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Dr. George A. Purnell
February 21, 2010
“On the Tip of My Tongue”
Romans 10:8b-13
I was fortunate in theological seminary to take my New Testament classes from one of America’s most respected and prolific New Testament scholars, Professor Ron Allen. He is almost in a class by himself in terms of productivity. He and I and Diane and Linda have a really nice friendship, and when we are together I sometimes tell him to slow down; that I can’t read books as fast as his are published.
Ron Allen is also in a class by himself as a classroom teacher, and really good teachers leave lasting impressions on their students. I remember some specific things that Ron said in our New Testament classes. When we were struggling with chapters 9-11 of Romans in a course on the letters of Paul, I remember Ron telling us not to be too hard on ourselves. These chapters have challenged generations of Biblical scholars, he said.
Today’s lectionary Epistle reading for this first Sunday in Lent comes from Romans 10, or from the middle of these difficult chapters. Out of curiosity, I checked to see what I have done in the past on the first Sunday in Lent during the lectionary cycle Year C. Guess what? I have never preached this text. I have always chosen the Gospel Lesson or one of the two selections from the Old Testament for the day. So, I guess one of the lasting impacts from my teacher has been to steer clear of trying to interpret material from Romans chapters 9-11.
These chapters portray Paul’s agonizing internal dialogue about the fate of his fellow Jews in light of God’s New Covenant in Christ. Reading them is hard work, because as he asks and answers the question of what happens to the Jews if they won’t accept Jesus as the Messiah, his argument becomes convoluted and even contradictory in places.
Chapter ten begins with these opening verses: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer is that they (Jews) may be saved…they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened.” So, Paul is praying earnestly for his fellow Jews to come to faith in Jesus. He knows how much they love God, but he is deeply troubled by their failure to see that Jesus is the fulfillment of their scriptures.
This refusal to accept Jesus as Messiah led the Jews to attempt to establish their own righteousness before God by obedience to the Law of Moses. Accordingly, there was an emphasis on doing…on keeping the Sabbath, on obeying dietary customs, on circumcision, and on celebrating religious festivals such as the Passover, the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles)...
The main points of our passage are clear. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Confess and believe. This gift is God’s doing. Nothing is said or implied about compliance with law or observance of religious festivals or any other act of self-righteousness.
But salvation by grace is hardly a new claim. In fact, this is the very core of Christian faith, and is found throughout Paul’s writings. He writes in Ephesians, for example: “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Paul goes beyond the standard Christian fare that salvation is a free gift by adding a universal feature to his claim, thereby bringing Jews into the fold. He draws from the Hebrew Scriptures to make his claim.
While grace is available to all, Paul says there are two things required of us to claim grace and the salvation that flows from it.
First, we must confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord.
Confessing is hard. I love a story I once read about the difficulty of getting anyone to confess. When Frederick the 2nd was King of Prussia in the 18th century, he took an inspection tour of a prison in Berlin. He was greeted with the cries of prisoners, who fell before him on their knees, protesting their unjust imprisonment. While listening to all these pleas of innocence, the king’s eyes were caught by a solitary figure in the corner who was not involved in all the commotion. ‘Why are you here?’ Frederick asked the man. ‘Armed robbery, your majesty,’ the man answered, and he added – ‘I deserve my punishment.’ ‘Release this man at once, the king ordered! I will not have him kept in this prison where he will corrupt all these fine innocent people.’
(On a lighter note, I was at the IU – Michigan State game Tuesday night. Bishop Mike Coyner, who is quite a fan, was with me. Every time one particular Michigan State player committed an obvious foul, he would protest his innocence. When this player picked up his fifth foul on a blatant cross body block…and he protested his innocence again…Coyner commented about how unfair it was that this poor fellow was being disqualified from further play by this conspiracy against him.)
