Tag: Romans 8

“The Life Giving Breath of the Church”

Psalm 104:34-35, 37  I will sing to Abba God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please Abba God; I will rejoice in Abba God. Bless Abba God, O my soul. Hallelujah!

Introduction

Unintentionally and unwittingly our Christian talk (and God-talk) often sounds as if we’ve forgotten the role of the Spirit in our praxis and doxology (practice and worship). I’m sure many of us, including me, keep the Spirit tucked away back in the recesses of our mind, and we don’t feel like we’re forgetting anything or anyone. I mean, come on, we, Episcopalians, are good Trinitarian, Creedal Christians; we believe in all three persons of the God head. But I get the impression from others—including from myself—that we don’t often take the Holy Spirit—the divine Spirit of God, God in God’s self—seriously. Any form of the pastoral don’t forget about the power of the Spirit is met with yeah, yeah, yeah, the spirit…whatever. (The last part mentioned silently as we turn to continue to do things of our own mind and power.)

Liturgically, the feast day celebrating the arrival of God’s Spirit to dwell in sinner-saints pales in comparison to the way we celebrate Christmas and Easter. Maybe it’s because Pentecost lacks a precursory penitential period like Christmas and Easter; there’s no obvious demand to sit and wait like there is in Advent or an inspiration to fast like there is in Lent. Frankly, this Sunday feels like just another Sunday; once Easter hits, all the BIG feast days are done, now it’s time to relax… Don’t worry, I’m implicated here, too. I’m aware of my own slackened posture toward everything that follows Easter Sunday’s setting sun.

For the Christian Church, the Church doesn’t exist until the Spirit comes, until today. Christmas doesn’t cause it to exist; Easter builds the foundation for it but not the structure. Pentecost establishes the Church in both its seen and unseen expressions; the Spirit is the reason why the Church will never die even if it ceases to exist as it does today. The Spirit is at the core our Christian Identity, both individually and corporately. It is the Spirit who brings all of us together in sibling like unity while celebrating our radiant and beautiful differences is certainly divine work, as Paul says,

Romans 8:14-17

For whoever is guided/carried by the Spirit of God, these ones are sons [children] of God (v.14). Paul, addressing the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Roman, declares to both parties that anyone (“whoever”) has the divine Spirit of God is by default a child (“son”) of God. It is these ones who were indebted to the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of the flesh (clean/unclean; wise/foolish; free/slave), who are now indebted to the Spirit.[1] In this way, their obligations to and association with others must take on a different vibe: one informed by and structured on the unity created by the Holy Spirit. [2] Another way to say this is, Christian Romans—both Jew and Gentile—are dependent on the Holy Spirit for their identification with Christ and their union with God by faith and this makes them more than just a group of individuals; it makes them one body.

Paul goes further, though. It is the Spirit, according to Paul, that makes those who follow The Way of Christ, family. Thus, why Paul then says, For you did not receive a spirit of captivity again into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption by which we cry out, “Papa, Father!” (v. 15). The divine Spirit, who is the source of their identity as “Christ followers” and of their union with God, is the one who ensures that whoever is carried by the spirit, whoever is dependent on the Spirit can call God “Papa!” (By the Spirit, God becomes “Papa!” and is the one you run to in distress rather than flee because of fear.[3]) The theme of adoption Paul employs here carries with it the legal connotation familiar to the Roman society: a person who is not related to you by birth is designated as one’s heir.[4] According to Paul, and this will sound offensive to us[5] as it probably did to the Jewish Children of Israel, no one is a child of God by birth (creation) but only by adoption through the presence of the Holy Spirit,[6] …the same Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God (v. 16).

Does this mean that the “children of God” are only Christians, and it is these who are worthy of love, life, liberation?[7] The answer to that is “No.” Recalling v. 14, For whoever is guided/carried by the Spirit of God, these are sons/children of God, the “whoever” expands the definition, broadens the scope from those who look, act, are a certain way to whoever is so imbued with God’s Spirit and whoever thusly acts like children of God (cf. Romans 2).[8] Said in another way, those who love/anyone who loves those who and that which God loves are the children of God because to love as God loves is the result of the presence of God who is love.[9] Concurrently, Paul is talking to a community threatening division over identities,[10] to this Paul says, Stop it! You are all the children of God, no group more so than the other; we are all children of God who have this same Spirit affirming us and helping us all to cray out “Papa, Father!” (Αββα ὁ πατήρ being both Aramaic and Greek father addresses[11]). Thus, their obligations are to each other—no matter previous religious affiliation and sex (Paul switches from “sons” (υἱοί) to “children” (τέκνα) or other facets of identity[12]. If this, then, following John from last week, those outside of the church will know these ones follow Christ and encounter Christ thus God through the community in unity’s witness in the world by the power of the Spirit.[13]

