Paul’s Joy and Grief in Telling about Jesus

Paul in Romans 9-11 takes up the message he celebrated in Rm 1-8 but with a new focus and intensity. The section begins in cries of grief and ends in exclamations of wonder (11:33-36).

He continues his focus on God’s faithfulness to his promises (God’s righteousness) that leads to salvation for both Jews and non-Jews in God’s people.

Paul’s grief flows from the repeated experience of proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah of Israel in synagogues in many Greek cities. Some Jews were convinced, but many refused to follow a crucified teacher and make the leap into a community that was not ethnically defined and without clear boundaries of legal practice to separate it from pagan society.

Paul understood well why Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah. He had been there. The fact that Jewish communities split when Gentiles came in seemed a veto on the Gospel. But Paul had seen that crucified Messiah and was called to preach to Gentiles. Both must be included.
As he experienced the power of the Gospel to unite Jew and Gentile, Greek and non-Greek, slave and free, men and women under one gracious God over all, he grieved for rejecters. He felt like Moses after the Golden Calf (Exod 32-33); he would give himself to save his people.

Proclaiming Jesus was in no sense a new religion. Every part was rooted deep in the history of Israel in scripture. All Paul had celebrated in Rom 8 made no sense except in that story. Jesus was a Jew, descendant of David (1:3), Israel’s Messiah. But that Messiah, suffering (crucified) servant, turned out to be the "arm of the Lord" (Is 53:1), the one God over all people, bringing blessing to all peoples as he promised to Abraham at the very start.

No, Jesus did not fit what Jews like Paul had desired in a Messiah, but he fit the promise.

Learning to See God’s Path of Promise and Mercy

Paul is writing to Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome who know scripture. He quotes texts and alludes to many more as he shows them the path of God’s work up to the Messiah.

Most fundamental is the realization that God’s people (Abraham’s seed) are not defined by ethnic descent but by God’s promise and choices: Isaac not Ishmael, Jacob not Esau. Always God chooses a path of promise and mercy, often not fitting human expectation.

The people are never marked out by their virtue, but chosen by mercy in spite of their failings. God’s promise and aim is to deal with the sin and brokenness of all humanity, a purpose of grace and mercy. But sin plays a dominant role in Israel’s story from Sinai to exile and more.

A principal question in scripture story, worship, and prophecy is "How did things go so wrong?" Israel plays out every aspect of human sin under the defining of covenant law. But that sin doesn’t stop God from shaping a people and story through which he can intervene in the person of a suffering Messiah. Everyone, even Pharaoh plays a role in God’s mercy.

The Unfolding of God’s Mercy for All People

But Paul knew how difficult the problem was for Jews like himself. Under an empire and society in which Jews were always outsiders, without power, a strange superstition, there were great advantages in keeping ethnic identity strong and communities clearly defined. That divided society understood such things. Everywhere, groups struggled for identity.

Paul says yes, that definition is important, but God’s story leads to a Messiah embodying the God of all people, who thus reaches back to the original promise God has always been fulfilling. God works in Israel to deal with the deepest problems of humanity and to open both Jews and Gentiles, people of all kinds, to his life-giving grace and mercy.

Learning to Build: Hearing and Doing Jesus Words

We've talked about fear, anxiety, and love. Now let's think together about building. Jesus uses the image of two builders as the climax of the Sermon on the Mount. One person hears Jesus' words and does them. Another hears and does not do them. He says it's the difference between a house founded in bedrock and one sitting on sand. The fearsome storms hit both. One stands. The other collapses. "Doing" Jesus' words is the difference! How? Is this Grace?

This "doing" is not "earning;" it is participating: Jesus' words / life become my own real life.

It reflects our unity as embodied creatures (as Jesus came in body) uniting mind and action. Doing also changes the way we hear: Hearing a chef's recipe on TV or really cooking the dish. We come to know and trust God's love in Jesus, abide in it, complete that love -- boldness! It's a process: We hear and do. We listen again; we do more. We abide, grow, share life.

