“No Condemnation!” (Romans 8:1-11)

Allow me to begin by saying what tremendous joy it gives me to be worshiping with you “at” Messiah once again. Even though we can’t be with one another physically, it has been a joy for Karen and me to be able to join with you virtually for your online services.

At the same time, I have to say that my heart has bled for you all over the events of recent weeks. Your experience of the novel corona virus has been far more severe than ours out here on the edge of the continent. But in your case to the fear and isolation associated with covid19 have been multiplied several-fold by the brutal death of George Floyd and then by the rioting and destruction that followed it. The sight of familiar and much-loved places lying in ruins has been heartbreaking. Needless to say, you are in my prayers regularly, but how much more in the wake of these dreadful events!

Here at our church in Halifax we have been making our way through the book of Job in recent weeks. In the midst of indescribable suffering—after the loss of property, family, and finally his health, plagued by constant, unabating pain, Job cried aloud to God, “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” Perhaps there have been times when you have found yourself asking the same question.

Last week we heard a powerful sermon from Dave on the apostle Paul’s discussion of the power and inescapability of sin in Romans, chapter 7. As he concludes the chapter, Paul utters what seems his own cry of desperation: “Wretched man that I am!” he exclaims. “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

By contrast, our passage this morning from Romans 8 begins with one of the most positive affirmations in all of Scripture: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

What Paul gives us here is not a suggestion. It is not a speculation or a theory or an idea. It is an unequivocal statement of absolute fact. I don’t know how to state it more emphatically! I love the way Eugene Peterson translated Paul’s words in The Message: “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.”

One of my vivid recollections of our years in the Midwest is of those enormous thunderclouds that would gather and seemingly within minutes could turn a sunny, bright, warm day into the darkness of night—sometimes to the point where the streetlights would go on. Some of you may remember camping one year at William O’Brien Park when there was a tornado warning. We were all instructed to leave our campsites and gather in the restrooms until the storm had passed—hopefully without taking us with it!

What a relief it was when, after some pretty fierce winds and torrential rain and more than a few resounding claps of thunder, the clouds parted and we were able to go back to our tents! Maybe that gives us something of the picture that Paul wants to paint for us here, when he declares, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The clouds have passed. The rumbles of thunder have receded into the distance. The birds have begun to resume their evening chorus.

The cross of Christ rescues us
from the penalty of sin

But we need to ask ourselves, how is all this possible? If we are incapable of rescuing ourselves (and this was the point that Paul was at pains to get across in Romans 7) what has happened to make the difference? I want to say that there are two things.

The first is that Jesus Christ through his death on the cross has rescued us from the penalty of sin. The story goes all the way back to the second chapter of the Bible, to the day when the Lord God brought Adam and Eve into the garden of Eden. As they gazed on its splendor and beauty, God told them that all this was theirs to tend and to reap. “But,” he warned them, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 1:17).

Well, we all know what happens in the next episode in the story. Adam and Eve chose not to put their trust in God’s word. Instead they chose to doubt his fatherly care and good purposes for them. And no sooner had they made that decision than the dark cloud of death began to overshadow them.

The letter of James speaks of the Bible as a mirror that gives us a true reflection of ourselves. As with so many of the stories in the Bible, we fail to see the meaning of the account of Adam and Eve if we do not see ourselves in it. Adam is me. Eve is me. And Adam is you and Eve is you. And the dark cloud that hung over them hangs over me and hangs over you to this day.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was first ordained, there was a prayer we recited at funeral services that went back to the tenth century. It began like this: “In the midst of life we are in death…” “In the midst of life we are in death…” That is the tragic reality for the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. So it is that we heard the apostle Paul cry out in chapter 7, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

The answer (like the answer always is in church, it seems!) is Jesus. When Jesus hung on the cross and uttered those words, “It is finished,” it was not that his life was ending. No, it was because in offering himself up in that one perfect act of sacrifice, he had vanquished sin and death once and for all. His was a cry not of defeat but of triumph. As Paul wrote elsewhere,

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:54b-57)

So it is that, because of what Jesus has done for us on his cross, a shaft of bright sunshine cuts through the clouds that have hung over the world since the days of Eden. Sin and death are defeated enemies.

