Mulberry Trees and Mountains

Luke 17:5-10

       What a perfect way for this text to begin. O Lord, increase our faith.

How often do we make this cry? O Lord, increase our faith.

There are so many fearful things happening in our world today, as structures around us threaten and do crumble and fall. “O Lord, increase our faith.”

We are immersed in what is perhaps the most bitter and frightening presidential election in our time, with what many fear will have the costliest of results, and we cry, “O Lord, increase our faith.”

We absorb the news of this week alone: a train barreling into a train station in New Jersey, a shooting at an elementary school, and we have doubt. There are children shooting children, the aftermath of yet another police shooting and we have doubt. There are typhoons in one hemisphere and hurricanes in the other and flooding in our region and fires consuming parts of the west, and we feel fear. “O Lord, increase our faith.”

We watch an African American child bravely and tearfully struggle to put into words the pain and the sadness and fear she feels living community in a country pathologically weighed down by its racism and bigotry, and we feel hope leaking away and our hearts are heavy with despair at injustice, pain and suffering of so many in the world, and we doubt. “O Lord, increase our faith,”

We face sadness in our own lives: personal failures, lost relationships, a devastating diagnosis, and we doubt. We bear the heavy marks of sin, and while we want to believe in God’s mercy and grace at the same time, we plead, “Lord, increase our faith.”

It seems like this is a plea that Jesus would want to hear from his disciples. After all, as he is traveling on this road that will lead him to the cross, Jesus has been teaching and preparing his apostles and other disciples for the kind of work they will be doing. Jesus knows he will be leaving them. You know, if I were Jesus, it would seem a good thing for my disciples to know they need faith for this difficult, challenging, critical ministry ahead – for how could we ever do this work, live these lives, without faith?

They’ve already had a taste of challenge – for as they have traveled together, Jesus has asked difficult things of his disciples. He’s told them to give away their possessions, to leave behind anything that might claim a higher allegiance in their lives than their relationship with God, including family and friends.

       Jesus has instructed them to look out for the countless poor, to love the outcast, to let go of the old ways in order to make way for new life. Jesus has instructed those who wish to follow him to give away money, comfort, even their very lives. Jesus has sent them out into hostile territory to preach and teach and heal with nothing but the sandals on their feet and the coats on their backs.

       Throughout this time Jesus has constantly contrasted the pointless pursuit of greatness (even the greatness of faith and discipleship) with the vain efforts that characterize our worldly attempts to save ourselves, with the humility, love, grace and mercy with which God responds to the needs of all people.

       Jesus says only those willing to lose will ever really win. “Pick up your cross, and follow me.”

       It’s no wonder that the disciples cry out what we might see as the perfect demand for discipleship: “Increase our faith!”

Then we hear the words of Jesus, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.” You might even remember the words from another gospel, “you could move mountains.” Mountains – mulberry trees -either way, we know that what Jesus is saying is impossible. So what does Jesus mean?

It is here that I recall the words of Martin Luther:

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.”

       Our problem is the same as the disciples’, - we frame things as the world frames them: anything worth having is worth having in large, larger, and largest quantity.

Forget about believing and trusting confidently that God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs. Money is good, and useful, and can do wonders, we think – well then, more is better. Anything worth having, is worth having more of.

       Like so many things in life says Jesus, it isn’t how much you have, but what you do with what you have been given that counts. Trusting in the sufficiency of what God had given is essential for the life of the disciple.

Faith is not quantifiable. There is no “more” or “less.” Even our faith is a gift from God, and what God has given us is “enough”. But what we do with our faith is directly related to the quality of our discipleship.

In baptism, God consecrated our lives as hands were laid on us and the Holy Spirit blessed us and claimed us. God accomplished all this in bountiful love, and God continues to equip and defend us each and every day by grace through faith.

While God has done this for every one of us, the faith God gives us is not for us alone, but for the sake of the kingdom of God.

You are God’s beloved child, and not only have you received the gift of faith, you already have all the faith you need to follow Christ.