Jesus knew that this is hard for us. He was both insistent and patient with "little-faith" disciples. In his sermon Jesus shows a transformed way of thinking and acting. So many of the ways we think to protect or secure our life-houses are actually sand or storm. We increase life's fears.

It's personal building and community building. Each of us has fears, struggles that we and God know. We are individually beloved by God. But we thrive only as part of a larger whole.

We share in Jesus' life and thus in each other's life, experience, challenge, support, burdens.

The Doing that Makes Us Solid

Most of our basic practice is multi-sided: Worship, Daily study/meditation, Small group, Ministry. Think of being here: physically, connecting with diverse people, singing these words, praying, sharing communion, reflecting deeply, learning from scripture, practicing generosity, teaching children, sharing life, bad and good, deepening friendship, experiencing the presence of God.

In personal meditation and study we nourish our life. We open our minds/hearts to God's love seen in Jesus; to the long story of God's faithfulness. We reflect on our own life, growth, and brokenness. We listen. Wait upon the Lord. We quiet our bodies from the anxieties of life in times of solitude, rest, prayer, fasting. We abide. Train our hearts in gratitude. Release anger, control, judgment. We learn to see God everywhere, to trust God boldly. Laugh at ourselves.

The Doing that Builds Our World

Jesus calls us to share God's vulnerable embodied love, even to enemies. But we seek safety. Start with those close to us and move outward. Self-giving love flows outward. Like Jesus we practice genuinely honoring and seeing others -- even/especially those very different from ourselves. Listening to them, learning their lives as God's beloved. Breaking down fears.

We practice hospitality, welcoming the stranger. We learn to look across society's barriers and build friendship, mutual service, shared grace. Ethnicity, class, financial, racial, gender, etc. We celebrate the wonder of God's diverse, complicated creation. We undermine anxieties.

We do forgiveness and seek reconciliation! No revenge, anger, control. We're forgiven forgivers. We learn people's pain and seek relief, justice, renewal for those wronged / oppressed.

We build a loving, welcoming community to help each other experience God's transforming love and grow into full, mature people living boldly and fearlessly in this challenging world.

Fearless Love in a Fear-filled World

"Fearless?" We live as vulnerable physical creatures in a dangerous world. Death is part of being human. In our bodies, in our circumstance, we’re often beset by anxieties. We all struggle.

1 John 4:18a (ESV) "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear!" It’s strange to say! In common experience, love and fear/anxiety can be close companions. "Love" often means someone/thing has become deeply important to me. I need it/them. My "love" creates fear that I might lose the beloved. Love is deep emotional vulnerability. I hover, protect, worry!

What does John mean? Many in his day advised keeping distance from emotional ties as the way to life without fear. But he stresses love! Maybe I don’t have "perfect love." A new fear! John challenges us, but not to perfectionism. He calls us to participation in God’s life/love.

Trusting a Love that has Happened

John says "God is love." God has lodged/invested that love that is himself in us. We come to know and trust that love and thus bring it to completion (perfect, teleios). God reaches out to us in love. As we participate, that love is completed. We’re fearful, vulnerable creatures. God acts first. We learn God’s love. We trust it. God’s eternal life is shared with us. We abide in it.

How did God act in love first: Jesus! God sent his Son, his unique self, for us that we may have life (v 9), to deal with our sin (v 10), as Savior for the world (v 14). God’s love was embodied, enacted, freely given. Jesus revealed the deepest nature of God and reality. God gives himself. Then God welcomes us fearful creatures to experience, learn, know that love - embodied, passionate, vulnerable, life-giving love of God in Jesus. We learn to trust it/him. We discover that we are sharing in God’s eternal life even in a dangerous world as we share his Spirit.

The Fearlessness is not a timid withdrawal to a protected space, but boldness, a confidence in that God we see in Jesus. It never seeks suffering. It empathizes and helps sufferers. It grieves loss and death, but sees all within the experience of God’s active love that embraces all of life.

How do I learn Fearless Love?

John knows that this complete love that throws fear out, must be active like God’s love (v 11, 19). First are practices that open our lives to the Love God has given us: "know," "trust," "abide." We meditate on Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and all it means, how it embodies God’s unbreakable love. We practice self-examination to seek ways to embody that love ourselves. We practice gratitude, prayer, times of solitude and rest, turning off our anxieties. We abide!

