Free for All (Romans 6:12-23)

Although we may not phrase it this way today, the question of sin in believers is one that we still wrestle with in the church. We may cast it in other terms, by pointing out how often the world looks at those of us who follow Jesus and maybe finds us wanting in displaying any characteristics of that. Their view of Christians -- people who say they're perfect and good and better than anyone else -- is wrong, but they'll still apply it to us and expect us to live up to it.

And there's still an important question buried under the simplistic misunderstanding the world has of us, one that we need to think about and try to find a path through: Why do we who follow Jesus, who orient our lives around his reality as the reality, still sin? If Paul's right that sin has no dominion over us, why do we find ourselves mixed up with it again and again?

Different views of our Christian reality influence how we talk about this. If we believe, for example, that salvation is something that matters to us only after we've died -- that Jesus' only purpose in coming to us and offering his life is to prevent us from spending eternity in hell -- then the only thing hurt by believers who sin is our witness. If I talk about a God of love, justice and righteousness but I practice none of those things then why should anyone who hears me talk care?But we can

But we can guard our witness pretty well and still "present our members to sin." John Wesley liked to use the example of people "reviling him." If he learned about that he might resent those people and become angry and hateful towards them. Aware of his responsibility to witness to his faith he wouldn't display that publicly. Inside, though, would still be feelings of hate. And as Jesus makes clear, while there's a difference between hating someone and harming them as far as they're concerned, there's none where we're concerned: "I tell you, those who hate another person have already committed murder against them in their heart."

Instead, in v. 19 Paul urges the Romans to "present their members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." Now when he says "righteousness" he means being right in relationship to God much more than he means the kind of legalistic self-righteousness we too often picture when we hear that word. He acknowledges that it's hard, because the tendency to sin remains in us.

This comes from seeing salvation as something that indeed happens after we die but also goes on right now. That eternal impact works its way backwards into our lives so that we start to change now, even if we won't finish in this lifetime. If that way of seeing salvation holds, we clearly need to "present our members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." And we all know how easy that is, right?

Why is it hard for those who were slaves to sin to become slaves to righteousness? I suppose part of the problem comes from the different expectations righteousness presents us. We're expected to act and speak differently. Getting used to the change and a completely new set of actions and priorities is no picnic. But is that the only problem? Learned behavior is exactly that, learned. What can be learned can be unlearned. It takes work -- generally behavioral psychologists say we need a minimum of 21 days of intentional effort to make a new habit -- but it can be done. Except it very often isn't. I can't speak about your experience, but I'm working on about a half-century of more or less intentional effort and I have yet to lose the habits of sin.

I think the real stumbling block comes because slavery to sin rarely presents itself as such. It almost always characterizes itself instead as freedom. It's freedom from rules, freedom from restrictions, freedom from authority, the opportunity to do what you want and be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. We don't necessarily rebel against the change in masters because we've been under the illusion we've never had a master and we rebel against the idea of having one now.

We have no experience with this kind of master so we reject him. A Master whose goal is our growth and flourishing? Gotta be a catch. A Master who will actually let us do what we want even when he knows better? Sure, right. A Master who is first a servant? A Master who will wash our feet? Yeah, pull the other one, buddy.  And yet it's true. That Master exists. But so does the other, and we will follow one or the other no matter what we think about the power of our own autonomy.

Even though my writerly character rebels against the idea of clichés I'm about to commit a big one by being a middle-aged dude who quotes Bob Dylan: "You're gonna serve somebody."

Division! (Matthew 10:34-39)

Every now and again we run across a word from Jesus that just clanks when we compare it to what the rest of what he says sounds like. It jars not because it runs counter to what the world tells us, but because it seems to run counter to what Jesus says and to what scripture tells us about Jesus. We have one of those here today.

"I have come not to bring peace, but a sword," Jesus says, outlining the way his words will divide household members from each other to the point of making those under the same roof actual foes of each other. Is this the man Isaiah prophesied as the "Prince of Peace?" Is this the man to whose body Paul will compare the church as a model for understanding its unity in the midst of difference? James will tell us that if we say we love God but we don't love each other we're liars, but here Jesus says his coming will produce enmity even in our own housholds!

When I try to suss this out I come up with a couple of possibilities. One is that Jesus comes with this kind of division as a goal of his ministry and mission. It's on the checklist: Feed the hungry, heal the sick, start fights between family members. In favor of that idea we have this passage from Matthew. It's not one of those where the Greek is wonky, either, and we have to be open to other possible translations.

But against it we have the things I mentioned earlier. And as well, we have the passages where both Jesus and Paul tell us to love our enemies. Not to mention a good-sized handful of other New Testament mentions of Jesus that emphasize his desire for unity among the believers. If Jesus intended to bring division instead of peace I'm left pretty confused.