Our passage ends with Paul saying, Now if children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs of Christ, if we suffer together/are affected by the same thing so that also we might be glorified (v. 17). According to Paul, those who are guided/carried by the Spirit of God, are those who become children of God, who have God as their Abba, Parent, and are those who are joint-heirs with Christ. Heirs of what? Well, not heirs of the honor and glory and power offered by the kingdom of Humanity, but of suffering. What type of suffering? Well, the suffering that Christ suffered. Those who are children of God are siblings of Christ and if siblings than they will also speak and act in the world as Christ did and this brings suffering and not human defined glory and success. Why? Because Christ didn’t identify with the strong and powerful, but with the weak and powerless and this, by faith and the power of the Holy Spirit yoking us into the family of Christ and God, means that we identity with the least of these, too, as Christ did;[14] in this way, we do not create our own glory defined by the kingdom of humanity, but receive glory from God in the reign of God.[15] How the disciples of Christ, the Church, treat the most disenfranchised and oppressed of society, speaks to their identification with Christ and whether or not the Spirit is present in and among them.

Conclusion

Every Sunday, we say this about the Spirit:

We believe in God within us, 
the Holy Spirit burning with Pentecostal fire,
life-giving breath of the Church, 
Spirit of healing and forgiveness,
source of resurrection and of eternal life.

This is no small declaration. God dwells within us in the Spirit, who inflames our hearts and bodies to participate in God’s mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation, the Spirit is the means by which we are healed and how forgiveness (both God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others) is worked out, and it is the Spirit that is credited with our daily resurrection and the the hope we carry of our bodily resurrection into eternal life at the time of death. The Spirit is the “life giving breath of the Church”; in other words, without the Spirit there is no Church. Our first reading highlights this point: Peter and those with him receive the Spirit and can now speak in different languages thus proclaiming the good news of God that is the incarnate word of Jesus the Christ. From here, the church begins to be a thing in the world, a place carved into time and space to make room for an encounter with God in the event of faith through Jesus preached and, by the power of the Spirit, Christ heard. It is by the Spirit that people, from anywhere and everywhere, can gather and be one as Christ and Abba God are one and be made into the representatives of Christ in the world (ref. John 17). It is by the Spirit that these people so gathered can grow into the likeness of Christ, to become those who can hear the leading of God’s will on earth as it is in heaven and follow the divine footsteps toward the beloved who are fighting to survive in any generation (ref. John 16). It is by the Holy Spirit that the ones so gathered can become the mature Christians of Ephesians who find themselves flexible in receiving and responding to God’s continuous self-disclosure even when it contradicts the kingdom of humanity (ref. Ephesians 4). And it is by the power of this Spirit of Love, that those who hear and gather can consider themselves to be God’s children, thus heirs with Christ of all that is of Abba God.

[1] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 139. “Although he does not explicitly state the further implication of no longer being debtors to the flesh, it is clear form what he has said previously that we are debtors instead to the spirit.”

[2] Lancaster, Romans, 139. “When we leave the law of sin and death to follow the law of Spirit and life, we exchange one set of obligations for another. Our new obligations are established not by a system of patronage but by being brothers and sisters in Christ, children of God. This relationship is what determines our responsibilities to one another.”

[3] LW 25:358. “For in the spirit of fear it is not possible to cry, for we can scarcely open our mouth or mumble. But faith expands the heart, the emotions, and the voice, but fear tightens up all these things and restricts them, as our experience amply testifies. Fear does not say Abba but rather it hates and flees form the Father as from an enemy and mutters against him as a tyrant. For those people who are in the spirit of fear and not int eh sprit of adoption do not taste how sweet he Lord is…but rather He appears to them as a harsh and hard, and int heir heart they call Him a virtual tyrant, although with the mouth they call Him Father…”

[4] Lancaster, Romans, 139. “To further stress the relationship of being brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul uses the image of adoption, a legal practice in roman society of designating someone who is not one’s physical offspring to be one’s heir.”

[5] Lancaster, Romans, 140. The modern conception of “children of God” based on our being all created as God’s children is not the image Paul has. “…Paul speaks of being children of God by adoption, not by creation. Although it does capture and expand concern about our obligations toward one another, this understanding of all humans as children of God does not help to understand what Paul means in these verses.”