That faith, freely given to you, is for everyday living. It was given so that as we live out our lives as disciples of Christ, we can trust that we truly have all we need to serve, to share, and to follow Christ; it is sufficient for our needs.         

How we use our faith, what we do with this gift, is the truest measure of our relationship with God.

I give you the story of Jerry. I knew Jerry and his family, as members of our home church, for many years.

Jerry was of particularly small stature but strong and generous heart. For over a decade he worked hard and had built a good career in finance and as an actuary at a large insurance company in Wilmington. I had lost track of Jerry and his family for the last decade or so as we moved in different directions, but I met up with them a couple of months ago when they visited here during worship, ironically. Jerry told me that in his mid-thirties, he had made a career change.

After the events of 9-11, Jerry decided that his life needed to mean something, he said. He needed to give back. His career had given him and his family a good life, but had come to have little meaning, he told me. Chasing the corporate dream wasn’t what he was meant to do. He wanted to make a difference. Jerry decided that his whole life needed to be lived in service to others.

So, Jerry followed another dream, and became a fire fighter, and for 13 years, despite his small stature, he was known as a powerhouse. He served with integrity. He was often the first in and the last out on a fire call, and his sisters and brothers in the fire company forever kidded him about being the dirtiest – because Jerry always placed himself right in the thick of things, and coming away from a fire his clothing, hair and skin bore the results – soot, dirt, water, tar.

Last weekend, right there in the thick of things, serving others with his life, Jerry was killed, in the line of duty.

Jerry lived his faith, and in the ordinary give and take of his days, he lived a life shaped by his faith: shaped by the cross of Jesus. He wasn’t a big man; he didn’t need to be. God gave him all the strength he needed. He didn’t have a lot of faith; he didn’t need to have. God gave him all the faith he needed -  just enough faith – to serve humbly and with dedication in the calling to which he was called.

People call Jerry a hero. And what he did truly was heroic. But the truth is, he lived an ordinary life and through it gave extraordinary testimony to the love of God and the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. 

Luther said, “I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.” Through Jesus, we too know our God.

Through the faith given to us in Baptism, through the Scriptures and through the communion of saints, our lives are transformed to live out our faith in the many ordinary things we do each day -

·         Getting the kids off to school.

·         Sitting and compassionately listening to someone struggling with their life.

·         Delivering meals to low-income seniors and the disabled.

·         Writing a thank you note to someone who has shown you a kindness.

·         Greeting a stranger and thereby unknowingly serving as an angel in their lives that day.

·         Reaching out to someone you haven’t seen lately, just to see how they are doing.

·         Praying for a friend or for someone whose name is unknown to you.

Our days are filled with the examples of the ordinary things of life - and a testimony to the grace of God in the faith you have been given.

Whether you are a doctor or nurse, teacher or administrator, student or musician, clerk or beautician, business owner or secretary, janitor or bus driver, spouse or child, homebound or on-the-road, your faith, blessed by God and lived out in acts both large and small, changes the world.

Faith in action points to God’s power, not our own. It points to how God has called us according to God’s purpose and grace, not our own.

Let’s leave it up to God to move the trees. Let us, through these simple acts, tell the story.

           

No Haggle Pricing - How Much Does THIS Cost?

Luke 14:25-33; Psalm 1; Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, from Jesus Christ our Lord, and from our Advocate, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have to acknowledge that beginning with such a greeting after hearing this gospel feels just plain weird.

“Grace, mercy and peace to you, but oh, yeah, to follow Jesus, you need to hate those who we have previously been commanded to love.” Is anyone else struggling with this seeming dichotomy?  This contradiction? With these words Jesus turns upside down our expectations of what grace and peace and mercy mean for us. Why? Why did Jesus say them?

If we look very deeply into the life of Jesus, we find that faithful discipleship is definitely not for the faint of heart, for those w

ho like to straddle the thin, white line, or for those who might think that if I just have enough faith, then discipleship is easy and its challenges will slip away and life will be filled with light, happiness, fulfillment, contentment and prosperity.

