"Out of the Sandbox" June 24, 2012 Romans 3:32-4:5

Out of the Sandbox[1]

Romans 3:31-4:5

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

June 24, 2012

Ordinary 12

 

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

Jesus said that where two or more are gathered he is there.

The presence of the Son of God is not the only thing present when human beings gather together.

In all sorts of places;

the sandbox on the playground,

the corridors of political power,

the midst of social conflict or upheaval,

IT is there.

The IT in question is our never ending effort to establish order in the world.  And not just any order, but a new order that favors our own perspectives and demands and bends them to our own will.

            A colleague related a story about the sort of conflict that can arise when those visions conflict.  It happened on the middle school yard.  The two guys had been cruising to a fight for a while because both had staked their claim to the same girl.  So, in that eternal show of middle school tough guy bravado, they stormed over to one another, threw their books to the ground and commenced battle.  Some blood was drawn, a few bruises were shared.  In the end, there really wasn’t a winner.  That of course was somewhat preordained since these two guys were fighting over a girl but neither had even shared their interest with her.  She had no desire to let these two guys decide anything about who she would or would not hang out with.  In fact, she was hanging out with a guy from another school. 

            Fists clenched and wills determined, those two guys duked it out to set straight just how the world was going to be ordered but in the end all they did was accomplish some bruises, scrapes and a three day suspension.   Try as they might, they did not have the power to bend the world to their own will and in hindsight driving home with mom and dad school suspension in hand, it probably seemed a little silly.  But in the moment, nothing else seems so important.

            Throughout the history of civilization, that school yard fight has been played out on a greater and more troubling scale.  And with each one, the victor thought that a new and permanent world order had been established.

            When Babylon crushed the Israelites, Israel worried that a new and permanent world order had been established and the Babylonians celebrated in their final victory.  But then, a few generations later, there the Israelites were rebuilding the temple and Jerusalem.

            In 732 at the Battle of Poitiers, the balance of power between Catholic France and Moorish Spain seemed to have been struck and set in stone forever.   750 years later Spain would not only be Christian again, but the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition would ensure that no other voices would be heard.

            In 1960’s and 70’s, the fragile balance between the United States and the USSR appeared to be the context of world affairs for the foreseeable future.  Until a group of East German residents, dissatisfied with the order of the world, took to the streets with sledgehammers and began to tear down the wall.

            The world order as we see it often seems eternal and unchangeable, but history teaches us that it rarely is.  Each of these eras in history is fleeting, yet each is also impactful on the fullness of history.  Without Babylon, the Jews of ancient Israel would likely not have such devotion and passion for the land of return.  Without the invasion of Spain by the armies of Tariq Ibn Ziyad, the west may never have made advances in math and astronomy owed largely to Islamic scholars.  Without the Cold War, we may never have known the horror of the arms race.

            For better or worse, each new era in human civilization changes whom we are and how we live.

            Such was the Rome of Paul’s time.  It was the biggest kid on the playground.  It set the rules and dictated the ordering of the world.  And like powerful nations before and after, Rome established that order by delineating between whole swaths of peoples.   Who is in and who is out.

            Paul, in this portion of his letter, betrays himself as a very well educated and astute observer of humanity.  He understood the realities of power and he understood these underlying patterns of history.  In writing to the Christians at Rome, Paul calls them, and consequently us, to a new perspective on history.  It is as though Paul walks us to a high vantage point and, letting history unfold before us, says “what you see is not really how it is.  Oh it may seem real enough in the moment, but in the fullness of history; in the fullness of God’s unfolding history, this is not the whole reality.” 

            For Paul, the order of history-the order of the world, our lives, and our communities- is about nothing less than Jesus Christ.  And Christ’s order is different than any other that the world has ever seen.

            In Jesus’ world, citizenship is determined by two things; the need of grace and the justification of Grace.  And what does Paul have to say about that.  Well to the first point, he says that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.  Kind of hard to put national or cultural or political boundaries around that!  We are ALL sinners and we ALL fall short of the glory of God.  And we sinners are “justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood…” (3:24, 25)

            Of all the tipping points in human history, of all the eras in which the whole course of history seems to change, none compares in Paul’s eyes to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            While earthly powers gather on the school yard to duke it out or argue over whose toys will stay in the sandbox, Jesus does something different.  Dissatisfied with the world as it is and with the limited perspectives the powers that be can offer, Jesus does not seek to reorder the world.  In his life, death and resurrection Jesus ushers in a whole new world.  A world not bound by the limits of our horizons or even the walls of the sandbox!

