United as God's Children by the Spirit of God vv 15-17

Paul is announcing the Gospel that has created remarkable communities like the church in Rome -- Jews and pagans of all nations, slave and free -- the deep brokenness of human beings healed by God. This is God's great purpose and only God could accomplish it.

In Jesus Messiah, uniquely Son of God, God came bodily among us in self-giving love/grace to bring the story of Israel to a new level of fulfillment, to break grip of sin and death that we in our weakness could not break, to conquer death and create new resurrection life.

In the Holy Spirit he stays with us, leading and empowering transformation and new life, the experience of intimacy as a child of God crying "Abba," giving us God's own life in us.

This reality breaks down barriers. Every human can be God's child, God's heir, co-heir with Jesus, who as Messiah unites all in himself. This great vision is lived out in the ongoing world we experience every day. The Spirit repairs and enhances our individuality toward the love of God seen in Jesus among us. Jesus takes us into the experience of the world of suffering and brokenness all around and within us, but with a radical new dimension.

United with All Creation in Expectation vv 18-21

Paul lifts our eyes to see our lives even in our suffering and brokenness on the largest possible scale. God is the creator of the whole world, and what God is doing in us is part of his universal renewal of his broken creation. Paul uses the images of Gen 1-3 and Isaiah. Humans were created to be God's image in his world, to care for and rule God's creation with God's love and care. Humans are broken and corrupted and so is the whole physical world subject to frustration, slave to corruption. God is bringing about not just personal salvation for individual souls but the renewal of all of this beloved world on all levels.

Human salvation is the restoring of that image of God, so defaced, but now regained in Jesus. It opens the vision of unlimited possibilities as God brings a "new heaven and new earth." We cannot predict the form or shape that this renewal will take, except that it will be a surprise. The one reality we know is the grace and love of God that will pervade it.

Songs: "This is My Father's World" -- "This World is not my Home." Each contains a truth. This world in its corruption is not the final reality. But God is not giving up on his creation. It is God's world and he will renew it. The whole world longs for that renewal. We work now to care for that world on every level, ecologically, socially, spiritually. God loves it all.

The Pain of Childbirth Bringing forth New Life vv 22-23

The reality of suffering and transience is so powerful that it can overwhelm us. Suffering easily undermines hope and leads to despair -- "Nothing is worth what we're going through."

Paul uses the experience of a woman in the pain of childbirth link the experience of intense suffering with ultimate hope. The whole creation is in that pain expecting new creation life to ultimately come forth. But especially we who are in the Messiah, who are given the Spirit, in fact have within us the first real participation in that world to come. The pain does not go away, but even in the midst of it expectation springs up of glory to come.

Living in Hope vv 24-25

Hope is fundamental to Christian life, Paul says, "for in this hope we were saved." This is not hope as it's often used in a weak sense of uncertain possibility -- "I hope it won't rain."

This is a certain reality, but one that is not yet visible. We journey with God into the future. He gives us his Spirit now. We learn to endure suffering now, but leaning forward expectantly.

Seeing Ourselves in the Reality of God (vv 9-11)

In leading us to grasp what it means to be embraced by God's love, Paul takes us to amazing expression of intimacy with God expressed by Jesus in calling God "Abba" -- a child's cry of "Papa," "Daddy." A sense of belonging/freedom/access with God of the universe.

Paul wants to help his ancient Roman readers (and us) get our minds / our way of thinking around what has actually happened in God's actions in Jesus and in giving His Spirit. It's the climax of his long journey with Israel and opens that history to the whole world. It deals with the sin and brokenness of all human life by bringing God's own life into it. In human Jesus, God takes our suffering, sin, and death into himself and creates life. For all who trust in him, God gives his Spirit, his ongoing presence and first taste of life.

We know and experience our vulnerability to sin and brokenness (what Paul calls "flesh," Rm 7). On our own that "flesh" inevitably succumbs. Like our physical "flesh," we die. But with God's Spirit (Breath, Life) dwelling in us, our life is enveloped in a more powerful reality.