The Spirit of Christ rescues us
from the power of sin

“Well, John,” you might want to say in reply. “Perhaps that is so. But the fact is that we still sin and we still die. So how have things changed?” Allow me to respond by offering what has been for me a very helpful illustration. It comes from an author and theologian named Oscar Cullmann, who lived at the time of the Second World War.

On 6^th June 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed on the shores of France. By dawn on that same day thousands of paratroopers had also touched down behind enemy lines, securing bridges and exit roads. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history and the cost in lives was enormous. Yet by the end of the day, all knew for sure that the Nazi hold on Europe had been broken.

However, the Nazi powers did not finally capitulate until eleven months later, on 8^th May 1945, the day we call VE Day (whose 75^th anniversary was celebrated just a couple of months ago). During those eleven months the warfare continued to rage fiercely and the fatality count continued to rise. Yet all along the Allies were certain that victory was in their hands.

That, said Cullmann, gives us something of a picture (albeit very imperfect in many ways) of where we stand as Christians today. Our victory over sin and evil and death was assured at Golgotha. But we still await VE Day—the day when Jesus will return and all creation will be renewed. Between those two days the warfare continues to rage. We witness it all around us in our society today in what can only be seen as a mounting, almost frenzied, opposition to the Christian message.

Yet in spite of all that is going on around us, I want to affirm, both from Scripture and my own experience, that the primary battleground has been and always will be within the confines of each of our own hearts.

In this regard I have often found myself falling back to the words of the celebrated Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As many of you probably know, he spent eight years living amid the horror and brutality of a Communist prison camp in the Soviet Union. It was out of that experience that he reflected with these words:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And this is where Paul’s second point comes in.

Just as Jesus gave his life for us on the cross to rescue us from the penalty of sin, so he now gives us his Holy Spirit to rescue us from the power of sin. Paul will have a good deal more to say about the Holy Spirit in next week’s verses from Romans—and I certainly don’t want to steal from next Sunday’s preacher! But in this morning’s verses Paul sets before us a choice. And the options are clear.

In Paul’s own words in verses 4 through 8, we can choose to live according to the flesh; or we can choose to live according to the Spirit. How do live according to the Spirit? Paul gives us three picture-words to make what he is saying clear. The first is to walk—to walk according to the Spirit or, as he puts it elsewhere, to walk in the Spirit. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit? Surely it means having the Holy Spirit as our constant companion moment by moment in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. It is what 17^th-century monk Brother Lawrence called the practice of the presence of Christ—consciously seeking him and keeping him in our company throughout the day.

The second expression Paul uses is to live in the Spirit. That is, to allow the Holy Spirit to be the one who dwells at the center of our lives; the one who gives meaning, joy and purpose to our life; the one who stirs deep within us at the very core of our being, who animates us, who shape our character and makes us who we are.

Thirdly, we are to set our minds on the Holy Spirit: to allow him to guide our thinking. I don’t know about you, but it is very easy for my thoughts to go in all the wrong directions—to think in ways that are selfish, uncharitable, impure and unworthy. How much we need the Holy Spirit to take our thought lives—to purify them and to raise our sights to look upon Jesus, day by day!

Well, Paul has taken us over a lot of ground in this brief passage. One author has said, “It is no exaggeration to say that [these verses] contain a complete picture of the Christian life as Paul understood it.” May God bless you as you seek to live that life and to share fully in Jesus’ victory over sin and death—trusting in his sacrifice on the cross and living day by day in the power of his Holy Spirit!

“Born in a Battlefield” (Ephesians 6:10-20)

I am grateful for the opportunity to come and take part in the baptism of our youngest grandchild, Avery, and to Paul Friesen for his invitation to preach once again at St Paul’s after our eleven-year sojourn in the United States. They were a wonderful, spiritually stimulating time for us in many ways, but it is also good to be back in Halifax, which became home for us during my eighteen years as rector here.

