Amy brings a message of grace and restoration in this sermon.

The Story of God Connecting our Lives to His

The world is always in pain. Some is just part of a world with sharp edges, earthquakes, disease, gravity. Most pain is created or magnified by us humans, from personal hurts to global structures. In the Bible is the long, ongoing narrative of God taking human life seriously and leading us out of self-inflicted pain and into God's own eternal life.

Paul shows how God unites righteousness (dikaio-) and faith(fullness) (pistis) in his own actions by reaching out to a human, Abraham, in making promises that establish a right relationship across worlds (God -- human) and by faithfully fulfilling the promises. In response, Abraham is called to faith/trust (pistis) in God's promise that God counts as righteousness and begins a personal journey and one across generations with God.

That story travels through centuries of human brokenness, made clear by the Law, and reaches a climax in Jesus -- human, Israel's Messiah, God himself -- who is the bridge for God to reach into human life and brokenness with his own faithfulness, take our sin and suffering on himself, and create a new realm for human life, new promises and power.

The Heart of God's Purpose in Jesus

In 5:1-5 is a focused summary of what God whole work is about. Paul will develop it in the rest of his letter (esp. ch 5-8), but this is the vision that unites it all from Abraham on.

It centers in Jesus and the impact of the event of his life, death, and resurrection -- God present at work, breaking the grip of sin and death, opening the promise of new life. We are called to trust God's faithful work and recognize ourselves there -- sin and new life.

We are declared right with God and Peace breaks out -- Shalom, pax, reconciliation -- God's great promise to Israel, more than Caesar can give. A peace across worlds, secure in God. Not an internal feeling, though that may come, but a new reality. A peace through all that Jesus has done. A peace that open doors to a new realm of life, my life linked to God's.

That realm is called "Grace" -- the gift that God in his love desires to give to his creatures. The gift we fight by our anger, greed, violence, self-deception. A gift open to every person God created, all classes, races, genders, no ethnic boundaries. We stand and receive.

All boasting in ourselves is gone, but confidence in God soars. We're still us, but we see what God can do and hope breaks out. We may even be restored to glory God intended for us in creation, the glory broken by rebellion, being God's true emissaries in his creation.

Living this Purpose as a Faulty Human in a Broken World

Paul's thought soars, but he has gone through too much -- imprisonment, beatings, anxiety -- not to take human suffering as seriously as God did in the cross. But because Jesus took so much suffering into himself on the cross -- the ultimate expression of God's self-giving love -- even 'tribulation' can be transformed. Paul is not saying that suffering is in itself redemptive, it automatically does some good. It doesn't. It can create bitterness and despair. But within this realm of peace and grace defined by Jesus, even pain changes.

It links us to Jesus and the astonishing promises of death defeated, resurrection life created. It challenges us to endurance that tests us and breaks our self-deception. As Paul later says (8:18-26) it becomes like the pain of childbirth, seemingly unbearable but filled with anticipation and new life. It becomes hope because it is strengthened by God's promise.

God stays with us in his Holy Spirit, his own life given to us. The very heart of everything, "the love of God" -- God's love for us / our love for God -- is poured out in us. Life united!

What is God Doing? What Sort of God is He?

We might think, 'Why so much about Abraham? Tell us about Jesus!' Paul knows that if Jesus is cut off from Scripture and Israel, nothing about him makes sense or has any power. It is because of all that God has done from Abraham through Israel to Jesus that we can see what is at stake in the events of the Gospel. Events require context to manifest meaning.

What Paul discovers is that when you go back to the start -- the creator God making a promise to a very human man, challenging him to believe the impossible, counting his trust in God as establishing a right covenant relationship with God, and then God being righteous/ faithful to fulfill the impossible promise -- you get to the heart of the Gospel.

It's this relationship of 'righteousness' (dikaiosyné) and 'faith(fullness)' (pistis) that's the core. God's righteousness in faithfully fulfilling his promises by his action in Jesus' faithfulness on the cross and his resurrection bringing forgiveness and new life, embodies a new expression of God's promises, calling us to faith/trust that he counts as righteousness, a right relationship. God is the main actor. We respond, receive, imitate, learn, grow.