Instead, Jesus points out to us that there is a cost to discipleship. And the cost is steep, not to be taken lightly. This is not the first or only time that Jesus has driven home the point that true discipleship is not only costly, but those who follow Jesus, commit to a new modus operandi shaped by the cross. In fact Jesus has to repeatedly drive this point home, because The Way is so contrary to our nature, we of fainting hearts and a deep desire for comfort – even in our witness to the gospel.

While we may chafe against the reality of the demands of discipleship, the other scriptures paired with our gospel today indicate that this teaching is not new, it is simply reshaped for those of us who know Jesus as Lord, who have been transformed through his life, death, and resurrection.

Way back in the wilderness of exile and in those wandering years, Moses speaks to the Israelites who prepare to enter the Promised Land and he tells them that while they are soon to enter that place promised to their ancestors, there are choices that they will make that will lead either to life and prosperity, or to adversity and death.

Following God’s commandments will allow for life in the midst of the sometimes harsh and difficult realities of this world. Turning away from God will bring a unique kind of darkness that can never be penetrated by blessing or the light of true life, both for individuals and for community. This call to trust in God and to obey God’s commandments is for the good of all God’s creation.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks frankly about the serious costs of following the Way of the Cross – the way of Jesus – the way of discipleship.

But if you are like me, there is one particular word that sticks out in today’s text and gives you trouble, and that’s the word “hate,” in verse 26. Deep down, I ‘hate’ that very word and have a hard time imagining it coming from Jesus’ mouth, except to describe how he feels about sin – injustice – racism – and other sins of -uh, hatred.

After all, I stand here all the time and remind you that God is a God of love. Jesus’ greatest commandment is to what? – “to love God and to love one another as we love ourselves.”

So what room in this love-feast is there, for hate? Particularly hate mandated by Christ as a requirement of discipleship? Hate directed at our parents, our siblings, our spouse and children? Didn’t Jesus read the Bible? Doesn’t he know how the hatred of kin wreaked havoc in the Old Testament?

And yet, what does Jesus say his followers must do? Whom should they “hate?” – Father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sister, even life itself.

Wow. Faithful discipleship is NOT for the faint of heart. The question most of us probably wrestle with is, do we really have to follow this instruction to follow Jesus? Does Jesus mean this literally – the way so many of us process words? Can’t I follow Jesus and still love my family? My friends and neighbors? My life?

At this point I think it is helpful to know that the Hebraic understanding of the word Jesus uses here is something that requires single-minded loyalty. Jesus wants us to follow him, possessing such single-minded loyalty.

As followers of Christ, we cannot stand with one foot in the world and one foot on The Way. We cannot equally love our lives as they are and commit to being the disciples Jesus is calling us to be. Discipleship requires radically reorienting our priorities and our actions to single-minded loyalty to the way of Jesus.

While Jesus loved his friends and his mother and sisters and brothers he did not let his love for them keep him looking inward. He did not let it hold him back. Instead, Jesus looked outward, inviting them along, but making his primary action all about obeying the will of God.

Jesus calls his followers to look to the outside, to care more for the good of our neighbor than to the comfort of ourselves. That’s hard. That’s costly – it means giving up things that are very dear to us. It means recognizing that this work, this discipleship isn't about us at all. It I about, and for the sake of Christ.

Jesus calls this church to commit to reaching out, inviting in and opening ourselves up bearing the cost of all that discipleship requires, so that we and those who are not yet among us might see and know and be transformed by the radical love of God, and become disciples too.

Jesus calls Grace to be the church Jesus calls us to be, not overcome with preserving the status quo, nor immersing ourselves in the maintenance of the building that houses us or even the relationships that reside within. Rather Jesus is calling us to be of single-minded purpose – carrying the cross, and following him.

Jesus modeled how transformative mission worked. God has sent people into our world to show us what that kind of discipleship looks like.  

One of those was canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic church today.