Paul emphasizes that the whole deep reality of God, Messiah, Spirit is engaged with the whole complex mix that is us, mind, spirit, mortal body -- our weakness and created potential. Here is real mysticism, uniting with God, not as an experience we create by discipline, but as a gift of God's faithfulness and love. Union with God, sharing Jesus' conquest of death.

But We Still are Bodies of Flesh! (vv 12-13)

But Paul knows well that God doesn't immediately turn us humans into perfect embodiments of goodness. The struggle with anger, selfishness, injustice, etc. remains very real. In fact it becomes more real as we follow Jesus. "But maybe it's too much. We are flesh after all. We owe it to our physical flesh to let it go its own way. Focus on our spiritual elements."

Paul warn that there is a way of living that is really death. Our physical existence is complex. As physical beings we are created by God and God will overcome even the death of our physical bodies. But the dominance of our physical reality in our experience is also a great vulnerability. It blinds us to the reality and presence of God and substitutes little gods of power, desire, money, etc., idols of ourselves. That "flesh" rejects God's life and dies.

God's Spirit continues the work of Jesus death (8:3) in condemning sin itself. It challenges us to join in that work of renewing our distorted ways of thinking to grow toward God's love. God's Spirit gives the power for real transformation, living into the reality God has given.

The Journey through Life into God's Heart (vv 14-17)

Paul's language echoes the archetypal struggle of Israel, delivered from slavery as God's "firstborn son" [Exod 4:22], but under the test of the wilderness wanting to go back to slavery in Egypt [Num 14:2-4]. It's the human story. We too travel through a life of hard challenges, with the values of the big/little gods of "flesh" celebrated all around us, pushing us into fear of circumstances and condemnation, trying to blind us to God.

But God's Spirit is the very life/Spirit of his Son. He boldly declares us to be God's sons and daughters. The God of the Universe, source of all life, who alone as creator can turn back the dissolution of death and create resurrection life, that God is our intimate "Abba."

We become heirs of that God, standing alongside Jesus, part of him. Everything belongs to us and we are called to live boldly in a world that has God's love at its deepest level. But like Jesus in the world he created, we also must share his suffering that flows from God's self- giving love. Present struggle, service, love, and sacrifice shape a life for God's glorious love.

Realizing What God has Done

Rom 8 focuses on the new reality brought about by what God has done in faithfulness to his promises long ago, now brought to full reality in Jesus the Messiah and the active work of God's Spirit. It deals with the deep/complex brokenness, sin, and suffering we're caught in.

Good guidance was not enough. Even God's Law could'nt free us from the enslavement, but it made the problem clear and distinct. It led up to God's coming to his people in Jesus.

In him uniquely, God did what no amount of guidance or law for us could do: God brought his own life and reality into the broken human situation. He took on himself our death.

He treated us not just as rebels but as beloved creatures enslaved by sin and death, and condemned sin itself. God stayed with us in his Spirit. God embraced us with his love.

A Mind Shaped by Reality

That reality shapes a way of thinking (phronema), of seeing ourselves and the world and God. It says that we don't live in a closed world limited to the stuff we can touch and control. It says the universe of God is far vaster and more loving than the world bounded by human desires, ambitions, violence, self-centeredness, aspirations -- "the flesh."

Paul knows that God is reality, but he sees most people living as though "flesh," that closed frame of human power and gods, were everything. "Spirit" is not just another element of human potential, our "spirituality." He is God's own life present in our dimension/life. "Flesh" is a set of blinders. It limits us to seeing only the passing world from our limited perspective. It blocks off our view of true God who is life. It ultimately limits us to death.

We in the Spirit ... The Spirit in Us.

In 8:9 Paul challenges us to let the meaning of God's reality, God's work, God's embrace sink in. You are not "in flesh" but "in Spirit." God's Spirit is the deepest reality of the world you really live in. You are "in Spirit" because that Spirit of God lives in you, Jesus' followers.