But What about the Torah?

Paul, trained as a Pharisee, lived his whole life within the Torah. But the Torah starts with Genesis, long before Moses. The law of Moses and 'works of law' are very important but limited inside the larger story. It defines transgressions. Scripture shows how it defines Israel's failure, the basis of God's wrath, Israel's exile. It was given to Israel, but the promise was for all nations. Paul lived with 'works of law' (circumcision, purity, Sabbath) that defined Jews against Gentiles, obedient Jews against lax Jews, a pure remnant.

But God told Abraham he had made him the father of nations (Gentiles). Ultimately the 'land' his family would inherit was not tiny Canaan, but the world (kosmos). Childless Abraham and Sarah needed a child that did not and could not exist by any human means. They needed the dying of their own aged bodies to be somehow reversed.

God acted precisely in Abraham and Sarah to show who he is. He is the Creator who calls (then and now) into existence what doesn't exist. He is the one who gives life in creation and life to the dead -- resurrection. He makes promises that are impossible to us, but fulfills them in his righteous faithfulness. We learn to trust/believe that he is able to do it!

Thus the heart of Torah/law itself is not about a small pure group keeping commandments correctly. It is about the whole world -- Jews and Gentiles. The Gospel of the Messiah Jesus draws in all peoples and thus fulfills what God was doing in the Torah.

Abraham's Faith and Jesus' Faithfulness

In making a covenant with Abraham, the righteous, faithful God makes promises that draw Abraham into faith, and God counts it as righteousness. Through the ages of scripture, that individual story is loaded with all the transgression and brokenness that the law revealed. The promises are expanded through Moses, David, the prophets: deliverance, forgiveness, new life, God's kingdom, God's coming, God's Messiah/King, the suffering servant bearing our sins, the world to come, resurrection life. Impossible to keep!

But in Jesus Messiah (God-Israel-humanity), all of these are brought into focus by God in a way as surprising as Isaac was to Sarah. By resurrection God showed that Jesus was God's self in action. But we are drawn in. It was our sin that God took on himself in Jesus' faithfulness on the cross. It was because God wanted to draw all people into a right/reconciled relationship with him that he created resurrection life in Jesus. He calls us to faith. He is able.

Back to the Scriptures...Questioning Old Assumptions

Who am I? What's the story within which my life has its meaning? Paul is helping Jews, Romans, Greeks, others in Rome to see how what has happened in Jesus opens a window into the reality of God that shows their life and the world in a new light. Part of that is that Jesus' life is both surprising and anticipated. He lives within a great story of God's faithfulness that he now calls both his fellow Jews and all peoples into. Because it is God's story it is vast enough for all people to be themselves, Romans, Jews, Chinese, Africans. But God shows its unity by narrowing the story down to a single point, a person: Jesus. From that one, the event explodes out for all the world. Jesus' own disciples were astonished.

Paul had grown up with a story centered on Torah/law as the defining story. The distinctness of Jews, the temple. Works of law/Torah marked out those in covenant with God. It marked boundaries from Gentiles, from lax Jews. It excluded a failed Messiah. But Jesus...

Jesus forced Paul to go back to scripture. To read again, to challenge his old assumptions. Jesus was not the first narrowing to one. The story started that way with Abraham -- one.

"Righteousness" and Trusting God

But God didn't give Abraham the law, he gave an impossible promise. He challenged him to trust/live on the basis that God is real, living, involved, caring. Abraham wasn't very good at it, but he learned. Abraham believed God, that God's wild promise was more real than the brokenness of his own body. God counted that trust as "righteousness," the basis of a real/right relationship/covenant with the God of the universe. Paul saw that was the key. Abraham was a mix of good and bad. God's grace was everything. He counted trust as the basis for a right relationship. Later God gave Abraham the beginning of law, the mark of circumcision, but scripture says it was a sign of the covenant, the relationship by grace.