Yes, confessing is hard. Many of us are reticent to “confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord.” We are afraid how others will see us after we make known with our lips what is sealed in our hearts. And when we hear someone give public testimony to their belief in Jesus as Lord, we get uncomfortable. We begin to think about ways we can either change the topic or find a way to excuse ourselves.
(As hard as it is for we who attend church to conceive, the vast majority of Americans do not attend worship, and this number is growing.
Every piece of research I have read over the years confirms that the most effective way to increase church attendance is for members to invite friends, co-workers and neighbors. Still, many of us won’t ask our friends, even if we know they don’t attend any church. I once asked a friend who was active in the Episcopal Church he attended about evangelism practices in his church. He said, ‘well George, the average Episcopalian invites someone to church once every 36 years. We don’t grow much, but we know everyone here really well.’ This may not be far off the mark for the average United Methodist.)
But why should confessing Jesus as Lord be so hard? Especially if we do love him with our whole hearts and are ready to give our lives over to him. If you are married, think about your wedding vows. What if you stood silent at your wedding when the preacher said, repeat after me: I Mary, take thee John, to be my husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as I live.
Marriage is a lifetime covenant. Without a love that is heartfelt enough to be given public declaration, it will not last.
Which leads into the second proviso, believing in our heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. Belief is more than agreeing that what is said is truth. Believing is the springboard into action. If we believe with out hearts that the environment is at risk, then we will take steps to make our lives greener. We will no longer insult the environment; we will protect it.
From the vantage point of time it is easy for us to look at Romans 10 and wonder why the Jews to whom Paul wrote could not confess with their lips that Jesus was Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead. Paul’s contemporaries had to notice the huge change that took place in the lives of the new believers in Jesus. Why didn’t they take their cue from what they saw happening in the lives of their contemporaries, and turn their hearts and their lives over to Jesus too?
Rather than ask that question of them, we should ask ourselves. If we are truthful, most of us will admit that it’s hard for us to fully buy the idea that we are saved by grace through faith and not by our works.
George Barna is a Christian who heads a California based market research firm that specializes in studying the religious beliefs and behavior of Americans. Barna has written several provocative books from his research, including the groundbreaking The Frog in the Kettle. Barna reports what I think we would guess, namely that over one out of two Americans believe that if a person is really good – regularly performs acts of mercy for the aged and the sick, is generous to charities, tutors children at risk, and so on – he or she will earn their way into heaven.
And this fits squarely into the American mythos, which celebrates the self made person who takes control of his or her life and triumphs over tremendous adversity. We want to believe that we control our own destinies. We credit our success in life, in large measure, to our hard work, our perseverance, our intelligence and intuition. Oh, we do give lip service to our good fortune…our genes and opportunities and such…but we give ourselves a lot of credit, even if we keep it a secret.
Yet the Christian tradition tells us that we do not control our destinies. If we say we believe that we are saved by grace through faith and not by any efforts of our own, we are saying that we are completely dependent upon God’s grace for salvation. We resist embracing this idea that we are powerless…that God’s grace alone determines our destiny…
And what’s even harder for us to swallow is the idea that grace is offered equally to all. Paul writes: “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” We aren’t sure we believe this. We must have earned some advantage from all our preparation and hard work. It isn’t fair that everyone benefits the same…
But when we think about it, this is the only kind of God we would want. God alone is worthy of our worship, because only God has a love with the breadth and depth to love so completely and so indiscriminately. We know that even at our best we are not capable of such love.
Only Jesus was able to offer such love. And he offered it without distinction. He offered it to the sick and to sinners, to Gentiles and to Jews, to rich and poor, to the publican and the prostitute and the Pharisee. And he offers it to us.
Today is the First Sunday in the Season we call Lent. It is the season we designate as the time we remember the cost of our faith. Just as there is a sacrificial cost to freedom, so there is to faith. Jesus began the road to where that ultimate price was paid on a cross today. So let’s begin Lent this year with the confession Jesus is Lord on the tip of our tongue and with the belief in his resurrection in our heart. These are our salvation. Amen.
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