Had we been using the old Book of Common Prayer, we would be hearing these words following Avery’s baptism:

We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.[1]

It is a source of sadness for me that we haven’t retained these words, or something like them, in our contemporary forms of worship. I wonder if they weren’t dropped because our liturgical revisers sensed an incongruity between a defenseless baby cuddled in its parent’s arms and the blood and gore of a battlefield. If so, I don’t entirely blame them. Yet, when you think about it, that is almost exactly what the apostle Paul does in this morning’s reading from the last chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.

In the latter verses of chapter 5 and the first half of chapter 6, Paul has addressed his words to Christian households, to the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves. The whole emphasis throughout those verses is on Christ-like submission and service. The nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor Karl Spitte put the picture of the Christian family into idyllic form in his hymn that includes the words,

O happy home, whose little ones are given
Early to thee, in humble faith and prayer,
To thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guards with more than mother’s care![2]

Yet suddenly, from that blissful scene Paul drops us into the middle of a battlefield, with the image, not of a peaceful family home but of a soldier fully armed for mortal combat.

The Action

Why the sudden shift? Handley Moule, one of the great scholar-bishops of Durham, wisely observed a century ago that it is a common experience that “the evil powers often win their worst advantages against us Christians on the quiet and common ground of life”.

Where we are least upon our guard they are most upon their watch… Just at home, alas, it is only too easy for the Christian to be inconsiderate in deed and word, to be quick or sullen in temper, to indulge self in small but dangerous ways, while yet a tolerable face of consistency is maintained in more public and exterior matters.[3]

Do you recognize yourself in the good bishop’s words? I can certainly see all too much of myself in them. Even such a one as the apostle Paul confessed to the struggle between good and evil that raged within the confines of his own soul:

I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. (Romans 7:21-23)

The great Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made much the same observation when he wrote,

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.[4]

As difficult as it may be to accept, little Avery has been born into a battlefield. At this stage in his life he certainly is not aware of it. But we ask his parents and sponsors to affirm on his behalf:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
I renounce them.

The Adversary

I don’t know if it was intentional, but those words in many ways reflect the words that we heard from Ephesians this morning. There Paul warns us about the devil’s schemes, about the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and about the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

It is important to notice that Paul doesn’t write about evil only in vague, general terms. He speaks quite specifically about the devil. In our post-Enlightenment world we may find the Bible’s references to the devil strange, antiquated, even slightly embarrassing. We may be tempted to set them aside as part of a pre-scientific worldview. If that is the case, then we need to beware.

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils,” wrote C.S. Lewis in the introduction to his spiritual classic, The Screwtape Letters. “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors…”[5]

C.E.B. Cranfield, one of the leading New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, has written,

Here we are up against something that presents many difficulties to the modern mind, which is apt to dismiss the whole subject as outgrown superstition. It is important to approach it with as open a mind as possible. To suggest that there may be more truth here in the New Testament picture than has sometimes been allowed is not to wish to turn the clock back on scientific progress or to open the floodgates of obscurantism. The question whether the confident spread of the demons’ non-existence has not been their greatest triumph gets tragic urgency from such twentieth-century features as Nazism, McCarthyism, and Apartheid. And lest we should be prejudiced by the memory of such horrors as the burning of witches, it must be said that they were due, not to taking the New Testament too seriously, but to failing to take it seriously enough.[6]

Even a casual reading of the New Testament should leave us in no doubt that to follow Christ will inevitably lead us into conflict with the spiritual forces of darkness. Satan’s desire is to bring us down, to tangle us in a web of lies—and at times those lies can be very powerful and enticing. Yet all the while we must never lose sight of the assurance that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

The Armour

So how does this work itself out in practical terms? How are we to engage in the fight? Paul uses the image of a soldier—one familiar to everyone in the Roman Empire—to show how it all happens. And it may seem odd, but he begins with the belt. For the belt was possibly the most important component of all. With it the ancient warrior bound together his loose-fitting clothes and so was able to manoeuvre with nimbleness and mobility. When we buckle on the belt of truth, we are encircling ourselves with certain truths about God and about ourselves, truths that we read in Scripture and that we affirm week by week in the creeds. At the same time we are committing ourselves to be men and women of truth, people whose “yes” truly is “yes” and whose “no” is truly “no”, people who really are who we say we are.

