Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20
I know that some of you follow the suggested daily Bible readings from the Mission Yearbook of Prayer. The daily epistle readings recently started in the Book of Acts. Just this week the readings reached chapter nine where Saul has his eye-blinding and mind-boggling experience of the risen Lord Jesus on his way to Damascus where he was going to roundup and deport to Jerusalem any believers that he found. Then God dispatched a man named Ananias to Judas’ house on Straight Street to heal Saul’s sight and begin his journey of faith as an apostle of the risen Lord.
There is nothing like a new believer. All of the energy and venom that had motivated Saul now converted him into a powerful, dauntless, irrepressible advocate and salesman for Jesus. He couldn’t do anything other than change his name, because he was a changed man. Paul was on fire to preach the good news of the gracious lordship of God expressed in Jesus Christ. That is nowhere more evident than in the extended letter that we know as addressed to the Romans.
Volumes and volumes have been written about the Romans letter by some of the most renowned theologians of the church across the centuries. Yet for all the words derived from the letter’s sixteen chapters, very little is known about the letter’s actual provenance. We don’t really know when Paul wrote it, or where he was when he wrote it. Nor do we know just what Paul knew about the situation among Christians in Rome. And we know very little about the church in Rome, other than the fact that Paul didn’t start it like he did many of those in Asia Minor – Turkey today – and in Greece. Since we don’t know how the church started, we don’t have much knowledge about the peculiarities of their faith in Christ. All we know is that Paul wanted to go to Rome and meet these fellow believers.
As Betsy Ensign-George pointed out in yesterday’s presentation on the forthcoming Presbyterian Women’s study of the 2 Corinthians letter, in some parts of the church the writings of Paul have greater influence than the gospels. In a sense, Paul is perhaps the earliest trained theologian of Christian doctrine. He studied with those who had been closest to Jesus. He takes all that learning and expounds and expands it. He understands that God is Lord over the whole of created reality. Therefore his reflections on that lordship encompass the full range of human problems. Romans is rife with that approach. Paul Achtemeier says that Paul deals with problems as contemporary as tomorrow’s newspaper and that they are problems as global as the headlines and as intimate as those discussed in “Dear Abby.”(1) Paul is passionate about his belief not only for himself but also for his Jewish kith and kin, as well as people with no Jewish heritage.
Was Paul writing at leisure during some downtime on one of his journeys or between journeys? Or was Paul writing during his initial imprisonment in Caesarea? The passion and intensity of his writing suggests the latter.
Professor N. T. Wright leans toward a provenance of prison and fairly good knowledge of the situation in Rome. Although the details are murky, there is sufficient evidence that a large portion of Rome’s Jewish population was forced to leave the city in the late 40s of the common era, about fifteen years after Christ’s resurrection. This was probably because of rioting that may have resulted from early Christian preaching in the Jewish community. The expulsion edict came from Emperor Claudius. He died in year 54 and was succeeded by the infamous Nero, who rescinded Claudius’ decrees, making it possible for Jews to return to Rome.(2) That would seem to be the backdrop for Paul’s writing.
Professor Eleazar S. Fernandez calls the situation in Rome a confessional situation or status confessionis.(3) This is “the state, or condition, of the Church, the society, the world, in which the Church must stand by and stand up: stand by her confession and stand up for the authority of the Word of God that she confesses.”(4) Paul senses that this is the situation in Rome. And indeed it is his own situation. This is the same kind of situation that Martin Luther found himself in as he was censured by the 16th century papal authorities; “Here I stand, I can do nothing else.” Or the Confessing Church in Germany in 1934, whose “Barmen Declaration” avowed:
“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.”Imperial Rome was the empire in Paul’s time. It claimed devotion and demanded sacrifice. This was not only offensive to Jews following the Mosaic Law – “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You must have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3). It was even more offensive to Christians who believed that Christ was the Word of God in flesh and blood.
Our times are also imperial, though in a different way. The empire of our time is much more subtle and insidious. We live in a global market economy, which is beneficial, but at a cost. But more than that we live in a market society where the 1% – despite all the good many of them do – get richer at the expense of the comparatively poor, the poorer, and the most poor. Our idol is the irrepressible need for more and more. Anything that separates us from God – or stands in the place of God – is an idol.
Paul called the Roman believers of whose plight he had heard to present themselves as a “living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.” He tells them, “This is your appropriate priestly service.” Eugene Peterson in The Message puts it this way:
“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.” (Romans 12:1-2)
No matter what culture Christians find themselves in, we are to offer our whole being – head, heart, bankbook, Facebook profile – as a daily “living” sacrifice.
That’s one reason we come to the Lord’s Table so often. It reminds us that only as we allow Christ to live in us and through us that we may make our strong, yet humble, confession declaring God ruler of all we have, all we are, all we imagine ourselves to be, all we dream and hope for.
Every day is a confessional situation. It may not be literally life and death, as it has been for Christians in Mosul, Iraq, or for churches trying display crosses in Chinese cities, or for believers in India, Indonesia, South Sudan, or whatever location will be in tomorrow’s news. Believers – you and I in our daily lives – must make our confessions about who our Lord and Savior is.
As a fire needs oxygen to burn, the church – and every individual believer – needs the free flow of the precious Holy Spirit to inflame faith in flesh and sinews and synapses. If we are not inspired by the Spirit, we shall surely expire. Underneath Paul’s words is the prayer of the early church: “Come, Holy Spirit.”
May it be so. Amen.
(1) Paul Achtemeier, Romans (Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), p. 1.
(2) N. T. Wright, “Romans,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), Vol X, p. 406
(3) Eleazar S. Fernandez, “Romans 12:1-8: Theological Perspective, Feasting on the Word, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, p. 376.
(4) Harold O. J. Brown, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=12-03-036-f
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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