What the ancient Tabernacle and Temple pointed to comes to fulfillment in us and can be a reality for every person. We become the movable tent for a God who is always moving.

But even more, God begins a process of drawing us into his ultimate and eternal life in a way that keeps all the individuality and physicality that God created for us.

All of God and All of Us

Paul wants to make it clear that what happens when we trust in what Jesus has done in his life, teaching, death, and resurrection brings us into a full relationship with the whole, deep, complex reality of the One God revealed in scripture. He intentionally unfolds a variety of ways of describing the presence of God through the Messiah and the Spirit in our lives. We have no power to bring this about. It can only be a gift of God's grace.

But the meaning for us is profound. When the Spirit of the Messiah, who embodies God's people, is in us, we are part of him, belong to him. We share in all that he did and experienced and accomplished. Yes we still live in a mortal body that struggles with sin and will ultimately die physically, but the Messiah's presence means that the Spirit's unconquerable life is already present in our physical life, fulfilling God's ancient promises.

The Spirit encompasses even our dying bodies, just as He raised Jesus from the dead. We begin even now to participate in a life living in this physical world that will be renewed in the resurrection. Only the God who creates can overcome and reverse the power of death. A vast new world opens before us starting now. We live into that eternal life.

Amy preaches on Philippians 1:27-30 and recounts her experience being the first woman from the Church of Christ to deliver a keynote sermon at the ACU Lectures.

Romans 7:24 - 8:6 The Passionate Participant: We return from our Retreat: Seeking "Rest and Delight" in God's presence, finding times of quiet renewal, meditation. If you look for books about meditation you'll find many on western variations of Buddhism, almost always with the invitation that this 'method' doesn't require any religion or faith. In that way they are true to the Buddha's self-help orientation of breaking the human situation of suffering with no dependence on any gods. Paul also is dealing with the human experience of suffering, evil desire, brokenness. Some real similarities but a radically different vision of where hope lies. Paul sees our situation through the event of Jesus: his life, teaching, death, resurrection, all that he means in the light of God's long history with Israel, all that he means for all people.

Bringing God's Reality into Everyday Life

It may seem strange to use Isaiah 58 as a text leading up to our retreat: "In God's Presence-Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life." It's a great text about the union of faith and justice. But notice how Isaian moves to a call for Sabbath. He mentions yokes 3 times, all negative. Jesus calls us to take his yoke and find rest for our souls (Mt. 11:29-30). Jesus challenges us to release our grip of anxiety and learn to trust God and seek his kingdom.

God and the Holy Requirement of Rest

Our congregational retreat, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life." Meditation on the meaning of Sabbath. Why does God make Sabbath one of the Ten Commandments? We need it. Stress, workaholism, 24/7, a city that never sleeps, Wall St., technology, fear of losing ground/work, competition, desire > need for more, perfectionism, parents' expectation, inner voice we're faking, competitive leisure, getting advantage.

But in the ancient world, 12-hr work day, no society support, struggle for subsistence.

Life has always been hard. Today, we make it hard. Sabbath rested everyone in Israel, even slaves and sojourners. But Sabbath is not just stopping work. Rest can be just a technological adjustment to make people more efficient units of production. Mammon co-opts everything.

Sabbath rest is physically renewing, it expresses justice across socio-economic lines, but it is also holy. God makes a time of rest holy. It took Israel into the character of God who creates and also values rest and delight. God's presence gave a rhythm and goal of rest.

Jesus and the Gift and Discovery of Rest

Jesus was challenged by Pharisees for his practice of Sabbath. Not rigorous enough. But Jesus believed the Sabbath was a sign of God's rule. Where God worked in healing, Jesus worked. He rejected the Pharisees call to a pure (elite) community, with strict prohibitions of work.

Mt 11 takes us into a challenging time in Jesus' ministry. Many in the Galilean cities where he taught rejected John the Baptist and berated Jesus, glutton, drunkard, friend of sinners. Then comes this amazing passage. It begins from Jesus' recognition of the difficulty people had in following him and his role in revealing the character and will of God as Messiah/Son. Then Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath, invites people into real rest, renewal, rest for life/soul.