The next piece of armour is the breastplate. The breastplate covers and protects nearly all the vital organs, especially the heart. And for the biblical writers the heart stood as the seat of the will. “In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord,” wrote the apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:15a). Though it is the breastplate of righteousness, it is not our righteousness, but Christ’s, that protects us, conferred upon us by the shedding of his blood on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:20,21).

Third come the sandals. Just it was important for a soldier to have proper protection for his feet so that he could cross any terrain no matter how rough without causing himself pain or injury, so too we are to have “our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace”. And so we are gospel people, good news people, leaving the imprint of God’s shalom wherever we go.

Then we are to arm ourselves with the shield—and the shield in question was a large piece of armour that covered nearly the whole body. That shield, says Paul, is faith. The word for faith in the New Testament is pistis, which can equally mean “faithfulness”. Thus I prefer to think of myself being armed not with my own faith, which is weak and faltering at the best of times, but with the faithfulness of God, which extends to the heavens and endures to all generations.

Fourthly there is the helmet of salvation. Clearly the helmet protects the brain—and how important it is to have minds that are formed and informed by the truths of God. Paul writes elsewhere of being transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may be able to test and approve what God’s will is. He writes of taking every thought captive to Christ (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 10:5). How vital it is that we should be able to think Christianly, to develop our minds in such a way that we can respond effectively to the many intellectual challenges that the world places before us!

Finally, we are presented with the sword of the Spirit, which, Paul tells us, is the word of God. Commentators have long observed that up to this point all the armour has been defensive. The sword is the only offensive piece of weaponry. It was with the word of God that Jesus fought off the attacks of the accuser in the wilderness: “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only…’ ” “It is written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” I well remember an adviser in my university days pointing out that a sword has two edges, but in most cases only one is blunt, and that is the edge facing away from us. We can be very adept at applying the Scriptures to other people, but if we have any right to do so, it will only be after we have learned to apply them to ourselves. And if the powers of darkness are to be defeated in our lives, that is the way it will happen.

All of what I have been trying to say in these few minutes is most profoundly and beautifully expressed in a hymn which we know as “St Patrick’s Breastplate”. And I’d like to use those words to pray for you and for me and for little Avery as he is enrolled as Christ’s faithful soldier and servant in the sacrament of baptism.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[7]

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[1]     The Book of Common Prayer, 1959, page 528

[2]     Hymn 340 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)

[3]     Ephesian Studies, page 322

[4]     Both quotes are from The Gulag Archipelago.

[5]     The Screwtape Letters, page 9

[6]     The Gospel According to St Mark, 75

[7]     Hymn 812 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)

“He taught with authority” (Mark 1:21-28)

I am told that some years ago at a meeting of bishops from around the world an Irish bishop and a Mexican bishop got into conversation. “Tell me,” the Mexican bishop said to the Irish bishop. “Does the Irish language have any equivalent of our word mañana?” The Irish bishop looked down and stroked his chin for a moment. Then he looked up and said, “No, I can’t think of any Irish word that would confer quite the same sense of urgency.”

Translating from one language into another is often a complex and tricky business. Our Karen interpreters face it every week when they bravely take on the challenge of translating my sermons. Whether we are aware of it or not, many of the words we use have subtle shades of meaning for which there is no precise equivalent in another language. This was very much the case a couple of generations ago when missionaries first began to translate the Bible into Inuktitut, the language of the Eskimos living in the eastern Arctic regions of Canada. How do you translate, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” for a people who lived in igloos with no doors? Or, “I am the good shepherd,” in a land where there are no sheep and there is no tradition of herding, only hunting?