What emerges from the story is astonishing. Abraham trusts not in a God who will treat him fairly, do good to him if he fulfills his vows, stays pure, etc. He trusts in a God who counts the ungodly as in the right and establishes his covenant with them. A God who looks for a person who trusts him and is willing to live by his impossible promises. Think of Jesus calling people not to worry about food and clothing, trust God who knows your needs.

Paul points to David through Ps 32. Blessing is not a fair evaluation of my sin and lawless deeds. It is the forgiveness that writes a new story, a new beginning, that lets me see my life not in the narrative of my mistakes and rebellion, but of God's promise, love, grace.

Why is Abraham's Story so Complicated?

Paul's point is that God knew what he was doing from the beginning of this story. We are all there in Abraham, Jew and Gentile, not as our ancestor in flesh but as our father in faith.

Abraham's story is complicated and multi-stage because it's a human story -- like Israel's, ours. The covenant is not the end but the beginning. There is yet growing, failing, understanding, challenging, testing to come. Abraham believes but doubts. He trusts but fears. He grows. He marks out the path of a walk of growing faith. That path is there not only for his physical descendants but for all peoples who trust the promises of the God who created them.

When God narrowed the story of his covenant with humanity in a sense to one person, it was never to exclude all the rest. Rather Abraham was there only for all the families of earth. That was God's repeated and increasingly emphatic promise -- all the nations (Gentiles).

So even more emphatically in Jesus. God's wild promises of his transforming love, his Spirit within us and resurrection life, call all people to be most fully themselves and one in Him.

Can I really trust God? The OT scriptures are the stor of one God, creator of the world and all people, a living, involved God who cares about his creatures, all that destroys thri life and the hope that life can be renewed, healed, made right. The very center of scripture is the affirmation that God is one. That must mean God belongs as much to all nations as to Jews. Yes, God working through Israel's long history, narrowing it down ultimately to the messiah embodying Israel and the whole world.

Larry Mudd delivers this Narrative Sermon on the life of King David.

What Do You Want Me to Do for You?

Jesus nears Jerusalem and the final confrontation. In Mt, this is last teaching before he arrives. Mt tries to help us to see Jesus in his depth and reality, no simplistic cliché, and through Jesus to see the real world of God, his grace, challenge, radical difference from our ways of thinking, seeing. The last two episodes Mt tells are requests to Jesus. One from a mother for her sons about Jesus' kingdom. The other from blind beggars at Jericho. Jesus focuses on "What do you want?" Mt wants us to think about them and Jesus' responses.

Jesus has been talking about first becoming last and last, first. The rich, young man, so promising, but.... What about disciples who left all? The strange employer who makes first and last equal. Then that awful, awkward moment when he took the twelve aside. They were headed to Jerusalem with dreams of a renewed world. What could Jesus mean? He had just spoken of the Son of Man on a glorious throne. Was he using crazy symbols?

A Mother and Sons

A disciple named Salome (Mk 15:40) came to Jesus with her two sons,James and John, two of Jesus' closest followers. They'd been with Jesus since the earliest days when Jesus found the two sons fishing with their father Zebedee. He called them as disciples; they left their father still fishing. But their mother went with them, also following Jesus. They've seen all and are wholly committed to the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims. Jesus asks, "What do you want?"

We know where this is going. We wince in embarrassment for them. Didn't you hear Jesus? Jesus doesn't wince. These are great people, but it's really hard to think in a new way, to see with new eyes, to "know what your're asking." Salome, James, and John are just like the rest of the disciples (now angry), trying to grasp the mystery and challenge of Jesus.

Jesus says, you well know how power works. "It shall not be so among you!" Start from that. Look at the way power works in the world. Do something different. I'll show you the way.

Son of Man -- King, Cup, Ransom

It's no wonder they were confused, like I'd be trying to drive in England. Jesus asks, "Can you drink my cup?" You mean like the king's cupbearer? Yes! Jesus knows that they cannot understand yet, but Mt wants us to see the connections. The "cup" is the prophetic "cup of wrath" (Isa 51:17,22) on oppressors and destroyers. It's Jesus' suffering and death.

