Comments for Jim Other sermons.                 

In the scripture this morning from the Thirteenth Chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Paul describes three facets of Christian community: love, life in the moment, and light.

First, Paul says that loving one another is the fulfillment of the law. Paul was writing to a community in Rome that included gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, and they had been arguing over what constituted ethical and unethical behavior. Paul says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He says to let right and wrong be ultimately determined by love because love cannot do wrong to a neighbor. In this regard Paul’s teaching is totally resonate with that of the historical Jesus. Paul and Jesus are saying that love always trumps rules. Can we live in community without any rules? No, of course not. But having rules is no guarantee of love. Jesus was crucified by people who probably followed the rules. In the scripture from Matthew, Jesus provides a simple process for dealing with conflict. But without love, even a good process won’t work.

Second, Paul tells us to wake up to the moment. We usually think of time in terms of past, present, and future, as a kind of chronological flow. In truth we live only in the present moment. But all too often the possibilities of the present moment are obscured by regrets from the past, and worries about the future. The present moment in its fullness is lost. The Greek word that Paul uses here for time is the word kairos. This means not simply time ticking by on the clock, but a present moment charged with meaning: a moment to be recognized and opportunities to be grasped. Back when I was a kid sitting eagerly in front of our ten inch television set, when Buffalo Bob Smith yelled "Hey, kids what time is it?" we didn’t cry out "It’s 4:00 o’clock." You know what we said. "It’s Howdy Doody time!" Maybe that sounds a little frivolous, but it’s what Paul is getting at here. He says, "…you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep." Paul says that right now is the sacred moment. "For salvation is nearer to us now than when we become believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." In this whole matter of God coming into our lives, Paul was both wrong and right. The early Christians seemed to believe in a very literal sense that Christ would return in a second coming that was right around the corner. It didn’t happen, at least not as they had expected. The early church had to rethink all that. But also, Paul was right, in that the presence of God in our lives really is at hand. Speaking personally, I don’t believe in a second coming in any literal sense at all. What I believe is that God has already come. The Holy Spirit is here already. Whatever it was that made Jesus special is now at work in you and me so that we are special, too. As an early church father put it, "The divine became human, so that humans could become divine." What is asked of you and me in all this? It is to see the present moment as the "wake up to the Spirit" moment. What is the point of feeling guilty about the past or worrying about the future, when the present moment carries the meaning of your whole life?

So God is already here in you and me and this beautiful creation. But to wake up means understanding that we have been living in the darkness and there is a lot of darkness still around. When you are living in darkness, you assume that it is normal. But to wake up to the light is to, paradoxically, come to appreciate how dangerous the darkness is. 9/11 began as a beautiful day, a radiant morning, and soon become an encounter with real darkness. We woke up to the darkness as well as the light on that day. 9/11 is no longer just a date on the calendar; it is now a day in which we experienced kairos, this time full of evil, but also nobility. The former U.S. poet laureate, Robert Pinksy has written a poem about that day. His poem includes these words:

The date became a word, an anniversary
That we inscribed with meanings – who keep so few,
More likely to name an airport for an actor
Or athlete than "First of May" or "Fourth of July."

His poem goes on to suggest that the mysteries of evil and goodness that were revealed on the day risk being lost, like all true mystery, in a popular culture that reduces everything to "catchy songs" with "back-up singers." When we wake up to the presence of God, the utter closeness and reality of the Realm of God, we also wake up to the reality of darkness and evil and injustice in our world. And in this sense, God is not fully present with us yet. God will not and can’t be fully realized in my life, or your life, or the life of this church, until we address the darkness, even as we strive to live in the light. God’s work is incomplete until God’s Realm is fully realized.

This is Paul’s third point in this scripture. "Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." We put on the armor of light by putting on Jesus Christ. We live now in the realm of God, which is light; and not the Empire of Caesar, which is darkness. It is said that in the early Christian Church folks were expected to wear a white garment for a period of time immediately after their baptism. They now followed Jesus, not Caesar. We do not live our Christian lives in isolation. Facing the forces of darkness and injustice requires us to recognize that we are involved – whether it be the issue of reduced services for the neediest in our county and the urgent need for affordable housing, or the issue of bringing the utmost public scrutiny and involvement to any decision to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

So the challenges to the Christian community are: to genuinely live the life of love that transcends rules, systems of conduct, and the worldly definition of success; to awake fully to the presence of God in our lives right now; and finally, to live in such a way that loving behavior in this community, translates into working for justice and peace in our world.

Quite an agenda. But the power of love transforms us and equips us to do it. We see things differently in the Realm of God. We are given a different kind of vision from the world. In God’s Realm the real concerns not competition, control, and conquest; instead they are caring, inclusion, connectedness. I’d like to close with a story told by Fred McFeely Rogers at this year’s Dartmouth College commencement. It is a story from the Seattle Special Olympics.

"For the 100 yard dash there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line, and at the sound of the gun, they all took off. But not long afterward one little boy stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard him crying; they slowed down, turned around and ran back to him. Every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy and said, "This’ll make it better." And the little boy got up and he and the rest of the runners linked arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in that stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long time." AMEN.

Return to CCC Home Page