At a more critical level a huge debate rages today over translating the Bible into Arabic. Should the word “Allah”, for example, be used to translate “God”? A considerably more heated controversy has arisen over the question of how to render “Son of God” into Arabic with reference to Jesus, as there are many Muslims who assume that this must mean “procreated Son of God”.

A Sensation: The Authority of Jesus

Less controversially, there are two words in this morning’s Gospel reading that to my mind defy translation into English. In our pew Bibles they are the words “astounded” in verse 22 and “amazed” in verse 27. I have looked up this passage in several different translations and most of them are about the same. Eugene Peterson in The Message colorfully renders verse 27, “Everyone there was incredulous, buzzing with curiosity.” But my own impression is that what we are witnessing here is something far more profound than curiosity. The New Living Bible comes closer with, “Amazement gripped the audience.” Yet even that, I believe, falls short of the mark.

So let’s just take a moment to recreate the scene in our minds. It’s Saturday morning and the good folk of Capernaum (population 1500) have assembled in the synagogue. A new young rabbi has come to town from neighboring Nazareth. I don’t believe that it was because he was a great orator (although he may have been) or because he was especially scholarly (although that may have been true as well) but there was something about his teaching that resonated with their hearts in a way that no other rabbi had ever done before. It spawned in them a yearning to hear more, to plumb deeper. We see that reflected in Peter’s words in John’s gospel: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life;” or in the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did not our hearts burn within us … as he opened the Scriptures to us?”

I can only imagine that their attention was so utterly focused on Jesus and on what he was saying to them that the sudden shrieks from the man with the unclean spirit must have caused their hearts to leap. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Yet without breaking step for a moment, and with a combination of total calm and intense concentration Jesus turned to him and said, “Be silenced (literally, ‘be muzzled’) and come out of him.” The man immediately went into convulsions and inarticulate screams, and then, as quickly as it had begun, all was silent. Then the room began to fill with amazed voices exclaiming, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

The words that contemporary Bible translations use to describe the congregation are “amazed”, “astonished”, “astounded”. But I don’t think that any of those words comes near to what was going on inside the hearts of the crowd on that day. I was tempted to think that “blown away” might bring us closer to what they were feeling. Yet even that seems woefully inadequate. “Overwhelmed” might be better. One of the verbs that Mark uses in this passage has at its root the idea of being struck, indeed being struck by lightning. The other is often coupled with trembling with fear. So do you see the direction in which we are heading? It is like Peter’s reaction after the miraculous catch of fish, falling at Jesus’ knees and protesting, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man;” or the people of Gerasa after the demons had caused their herd of swine to hurtle down the hillside and drown in the sea. Their utter bewilderment at what they had witnessed was such that they begged Jesus to leave the area.

Both in his teachings and in his actions Jesus demonstrated an authority not seen in anyone else. He simply did not fit into any category. And that, I believe, is something that ought to make anyone profoundly uncomfortable. “What kind of man is this?” the disciples asked themselves when Jesus calmed the storm. “Even the wind and sea obey him!”

A Confrontation: The Reality of Evil

At this point we need to stop for just a moment to wind back and ask ourselves, what was it exactly that was taking place in the synagogue that morning? It is not just Jesus who doesn’t fit readily into our twenty-first century categories. What about the unclean spirit? What are we to say, what are we to think, about that? Our three-and-a-half-century heritage of rationalism and reductionistic thought has succeeded in pretty well eradicating any sense of the supernatural from our worldview. We prefer to explain what an earlier generation saw as spirit possession in terms of disease or psychosis or something else that fits more neatly into an understanding of life composed entirely of the physical.