            In a world of dog eat dog,

                        a world of me first, me second, me third,

                        a world where the one with the most toys wins,

                        Jesus proclaims a new day.   A day when the order of the world does not rise or fall on the powers that be;  that expands beyond our human created boundaries, divergent philosophies and limited perspectives; where the goal of life is neither strength nor power, neither advancement or domination. 

            This new world as Paul describes it is defined by…relationship.  And this is not just any relationship but real, abiding, unbreakable relationship with God our creator.  Paul strives in his letter to the Romans to get them to understand that this new order Jesus ushers into the world is defined by one truth; the truth of the grace and love of God.  All that is, in heaven and on earth, bows to God and it is by God’s universal act of grace that we are united.

            Amen?

            No, really, can I get an amen to that?

            If there was ever a good word of good news in a world that needs to hear it, this is it!  Can you think of any better word for us to hear? 

            If ever there was a time for even Presbyterians to give an amen, this is it!

            This new world that Paul describes is a place for US.  For all of us; Jews, Gentiles, men, women, old, young, free people and slaves, you name the human condition or human category, and Jesus has knocked down the walls and gathered us all in together in the embrace of the love of God.

            God, Paul tells us is our universal true north.  Was it the law that brought blessing to Abraham?  No.  Was it his good works and good deeds?  No.  It was the faithfulness of God and Abraham’s faith in God’s faithfulness that brought such blessing to him. 

            I did a completely informal survey last night.  I skimmed three dozen front page stories on news websites; the NY Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, you get the idea.  I kept a running count of the stories that described some sort of conflict or division in the world.   With the notable exceptions of an article on the children’s book Good Night Moon and a very interesting article about the rising standards for admission to nursing programs, every article I read described some sort of conflict between warring political, economic, social or national worldviews.  Each one determined to bend the world to their own will and way. 

            Later this week in Pittsburgh, a few thousand Presbyterians will descend on Pittsburgh for the 220^th General Assembly of the PC(USA).  Some of the business will sail through without a single dissenting voice.  Things like salaries for missionaries and partnerships with hospitals and orphanages around the world.  Other things, though, will be met with less fulsome support.  As in so many years past, a great deal of time will be spent arguing over which side will have its way.  Each one unwilling to establish enough space for the other, groups on opposing sides of contentions issues will stake out their claim. 

It seems as though we do spend an inordinate amount of time arguing over who and what gets to play in our sandbox.  We argue and debate about which ideas and which people and which groups may or may not be a part of our sandbox. 

There is only one problem I can see.  Well, two actually.

The first is that it is not our sandbox!  We spin our wheels when we try to determine who will and who will not exist in the shadow of the love and grace of God. 

The second is that the sandbox we share today is boundless.  There is room for us all.  Jesus made sure of it.  In fact, he died to make it so.

There are no boundaries to this new world order ushered in by Christ.  And in Jesus Christ, we live in a new world, a new time, a new order defined by new love, new relationships and new possibilities for all of God’s children. 

Make no mistake about it. 

Jesus Christ died…for all.

God’s grace is offered…to all.

This new world order born of an empty tomb has room…for all.

That did not sound like good news to the powerful.

That did not sound like good news to the fearful.

That did not sound like good news to those who like things just the way they were.

What about us?  Does that sound like good news to us?

For our sake, I sure hope so.

Sola Deo Gloria.  To God alone be the glory!  Amen.

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[1] I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. David Bender whose sermon of the same title was presented to our study group in March 2012. This sermon is informed both by his theological insights and homiletical ideas. His generous permission is gratefully acknowledged.

"Created in Love, Loving the Creator" June 17, 2012 Romans 1:14-2:11

Created in Love, Loving the Creator[1]

Romans 1:16-2:11

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

June 17, 2012

Ordinary 11

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” says Paul. 

Unrelenting in his opinions and unyielding in his conviction, Paul, come hell or high water, is going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and not be ashamed.  I don’t know about you, but I wish more Christians would honestly live like that; living and speaking and believing in the gospel of Christ without ceasing.  Not so much that we are obnoxious or prideful, but so that we are bold and unashamed.  I wish more of us were willing to openly and honestly and bravely speak about our faith. 