[6] Lancaster, Romans, 140. “The status of child of God is not given to all humans simply by virtue of being human. It belongs specifically to those who have been led into this relationship by the Spriit.”

[7] Lancaster, Romans, 140. “The idea that ‘children of God’ is a more restricted group than all humans leads to the question about who belongs in that group.”

[8] Also building here from Dorothee Sölle’s conception that anyone who identifies with the least of these and meets their real, tangible, physical need are those who represent Christ to humanity. See her Christ the Representative.

[9] LW 25:358-359. Shifting from spirit of fear to spirit of love can only happen if “we have His spirit, so that in the same spirit we love the same things which He loves and hate the things which He hates in the same way that He does. For we cannot love those things which God loves unless we have the love and will and spirt which He has. …And those people are called godlike men and sons of God because they are led by the Spirit of God.”

[10] Lancaster, Romans, 140. “Paul is still addressing the whole community (‘you’ plural and ‘we’). His intent is not to break down community in competition over who is a child of God and who is not, but rather to underscore the new community we have when we are in Christ.”

[11] Lancaster, Romans, 142. “…Paul has included both the Aramaic and Greek forms of address to God. The inclusion of both languages makes sense in a community made up of Greek and Jewish followers of Jesus, and since both words indicate the adopted status of the ones who cry out, each group needs to recognize its common inheritance with the other. Because the word ‘heir’ calls to mind Paul’s discussion of inheritance regarding God’s promise to Abraham (4:13-14) the direct address to God in both Aramaic and Greek reinforces the common spiritual ancestry of the followers of Jesus, whether they may be Jew or Gentile. Neither group has a lesser place in the community, and they need to see and treat each other equally as brothers and sisters in Christ.”

[12] Lancaster, Romans, 141. Word play in Greek between huiothesias and huioi “The Greek wordplay between “sons” and “son-making” also calls to mind that in 8:3 Paul says God sent the Son into the world to deal with sin. Through Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, we come adopted sons and therefore join heirs with Christ. The masculine language in Greek has a purpose in connecting all these ideas, but Paul drops the masculine language in 8:16-17 to speak instead of ‘children’ (tekna). By shifting to language that is not gender -specific, Paul makes clear that women as well as men are heirs with Christ, thus breaking down on of the traditional hierarchical barriers between people in Romans society and opening the way to think of how other barriers are also overcome in Christ. Adoption makes the followers of Jesus kin to one another, brothers and siters in Christ, regardless of their place in society.”

[13] Lancaster, Romans, 141. “The presence of the Spirit in the gathering for worship leads the followers of Jesus to cry out to God as a parent, confirming that they are not slaves but children of God. Their allegiance to the dominion of the Spirit presents them with a new set of obligations—not obligations of slave to master but rather the obligations of joint heirs because of their common adopted status.”

[14] LW 25:356. “‘To be led by the Spirit of God’ is to put to death our flesh, that is, the old Adam, and to do it freely, promptly, and gladly, that is to despise and renounce all that is not God, even ourselves, and thus ‘not to fear death or the friends of death, the fierce race of penalties,’ and likes ‘to give up the empty pleasures of the world its corrupt and sordid prices,’ and freely to relinquish all good things and embrace evils in their place. This is not characteristic of our nature, but is a work of the Spirit of God in us.”

[15] Lancaster, Romans, 142. “Of course, the inheritance that joint heirs with Christ receive comes through being baptized into his death. Suffering comes before glory. Just as the son took on the vulnerability of weakness, which brings social shame, the joint-heirs with Christ must give up the mindset of the flesh that would seek glory in status and power and instead follow the Son’s example of accepting the suffering that accompanies weakness in order to gain a more secure glory. The passive ‘be glorified’ indicates that glory is not ours to be own, but rather it is God’s to give.”

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Fracturing the Stagnant

Psalm 105:1-3 Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make known God’s deeds among the peoples. Sing to God, sing praises to God, and speak of all God’s marvelous works. Glory in God’s holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek God rejoice.