Simultaneously, we actively practice loving others. This also is abiding in God’s love. We practice seeing others, really listening to them, learning their world. We practice hospitality, inviting others into our life, building friendship. We seek reconciliation and forgiveness in broken relationships. We seek justice for those wronged. We bear each other’s burdens. We create a welcoming community in which we strengthen each other for bold and fearless love in God.

Anxiety, Vulnerability and A Secret

Anxiety, worry, fear is a deep problem of human life. What can "Fearless" mean? Anxiety tends to point to uncertainty of many kinds. Often magnified in my own mind. Fear of loss of control or unfettered choice. I create worst case scenarios. Merging into anxiety disorders/phobias.

It’s amazing that Paul in prison, uncertain of sentence, can say, "Don’t be anxious about anything." Or that Jesus, talking to poor farmers and laborers, says "Don’t be anxious about your life."

What can they mean? We all are vulnerable to death, disease, danger - the human condition! Paul himself is explicit not only on the dangers he faced but also the worries that plagued him. We today are far healthier/wealthier/long-lived than ancients, but still we all worry and all die.

Paul says he’s learned a secret. I think it’s linked to what Jesus says. Paul expresses it by saying, "Celebrate with joy." In the Olympics, you celebrate when you’ve won! Hug your competitors. Paul has realized that "in the Lord" he has won! He’s no longer in competition with anyone. Gentleness/generosity breaks out: the "Peace of God"! His "self" is in God and so he can be "self-sufficient" in anything. Rome: "We can kill you." A worst case! Paul: "Far better!" (Phi 1:23)

Jesus and the Scale of My Life

Paul is living Jesus’ teaching. In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus looks at the hardscrabble people around him and says, "Don’t be anxious about your life" and repeats it. He speaks in very basic terms: food, drink, clothes (not luxuries). These things support life, but our anxiety cannot change our basic human vulnerability or guarantee one extra day (Mt 6:27).

More important, it’s the world of "Mammon" that defines us and our security in terms of stuff, that pushes us into anxious struggle in all circumstances with everyone over getting more.
We (life and body) are already "something more!" Stuff (much or little) can’t touch that "more"!

Mammon is not a god. We live our life within the true God who pervades everything, loves all his creatures. We can see his care, beauty, and delight in even the smallest, most passing things (birds, lilies). Yes, we also are passing, but we’re "something more" - a relationship of love, his unbreakable love. He knows all our needs. He calls us to focus our lives on embodying that "something more." Be the embodiment of God’s rule, his love, justice, and beauty in his world.

The World of the God who Enfolds All

Paul in prison follows Jesus on his way to a cross. But both are genuinely joyful, even in the face of uncertainty, suffering around them, real danger. They never look at human life as "nothing but" some limited definition. Human life, even with uncertainty and death, is always life that can interweave with the life of God. God has done the wonderful interweaving in Jesus.

God creates, works, and loves on every scale, from subatomic to multiverse. God has created that "something more" in you to experience his love in depth and grace. Trusting that true God is gaining life, winning, celebrating with joy. Gentleness, grace, love flow out.

Can I be Fearless in a World full of Fear?

Our retreat theme starts from the word "Fearless." What can that mean? Fear has myriad forms. We all experience fear. It’s built into us as creatures (Gen 3:10 "I was afraid."). Fear touches every scale of life from war and terrorism, to pollution and ferocious weather, to injustice and corruption in society, to unemployment and poverty, to broken relationships and loss of one we love, to our children’s future and our own death, to failure in doing something and peer pressure, to flying and germs, to what friends will think if I wear this. Even the best things bring fear.

You are the only expert in your own fears. The experience of fear is a given. Fear is not a sin. But our experiences of fear teach us that it can be awful and disabling. It distorts reality and often produces bad responses to situations. We want to avoid it and will do almost anything to keep fear at bay. Fear often isolates us, makes us strike out, and see others in the worst light.