I am not ashamed. 

I don’t know about you, but I wish I could honestly live like that.  I wish I could go out there, and be willing to be labeled as a Christian and never be ashamed.

Unfortunately, there are some reasons to be ashamed.  Not ashamed of the gospel but of some of the things that have been done in the name of the gospel.  By manipulating the gospel to meet our own ends, we Christians have been responsible for unjust wars, for justifying slavery as God’s natural order, for persecuting un-favored groups and peoples by making hate and bigotry morally acceptable.  God help us, we have some skeletons in our closet and they are pretty damn shameful. 

We have a history, and not all of it is worthy of the God whom we serve and worship or the gospel we are called to proclaim.

Unfortunately in our contemporary culture, bad news sells and those lapses in our treatment of the gospel and the world are the things of which most people who don’t go to church are most aware.  Our silence and unwillingness to be openly Christian, to speak up and correct the record in both our words and our actions, feeds into that perception.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” Paul says. 

How do we get there?  How do we start to overcome our missteps and start to show the world the gospel and do it with boldness?

Maybe the answer is taking seriously that portion of our text today where Paul writes about not judging others.  If anything is at the heart of our tendency to stumble over the gospel and make a mess of things, it is the temptation to judge; to measure the world against our own private morality measuring stick.   If we will let go of our judging, maybe we could begin to change the perceptions about all Christians, and could live into the reality of not being ashamed. 

Paul, in that way he has, gets to the heart of judgment and what really motivates us to stand in judgment of others and the world.   He points out that when we judge we are not merely assessing others’ lives.  In reality, Paul says, we are trying to limit the grace of God.  Whenever we judge, we take yet another bite of the serpent’s tempting fruit and seek to replace our judgment for God’s grace.  Not only is that not in our power, it is never in our best interest.

More than ever before, we need to live in the world that is completely and thoroughly covered in God’s grace; every corner of our world, each and every nook and cranny and corner, whelmed by the love and grace of God.  We need to live in the world where God’s grace is inescapable.

Well I’ve got good news for you.  We do live in exactly that world, for God’s grace has saturated the world; it is inescapable; it is the whelming flood that sweeps through creation.

And when we can stop substituting our own idea of what is worthy with God’s declaration that all that is created by the hand of God is good, we may just find ourselves living unashamed of the gospel.  Perhaps the answer is as simple as an act of the will to refrain from judgment.

That makes for a tidy theological package wrapped up all nice and neat.  But good ole Paul won’t leave it there.  Simply saying “judge not” will not do it.  So Paul does what Paul so often does, he pushes things a little more.  He demands that we look beyond simple answers to some more difficult truths.

This section beginning in verse 18, and intensifying in 24 is so intriguing.  Paul has just written in verse 16 that he is not ashamed, and is moving toward not judging and the all-encompassing grace of God, but here he pauses to do something that at first glance seems like a good amount of judging, or a good amount of stuff he should be ashamed about.

In verses 24, 26 and 28, Paul repeats a form of the Greek word “paradoken”.  From the root “paradidomi,” it literally means “to give over.”  It is a compound word, para meaning beside or with and didomi means to give or present.  There is no single English word that is the equivalent, but in context it means handing something, or someone, over like a hostage.  We are handed over as hostages to our sinfulness.

Like so much of scripture, this text isn’t about what many people have tried to make it about.  This is not a passage that shows how a man must not lie with a man nor a woman to have unnatural intercourse.  I know that’s what the words read, and if you take them out of context it can sure make a tidy moralistic argument.  But this is not an aside from Paul outlining a particular sin.  In this passage, Paul is writing not about homosexuality, but about healthy sexuality, and in this case unhealthy sexuality in order to make a larger point.  Paul uses sex and sexuality to make his point, but it is hardly the main thing on his mind.  Still, making this text merely about moral assessments and judgments on sex is an easy trap to fall into.  When it comes to sex and sexuality, our cultural sensibilities press us to avoid talking about talking about it because all of that is dirty or somehow bad and wrong.  Like an embarrassed teenager, we too often skip over these sorts of texts, dismissing them with easy moralistic platitudes because it is an uncomfortable topic.  In truth that is one of the huge mistakes in the church’s theological history. The damage this persistent misunderstanding and misuse of the text has done is only matched by the wrongness of the theology behind it. 