But that doesn't mean he is not Son of Man, Lord, Son of David, Messiah, King. Greatness is still great, first is still first. But Jesus knows "great" and "first" as seen through God's reality of self-giving love in the suffering servant of Isa 53. In reality, "great" means "servant." The Son of Man on the Glorious throne is the one going to Jerusalem to drink the cup, the one not being served but serving, giving his life/soul for these broken creatures he loves.

It was only days from that moment till Salome was standing on Golgotha watching Jesus crucified between those on his right and left. Till she and James and John experienced Jesus' resurrection, a new reality no one had ever known. Now they could begin to understand. The world truly was bigger, different, astonishing. James and John drank the cup in different ways: James was beheaded. John traditionally lived a long ministry.

Eyes Open to Follow

Two blind beggars cry for Jesus as Lord, Son of David -- Messiah, King. Everyone knows what they want: a beggar wants money -- a lot from a king. But Jesus asks, "What do you want me to do for you?" Only one thing: "That our eyes be open." Touch, healing. They follow!

What do you want Jesus to do for you? Am I ready to have my eyes open? Ready to live?

A Story with the Wrong Ending

Mt is describing the final stages of Jesus' ministry as he is nearing Jerusalem and the final confrontation in the temple. In these sections Jesus says something that leaves his hearers (disciples) wondering -- like that camel going through a needle's eye: it's hard for those 'blessed' with money to be saved (19:24). Here he tells a parable about the Kingdom of heaven -- a wonderful example of the challenging way Jesus' parables work.

The story is simple and everyday. A vineyard owner goes out at 6 am to hire day laborers for a typical 12-hour work day. Typical pay was a denarius, a silver coin. (Say $120; $10 / hour.)

It's a good day for work so goes back to the marketplace and hires more workers at 9 am: "I'll pay what is right." (3/4 den. $90). Then again at noon, 3 pm, even at 5 pm. It's the end of the day but "no one has hired us." He sends them all into the vineyard.

Then at 6 pm comes pay time. They come up in reverse order. The one-hour workers get $120. Wow! Generosity! This is going to be a good day. The 3-hour workers get $120 ($40/hr); not as good but more than they expected. The wow factor fades. Each group gets the same, but less per hour. Finally, those who worked all day. If generosity is here, they of all people should receive it. But no, just $120, 1 denarius. No wow. Grumbling!

We understand how they feel! We know the language of money. Wages, expectations, generosity, stinginess, fairness, justice. Sure, the employer has paid them what they agreed, but why reward late-comers? Besides, it's crazy. What'll happen tomorrow?

Fixing Jesus' Parable

It's easy to imagine better ways for the employer. Regular pay: fair, no grumbling, less money. Give everybody time and a half. All surprised and happy. Cheering. May cost less too!

Or the story could give some explanation. The last workers had special needs (sick children) that motivated generosity. Or the all-day workers were lazy. The one-hour workers did as much in one hour as the others did all day. Theologically, the all-day workers are legalists thinking they can earn salvation. The one-hour workers are the outcasts trusting grace.

The problem is that Jesus doesn't really give us such explanations. He lets us hear the grumbling: "You've made them equal to us." And the employer's agreement: "I choose to give to this last person as I give to you." But it still seems arbitrary, unfair, unsatisfying.

The story will never work within our familiar language of money, proportional reward, fairness. First, last; last, first? Jesus pushes the disciples/us to break into a different way of thinking.

The Son of Man going to Jerusalem

In Mt 19 Peter asks about disciples who left all to follow. Jesus speaks of the enthroned 'Son of Man' (Dan 7) to tell of wonderful things in 'the renewed world' -- thrones, 100x renewals, eternal life/life of the age to come. It's playful, not literal. A hundred mothers! You'll be wonderfully surprised! 'Many first will be last and last first.' Then he tells the parable.