While we as Protestants, as Lutherans, do not pray to or venerate saints as our Catholic sisters and brothers do, we do look upon them as examples of faithful living, as individuals who have answered Christ’s call and dedicated their lives to a particular kind of discipleship, and single minded loyalty to Christ.

Mother Teresa of Kolkata was no different from any of us; saint and sinner, bound and free, recipient of God’s grace, mercy and love. She made a particular choice to follow Jesus’ example by ministering to the poorest of the poor. In photos taken of her in her work, you constantly see her touching people – poor people, starving people, homeless people, AIDS victims, dying people, orphaned and abandoned children. Jesus needs us to bear the cost of touching people.

St. Augustine said, “There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.” Our past includes the relationships that moor us to our beginnings. Our challenge and the joy that Jesus is calling us to is moving us into a future with single-minded loyalty to Jesus, always looking outward, always reaching out to others for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Sometimes that looks like a life singularly dedicated to relieving the suffering of others, like Mother Teresa’s was. Sometimes that looks like providing lunches, and meals, and clothing, and quilts, and canned food, and hospitality for the stranger, the homeless, and the needy. It looks like ministries we haven’t yet even begun to imagine or explore.

Jesus calls us not to comfortable membership in this church, but to fearless discipleship in his name. Jesus calls us not to maintain the status quo, but to engage in radical hospitality and ministry that will transform our lives and the lives of others, for the sake of Jesus Christ. By God’s grace and mercy, God promises in the midst of all this to be with us, blessing us, challenging us, sending us saints to join the priesthood of all believers of which we are a part, so that others can know the goodness of God. Let it be so.

          

It is what is it, - just don't ask me what!

Holy Trinity Sunday

I recently realized that there are three words that I mention – a lot! - in my preaching. Well – spoiler alert - I’m about to do it again. Those words, which come up again and again because they are so much in the nature and work of God, are “relationship,”                “forgiveness,” and “communion. One of those words is especially connected to the scripture texts we just read. (Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17)

The assigned verses we read this morning reveal to us the deep desire of God to exist in relationship with all God has created, especially with humankind. As I thought about what I might say today as we turn our focus to God as Trinity, I of course considered how I could best describe the Trinity when the truth is, God’s workings and nature are in so many ways indescribable.

I guess, it should come as no surprise that I came up empty.

I mean, there are all kinds of cute little analogies that are often repeated whenever we attempt to define or explain the three-in-one, one-in-three nature of God, but of course, none of these quite cut it and we find ourselves asking, as Nicodemus once did, “How can these things be?”

The truth is that we always fall short when trying to define God or explain the reality of who God is and how God works, let alone when we attempt to tackle the complexity of God’s Trinitarian nature. It seems that there are some things that are simply too mysterious and infinitely astounding to pigeonhole, to fit into a box, or explain with human words. Human knowledge and language will always fall short, will always be inadequate, will always be unequal to the task of satisfying our longing to fully understand how the divinity can possibly exist in trinity.

Peculiar as it might seem there is something profoundly comforting for me in that. It seems to me that as much as I want to have a clear, concise, precise way to describe and explain God, the very nature of definition is that it sets limitations and boundaries on that which is being defined.

It is ……this.

It isn’t …..that.

But who wants a God who is limited? We do not worship a God who observes boundaries, especially not boundaries drawn through our ideologies. Such a divinity would not be anyone’s idea of a God who meets the vast needs of the cosmos.  Nor is it a description of the holy one who creates, redeems, shapes and sanctifies us, who abides in this unique and wonderful relationship with us.

Instead, we belong to a God who is transcendent; different from anything that is or ever will be confined within our finite human experience or understanding. Try as we might, and many have tried – the reality is that our best attempts to explain the Trinity are simply a means to master with our words what is truly only God’s to know.

While some have rejected the very idea of a triune God because of the inability to precisely contain and explain the Three-in-One divinity, it is God’s deep desire to make God’s self intimately known which is reflected in the unique expression of a God who is perpetually relational, who goes to means as extreme as joining us in our humanity to bear this relationality out.