The real issue for the apostle is stated plainly in verse 25.  They worshipped the creature instead of the creator.

It is God, after all, who creates our bodies, and calls us very good.  It is God, after all, who creates us to be in relationship with one other, and calls us very good.  It is God, after all, who creates us as physical creatures and calls us very good.  All of it, God creates every part of our human-ness, every part of our physical nature, and calls us very good.  Paul recognizes this and in order to show that what he is saying is for all humanity and not just a select group, he turns to one of the most base and universal parts of being human.

So the issue for Paul is not sex per se but our misuse of the gifts of God.  The trouble comes when we objectify and abuse the gifts God has given us.  It’s when we worship that which is very good instead of the one who makes us and declares us so that we run into problems. 

That’s Paul’s real issue here.  The trouble is that we abuse God’s good creation and our objectification of created goodness distracts us from the good creator.  We become captives to our tendency toward objectification.  Or, to use Paul’s language, we are handed over to be hostages to our own sin.

In many ways, we live in the same world as the one Paul wrote about.  A world where people are taught by the culture to worship their bodies and search only for the pleasures the world can provide; a world in which intimacy is treated as recreation rather than a sacramental expression of love.  

So when Paul goes on about natural and unnatural sexual expression, he wasn’t trying to define this person or that person or a particular sort of human intimacy as inherently sinful.  What Paul was trying to communicate was the sinfulness in worshipping the creation instead of the creator; of objectifying God’s gifts and making those idols of our desire and devotion.  Even the most wholesome and loving act bears the stain of sin if it is the result of objectifying or, worse, worshiping the object, of serving the creation instead of worshipping and serving the creator.

That, I believe, is why Paul is so harsh here and on through chapter 2.  It is as though he is saying don’t you dare judge others for whatever they are doing with their bodies, because you are worshipping the creation instead of the creator in your own way.  The issue for Paul was not a woman giving up natural intercourse for unnatural, or a man lying with a man.  Paul has much bigger fish to fry.  He seeks to warn the Romans, and us, of the dangers inherent in allowing our devotion to turn from God and toward the things of this world. 

Here the issue is worshipping God alone, and having no other Gods- nothing in heaven or on earth- before God.  That is the axis around which this particular theological argument turns.   And it is hardly the first time this has come up with the people of God.  We recall from Exodus,  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.”[2]

From the day God first spoke in the garden to when God gave the law to Moses to when Paul wrote to the people in Rome to this very day, God has known our tendency to allow the object of our devotion to shift from our creator to our own favored parts of creation.

Consider nearly every episode in the history of the church that may lead us to be ashamed of our misuse of the gospel.

Slavery; rather than worshiping the God who created us all, the gospel was used as a means to devalue some of God’s children and hold up as sacred one race over another.

Sexism; rather than recognizing that all humanity is created in the image of God, the gospel was used as an excuse to degrade and discriminate against women.

Unjust war in the Crusades, the wars of the Reformation, and modern wars like Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and elsewhere; rather than heed Jesus’ call to love all, the gospel was used as an excuse to wage war in the name of what the powerful declared to be true faith.

Each and every time the gospel of Jesus Christ is misused and we are given cause to be ashamed of our misuse of the gospel, the object of our worship is the creation of our own making rather than the creator who made us. 

Not being ashamed of the gospel means living lives that remain focused on the true object of our worship, our love, our devotion and our lives.

When Narcissus of legend peered into a pool of water and saw his own handsome reflection, he fell so deeply entranced with the beauty of his own reflection that he was unable to pull himself away so he wasted away and died.

Not being ashamed of the gospel means tearing our eyes away from the pleasing sight of our own desires and fulfillment and turning them toward the God of history; the maker and lover of all things good.

But it is so easy to keep looking at our own reflection in the will of God.  It is so easy for us to substitute our own vision for God’s world for the vision God gives us in Jesus Christ.  It is easy to find ourselves drawn toward the reflection in the water never realizing that as long as we are captive to it, our eyes will not be on the true object of our affection.  But, what if we did manage to tear our eyes away?

What if we did return our eyes, our hearts, our spirits to God? 

           What if, like Paul, we weren’t ashamed? 