Babies and Burdened Laborers

If Jesus is true, God has done things in a way that's not realistic to those who understand the way the world works -- "the wise and understanding." In contrast Jesus says God chose babies/little children. Babies are many things but they are always learning, grasping the world around them. Those who already know can't understand Jesus. Only those ready to re-learn life on a deep level. Our understanding of both God and being human must be reshaped by who Jesus is, how he acted, what he taught, all that we can see in him.

Those babies are also the ordinary people Jesus saw all around him, laboring to survive, burdened with poverty, oppression, religious demands and prohibitions. Jesus echoes words of God's promises of rest and the traditional call to Wisdom. Jesus calls them to real Sabbath.

The call is very personal. Jesus knows how hard it is to become a child again, to really change our way of thinking, our self-understanding. It can't be by abstract doctrine. Only personal relationship, discipleship, time with him can set people free. Do you want to know God? Look at Jesus, the Messiah/Son, who knows the Father, who calls the laboring and burdened.

"Practice, Practice, Practice"

Jesus wants to give rest on all levels. The rest we need physically for renewal, health, a sense of delight and celebration. Rest from the demands for ever more production, achievement, perfection. Rest for the soul that takes us into the heart of God seen in Jesus.

Jesus calls us to take his yoke (rather than the one we're carrying now). His yoke (discipleship) is defined by his character, gentle, humble. It frees us to live boldly, freely, creatively, even dangerously. It frees us from the burdens of ego, religious performance, perfection. It's a yoke that's light. It lifts us up and carries us into rest, the heart of God's love and delight.

The Signpost of Delight / The Problem of Pleasure

Our congregational retreat, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life."

We began last time reflecting on the idea of Sabbath/rest planted in the very active account of creation. God rests. God gives people a rhythm of rest in everyday life. But also part of that idea: the Sabbath is not sad or ascetic, but celebratory, a time of delight and pleasure. People have always lived hard lives. God wanted a time of focused joy and delight in our lives. Likewise Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, called his disciple to a deep "rest for your souls."

Ps 16 describes the confidence/trust/rest of the psalmist because of trust in God (quoted about Jesus in Acts 2). God gives "the path of life," "fullness of joy," "pleasures forevermore." It's a strange phrase for many who grow up thinking of God as the wagging finger who stops pleasures and delights. Yes, addiction to pleasures can be a great threat, but pleasures have that power for misuse only because God has created a world with so much delight in it. When Jesus looked at the world, he saw beauty, pleasure, delight, God's presence everywhere: lilies, birds, people, mustard seed, rain, sunshine, infants, banquets, planting seeds, feeding hungry.

N T Wright (Simply Christian) speaks of beauty as one of the great signposts of God's reality. He builds on the thoughts of C. S. Lewis, (The Weight of Glory, Surprised by Joy) that our sense of delight, longing, beauty, never fully realized points to the transcendence of human life made for fulfillment beyond this world. It is that sense of hope and longing in the Psalm.

The creation expresses the character of the creator. His desire for freedom more than control. His love of pleasures in his creatures and for his creatures. Why is aesthetic delight so much a part of our life? We love music, delicious food, beautiful words, running, sunsets, etc., etc. Why is there so much beauty, delight, pleasure, joy? Why do we long for more?

The Temptation of Pleasure

It is important to recognize that pleasures are also a danger. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 gives strong expression to that common experience. Creating ever more intense experiences that give less and less real pleasure is our usual distortion. Pleasure in broken sex, power, domination, accumulation, defeat of others, etc. makes pleasures into false gods rather than God's gift.

C. S. Lewis, again, (Screwtape Letters) expresses the interplay of pleasure as a temptation away from God and a signpost to God. Artificial pleasures, manufactured experiences allow us to manipulate our experiences and stimulate our own response. Always more to get less. Learning to experience the pleasures built into God's creation and in ourselves with delight and gratitude in the gift evokes a very different response. Can the real experience of joy and delight can be a temptation back to God? Do we see what the presence of delights means?