Nothing reveals this deep desire more than the incarnation of Jesus. And then, God leaves no stone unturned as God comes to us again and again repeatedly extending what God has promised: forgiveness, accompaniment and eternal love over, and over, and over again as grace upon grace.

At the reception following Confirmation last week, I had a lengthy conversation with one of our guests. He happened to be the grandfather of one of our confirmands, and from the perspective of quantum mechanics, he tried to describe a certain relative theory to me. To be fair, he did more than try. He explained it, and very well, I am sure –   it was me who was doing the trying - and failing - to understand what he was saying. Every now and then I had a glimmer of an inkling of an idea that a window might be opening and I was perhaps actually grasping a little bit of what he was saying, but then the curtain would come down, the light bulb would go out, and my head would start to hurt – it turns out I am no physicist, quantum theorist, engineer, or mathematician, my friends.

Then, after describing in great detail and with authority what scientists in his field have long understood to be absolutely true, my new friend looked at me and told me that lately, after reading about recent discoveries and current theory development he has come to firmly believe that our theories in this field are all wrong. He has come to believe that despite all the study and attention and development in his field over the past few decades, despite the mathematical certainty with which theories have been advanced, he is convinced - we really don’t know a thing.

Quantum mechanics aside - I kind of know what he means.

After a lifetime of reading and hearing the scriptures, at least enough to know many of the stories; after decades of going to church, and studying the foundations of our faith; after being involved in parish ministry in various capacities for decades, I had the bright idea to go to seminary. Well, truth be told, it wasn’t my idea, but that is another sermon for another day. Anyway, I went.

And, after taking classes like Biblical Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, Ancient and Medieval Christianity and the Gospels, all very early in my seminary career, I quickly reached the conclusion that all of my neatly drawn knowledge and determination about who God is and how God works was just wrong.

Despite my certainty that I had a solid foundation on which to begin my studies, the more I read and studied and learned, the more I realized I didn’t know a thing. I discovered my confidence and even my faith wavering because, if I couldn’t trust my intellect; if the facts and rules and laws I had learned and understood to be true about how God interacts with the world, if what I thought about these things was wrong, what in the world was I doing in seminary?

I have to tell you that my succeeding years in seminary, internship and subsequent study have only succeeded in confirming that while prayer and study and immersion in the scriptures is important, none of that is what really what matters. How can this be?

The thing about belonging to a relational God, is that, sooner or later we learn that God is more interested in the relationship than in what bits of knowledge we have amassed and may or may not possess. God is more interested in the relationship God has with each and every one of us – than in how well any of us understand this doctrine or that teaching of the church, or the law, or scholarship.

God is so interested and passionate about existing in eternal relationship with us, that God came to us, sealing our relationship in flesh and bone. God’s deep, gritty, amazing love for us comes to us through God’s all-encompassing drive and movement to save the world.

It is God’s activity in and through Christ that leads us to a new reality and experience of God’s love for the entire creation. God in relationship with us is constantly changing our perceptions, giving us new perspective, challenging our assumptions, shattering the boundaries we draw around our own ideas and theories, and drawing us into an ever deepening relationship and experience of God through the work of the Trinity – thus transforming us for daily discipleship.

This is the good news for today. It is our experience of God in holy relationship that informs our best understanding of who God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is.

All the rest – the mystery, the theories, the doctrine, the analogies, our every attempt to “explain” the trinity falls far, far short of the reality of who this God is, except as one who draws us all so deeply into relationship and gives us faith to keep us there. It is for the sake of love that God reaches out into the universe, claiming us each as heirs of the promise, heirs of the prize of God’s enormous gift and treasure of God’s love.

David Lose writes,

“Some say that’s why God created the cosmos and humanity in the first place, to have more people to love. But the Trinity goes even further, saying that from the very beginning of time the dynamic power of love that is at the heart of God’s identity and character can only be captured – and that dimly! – by thinking of the love that is shared…..And so God’s essential and core being has always been a giving and receiving and sharing of love that finally spills out into the whole of the universe and invites all of us into it. First through creation and God’s series of covenants, then and pre-eminently in the sending of God’s Son to demonstrate in word and deed just how much God loves us, and now as the Spirit, bears witness to God’s ongoing love for us and all creation.

