Sermon 122098,

It is generally believed that Paul may have dictated his letters to a scribe rather than writing the words out himself. I would like you to put yourself in the place of that scribe. I will be Paul - dictating what became the first seven verses of Romans.

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Did you get that? Is there anything you would like me to repeat?

At our staff meeting last week, it was John Touchton’s turn to read the scripture. After he read aloud the first seven verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he said "At the school that I went to, that would be called a ‘run on sentence.’" How true! And just try reading it in one breath! Paul is trying to get it all in there. And I think he succeeds brilliantly, even if he fails grammatically. In that one sentence he talks about Jesus as the Son of God, the descendant of David, as Lord, the fulfillment of the scriptures; he throws in the power of the spirit, the resurrection from the dead, Paul’s own call to discipleship, the charge to spread the Gospel to the gentiles, and greetings to the church at Rome.

Whew! Go Paul! Religion is not first and foremost about theology or doctrine - religion is about passion. And the best way to understand Paul’s words here is not to analyze the intellectual content, but rather to feel his passion. Here is a man swept up in the enthusiasm of his experience of Jesus Christ. Here is a man on fire with the experience of personal transformation. Here is a man electrified. Paul’s passion outruns his thinking, his words, his syntax. We must listen to and respond to his feeling.

Theology and religious discourse is always one step removed from the experience of faith. To deal with faith intellectually leads us into theology and philosophy, that is, attempts at rational discourse. To understand faith as personal experience focuses on feelings and feelings lead to stories.

Take the story from Matthew of the birth of Jesus. The infancy narrative in Matthew is in some ways different from Luke’s version: no shepherds in the fields, no Gabriel appearing to Mary. But Matthew has the Wise Men and the Star in the East, Herod and the slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem, and the flight into Egypt. And in Matthew the focus is on Joseph, the betrothed of Mary. And it is a familiar story. Mary and Joseph are engaged and she is discovered to be with child. Joseph, being an honorable man and wishing to avoid embarrassment to Mary (and might we add embarrassment to himself?) decides to call the whole thing off. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and explains that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Rather than study the content the story, reflect on the feelings of the story. First of all it is a story about being in love. Can we not assume that Mary and Joseph fell in love? Planned marriages based on convenience occurred more among the rich than the poor. Let us assume that Mary and Joseph were simple, good people who loved one another. They then entered together into the extended betrothal period that was the custom. Then it is discovered that Mary is pregnant.

Now what feelings are we dealing with? Imagine Joseph’s sense of betrayal. The woman you are in love with has been with another man. What can be more hurtful than the sense of personal betrayal in love? In Harold Bloom’s new book on Shakespeare, whom he believes to be the greatest writer who ever lived, he stresses that a theme that runs through all of Shakespeare’s plays is the profound and frequently irrational male fear of sexual betrayal. And that is what Joseph is faced with.

A crushing blow. Managing his feelings as best he could, he decided to move on. But then the angel in the dream explains what really happened. If you are Joseph, how then are you to feel? Think of all the strange and complicated feelings people experience today with what science has made possible through in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and who knows what? One’s head spins. Joseph’s head must have been spinning. How do you deal with the reality that your espoused is a virgin, is carrying the child of another, who just happens to be . . . God?

The passion of love, betrayal, and astonishment. And we cannot overlook the paranoia of Herod. In his determination to hold on to power, he orders the murder of hundreds of innocent boy babies in Bethlehem, this dark episode in the Christmas story that we are tempted to overlook. But this is reality. When the powerful get worried, the most vulnerable suffer. Missiles and bombs have rained over Baghdad once more. By the most conservative independent estimates, in the years since sanctions were imposed on Iraq, 239,000 children under the age of five have died due to malnutrition, wasting and dysentery. This is triple the level before 1990. No matter who is to blame, the innocent this Christmas are still suffering on an unimaginable scale.

The Christmas story is about passion. It is about the turmoil that occurs when God enters our lives. We prefer, I think, a religion that domesticates God. We see our goal as to keep our lives in order - home, family, comfort, security, predictability, and so on - and we want a religion that will hold system together: work, family, community, church. That is perfectly understandable, sensible, even wise.

But when God enters our lives, our world is turned on its head. Our sense of security, control and predictability, mean nothing to God. The experience of the Holy is completely unmanageable. God is like the guest who comes and transforms the household.

One of the beauties of the Christmas story is that it brings all this right down to earth. It says that God comes into our lives like a little baby. Can you think of any newcomer that has more impact on the life of a household than a new baby? What is more beloved for a man and woman than a newborn child in their midst? And yet what is more disruptive to their lifestyle than this beloved one? Try getting a good night’s sleep? Try finding some time alone? Try getting a work schedule settled on? This little one is both totally vulnerable and needy and totally demanding and always the center of attention. No one is ever, ever fully prepared for what the coming of a new baby means (no matter what they tell you!)

And so it is with God. God enters our lives in order to change them. That is the point. That is the purpose. That is the passion, a word that includes pain in its meaning. It is the pain of the necessary disruption love brings with it. That is the passion of being in love. Did Joseph have any idea what he was getting into when he was betrothed to Mary? I don’t think so. But yet a love entered his life that transcended and transformed any notion they had of marital love, of betrayal, of fatherhood and motherhood, even of family. At the heart of it all was the passionate and powerful love of God that interrupted us in Jesus, and that love is ready to interrupt you and me again.

Paul’s proclamation of Jesus Christ is a passionate outburst of appreciation, excitement, and hope. The routine is broken forever. The categories and arrangements of this world are overturned, rearranged or dispensed with. They represent a past that is gone. "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come," cries Paul. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. Amen.