Delight in Everyday Life

In creation, God made a "Garden of Eden" (Delight). Jesus calls us to delight in the things around us. Not controlling or manufacturing delights. Receiving them as gifts. Learning to see in them the presence of God. Learning to realize that God is present in all kinds of experiences around us helps us to discern the value God places on our own lives, the depth of his love.

As we learn to live with delight, pleasure, joy in God's world, our lives take on a beauty that itself bears witness to God. Life itself is an art, a thing of beauty. God calls us to abundant life. So much of the noise of life drowns out our ability to perceive God's presence. We need the training of following Jesus, the help of others before us, and daily discipline to learn to see. We open our lives to receive God's gifts of "pleasures forevermore" and live beautifully.

Jesus and the Meaning of Sabbath

Our congregational retreat topic, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life," began from meditation on the understanding of Sabbath in both the OT and NT.

The Sabbath, "Rest," is one of the 10 Commandments, linked to the story of creation in which God sanctifies the seventh day (Saturday). It has always had a very prominent place in both Jewish and Christian thinking. In late antiquity as the Roman empire became Christianized, the use of 'Sabbath' shifted for Christians from Saturday to Sunday as a legal rest day.

Should we be concerned with the concept of the Sabbath. The Gospels describe Jesus' many controversies with the Pharisees over the Sabbath, often read as Jesus refusing to keep the Sabbath. Jesus disagreed with the Pharisees' definition of Sabbath restrictions, but he affirmed the Sabbath was made for us humans and claimed to be "Lord of the Sabbath." Indeed, Jesus called laboring, weary people as disciples promising to give them real Sabbath.

God and the Music and Language of Time

In a sense the idea of Sabbath has a unique place in the OT story. It is linked both to Israel's own story and to the understanding of all creation. The creation narrative in Gen 1-2:3 is a creation of the rhythm of time (evening, morning, day one...). But the sequence doesn't end with the creation of humans on the very busy 6th day. God takes a day off. He rests. He doesn't do tests on creation to make sure it's working. He sanctifies a day/rhythm of rest.

But nothing is said about that holy rest for a long time. Only when he delivers Israel from Egypt, leads them into the desert without food, and begins giving them Manna to eat. This marvelous food spoils daily except on the 7th when it stays good. Trust God's provision/rest.

Sabbath takes a central spot in the 10 Commandments. It links trust in only one God in the first commands and building a trustworthy, non-exploiting community in the later. God has built a deep, moral rhythm into time. It becomes our language expressing our deepest values.

"Time is Money" and the Doctrine of the Free Lunch

Sabbath tells a distinct story about human existence. We are not the source of our well-being by our hard work and accomplishment. It reminded Israel that their food and all life is a gift from God as creator (Dt 8:3: 'Man does not live by bread alone.').

In our day, of course, we all know that there is "No free lunch." Someone has to earn it, pay for it. But the giving of the Sabbath with Manna teaches that every lunch is free. All are a gift of God. Every ability to earn is a gift of God. Every day is a gift. Creation is God's gift of grace.

Today, it's our glory to work 24/7, multi-tasking all the time. Time is money and the wealthiest are often not a leisure class but never stop working, achieving, proving their value. The poor have to work multiple jobs just to survive. We all serve Mammon who demands every moment.

Rest and Delight in God's Creation

Jesus warns against serving the great false god Mammon. He urges us to take the day off from worrying. Trust in God. Make it clear to yourself and to the world that you dance to different music, speak a different language of time, experience a different source of nourishment.

For Jesus, Sabbath Rest is a sign of God's kingdom, of trust in God. It is a time for delight in creation, rest for the weary, justice for the oppressed, healing. He is Lord of the Sabbath.

Kyle Swann speaks on the power of God over chaos that is found in Christ