Which means, I think, that when we talk about the Trinity as God being three-in-one, we really haven’t captured the heart of the doctrine and reality unless we recognize that God is three-in-one in order always to add one more – and that’s us, all of us, an infinite “plus one” through which God’s love is made complete in relationship with all of God’s children.

And that’s what these passages testify to – the profound love of God that draws us into relationship with God, with each other, and with the whole of creation and the cosmos.”

And so, yes, that big word, “relationship,” is again at the core of our message today. Today we embrace the fact that God in trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the relational power of God to reach out in love for us, for the sake of the world. Thanks be to God!

What's God Doing?

Romans 9:1-5

          Paul has a problem. It’s a problem that causes him such enormous struggle and grief that he says that he would sacrifice his own salvation and place in God’s kingdom if it could make a difference. I think it is a problem many of us can probably identify with.

In the chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans that precede chapters 9 – 11 which we enter today, Paul has been writing about the wonder of God’s love. He has been writing about the wonder of how God has opened up the gates of heaven first to the Jews and now to the Gentiles as well. He has expounded on the grace of God that frees humanity through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He affirms, over and over that God’s faithfulness is revealed in God’s covenants, and that nothing can eradicate the promises of God.

          Paul goes to great lengths (that’s another way to say that Paul can be wordy and his arguments rather circular) to assure the reader and hearers of this letter that salvation is God’s doing and is neither earned nor deserved by Gentile nor Jew. All have fallen short of the glory of God, and been judged guilty by God. All have been condemned to death by the utter failure of humanity to ever live in right relationship with God, to ever live in covenantal fidelity. That is, Paul says, we would be condemned, we would be overwhelmed by the power of death if it were not for God’s love, God’s faithfulness, and God’s determination for us.

          The first eight chapters of this letter to the Romans contain nothing less than Paul’s powerful confession of the veracity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He develops a strong argument for the power of the faith in which God engages us; he makes connections through scripture to God’s providence throughout all of history. Paul has set the stage in these chapters, by telling his story, by testifying how God has intervened in his own life – with a truth so powerful that he, Paul, a faithful Jew, was converted from his persecution of Christians and became a dedicated proclaimer of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul is convinced that all God’s promises of life and redemption are found in Christ and belong to the “providential hand of God.”

          Just last week we heard the apostle’s powerful words of conviction regarding God’s absolute reign over the powers that might threaten us, a reign that is sealed through faith in Christ that is itself God’s doing. Paul writes, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, our Lord.” (8:38-39) Paul is convinced that God’s righteousness saves us, that God’s faithfulness redeems us from the grave, and that it is through God’s grace revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that salvation is won, and that believing in Christ, nothing ever can or will change that, nor take away from us the status of God’s beloved, redeemed, inheritors of the kingdom of God.

          So what is Paul’s problem?

          Paul enters some of the deepest waters of the New Testament here, as he contemplates the fate of the Jewish people. New Testament theologian Matt Skinner writes that at the time Paul wrote this epistle it was becoming more and more apparent that the Christian gospel would not receive a positive response from the majority of Jews who heard it.

With great compassion, Paul opens this ninth chapter of the letter with a heartfelt expression of anguish for his people; for the Jews. “I am speaking the truth in Christ,” he writes, “I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” Paul’s struggle arises out of the love and compassion that he bears for the Jewish people – the Israelites – the people of the covenant. Are they “people of the covenant” no more he wonders? What happens to them? If salvation is brought through faith in Christ but there is a fundamental rejection of the gospel, what then? These are not questions and problems only for Paul. World events both past and present detail the stereotypes we assign to the Jews which bear evidence that this problem and the questions it inspires persist.