                  What if we created and lived into lives and a gospel community of which
                      we need never be ashamed? 

What if we worshipped God alone? 

Not ourselves, not our pleasures or desires, not substituting what we believe God should want or should desire, not casting our own reflection on God, but God, our Maker, our Redeemer and our Sustainer alone.

I’ll tell you what.  I think we might just get a glimpse of heaven on earth.  You and I might just become the creatures we were meant to be; living the way God intended; loving the true object of our greatest affection- our loving and gracious God by whose hands we are lovingly made.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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[1] I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Matt Fry for insight into the theological approach to this text offered in his sermon by the same name which was presented to our study group in March, 2012. 

[2] Exodus 20.2-3

"In the Name" June 10, 2012 Romans 1:1-17

In the Name

Romans 1:1-17

First Presbyterian Church of Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

June 10, 2012

Ordinary 10

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            This morning we begin a journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans.

            Few biblical texts have had as much influence on the church and even the world as this deeply theological letter written nearly 2000 years ago.

            Paul, having spent the previous decade preaching, teaching and founding Christian communities all around the Aegean Sea, decides to take his theological show on the road to Spain. On his way to the Iberian Peninsula, Paul would make a stop in Rome, the Eternal City. Rome was the seat of power not only in the empire but in the world. He knew that if his theology would take root there, it would spread like wildfire to every corner of the known world.

            Unlike many of the places Paul worked, Rome’s church was not founded by the apostle. In Rome the story of Jesus and his ministry had made it into the fabric of the Jewish community long before Paul ever decided to visit. This presented a particular problem for him. In most of Paul’s letters, he writes to the community to correct them on some error in theology or practice; some way they had strayed away from the theology he left with them.

            The Romans were different.

            They did not know Paul’s particular brand of Jesus theology. They were likely unfamiliar with much of what he had taught in other places and the way of living he prescribed for followers of Jesus of Nazareth. So before he arrived, Paul thought it wise to write ahead and let the Romans know a) that he would be dropping by for a visit and b) his theology of the faith so they would know what to expect from his teaching.

            That letter is our roadmap for the next few weeks as we journey with Paul through the height, depth, width and breadth of the apostles’ vision of the nature and character of God and the life in Christ.

            When I was a student at Pulaski Heights Junior High School, my English teacher Ms. Bell worked to teach a bunch of attention challenged teenagers how to write a basic research paper. She would tell us that the whole thing rises or falls on the thesis sentence. The thesis, she said, is what sums up your paper for the reader and sets the tone for the whole thing. If your thesis is a dud, the rest hardly matters.

            30+ years later, I hear Ms. Bell whenever I sit down to write a paper, article or even sermon. Reading Romans, I think Paul must have had the same sort of teacher because in his first sentence, he sums up the whole of Romans and gives us a picture of where the letter is going.

Now to be sure the first sentence of Romans is a long and convoluted sentence that would be a bear to diagram and is worthy of James Joyce or William Faulkner in its complexity, but at its heart it has a pretty simple thesis. It says,“God is as good as God’s word and God’s word is fully and wholly reliable.” And that is the heart of Paul’s letter. It is a letter about the righteousness and goodness of God.

            In the broader context of the first century, Rome was a cosmopolitan city. It defied easy classification in one particular cultural category. It was a true world city; a crossroads of the peoples and cultures. Of all the cities Paul visited and taught in, Rome posed a unique set of challenges.

            Not only had Paul not founded the faith community in Rome, the city itself was hardly cohesive even within the Jewish or Jewish- Christian community.

            It was a place where many ideas and systems of belief and models for virtuous living competed for the attention and adherence of the population. Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus…these were fish in a barrel for a theologian and teacher of Paul’s caliber. Rome was in a league of its own.

In some ways, Rome in Paul’s day was much like the whole of western culture in our own. It was a challenging mission field for the gospel of Jesus Christ. While western culture until the mid-20^th century was culturally Christian and, in many ways, culturally Protestant, that is no longer the case. Like the Rome of Paul’s time, the whole of western culture has become a crossroads of cultures and religions.

It was into this place that Paul, the disciple of the Lord, goes bearing the truth of God’s promise; the truth of the righteousness of God.

To say that ours is a time of great change in the church would be more than an understatement. It would not be an hyperbole to say that we live in the midst of one of the greatest shifts in church life, church culture and religious life in general since the years of the Protestant Reformation.

