March 1, 2015
The Obstacle of the Law
- Romans 4:13-25
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
We human beings certainly love our rules – or at least most of us do – in theory anyway! The security that comes from knowing how things should be done comforts us in our chaotic world. God understands this about us and so God comes to us in terms of covenant. In our lesson from Genesis, God provides a clear agreement that Abraham can refer to and rely on to know that God will keep God’s promises. This is an everlasting promise and it is essentially God promising to be God to Abraham and Abraham’s offspring.
But Paul doesn’t want us to get all caught up in the rules of the covenant between God and Abraham because that can be an obstacle in our relationship with God. The path to a right relationship with God is not through following a bunch of rules, but through faith. And for Christians that faith is in Jesus Christ.
Paul claims in his letter to the Romans, that Abraham is an example for us because God considered him a righteous man – not because of his obedience to the law, but because of his faith in God. After all, if obedience to the law were the path to right relationship with God, what would be the use of faith? And since the promise of relationship with God is built on faith, not on obedience to the law, that promise is open to everyone. And that was important for Paul, who was trying to incorporate Gentile Christians into the fold and the Jewish Christians felt like the newcomers had to follow traditional Jewish rules.
You all know I am a rule follower. I don’t always like the rules, and I grumble about them, but I usually follow them. I have rarely been rebellious. So I sympathize with the Jewish Christians who are uneasy about these new Gentile converts that Paul has made and is asking them to accept. If I had had to follow all sorts of commandments to be a good Jew and then I had become a follower of Jesus – a very new and different way of living – I would want the newcomers to understand the tradition of the commandments too. How can you appreciate the new if you haven’t experienced the old?
This reminds me of a story about our son John. (And I can tell lots of stories about John right now because he is in China and not paying much attention to his old mother back in the States!) When John was a freshman at Wabash he pledged the Phi Gamma Delta or Fiji fraternity. Although I don’t know all that went on during his pledge ship (and I know I should be grateful about that!) I do know that the pledges had to clean the house and do lots of things for the upper classmen. And John hated that. He really felt like the upperclassmen took advantage of the freshman pledges. Fast forward to two years later and John is president of his fraternity. So I said, “Wow John, this is your chance to change things, to make the pledge ship process less difficult. “ And his response was: “I’m not going to change anything. If I had to go through all of that then they do too.” No lessons learned there, that’s for sure!
The Jewish Christians considered themselves the true custodians of the tradition. It was hard for them to understand that Christ was available to all. The church also does itself no favors when it stresses tradition over the inclusive love and grace of Jesus. So many people no longer go to church and worship is an unknown for them. So if we put up the obstacle of dressing or looking a certain way, if we put up the obstacle of not including children in worship, if we put up the obstacle of believing or living our lives a certain way, we get in the way of God’s promise to be in relationship with all of Abraham’s children. Shoot, if God can bring new life from a 99 year old man and a barren 90 year old woman, and if God can raise Jesus from the dead, why would we want to stand in the way of the new and the perhaps the miraculous? Wasn’t it Jesus who said something like, “See I make all things new.”
The promise to Abraham is similar to God’s promise to us now. Abraham’s promise depended on God bringing forth life from that which was barren; the promise to us now depends on trusting the God who brings life from death in Jesus Christ. The promise of new life is given by God. And trusting the promises of God is the primary way we interact with God – it is not the law. The fact that we now trust the promise of God in the resurrection of Jesus is evidence that God’s promise to Abraham – that he would be a father of many nations – is being fulfilled.
For Paul it’s not the law or the rules that form the basis of our relationship with God, it is faith. Yes God promised something to Abraham and expected him to do something in return – in this case it is circumcision. But the rule to become circumcised was not a condition of the covenant itself, but rather a sign of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Obedience to the law of circumcision is a sign that fulfills the faith of Abraham and his people – just like baptism is a sign to us that fulfills our faith in Jesus Christ. And The Lord’s Supper is a sign of eating and drinking in communion with the crucified and risen Lord. We eat the bread and drink from the cup to proclaim our faith in the risen Lord and our faith in the promise that he will come again to be with us. God expects us to have faith in his promises to us. As Paul says in Romans, “It depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants. “ (v. 16) This makes God’s action and initiative the significant point of the story, instead of the law which makes human agency the main focus.
We would be wise to heed Paul’s message, while remembering that only God can create faith in human hearts – the church cannot create faith or transfer it to others. If God shows no partiality, then God can create faith in a Gentile, in us, in anyone, just as easily as God created the faith tradition with Abraham. An unchurched newcomer grows in faith in ways longtime members never experience. A lifelong member suddenly comes to a new level of faith in a time of crisis. God can make all things – and all faith - new. We just need to stay out of the way and not create obstacles along the way.
One of the best promises a church can make is to teach the right relationship between faith and obedience to the law. As Paul illustrates in Abraham’s story – faith precedes and shapes obedience. If God establishes relationships through faith first, then obedience takes a subsequent and supportive role in our divine-human relationships. We cannot be obedient to anyone or anything – including God – without faith first. Faith requires trust and it requires boldness like we see in Abraham and Jesus. But when we trust in the God who brings life from weakness and tragedy, we can be obedient to the rules – which are basically to love God and to love each other. And when obedience fulfills faith, it becomes the sacrament of the everyday. As the visible and concrete response to faith, obedience expresses the invisible relationship of trust between God and God’s people and moves us toward ministry in God’s name. May it be so. Amen.
Resource: Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, Second Sunday in Lent.