ecstatic experiences he had on the Damascus Road and elsewhere, it is not unusual that he would be emphatic. Given that Paul spent much of his life after his encounter with the risen Lord and his change from persecuting the Christians to evangelizing Christ, it is not surprising that his frustration with those who had heard the word of Christ crucified but then let ordinary human impulses to compete with one another for prominence of position and other human struggles leak through in his letters to the various churches he had helped to found.
In his article about this passage from Romans, Fedler suggests that “Christ is the only human being capable of upholding and obeying the deeper meaning of the law. With a few exceptions, all Torah commands have to do with one of two primary relationships: human-to-human and human-to-God. The law was given largely to join humans and God. (Feasting, 330). Paul, a pharisee steeped in the law – or as I prefer- the teachings of the Torah, would have a unique perspective on how those teachings should now be considered in light of the Christ. Paul is able to move- and urges us to move- from a rigid, legalistic view – of the law to a more inclusive, relational view of the teachings. Paul urges us to move from a belief that “if only we live in ways that strictly obey the law” to “live in right relationship with God and each other.” Our relationship with God is to be founded upon love. Remember the passage from 1 Corinthians- read at many weddings: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. … and now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love (I Cor. 13: 1, 13). This is, I think, the “true” Paul. The one who understood that God loves us – despite all our failings, despite our hanging on to things and ways of living that do not reflect God’s love for us and the command that we love one another as God has loved us. At the same time, Paul is not content for us to believe and not act. Lips. Hearts. Feet. He starts this passage from Romans with reminding his readers of what Moses wrote: “the person who does these things will live by them” (Rom. 10:5). Action is required.
Martha Highsmith of Yale University finds an interesting difference between many northern and southern Americans around evangelism. It is a tension, she says, between doing and believing. Generally, northerners tend to “do” – they send missionaries, run soup kitchens and the like. Southerners tend to “talk” – they tend to be on street corners or other public places speaking about their faith and desire that all come to know Jesus as Lord (Martha Highsmith in Feasting, 328). Yes, this is a generality and we can each think of a person who doesn’t fit this model. But, as someone who has lived in both the northern and southern parts of this country, there is some merit, I think, to her observation. If “faith is an embodied reality” “what does it mean in 2011 to confess with our lips and believe in our hearts” (Feasting, 328, 330)
The following story, whose source I do not have, says a lot about the embodiment of faith:
“His name is Bill. He has wild hair, wears a t-shirt with holes in it, jeans and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of college. He is brilliant. Kind of profound and very, very bright. He became a Christian while attending college.
Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative church. They want to develop a ministry to the students But are not sure how to go about it.
One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shores, jeans, his t-shirt and wild hair. The service has already started and so Bill starts down the aisle looking for a seat. The church is completely packed and he can’t find a seat. By now, people are really looking a bit uncomfortable. But no one says anything. Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet. By now people are really uptight and the tension in the air is thick.
About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward Bill. Now the deacon is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair and a three-pice suit. A godly man, very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying to themselves that you can’t blame him for what he’s going to do. How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor? It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy.
The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man’s cane. All eyes are focused on him. You can’t even hear anyone breathing. The minister can’t even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do. And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers himself and sits down next to Bill and worships with him so he won’t be alone.
Everyone chokes up with emotion. When the minister gains control, he says, “What I’m about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget. Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read.”
Amen.
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