Not Enough Containers

Romans 5:1-11; Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42

2017 marks the 500th anniversary of German reformer Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, provoking the protracted and heavy-handed response of the Church of Rome which resulted in the development of Lutheran, Reformed (Presbyterian), and Anabaptist theologies and churches. Luther’s theses – talking points – were based on his in-depth study of Paul’s Letter to the Romans in general and chapter 5 in particular. This chapter of Romans was also of particular interest to John and Charles Wesley, the evangelical preaching and hymn-writing ancestors of our Methodist brothers and sisters in faith. Every major great awakening and revival can trace its roots to Paul’s words. 

The power and meaning of Paul’s writing to the Romans was of interest to believers from the time of the earliest circulation of Paul’s letters. The pre-eminent and forthright presentation of the Gospel in the Letter to the Romans may well be the reason it leads the folder of correspondence Paul’s dictation contained in our New Testament canon.

Paul is absolutely certain that there is not one whit of anything that we human beings can add to the work of Christ in order to bring upon us the peace which is lavished so generously upon believers by the Holy Spirit. Origen, a theologian and ascetic active in the first half of the 3rd century CE, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, writes that it was obvious that Paul “is inviting everyone who has understood that he is justified by faith and not by works to that peace that passes all understanding, in which the height of perfection consists.”(1) 

Origen writes that peace reigns when nobody complains. That sounds like an inane statement, but when we realize that before Christ came along we were enemies of God, people who followed the greatest enemy and tyrant — the devil — then it becomes clear that the one most likely to complain, and rightfully so – is God. Because of the work of Christ, God has no reason to complain about us. God not only doesn’t complain, God accepts what Christ has done for us and calls a truce to the hostilities which would otherwise exist between fallen humanity and perfect divinity. Christ has covered over, wiped out, expiated the past heritage and the future legacy of our sin.

Peace doesn’t mean that everything is hunky-dory, that life’s storm clouds will never impinge on our happiness, our physical wholeness, or our spiritual well-being. Having peace with God doesn’t rule out suffering. But, because we are at peace inside ourselves through Christ, we are equipped to deal with, in fact to do battle with, the external forces of evil that have not given up the fight to possess us. Faith in Christ brings us nearer to God and gives us a greater share in God’s glory. It is this increasing nearness that produces the hope that what God has begun in us will indeed be completed at the end of the age.

Our new relationship with God is established through our faith in Christ. Salvation is the main benefit, which in turn is accompanied by many other blessings. These come to us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Paul’s words this way: “We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we would stand — out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.” 

At this point, Paul explains the way grace progresses in our lives: “trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” What comes next, in Peterson’s understanding of Paul’s words, “in alert expectancy [hope] such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary — we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

The picture that comes to my mind when I hear the imagery that Peterson uses for God’s grace is a leaky roof of some ramshackle shack. There are pots and pans and buckets everywhere there is a leak dripping. As offbeat as the image is, I think that it nearly perfect. Our life without Christ is like a leaky, ramshackle shack that offers little or no protection. We may think it does, but when suffering — rains — pours in and the winds whistle through the chinks in the clapboards, we are unprotected. Life without Christ ultimately has no protection. We huddle inside it, we rearrange the pots, and we try to stuff the cracks in the walls. And all to no avail. We are unprotected from the rains of life.

The Serendipity Singers did a song in the 1960s by Ed E. Miller and Ersel Hickey. The chorus goes this way:

          “Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down,
          Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down,
          Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down;
          My roof’s got a hole in it and I might drown.

          Oh, yes, my roof’s got a hole in it and I might drown.”(2)

It was a cute song, as many folk songs of that era were. Think about the image, however. If our life without Christ is a broken down, unprotecting shack, not only are we not protected from suffering, we are also unable to fend off the grace of God. We can think of the rain as God’s grace pouring over us so torrentially that we can’t round up enough containers to hold it. We could be, in fact are, drowning in God’s grace. We can’t get away from it. The roofs of our lives without Christ are so riddled with holes that we are soaking wet, we are drowning in God’s love for us. 

Isn’t that what baptism is all about? We are sprinkled, we are drenched, we are so immersed in God’s love that we in effect drown in it in order to receive the new life which Christ offers us.

That’s what happened to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. She no longer had to sheepishly and on the sly get water from the physical well because the well of life, the source of living water had entered her life. She became all wet with the grace of Christ’s love for her. It didn’t matter that she was apparently the town outcast or that for whatever reason had had multiple husbands. Christ got her all wet with his grace. Her water jar wasn’t enough to contain it all. She had to run back to town and, in spite of her status, interrupt her neighbors’ avoidance of her to proclaim the news that the true Messiah of God had come to her and blessed her, that his grace had changed her life.

Paul’s message to the Roman believers is a great counsel as we journey with Jesus towards Jerusalem and the cross. It is a pilgrimage of hope. The trouble of disciples not getting his message and the trouble of religious people getting it terribly wrong increased Jesus’ endurance and only solidified his resolve to be the Human One, the Son of Man, the anointed Christ all the way along until the desperate crying out of death was overcome with the hope that burst the bonds of the tomb. Hope comes because before us is the cross, the sign both of the suffering of Christ and of the triumph over death that God made possible for him and for us. The cross before us, like the north star, draws us forward along this pilgrim way from suffering into endurance and character on our way to hope.

The closing verses of this portion of Paul’s Romans letter take us back through the case for justification. They reiterate what twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls the basic and wonderful paradox of justification: by justification we are what we are not. What God confers upon us, what God pours generously on us, makes us children of God, justified by faith and thus able with God’s help to move through all the sufferings and troubles of life, coming to terms with patience so that we may endure and persevere, to the point at which we become the blessed creations God has had in mind for us long before we ever came to be. 

As Paul wrote, “If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.” 

There are not enough containers around to hold everything God generously pours into our lives. But thanks be to God, we need no other container than the faith God’s grace evokes in us, the container that is labeled, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”


(1) Cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament: Romans, Gerald Bray, ed. (Downer’s Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), vol. VI, p.126.
(2) Ed E. Miller and Ersel Hickey. © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.