          Paul’s questions present a minefield. What does it mean to be “the chosen people” who reject God? What does it mean to fail to accept Christ as God’s new covenant? What does it mean for those who fail to receive Jesus as the Anointed One, the Savior, the Messiah? For, if the people of the first covenant, the one God made in antiquity with the Israelites – Paul intentionally uses that historic name as a reference - are not now saved, does that mean that God isn’t really faithful all the time? If God is not faithful to the promises made to the people of Israel, what does that mean for Jews, for Gentiles, for God?

          Paul’s suffering is personal because these are his people he is thinking about. These are the people with whom and for whom he locates his own history and faith formation. Paul is thinking about his family, his friends, the people from synagogue that he’s known his whole life. In broader terms, Paul is thinking about all those Jews to whom he is connected through his birth and their shared history– these are the people he knows and identifies with. These are the people he loves. This is more than a struggle for Paul. This is a crisis for him.

          Skinner writes, “Paul did not write Romans 9-11 as a “Christian” passing judgment on “Judaism,” as much as he wrote as a Jew trying, like the prophets of old, to make theological sense of the dynamics of disobedience and restoration among Abraham’s descendants. The question driving this section of Romans is “What’s God doing?” It’s not “What’s wrong with these unbelievers?” The situation threatened to ignite a theological crisis in Paul’s day, if it could be supposed that the gospel meant the expiration of God’s promises to those God had already chosen.” Could God have given up on the Jewish people?

          It might be tempting to think that these issues don’t pertain to us. After all, we are Christians, far removed from Paul’s experience of conversion and the crisis in which he finds himself. We are believers in Jesus and in the gospel of grace and redemption. But these are important questions, and important passages to think about, because they wrestle with serious questions about God’s character and about the limit of God’s love and the steadfastness of God’s word. And there is that burning question – “What’s God doing?”

          Friends, I submit to you that God’s history with Israel is our history too. What we encounter here is not an “us and them” question, but a “we” equation. The Jewish people’s rich theological heritage is part of our heritage. This is why it is important to consistently remind ourselves of the entire biblical witness – why we include Old Testament readings and psalms along with New Testament readings in worship each week. It is why our worship and liturgy is sprinkled throughout with references and biblical passages from the entire corpus of the scriptures both old and new. All of our worship and imagery, in fact, is rooted in the Old Testament – within the story of God’s relationship with the people of Israel as it was unfolding.

Further, to understand where Paul is coming from, consider this: how many of you know of someone who has struggled, or have struggled yourself because a loved one, a family member, an adult child perhaps, or even a friend has “fallen away” from the faith? How many of you may wonder about a friend who has never known Christ or rejects the gospel we proclaim? Where is their salvation? What will happen to them? If any of these questions resonate with you, then you might have a wee bit of understanding what it might have been like for Paul.

          I can tell you that in my ministry I have been met by parents, husbands, wives and siblings who have suffered anguish like Paul’s when their loved one has died outside the bounds of the church and therefore, seemingly outside the bounds of God’s love and saving grace. I can tell you that I have often heard the despair of parents of adult children who have turned their backs on the church, or their faith. I have fielded questions about what happens to people who die without ever having known or accepted Christ. What, they want to know, what, we want to know, is God’s promise to them?

          I cannot say with certainty that I can answer all of those questions – I do not know the mind of God. But I believe that God, who relentlessly pursues humanity, who expands the redeemed to include all of the creation, who saves even a lowly, insignificant creature like me – and you – and then feeds us endlessly from his own body and blood, this God is able to work for the good of all whom God loves. The same God who created the ordered cosmos out of chaos and man and woman out of dust and bone, can and will work in ways we cannot fathom or explain to bear good fruit for the new creation of the kingdom of God.

          Paul S. Berge, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary writes, “The Jewish people are not only the recipients of all that God has to give, but they are the people from whom the seed of promise has come as they bear the very gift of God to the nations: "And from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen" (9:5b). Paul has saved the greatest of God's promises to last. The identity of the Messiah is the greatest of God's gifts to Paul's kindred according to the flesh. This brings Paul to the only words that can express the focus of all that he has said in these introductory words--a doxology of praise to God--"God blessed forever. Amen!"