Charles Cranfield, one of the leading New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, commented on this passage,

Here we are up against something that presents many difficulties to the modern mind, which is apt to dismiss the whole subject as outgrown superstition. It is important to approach it with as open a mind as possible. To suggest that there may be more truth here in the New Testament picture than has sometimes been allowed is not to wish to turn the clock back on scientific progress or to open the floodgates of obscurantism. The question whether the confident spread of the demons’ non-existence has not been their greatest triumph gets tragic urgency from such twentieth-century features as Nazism, McCarthyism, and Apartheid. And lest we should be prejudiced by the memory of such horrors as the burning of witches, it must be said that they were due, not to taking the New Testament too seriously, but to failing to take it seriously enough.[1]

So how do we take what the Bible says seriously? C.S. Lewis perhaps put it best in his brief preface to The Screwtape Letters, when he wrote,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors…[2]

The New Testament clearly recognizes the reality of personal evil. In a few weeks’ time as we enter the season of Lent we will be reading about Jesus’ threefold confrontation with the devil. He taught us to pray, “Deliver us from the evil one.” (That is the literal translation of the Lord’s Prayer.) The apostle Paul teaches that we are engaged in a struggle “against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). And numerous times in the New Testament we see both Jesus himself and later the apostles engaging in direct conflict with the occult forces of evil in the world.

Yet we need also to be aware that, while the Bible speaks about the reality of the devil and his legions, it is speaking about a conquered enemy. What we see in this morning’s passage is a power confrontation. The unclean spirit shrieked out, “I know who you are…” It somehow reasoned that by knowing who Jesus was, it could exert some kind of power over him. Yet its words were clearly the product of desperation because in fact the opposite was true. What we witness in the New Testament and in our own struggles with evil are the final skirmishes of a battle that has been won. In Revelation we read,

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb…” (Revelation 12:10,11)

Notice how the victory has been won: by the blood of the Lamb. The ultimate confrontation with evil took place at Calvary, as the spotless Son of God bore the full brunt of evil’s power and rendered it powerless. The devil and his legions are a defeated foe. Yet like a wounded bear they rage and flail, and we do ourselves a disfavor when we ignore their ability to damage and to destroy. Like those brave saints in Revelation, however, our victory is assured through the blood of the Lamb.

An Invitation: A Relationship with Jesus

One final note on this morning’s passage: The unclean spirit thought that it could somehow fend off Jesus’ power because it knew who he was. Elsewhere James tells us that even the demons believe (2:19). And so implicit in what we have read this morning and indeed throughout the Bible is that knowing about Jesus, even believing about Jesus, is not enough, not what God is looking for. And that is where our other reading this morning, from 1 Corinthians, comes in. There Paul tells us, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

Early in my Christian life I remember my rector once saying (and I think very wisely), “Isn’t it great that we’re not going to be judged on the basis of the correctness of our doctrine!” Now I am not suggesting that we all go out and embrace heresy. Nor am I saying that doctrine is not important, or that we should not have a thirst to know more and more about Jesus. The problem with the unclean spirit in this morning’s Gospel, however, was that, while it knew about Jesus, it had no desire actually to know him, to yield to him, to enter into a relationship with him.

By contrast, Jesus’ prayer for his followers—and by extension for us—was that they might truly know him (John 17:3). Paul’s single desire was “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). And so I guess my prayer is that we should go away from this morning’s Gospel passage, not simply amazed or bowled over or blown away by Jesus’ power, but that that should lead us to bow to him personally, to let his presence permeate our lives—and in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim for ourselves, “Jesus is Lord.”

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[1]     The Gospel According to St Mark, 75

[2]     page 9

“Majoring on the Majors” (Romans 14:1-12)

With a total of 48 places of worship, Centerville holds the record for the greatest number of churches per capita in the nation. Originally, in 1899, only one congregation existed, simply known as “Centerville Community Church”.

However, 1911 a dispute arose over whether or not the offering should be taken before or after the sermon. Thus occurred the first split, with the dissenting congregation forming “Centerville Reformed Community Church”.