One of the Bible’s the most often repeated instruction is "Don’t be afraid." We want to think about that. Ps 23 points to breaking fear’s grip. 1Jn 4:18 speaks of love casting out fear. How?

Thinking about Crossing through a Storm at Sea

One of the main ways early Christians thought about such things was through narratives of Jesus. The story of the storm was likely told innumerable times, long and short. Who was there? What did Peter or Matthew do? Etc. In our Gospels it’s focused in few words not just on the wonder of stopping a storm, but on issues of discipleship, fear, faith, and identity. In Mk it follows Jesus’ parables of God’s kingdom and leads to another storm of demonic power.

Fishermen take Jesus in one of their boats to cross the Sea of Galilee. He falls asleep on a cushion. Tired! A howling windstorm rises. Waves fill the boat. Jesus sleeps on. The fishermen know they’re about to sink. Jesus’ sleeping is strange. They raise him to let him know they’re all staring death in the face. Doesn’t he care? How can he sleep? They don’t seem to assume he can do anything, but they want him to know how fearful the situation is. Wake up!

Jesus rises and simply rebukes the storm. He speaks as creator to his creation, just as the OT describes God speaking. A great calm! Then he asks the strangest question: "Why are you frightened?" Every reader knows exactly why: They were about to die! It is unreasonable to think they wouldn’t experience fear. How could Jesus even ask such a thing? Then he follows it with another, almost insulting question: "Do you not yet have faith?" What? The disciples!? Why doesn’t he comfort them: "Of course, I care!" I would have. Mark challenges us to think.

Mark says then they were really afraid. It was one kind of fear to face a storm and even death. It was a something new and impossible to understand to realize that the man asleep in your boat could command nature or danger as God does. What could it mean to be with him?

"Don’t You Care if We are Dying?"

The disciple’s cry to Jesus embodies the most basic human fear - death - the fear behind so many other human fears, struggles, security systems, and aspirations. And with it the question, "Don’t you care?" There’s so much suffering and death, how can a loving God allow it?

First, the very important truth: Death is part of being human. If you were born, you will die! Young, old, easy, hard, faithful, profane, all die. We are all vulnerable. Jesus stops this storm, but doesn’t promise they’ll never have another in life. Most of them died for following Jesus.

Does he care? Yes! But not by changing us from being human. He comes in the boat with us; he is one of us. We are perishing. He takes that death on himself and creates life - beautiful sea.

What did the disciples learn? To listen to Jesus with new perception. He teaches us how to live life and death with joy and beauty. How to build a life on solid rock unbroken by life’s storms.

Paul the Traveler from Jerusalem to Rome and Beyond

Jesus, after his resurrection, sent his disciples gradually out into the world -- Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria -- then "to the end of the earth." That was not just a geographical, but cultural, racial, political, and social transformation. From a conception of God centered ethnically, politically, theologically on the Jerusalem temple, to a realization of God in and for all peoples in all lands.

That was part of the 'conversion' that seized Paul. As a national Messiah, Jesus was impossible. Crucified! But if he was true/raised/alive, then he exploded the ethnic/political/class barriers and entanglements. He showed God creating a bridge of faithful love to all of his alienated creatures.

Paul (with Steven, Philip, Peter, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Priscilla, Aquila and so many others) set out across the world (Roman empire and beyond) with that transforming vision. Luke records the story from Lk 1 to Acts 28, from Jerusalem temple to Rome. Paul's letters let us see inside events into the depth of spiritual power that could break hatred and draw people to God together.

Paul knew it was not a human vision or plan; it was an utterly surprising event -- Jesus! -- who confronted people with a reality of God they could never have imagined: Good News, powerful! And Jesus never became past history, but was present/experienced in the work of God's Spirit.

People, Races, Funds, Dangers

Thus Paul intensely desired to go to Rome and beyond, to Spain. After that, who knows? Paul has been taken by Jesus for a long time, when he writes Romans from Corinth in ad 56. His vision is deep and high. But also he has been involved in peoples' lives as Jesus transformed them. He knows the diversity, the conflicts and dangers that can arise. He knows how hard it is to let the reality of God's grace really remake human relationships and purposes, and shape institutions.