The Kingdom is not like the world of competition and reward. It is the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price. It is everything. It is the life of God given to us. It starts now and never stops. It is living within the love of the eternal God whose love challenges every form of injustice, hatred, oppression, violence. The last being first and first last is not a reversal of reward but is everyone brought to the front (now also the back) -- all "equal to us."

But that Son of Man on the throne is also the Son of Man on the way to Jerusalem. He is the one with absolute claim to be first. But he empties himself. He's handed over. He loses.

He changes how we see this world's power. He creates new, resurrection life. The first is last; is first. It is in that Messiah Jesus that we begin now to live out God's gift of His life.

What Just Went Wrong?

We are looking at a section of Mt in which people listen to Jesus’ teaching and are agog, wide- eyed, at what he says. This is one of the most striking because of the incident and the famous image that Jesus creates. A man comes to Jesus, a young man, devout and honorable, wealthy. He seeks Jesus’ instruction. He goes away grieving. What happened?

He seems aware that things have gone well for him in life. He is concerned about ‘life of the age to come’ (aionios). Jesus is ‘Teacher’ to give instruction about what to do to have that life. We can hear a sense of confidence, expectation. Jesus probes, reminding him indirectly about God, unmentioned in his request. Jesus takes the assigned role and gives a traditional answer: commandments, the ten, expanded with love of neighbor.

He has guarded them all. What do I lack? Perhaps, nothing! You’re good! We easily imagine he had often been praised for such faithfulness in a wealthy youth. There were so many rich people who disdained the law, extorted, and robbed the poor. A rising leader in Israel.

But Jesus answers his question on his terms - something to do. Do you wish to be complete (teleios, fill your lack)? Go. Sell your possessions. Give to the poor. You’ll have treasures in heaven. Come. Follow me! Jesus doesn’t analyze and discuss his problem first. He acts as though the man understands his problem on a deep level that he has covered over with rationalizations. Your lack? It’s what you have! Your possessions. Get rid of them. Jesus lets him walk away. Still astonishing. Can I approve? Would I have walked away?

Can a Camel go through a Needle’s Eye?

But Jesus just increases the intensity: "only with difficulty" ... "a camel through the eye of a needle" ... "this is impossible!" The disciples are astonished. They and we thought we could tell the difference between a blessing and a curse. We pray for things to go well, not for us and our families to be impoverished! What’s going on? We want to duck and weave.

Jesus is breaking our sense that we’ve got things under control. We possess our possessions! No, they possess us. I can see it in those wealthy people. But I’m one of them. Who can be saved? Jesus won’t let us duck. No camel can get through a needle’s eye. No rich person can do the good thing to have life. But also no tax collector, no woman with five previous marriages, no Pharisee, no fisherman, no zealot, no scholar, no toll-taker, no doctor.

But there’s a reason that Jesus emphasizes the problem of possessions. Something that is the common language of our world for success, "blessing," accomplishment, high standing, is also the most dangerous counterfeit god, the ruler of violence and power, corruption, lies.

God of the Impossible

Can we with possessions enter the "kingdom of God"? The problem of the Kingdom of God is God. We understand and thrive in the kingdom of mammon. We don’t always succeed, but we know where we are, we know when we’re ahead, we learn its promises, payoffs. We know what "good" thing we need to do to have something. Greed clarifies things.

But with God, with Jesus, there’s not a good thing I can do. The scale is entirely different. God doesn’t want my stuff, or even my good deed, he wants me. Mammon is external and doesn’t last an instant beyond death. Dealing with God challenges me to see my life on the scale of God’s life. God already owns me, past, present, future. He alone has power to truly destroy me. He is also astonishingly loving. I can’t fool him or impress him.

He simply wants you/me. He wants us whole, freely, lovingly given. In turn he will give you you. Filled with his eternal life, healed, forgiven, filled with joy, beloved forever.

Community of Hope Sunday message led by Carl Garrison, minister to the community of hope. The podcast opens with a testimony from Carol, a member of the Community of Hope.