In 1915 another controversy divided the members of Centerville Reformed Community Church, this time over the issue of placing flowers in the sanctuary. Some approved while others objected. As a result CRCC split and Trinity Reformed Church of Centerville was organized with 25 members.

Several more splits took place over various issues between the years 1915 and 1929. In 1931 another clash erupted among the members of Seventh Reformed Covenantal Church of Centerville over an issue that no one can seem to remember, nor do any records indicate. Suffice it to say, that approximately half the congregation walked away, and 9 people formed Third Westminster Trinity Covenant Reformed Church of Centerville.

Since then several more divisions have occurred, the most recent being this past weekend, when a disagreement arose amongst the members of Second Street First Ninth Westminster Covenant Reformed Church over the observance of the Lord’s Day. The issue in question was whether or not it was acceptable to check one’s email on the Sabbath. Those who objected have now formed “The Totally Reformed Covenantal Westminsterian Sabbatarian Regulative Credo-Communionist Amillennial Presuppositional Church of Centerville”.

“I think we’ve finally got it right now,” said Paul Davis, teaching elder at TRCWSRCCAPCC. “We now have a church with 100% doctrinal purity.”

The story of course is fictional. Yet it is not far from the truth. We Christians can be a fractious lot. In this country there are well over two hundred separate denominations of Christian churches, and that does not include the more than 35,000 non-denominational congregations scattered across the land.[1] Studies indicate that there are as many as 19,000 major, scarring church conflicts in the U.S. each year—an average of 50 per day.[2] Until recently we Episcopalians could look down our noses at other denominations, as there had not been a split of any consequence among us since 1873. Today that is no longer the case, as the recent disaffiliation of entire parishes and dioceses and legal costs in excess of $20 million will testify.

Sad to say, even since its earliest days there have been conflicts in the church. Pentecost was still a recent memory when complaints began to arise that the Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in favor of the Aramaic-speaking widows. In later years a major dispute erupted between Peter and Paul over the question of circumcision. Paul described himself as opposing Peter to his face and calling him to account in the presence of the whole church. In fact, when you read through the letters of the New Testament, whether from Paul or Peter or John, nearly all of them deal in one way or another with issues that were causing controversy in the church.

The Periphery

It is almost surprising that we have to get all the way to the fourteenth chapter of Romans before we come face to face with an issue that was threatening to divide the church there. The controversy centered on a couple of things. The first of them had to do with food. It is difficult to pin down the precise nature of the dispute. I tend to agree with those who think that it was related to the observance of kosher food laws. The Roman church was made up of a wonderful diversity of Jewish and non-Jewish believers. No doubt there would have been those among the Jewish believers who desired to continue to follow the Old Testament food regulations. Because it was difficult to guarantee that meat was truly kosher, it is quite possible that some would have decided to abstain from eating it altogether.

The second issue had to do with the observance of particular days. Paul was likely referring to the Sabbath and to the annual Jewish festivals—important to believers of Jewish heritage no doubt, but of little or no interest to many of the Gentiles.

It should have been possible for these two groups to live and worship and serve Christ together side by side. Yet that was becoming increasingly awkward. Tensions were mounting. Those who had no interest in the food laws or Sabbath observance had begun to look down on those who did as weak in the faith. And those who did observe them wrote off the others as half-hearted Christians, slack in their obedience to the Scriptures.

The problem with the Roman church was not that there were differences, but that those differences were leading to a critical spirit, judgmentalism, and division—and to make matters worse, the differences had nothing to do with concerns that were central to the Christian faith. In our translation Paul describes them as “opinions”. The New International Version renders the word “disputable matters”. It has to do with personal views that are not necessarily based on fact, matters that are generally open to debate.