Everyday life has to change. Greeks, Barbarians and Jews must work side by side. Wise and foolish must talk and laugh together as friends. Fears, separation, culture must be overcome. He has worked gathering an offering of money from Gentile believers to help Jews back in Jerusalem.

This theology comes to reality in individuals and communities. Writing to Rome he concludes this theological letter with greetings to many individuals -- each a story, a transformation, a life. Epaenetus, first believer. Maria mission worker. Phoebe, deacon, patron. Prisca and Aquila are Jews back in Rome after Claudius' death in ad 54. Now the church again joins Gentiles and Jews.

God chose to come in a vulnerable human, and Paul and his plans are no less vulnerable. Always danger, rejection. Vulnerability has to be lived out with Jesus' grace and love. Pray for travels.

God's Faithfulness calls all the Peoples he Created into a Life of Trust

Paul's longing to come to Rome leads to the heart of his letter. The church is already there; Paul is a debtor in God's great enterprise -- the Good News/Gospel. They're united by the Spirit's work, their faith in Jesus, who embodies God's faithfulness/righteousness as he keeps his promises.

Rome (like society today) was a caldron of conflicting groups, bound by power of empire. Jesus embodied a reality of trust, grace, self-giving love, under a faithful God -- God's power/deliverance to new life. Lasting power! Paul learned to trust God's work in that Gospel. It never shamed him!

Adventures in Ephesus, Capital of Asia

With cities like Philippi, Corinth, and Ephesus, we have not only the Acts account of Paul's work but also letters from Paul to believers. Acts was probably written 15-20 yrs after Paul's death. People remembered amazing stories of Ephesus, maybe from Aquila and Priscilla and many others.

An old city (1000 bc), now Rome's provincial capital, famous for the huge temple of Artemis (strange, bound, many 'breasts,' meteorite?, pilgrims). Great city ruins; no ruins of Temple.

Acts 19 starts from A and P house church. Unusual disciples: Apollos, 12 who follow John's baptism. Synagogue conflict. The Hall of Tyrannus for 2 yrs. The message spreads, mission teams sent. Remarkable signs. Jewish traveling exorcists. Disciples who practiced magic. Paul was imprisoned. He wrote Galatians, Philippians, 1Corinthians. His life was in danger (Phi 1:12ff) and he 'fought with beasts' (1Cor 15:32). Paul plans to leave but riots stirred by Demetrius a silversmith. Paul's helpers are held hostage. A huge crowd fills the great theater with uproar. Finally quieted by town clerk.

The Word of the Cross and the Breaking of Barriers

Through the chaos Paul sees a miracle as people alienated from each other are brought together through the unexpected means of the event of Jesus' death and resurrection, as it is proclaimed. For Paul the obvious divide is between Jew and Gentile -- ethnic, racial, political, religious, social. But all kinds of divides are being broken: class, slave/free, male/female, rich/poor, oppressed.

It is the power of what God had done in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection revealing reality anew. Thus to Corinth he stresses the 'word of cross' (1Cor 1:17ff); to Philippi, the hymn of cross (Phi 2). Now he looks at the walls that divide people, different worlds, different gods, ages-old alienation. But that is deception. As he told the Athenians, God made all peoples from one (Act 17:26).

In Jesus' cross was a new creation, he says. Not a starting over, but new creation within the messy ongoing story of humanity. Humans' relation to their creator was profoundly broken, manifested in violence, corruption, selfish power. God had worked through Abraham, Israel, giving Torah as guidance and promising an anointed king-Messiah, to embody that story. Gentiles were outside.

But the problem of alienation from God was universal. When the Messiah came he was a surprise. Not a king to restore Israel's power, nor a spiritual manifestation, but a very ordinary human who was also the presence of God. He embodied Israel and also all humanity, and not just in its nobility, but in its limitation, vulnerable, oppressed, physical, suffering, death. He was all of us.

