Romans 4: 13-5, page 798.
It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.
Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring – not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed – the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what was promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words, “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
Sermon
We are often confronted with our own sinfulness. One of the things that we try to keep secret from ourselves and others, the fact that we aren’t perfect, we boldly confess to in the Prayer of Confession each Sunday morning.
The temptation though, or the temptation for me anyway, is that when I am faced with my sinfulness I feel uncomfortable and I am tempted to say to myself, “Well surely I’m not really that bad.” We want to know that we are OK, but rather than trusting in God’s Grace, we hope that God will be distracted by other people’s sin, or that “their” sinfulness will make our sinfulness seem small in comparison.
We say to God, “Sure I’m pretty bad, sure I’m impure, but at least I’m not as bad as that guy – right God?”
We see this logic play out in the news, as society is divided between good guys and bad guys. If morality was a softball game, and we were picked to go up against the bad guys of the world, I am sure we would be winning by a few runs, their sinfulness surely outweighing our own.
But does our faith call us to different teams, judging each other according to a set of rules? For Paul, the Law stood as society’s law book – the means by which humanity could judge one another, figuring out who was ahead and who was behind. But Paul believed God, through Jesus, was calling us to see each other in a different way.
I saw a glimpse of this different way in a video some folks sent me through email this past week.
It was a clip from ESPN, a college softball game.
In this clip steps to the plate a young woman, barely more than 5 feet tall, batting average of .153, no career homeruns in college, high school, or even before that. Her name is Sarah, and as her team trails by a run she steps to the plate with two strikes already hanging over her head. The pitch, she swings, and off it goes, over the wall. She has hit a home run for the first time in her life, giving her team the lead in this important game against rival Central Washington. The two runners score as the crowd cheers, but they turn to see Sarah on the ground, her arms wrapped around 1st base. She is not able to cherish every second of this important moment trotting from base to base, because in turning 1st her knee gave way, and Sarah found herself unable to finish rounding the bases to score for her home run. She lay there in pain, hugging first base knowing that her career in softball had just ended, and that her only home run would count as a single. Her coach asked the umpire what to do, and the umpire said that if the coach were to substitute a runner for Sarah the homerun wouldn’t count, and her hit would be scored a two RBI single, and if any of the players on her team even touched her, Sarah would be called out. These were the rules of the game.
But then Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace of the opposing team, finding they couldn’t sit by, knowing what it means to see such an important accomplishment be taken away, walked over to Sarah, picked her up in their arms, and carried her around the bases, as Sarah touched second, then third, and finally home to score the first and only homerun of her career.
Liz and Mallory’s act of compassion could have cost their team the game, as Sarah’s homerun secured a 4 to 2 lead. By the rules of the game, they could have waited as the team’s trainer bandaged Sarah’s knee and escorted her off the field, limiting her homerun to a single, leaving their team in a better position on the score board.
They would have had a better chance of winning their game, but compassion led them to do something else. Compassion broke down the wall between two softball teams, as they saw each other, not as competitors, but as something else.
For Paul it was the Jews vs. the Gentiles, the law dividing the two, standing as a means for the Jews to justify themselves in light of the non-Jewish Gentiles apparent unrighteousness.
But Paul knew that faith, like the compassion that broke through the wall dividing two softball teams, would break through the wall between Jews and Gentiles, Slave and Free, Male and Female.
As a persecutor of Christians he prided himself on knowing right and wrong, of building up a righteous life according to stringent observance of the law codes of our Bible. He rested on the Sabbath, was circumcised, he ate what he was supposed to, he said what was upstanding and clean, he gave everything he had to being righteous in God’s sight. He built up a wall against impropriety, unrighteousness, impurity, and against those he believed to be impropriates, unrighteous, and unclean.
But this wall came down as he realized it didn’t really matter when he came face to face with Jesus.
Paul’s faith in Christ was like a wrecking ball to the walls he had built up around himself.
When Paul’s opponents began claiming that those who wanted to be Christians had first become Jews - that those men who wanted to be baptized also had to be circumcised, Paul put his foot down, asking “is this blessedness only for the circumcised?” Claiming that “it was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”
The rules of the game had to be changed, and as Paul’s faith changed the way he lived, the walls he built around himself, walls of division, of race, of class, of status, came tumbling down, according to the foundation of his faith laid out in verse 25 of our scripture lesson, that Jesus, “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Paul began living by a new set of rules.
I have another story about people breaking down walls, though the stakes in this story are much higher than winning or losing.
A few years ago, Evan Silverstein of the Presbyterian News Service, reported that two Presbyterian participants in an important ministry at the US/Mexico border were arrested, charged with helping undocumented migrants cross the border into Arizona. In an effort to limit illegal immigration, the United States Border Patrol increased security dramatically in those areas where it was safest for people to cross. This increased security drove migrants to cross in rural areas, deserted wastelands where the sun would be hot, water scarce, and nothing in between Mexico and the US but sand and cactus.
The US Border Patrol thought that the length and the risk of crossing in these desolate areas would make desperate migrants think twice about crossing the border - that the threat of death would prevent people from trying to cross, but they underestimated a peoples’ desperation. "There is no shade or water available to the crossers," said Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which takes in much of Arizona. "They're at the disposal of the elements. They really face an uphill battle of Herculean size." And there are other challenges, including snakes, scorpions and vultures, twisted ankles, dislocated knees, broken bones and severely blistered feet.
In an attempt to prevent another death, two Presbyterians drove a dying migrant to a hospital, where they were arrested for aiding an illegal immigrant. According to some statistics, in the years between 1998 and 2003, 2,600 people died attempting to cross the border. In the hopes of limiting how many immigrants come into our country, in the hopes of keeping the labels on our food, the signs on the street, and the sound on our TV in English, more than 2,600 people have died.
And as I read Paul’s letter to the Romans, as I think about the power of God’s Grace, my sinfulness, and our common heritage in Abraham, the Father of all the Faithful, I know that there is a wall that our Faith has yet to break down.
But at least for these two Presbyterians, like the two softball players, and so like Paul the Apostle, the walls that divided became nothing when they considered the bonds that united them to another.
We seem to be a world divided by walls, oceans, and hatred. We seem to be a country segmented, and distant, but truly, we are a sinful people made worthy by the bonds of faith that join us together.
Faith has torn down the walls that divide us, as it is not by building up walls around ourselves that we are saved, but like Paul, “we are saved by the one who was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
-Amen.