The differences may be real, and Paul acknowledges that. They may be based on deeply entrenched convictions. Nevertheless, he says, even though that may be the case, we must not allow secondary matters to blind us to the basic truth that God has welcomed us all—and that therefore we are under a divine obligation to welcome one another. Paul will make the same point again in the next chapter. “Welcome one another,” he writes, “just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

The issues may have changed in the intervening twenty centuries, but we still face parallel situations in the church today. In his book Reinventing Evangelism Don Posterski makes the very helpful distinction between what he calls “treasures”, “baggage” and “garbage”.[3] In the first category he places such things as worshipful liturgy, evangelistic fervor, social service, biblical preaching, a commitment to global mission, the practice of prayer, and holiness in lifestyle. The baggage he defines as aspects of church life that relate more to the external form than to the essence of spiritual life: things like raising your hands in worship or crossing yourself, traditional hymns or contemporary praise, dressing up on Sunday or coming as you are. The third category, garbage, is stuff that somehow gets incorporated into church life but actually detracts from our fulfilling Christ’s mission and that we would be much better off without—things like religious jargon, personal kingdom-building, begging for money, self-righteousness and exclusivism. We continually stand in need of the wisdom to be able to distinguish among the three, and then to treasure the treasures, be soft on the baggage, and toss out the garbage.

The Center

What Don Posterski writes in his book is not that far from a helpful little catch phrase that began to have currency in the church about four hundred years ago: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity”. The challenge for the church in every era—not least in our own—is to distinguish what are the essentials and the non-essentials. It seems to me that this has been the problem facing the Episcopal Church and much of western Protestantism for the past fifty years. Whether it is questions such as the deity of Christ or his virgin birth and resurrection, or the hot-button issues of today surrounding human sexuality, we are facing increasing division and acrimony. How do we deal with them?

About a month ago Charlie Clauss wrote a very helpful little on-line article entitled “Radically Centered”. He used the idea of mathematical concept of sets and applied it to the church. Here is some of what he wrote:

A church community can be a fuzzy, bounded, or centered set. A bounded set is a set with clearly defined criteria to membership in the set. One is either “in” or “out”. A centered set eschews the language of in and out and concentrates instead on a person’s relationships with a defined center. Orientation to, and distance from, the center are what matter. A fuzzy set is just that: it has neither boundaries nor center. It is just a collection of people.[4]

Charlie goes on to commend the church as a centered set and this is something that makes eminent sense to me. We are not in the business of determining who is or is not a Christian. C.S. Lewis wrote about the futility of this option sixty years ago in Mere Christianity:

There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by him that they are his in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand… And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-Christians in the mass.[5]

The challenge that Jesus lays before us is to be a centered set: to lift him up in such a way that people are drawn to him as their Savior and Lord. It seems to me that this is our governing philosophy at Messiah and we have articulated it in our vision statement: “Bringing people together from many nations and every generation to worship Jesus Christ and take his healing into the world.”

The Goal

All of this brings us back to what Paul writes in verses 7 to 9 of our reading this morning:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

There is a place for baggage in the church: those traditions and practices that have become important to us, perhaps because they evoke precious childhood memories, perhaps because they have helped us to avoid sin and remain true to Jesus. Yet we cannot allow them to cloud our vision, to become our primary focus. The key thing is to be sure that we are serving him.

It is Jesus, not traditions, who through his death and resurrection has brought us to life. It is Jesus, not opinions, who will greet us at the end of our journey and welcome us as his bride to the wedding supper of the Lamb. It is Jesus who must stand as unrivaled Lord over all things in our churches as well as in our personal lives.

I conclude with words from theologian C.E.B. Cranfield, who writes,

[This passage from Paul] is a reminder to each member that, whether his faith leads him to adopt the practices of the strong or the practice of the weak, it can, and must be allowed to, set him free for an obedience which (according to his own particular way of faith) is firm, decisive, resolute, courageous, joyful.[6]

May that be the experience of each of us today.

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[1]     http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#denom

[2]     http://www.peacemaker.net/site/c.aqKFLTOBIpH/b.1320145/k.23DE/The_High_Cost_of_Conflict_Among_Christians.htm

[3]     See pages 102-105.

[4]     http://livingchurch.org/covenant/?p=3568

[5]     Page 173

[6]     Romans, A Shorter Commentary, 343