A New Humanity -- A New Sanctuary

Paul says that the dark cross was also the light of new creation. The Torah did its work marking God's holiness and human brokenness. Now in Jesus' crucifixion, the story turns a corner. God and human are brought together as God in grace and self-giving love takes our sin and death to himself. All humans are affected whether they know it or not. In Jesus' flesh-and-blood body dying, the walls, the hostility, are destroyed. Reconciliation to God and to each other shine forth. All the distances are bridged. He himself is our peace. The reality of One God, one creation is visible.

In the chaos of the world, real communities become sanctuaries where that reality of reconciliation begins to be lived out, windows where God's reality shines through. Rome's empire could span many classes and ethnic groups and order them for control, but barriers were (are) always there.

Jesus' cross says the barriers are false. We commune as one body (still broken) across humanity. Even Americans can be part of the prophets' story. One Trinity calls all creation to know it's one.

Paul in Corinth -- a Cultural Crossroads

Corinth a "new" Roman colony; destroyed in 146 bc, rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 44 bc. In ad 50, 94 yrs later, Paul arrives. Strong Jewish community. Jews expelled from Rome by Claudius in ad 48. Paul stays 18 mo. growing a complex community of Jews, god-fearers, pagans, etc. -- dynamic, lives changed, new experiences, under persecution. Paul moves on: Galatia, Ephesus. Paul learns about believers in Corinth, receives a letter of inquiries from them: writes 1 Corinthians in ad 54.

A community transformed by the Gospel and power of the Spirit but living in the social, cultural, political world of Greece and Rome. In 1Cor Paul deals with a variety of serious problems as they try to live into this new reality but are drawn back into old/common/pervasive ways of thinking.

Paul starts from a basic symptom that reveals the problem: conflict, competition, groups around various teachers. Common from both teachers and learners. Natural in complex communities.

So what's the problem? Get along. Competition among groups leads to clearer thinking--advance. Those with Greek education are going to have different perspective than Jews reading the Torah. It's obvious, natural and real. A community that brings together different ethnic groups, cultures, social classes is going to have competing points of view. It's more of a virtue than a problem.

The Dangerous Idea of Unity

But Paul says that natural tendency blocks from view a deeper reality that is the heart of what God has done in Jesus. He is well aware of cultural and ethnic diversity (Jew/Greek; slave/free). Even the small, persecuted community of believers lives within the power struggles and identity struggles of the larger society, ultimately shaped by the culture and veiled violence of Rome. That shared vision of reality shapes how everyone thinks even in their conflicts with each other.

But the "Good News" that Paul proclaimed was that God had planted in the middle of that very human understanding of how life works a sign that things are actually radically different. In Jesus' life, teaching, death on a cross, and resurrection, God says that the deep reality that endures, God's self-giving love, is so different that it is scandalous and foolish to smart people.

Paul challenges all groups in Corinth to focus on that reality -- the event of God in Jesus the Messiah on a Roman cross -- the Word/Message/Way of thinking of the Cross. The Cross is the lens by which the entire value structure of our violent, divided world is seen as distorted and false.

Paul say let that event unite your words, relationships. Only it can create a new united humanity.

Where is the Expert on the Cross?

But the wisdom of the world is real. It really is the way we make our world work. The Cross says that it is transient, but it's here now. It remakes everything in its competitive image. The cross, baptism, all get coopted. The cross is vulnerable. It can be emptied. God chooses vulnerability!

No one can be a wise sage about the cross. It challenges every person, every system. We have wisdom, aristocracy. What doesn't exist is human life in God, in God's Messiah Jesus, in God's Spirit. God creates that new reality in all kinds of people. A new world emerges, new humanity.

Carl Garrison, Associate Minister of Outreach, delivers a powerful sermon on the Christian call to be salt and light in a world in need of hope.

In the face of a week of fear, hatred and violence, the words of Jesus speak words of both comfort and responsibility to us. Larry reflects on some of Jesus' statements in the Sermon on the Mount and the need to examine ourselves and repent (Matthew 7:1-5), to pray for those who persecute us (5:43-48), and to act as salt and light, agents of the love of Christ (5:13-16), in the circle of influence into which He has placed each one of us. Followed by a meditation surrounding communion led by Walter Edwards.