Of course, it's also possible that this kind of division happens not because Jesus causes it, but because he's come here to do other things and opposition like he describes happens as a result of it. I can make some more sense of things by seeing them in this light. If there is one thing for certain about Jesus' mission it's that he comes to bring truth -- both by teaching it and embodying it. In John he will even say he is the truth, along with the way and the life. As for his teaching, how often does he begin one of his lessons or parables by saying, "Truly, truly I say unto you...?" Both bringing truth and being truth are essential elements of Jesus mission during his time on Earth.

And humans being what we are, claims of truth are one of the most certain ways to create division between people. In fact, most adult disagreements root in different understandings about what is true. Other disagreements, of course, root in whether or not she's touching me, he's sitting on my side, or she got the bigger cookie and so on. It's not that adults can't act that childishly, but we generally expect them not to.

We expect them to disagree about what is true. Let's take politics, since we can't apparently disagree about that without being ugly to each other. People who support President Trump think that, on balance, his term in office has benefited the country. They're not happy with everything he does or says and they may even dislike some of it pretty strongly. But on the whole they think he's a net positive.

Detractors, on the other hand, may like this or that policy goal or outcome but think that overall his term has been a net negative for the nation. This is what they hold to be true. As these things go, we could say that the supporters are wrong or the detractors are wrong or maybe even that both of them are wrong. But since they make oppositional claims about the truth, at least one of them has to be wrong.

The truth about Jesus creates the same kind of division. But at the same time, it creates the responsibility for disagreeing without disagreeability, which I do not know is a real word or not but is still a real responsibility. Jesus is clear that he will come with claims about truth, both in what he teaches and in who he is. That can't happen without disagreement. Jesus says he is the way, the truth and the life. There are people who believe otherwise, meaning our claims about the truth differ from theirs and can't be reconciled away without weakening the truth we claim to hold.

But do you and I, Christian, need to win an argument about the truth or do we need to open a door for Christ to win the person with whom we disagree? Do we need devastating comebacks and invulnerable logic, or do we need the heart of the Savior who washed Judas' feet? Will we speak the truth, or will we speak the truth in love?

Jesus said he came to bring a sword. He never said we had to pick it up and use it.

Go! (Matthew 28:16-20)

The lectionary does a funny thing with this incident in the life of the church. Even though Pentecost will come several days after the Ascension, we are reading this passage, which we call the Great Commission, after we've read the story of Pentecost.

We don't always see the U-turn because for us, both events are part of history. We know that Jesus' leaving opens the door for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers. We know that this outline of the mission of the church will be made possible by the coming of the Spirit. But they didn't know that. And from our perspective two millennia later, the events of those amazing days seem pretty much like they happened all at once -- but they didn't to the people living them. We last worshipped in person on March 15, 84 days ago. From the point of view of someone hearing this story in, say, 2040, that will seem like not much time. For those who hear it in 2120, the gap between the two will look almost as small as the gap between the Resurrection and Pentecost does to us. But for those of us who have lived it, it's 84 long days.

Even though the lectionary gives them to us out of order, when we reflect on these words of Jesus we see how necessary Pentecost is to understanding and fulfilling them. "You shall be my witnesses," Jesus says to a group of simple fishermen, peasant women and laborers. "In Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth!" he says to people who probably haven't been more than ten miles from their villages in their lives, except for a Passover now and again. "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!" They know who the Father is and they've come to realize who's the Son, but Holy Spirit? "I am with you always, even to the end of the age!" Just how long will he be gone then? That sounds like a long way off.

In the calendar of the church year, we call today Trinity Sunday. It marks one of the greatest doctrines -- and greatest mysteries -- of Christianity, that of the Trinity. We say that God is Three in One, or sometimes Three and One. We mean that we worship one God, not three. But that one God is expressed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Sometimes people will try to explain the three persons based on their spheres of activity. We do this when we label them Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. God the Father is the Creator. Jesus, through his actions on the cross, redeemed fallen humanity. And the Holy Spirit sustains believers as they try to follow Jesus. But the gospel of John makes clear that the work of the Word, the second person of the Trinity we call the Son, is essential to creation. And during their time of exile and before that, in the wilderness, the Israelites were sustained by God as the person we call the Father. And so on.

What we know is that all three persons are present in any work called the work of God. It's why we say God is Three in One -- any work of one of the Trinity is the work of all of the Trinity.

Here in Galilee, the Son tells the disciples of the work they are called to do, saying he has the authority to do so because it has been given to him -- by the Father. Even though the disciples do not yet know about the Holy Spirit or what the Spirit's presence will mean to them, they can sense something is missing. Some of them have doubts about what they see and hear and about what it means.

Something is missing, and that something is the presence of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost empowers the disciples to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives them.

And the presence of the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives us. Of course we have to carry it out with wisdom and common sense, with perception and awareness of our context -- but carry it out we are to do. The Commission worries a lot of us and we sometimes, as the joke goes, think the translation is wrong and the original Greek talked about a Great Suggestion. How could we share the gospel? We're not eloquent, knowledgeable, courageous, holy, whatever enough. But that's wrong. We're much less qualified than that. We think we'd do a mediocre job but the truth is we'd be lucky to get to mediocre.

Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Always, and forever. To the ends of the earth and the end of time, and beyond.