“Faith – Our Divine DNA”
Romans 4:13-18
(Using J.B Phillips NT Translation – See Below)
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/1/15
For the embattled
church in Rome, one fundamental question lies at the heart of ongoing conflicts:
Who are we? In a growing and becoming
body like the early church, the struggle for identity presents with questions
about who belongs in the family and who does not. And in a world marinating in
anxiety, such questions tend to create a wide range of often-violent arguments
about control. Those in control get to determine the criteria for belonging.
They get to decide all the community arrangements – how men and women relate,
how leaders are chosen, groomed, and empowered, how strangers are treated, and
how those who threaten the community will be stopped, and punished or
rehabilitated. Within all of that, those who define a community’s identity usually
find it prudent to decide how, if at all, that community understands and
relates to God.
Once the agents of power have
gained control over a community’s politics and economics, over its vision for
the future, and once they have fixed the nature of religion’s role in public
and personal life, they must, if they want to maintain control, also decide how
the community will remember, interpret, and appropriate the past. What stories, and whose stories will be told? How will defining individuals and
events be taught and ritually remembered?
The government-mandated councils
that wrote the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds were shaping theology, but they were
doing so to maintain political order. While bringing religious integrity to the
table, they were deciding how, for the
sake of the empire, to remember, interpret, and appropriate the enigma of Jesus,
who was not going away.
Setting up and maintaining a
community is a kind of a cultural genome project. It seeks to determine how the
collective character of a community will be inseminated with the political,
social, economic, and theological attributes of venerated forebears. Forgive
the somewhat graphic nature of that image, but we are talking about personal
and communal identity at the level of DNA. Who ARE we?
Every culture does this, and one of
the most vivid examples in our own culture is the story of George Washington
confessing to his father that he cut down the cherry tree. I was in college
before I learned who Parson Weems was, and how he created and propagated that outright
lie in order to teach children the virtues of telling the truth.
My, my. How far we have not come.
As the early Church’s most
influential apostle, Paul ventures across the threshold of a brand new spiritual,
political, social, economic, and even physical identity. In doing so, he
assumes the authority to shape the community’s memory not only of Jesus, but of
the ancient, yet continually compelling stories of the Jewish faith. Of
particular concern to Paul is the person of Abraham. And at the heart of
Abraham’s story, says Paul, lies the fundamental characteristic of faith.
According to Paul, faith is the
divine DNA that defines us. And by faith Paul
means more than “believing in” God. He means both trusting the God in whom we claim to believe, and he means loving that God by loving our neighbors with steadfast and non-sentimental resolve.
In making his point, Paul clearly encourages
the faith community to alter its thousand-year-old understanding of the law,
and of the faith community itself. And while Paul’s teachings do change things,
I think he would say that he is not really changing
anything at all. He is restoring the
community to its deepest and truest self. That’s why he uses Abraham rather
than Moses as the standard.
To restore the people to their chromosomal
faith, Paul must scrape away all the legalism that has become a kind of fungus
on their spiritual practices. Inside and out, score keeping obscures and
distorts their God-imaged character of trust and love.
In an effort to pry the law from the
people’s dead and dying fingers, Paul says, “The Law can produce no promise,
only the threat of wrath to come…The whole thing, then, is a matter of faith on
[our] part and generosity on God’s…[And] faith is valid because of the
existence of God…who can make the dead live…Abraham, when hope was dead within
him, went on hoping in faith…He relied on the word of God…”
Because the community’s identity
hinges on faith – that is, on trust and Love – Paul demotes the law, and holds
it in service to faith.
Having said that, we must also
acknowledge that every religion, and every sect within those religions, creates
structures of theology and governance. We do that because all communities need such things to thrive. Without the rule of some
sort of law, there can be no effective gathering and cooperation of
individuals. Even the laws of nature affirm this. Where would we be, for
example, if gravity were not a dependable law? What if we had to live with the
anxiety of coming untethered from the earth without warning, and floating away until
gravity kicked in again, and yanked us back to earth with a deadly splat?
I think Paul understands all of this.
Still, when writing into Rome’s argument over who belongs and who doesn’t, the
apostle makes the point that when we live as if the law represents our
fundamental DNA, we inevitably do more to destroy the beauty and the wholeness
of God’s creation than we do to give thanks for it, and to steward it. Wherever
people seek to trust God and love neighbor, there
is the community of faith. And if people cannot find that community in the
Roman church, or in any church, they will leave it. And the only ones who can
blame them are those who live by law rather than faith.
Jesus himself systematically
dismantles the DNA of law-based religion. He does reckless things like heal and
pick grain on the Sabbath. He calls Yahweh “Abba.” He fraternizes with
Gentiles, prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers. Five times in Matthew he
launches into a teaching saying, “You have heard it said,” then turns some holy
law inside out saying, “but I say to you.”
Jesus’
very life is the giving of a new law: The law for living in the kingdom of God,
the law of grace.
Paul is doing exactly the same
thing. In Romans 13 he writes these earth-shaking words, “The
commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder…[or] steal…[or]
covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the
fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)
Here’s the trick, though: The law
of Love cannot be followed by mere obedience. To abide by a law that says
things like “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” that requires
the steel-toed trust and the leather-gloved agape Love made real by
resurrection. To abide by Jesus’ law is to embark on Abraham’s journey. It is simply
to go when God says, “Go,” even when a cost-benefit analysis proves the risk
unjustified.
Nonetheless, on that journey,
through our faith and God’s generosity, we do rediscover our true selves and
our true home as we relate to one another in holy Trust and Love.
So, come to the table. The journey
begins and continues right here.
Romans 4:13-18
(J.
B. Phillips New Testament)
13-14 The ancient promise made to Abraham and his
descendants, that they should eventually possess the world, was given not
because of any achievements made through obedience to the Law, but because of
the righteousness which had its root in faith. For if, after all, they who pin
their faith to keeping the Law were to inherit God’s world, it would make
nonsense of faith in God himself, and destroy the whole point of the promise.
15 For we have already noted that the Law can produce no
promise, only the threat of wrath to come. And, indeed if there were no Law the
question of sin would not arise.
16-17 The whole thing, then, is a matter of faith on man's part and generosity on God’s. He
gives the security of his own promise to all men
18 Abraham, when hope was dead within him, went on hoping
in faith, believing that he would become “the father of many nations”. He
relied on the word of God which definitely referred to ‘your descendants’.
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