Any number of books written in the last decade or so purport to explain the shifts in church culture from the institutional/congregational model familiar to so many of us to new and often unusual expressions of Christian community such as house churches, pub churches and even cowboy or biker churches. Theologians, anthropologists and sociologists are all seeking to explain why familiar more traditional modes of church life are losing traction while new and nontraditional communities are attracting more and more new people.

Some blame the music.

Some blame the theology.

Some say the church needs to make it easier to join.

Some say the church makes it far too easy.

Some give advice on how to better advertise.

Some give you the chance to franchise a proven model.

Book after book, seminar after seminar, program after program each offers quick fixes and easy solutions to the challenges of the modern church; how to meet the challenges of our modern day Rome.

Of all the books I have read on the topic, and I believe me I have read my share, one stands out. It is by Kenda Creasy Dean who is professor of Youth and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her most recent book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, Kenda delves deep into the data collected in the National Study of Youth and Religion.

Like Paul, Kenda gives you a bold up front statement of what she wants to tell. The first sentence of the book reads:

            Here is the gist of what you are about to read: American young people are, theoretically,    fine with religious faith- but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable   enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.

            And, she adds, “One more thing: we’re responsible.”

            Kenda goes on to assess the state of the church today and argues that we have lapsed into a lazy and all too often self-indulgent faith. A faith that is concerned more with not offending or being off-putting than it is with truth-telling and virtuous living. She refers to this contemporary sort of theology as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

            That is hard medicine to swallow, but if we are to make a frank assessment of the church in the world today, we have to accept that the reasons that the church is in decline are not laid at the feet of the culture but at ours. Teenagers are the canary in the coal mine in the church. Their rejection of our institutional structures and ways of belief are a lesson for understanding the past and the future of the church. And at the heart of what they are telling us is a simple message.

            Practice what you preach.

            More often than not the reason that teenagers and young adults give for leaving the church is a feeling that institutionally, we say one thing on Sunday mornings and live another during the week. In other words, they are left with the impression that we keep our theology on the one hand and our lives on the other.

            It is a harsh indictment, but it is hardly a new one. In fact this habit of separating belief from life- theology from living- was already enough of a problem in Rome that Paul addresses it in his letter.

Paul reminded the Romans of the same thing that teenagers remind the church today; belief in God is not about the words. Well, not justabout words. It is about living into the words we say, the things we believe.

When Paul tells the Romans, in these first few words of his letter, that the God of history is as good as the word that has been promised; God’s word is the very righteousness of God. And if we are to live in faith in that word, we must be as good as that word as well. In other words, if we are to proclaimour belief in this God whose promise is Jesus Christ we must fully live into that promise.

Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasaar refers to this as our participation in the truth of God. And that is what it is. When we live into the faith we profess to believe; when we let that faith saturate our very lives the way a hard summer rain drenches the earth, we will not be able to keep from becoming full participants in the truth of God; the righteousness of God.

In the 2000 British Film Billy Elliot, Billy’s father takes him to the community recreation center to take boxing lessons. Billy does not like boxing but happens upon a ballet class. At first, Billy is not all that good. He is clumsy and trips over his own feet. But his teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson, sees talent in the boy. And believing in him, she tells Billy to forget his feet and just dance.

Forget your feet.

Stop worrying if you are doing it right.

Stop worrying if your feet or your posture or your form are perfect.

Stop worrying, forget your feet and dance.

Mrs. Wilkinson must have read Romans!

Paul, our teacher, seeing beyond our anxieties and fears-beyond the clumsiness of our sins and our faults- tells us to forget our feet and dance in the promise of God. Because it is in that promise that we are called to live and to grow and to lose ourselves and let our souls dance in celebration of God’s goodness and promise.

When we let our souls dance in the fullness of God, we participate in the righteousness and promise of God. In fact the very word that is used to describe the participation of the three persons of the Trinity with one another is Perichoresis which literally means dance around! The persons of the Trinity dance around one another! That is how they participate in the fullness of the triune God.

And so should we!

So let our sojourn through Paul’s letter begin. Over the next few weeks we will delve ever deeper with the Apostle into the hope and joy that is found in God. It all commences here, with these words recounting promises made and promises kept. There is no surer place to start any journey than on the name and promise of the righteousness of God.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.