I just completed a retreat with a group of people I love. They are the Board of the event called Choir School. Not an event, a community, a gathering of people who care about church music and about faith and about each other and those who haven’t yet found their way there. I found them, or rather they found me in the mid 90's and invited me for a short stint as their chaplain. Twenty years later I left as their chaplain because of reasons too many to name, but mostly having to do with me and the path I was on. They didn’t understand why I felt like I had to leave, but they let me go. And even more amazing, they accepted me back this weekend as though that rift hadn’t been there. As though that leaving hadn’t taken place.
I was surprised when I got the invitation to lead the retreat. I was asked to help them care for themselves this weekend. Help them set aside the business and focus on the spirit, their spirits and the Spirit of God, the spirit of the community called Choir School and the Spirit that binds them in their individual churches and settings where they seek to sing the Lord’s song in what often feels like a foreign land. Help them tend to their souls as an outsider who was an insider, who knows them and yet now comes from a distance, a different world. And as my wife can tell you and now my new staff is learning, I have trouble saying no to such a request. So, Friday night and most of Saturday I sat with them, thought with them, prayed with them and yes, sang with them, and in and among it all we were healed a little bit, encouraged a little bit, lifted up a little bit. And the distance didn’t matter, the separation dissolved, and we walked together for this time, as though we knew the steps, as though we shared a pace. We were right, we were good.
We were justified. That’s the word we are focusing on this weekend, the next step in our journey, our “way to heaven.” We began with the root of the problem, the sin that infects and infests our lives and before which we are helpless. But then we quickly moved to the solution - grace. Grace is God’s antidote to our sin problem, and it was there before we even knew to ask for it, before we even knew we needed it. Prevenient grace is the grace that comes before. Before what? Before us, before any action on our part. It is just there whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we embrace it or run from it, it is there. Like the rain that falls even when we forget to look out the window. It is falling everywhere and on everyone, it just falls. Prevenient grace.
But sometimes, we choose to run out in it. Sometimes we choose to get wet. Sometimes we say yes to dancing in the rain, to singing in the rain. There’s a little Gene Kelly in all of us when you get right down to it. The tragedy is we often don’t let him out, keep him bottled up in there instead of reaching out to embrace the possibilities, to accept the gift that is given. And what is that gift? Life. Pure and simple. Wondrous and magical. Rich and divinely eternal. Life.
Romans 3:21-31 But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
You missed it, didn’t you? You missed the joy, the passion, the life that fairly drips from the Apostle Paul as he writes this breathless letter to a church he never knew. It’s understandable. It’s way too easy to get lost in the rhetoric that grips Paul when he gets carried away. His vocabulary deepens and his mind tumbles over itself when he gets excited. And we get lost in the words. We stumble over the roots of Paul’s trees and we miss the vista of the forest he is trying to describe. But take a breath and we can plunge into a small piece of it; a copse in the woods, let’s say, a clearing in the dense forest.
“But now” he writes, or dictates, or proclaims with arms spread wide and eyes wide open. “But now!” If he was texting to the Roman church those words would be in all caps. BUT NOW. Now what? Now everything has changed. Now the world is different. Now a door is open that was previously shut. Not just shut, but locked and bolted and overgrown with hedges and climbing ivy. Not just impenetrable, but invisible to our eyes. Not just invisible, but terrifying, a “here be dragons” scrawl on the edge of the map. But now, the door is open. The door that leads us into the very heart of God. God! Imagine it. The heart of God, the righteousness of God, Paul calls it. The purity of God, the holiness of God, the very essence of God that makes God God! And we have access to that presence. We can see it. Even more we can claim it for us. Because of Jesus. Not the law. Apart from the law, Paul states, but attested by the law and the prophets.
See, this is what everything has been about from the beginning of the people of God. This access, this entry, this gift of life that comes from the heart of God – this is what it has been about. And the law pointed to it. And the prophets pointed to it. But they couldn’t get us there. The problem is they thought they could. If only people would just listen to me, the prophets whined. If only people would be obedient to me, the law would opine. The Pharisees who wore the law like a hair shirt, like a gang tattoo, were convinced that if you just put a little more effort into it you could find your way to righteousness. You could work your way there. Just try harder. The Pharisees aren’t gone, really. We still have them. We still are them. Thinking that if we just try harder. Just work longer, more doggedly, then we’ll make ourselves righteous, like God is righteous.
But Paul says it was never the purpose of the law to make us righteous, or even to show us the righteousness of God. It was never the function of the prophets to deliver to us the heart of God, the life abundant that we desperately want to enjoy. Instead, their function was to point to the One who would. Or rather they were there to show us how much we needed the One who could bring us into the righteousness of God, who could offer us abundant, eternal life. But now, Paul squeals with joy, it’s here. The door is open, the access is provided. So. Just step through.
God has done the heavy lifting. God has wrenched open the door, torn apart the chains, busted through the locks, at great cost. Just step through. We could be compelled, forced through the door into life, into the righteousness of God. But God chooses not to work that way. To leave it up to us. To give us the choice. To allow us to partner with God in the reclamation of our own souls, our own lives. God wants us to exercise our faith muscles and grab hold of the gift, step through the door. To walk right with God. To heal the breach, to cross the distance we’ve put between us. And will help us every step along the way.
Grace rains down still. Same grace as before, but now we’re aware of it, now we choose it. So we call it justifying grace. Because it puts us right with God again. Puts us back where we were created to be, but now need to choose. Now we need to want to go back. To be back, to be right. All of us. God is God of all, says Paul breathlessly, of all. Stop making divisions, stop drawing lines. Just say yes. Just choose life. Just choose love. Just choose righteousness. And continue to lean on the law, not as a way to redeem us, but as a measure for our redemption. As a weather vane to tell us that the rain still falls and grace is still possible, still available. That there are those who will love you even after you walk away. There is a place, a place of grace, that will welcome you home when you’re ready to choose life.
And in that place we will be right. Right with God. Right with each other. Right with the world we struggle through now. But then we’ll be right. We’ll be good. We’ll be alive. We’ll be ... justified.
Shalom,
Derek
No comments:
Post a Comment