Lectionary 11 Pr 6A Grace Lutheran Church, Lakeland, FL June 14, 2020
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 Romans 5:1-8 Mt 9:35-10:8
Grace to you and much needed peace that comes from God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Please pray with me. Lord, we gather together across time and place yet united as your children because of your love for us. Be with us now as we consider the Good News of Jesus which we are called to proclaim and live into the world around us. Amen.
The text for our consideration today is in our second reading – Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. The following verses are from – Romans 5:1-5:
Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, we have access by faith into the grace in which we stand firmly. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in the sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Faith leads to peace. Through faith we enter into grace – grace in which we stand firmly rooted and established. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And we rejoice in sufferings because we know that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope will not bring us any shame because God’s persistent love for us has been poured into our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit who is ours. Any one of these words could be the subject of great ponderings and wonderings and any number of sermons, but here they all are in one tremendous run-on sentence.
Do you sense the encouragement and optimism of which Paul is writing? And, so that we can more fully understand this encouragement, we look at the experience of those who first heard St. Paul’s words. The Christians in Rome would have gathered in house churches, in secret because of the oppression they experienced at the hands of the Roman Empire. They were ostracized by their neighbors. Subject to persecution. Nero was the emperor. Nero, the fiddler.
Life was difficult. Full of conflict and challenges. Struggles. Worries. These were existential concerns. And into this St. Paul wrote these amazing words – we have peace with God through our Lord. Today, we hear the comfort of these words, we know this peace, we hear it proclaimed time and time again in our liturgy and worship.
Yet, those first hearers would hear St. Paul’s proclamation – we have peace with God through our Lord – as surprising rhetoric. “Peace” – in Latin this is “pax” and we have learned of the Pax Romana, the peace for which Rome was known, the peace that was enforced by any and all means possible, the peace that was enforced with the iron hand. Peace – peace for the few, the select, the elite. “Lord” – today we hear this as a reference to Jesus or if we remember our world history we might think of the Middle Ages when the lord owned all the property and the serfs worked for him. But in the Roman Empire, the title “Lord” was reserved exclusively for the Emperor, for Caesar. The “peace of the lord” meant honor the Emperor because he has made all things devoid of conflict with the mighty arm of power. St. Paul’s words were politically subversive because Jesus, the Christ – the Lord of Christians – was the source of peace – peace that is based not in military might and power but in grace and faith.
The calendar reminds us of important events, some of recent years, anniversaries of events that have shaped some of who we are as a society. On June 12th, 1987, President Reagan exhorted Mr. Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” and twenty-nine months later, that wall came down. On June 17th 2015, Dylan Roof – a member of an ELCA church – went in to Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC, and shot nine people of color, including their pastor, a classmate of mine. And this year, as life as we have known it has been disrupted by a novel virus, we are reeling with the deaths of George Floyd, Breeana Taylor, and Arbery Ahmad.
Perhaps like you, some days I hardly know where to turn. Certainly not to a Pollyanna-like Annie singing “The sun will come out – tomorrow.” Not to wishful thinking. Not to a glass half-full optimism. We turn to our hope in the glory of God. We stand in the hope that is a confident assurance of what is to come. A hope that we hold firmly to because of the grace of Jesus. Indeed, a hope that holds us fast.
Faith to grace to rejoicing in hope. Suffering to endurance to character to triumphant hope. Hope. A hope that is built on nothing less than the faithfulness of Jesus and God’s eternal persistent steadfast love for us.
Let us pray. Holy One, we look around us and are discouraged at so much of what we see. Through the din of voices, the clamor of violence, the cries of pain, let us hear your clarion call of grace and faith and hope. Enable us by the power of the Holy Spirit to be people of hope proclaiming the Good News of Jesus to a world hungry for peace, for shalom, for wholeness, for security, for healing. Guide us and direct us Lord and give us a will to follow where you lead. In the name of your Son, our Lord, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