Introduction

So far in chapter 8 of Romans, we’ve covered a few things:

8:1-11: We started the chapter learning “So then at this very time [there is] not one punishment following condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,”[1] (v.1). This is the controlling thought for the chapter. Those who love God because they have been loved by God need not fear the law and its ability to condemn because they trust God by faith and love God. The law is exposed as weak by our inability to do it because it only tells us “do this” and “don’t do that”, but it cannot cause us to do it. Also, we found out—during Good Friday—we broke the law by not listening and loving Christ—God incarnate—and by forcing the law to condemn an innocent man. Here, Paul told us, when we’re dead set on living according to the flesh then we will judge according to the flesh. Then Paul is quick to usher us out of our tombs into Easter life by reminding us that Pentecost happened, and God’s Spirit is in us and thus we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit desiring the things of the Spirit which is the heart and mind of God. Effectually, Paul reminds that even though we sentenced Jesus because we were stuck in the flesh, God’s love knows no limits and cannot be hindered not even by death and in Christ’s resurrection God demonstrates that God’s love is always and forever and we’re exposed, but the twist is that we’re not pushed away and rejected. Rather, we’re exposed and ushered into God’s presence and accepted; this is true love, mercy, and grace. Then…

8:12-25: Paul builds up the mercy, grace, and love of God for us and exhorted us to live into our adoption by faith in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we live (in the world) as God’s own beloved children. Paul drew the line in the sand, “For if you are living according to the flesh, you intend to die; but if [you are living according to] the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This is not about now reverting to the law and living according to condemnation, fear, threat, and self-induced purity and piety—this is returning to the “the spirit of slavery brought again into fear”. Rather, “you received a spirit of adoption by which we cry aloud: ‘Abba, Elder!’” Returning to a life where you’re in service to the law will enslave you to fear and condemnation, deny liberation, which is the product of God’s love and life in you given by God’s grace and mercy. So, Paul is not exhorting you to turn in and focus on your sins, rather you are to focus on things of life, love, liberation and bringing God close to those who think God can’t be close to them. Plus, Paul explains, if we return to law and fear, we will not run to God but away from God. Rather, we’re to run to God, cry out for Abba!, and have hope because hope is a byproduct of love.

So, Paul says further,

Romans 8:26-39

Now, in like manner the Spirit takes hold with us in our weakness; for we do not perceive what we should pray according to what is necessary but the same Spirit intercedes for inexpressible groaning…Now, we perceive that all things work together toward good for the ones who love God who are being called according to [God’s] purpose…Therefore what will we speak to these things? If God [is] on our behalf, who [is] against us? God who spared not God’s own son but committed him on our behalf, how [is it] absolutely out of the question that also with him God will give freely all things to us? …  in all these things we prevail mightily through the one who loved us. (Rom 8:26, 28, 31-32, 37)

Building from the discussion on God’s love for us and our love for God provoking hope that motivates us now, Paul speaks to the Spirit helping us to pray in our weakness—not perceiving how to pray rightly. In other words, we pray and the Spirit takes those sounds and words—the inexpressible groaning—and molds them into prayers coinciding with the Spirit of God—the same one who searches the heart and mind of the beloved. To pray, according to Paul, is to speak to God in alignment with the Spirit of God. This means an exposure and realignment to God and God’s Spirit—when we pray, we dare to allow God to shape our words and our hearts to reflect God’s love, life, and liberation—no matter what we pray for.[2] In this way as we pray, we find ourselves in the realm of the proclamation of Christ, are exposed and accepted, and brought further into God’s mercy and grace. Thus, we begin to pray aligned to Christ’s self-witness. This is not about bombarding the door to the divine thrown room with incessant heartless repetition of words; [3] rather, it’s about finding yourself before God praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven—advocating for the neighbor. When we’re aligned to Christ, the Spirit takes hold of our desires and wishes and forms them in accordance with the will of God: divinely twisted prayers seeking and searching for life, love, and liberation for the entire cosmos.

Next, Paul dares to say, all things work together for good for those who love God. Now, this isn’t about having your entire life go well and comfortably. It’s also not about winning or always finding yourself on victory’s side. It’s not even about liking things that happen as if this good was for you (privatized salvation (God’s acceptance and presence); privatized blessing). Rather, this’s about God’s word of life, love, and liberation as the absolute last word, the absolute good (deprivatized salvation; deprivatized blessing). Conjoined to what came before—the Spirit taking hold with us in our weakness and forming our prayers because we lack perception—we gain the perception that every little action reaching toward life, love, and liberation even when things are a massive dumpster fire threatening cosmic existence, will work toward good, toward love, life and liberation. Here we have hope to see all things are possible with God.[4]

Then, Paul moves on to say affirming all things working together for those who love God, “If God is on our behalf, who is against us?” If God is the author of love, life, and liberation in general and specifically even when God committed God’s son on our behalf and we responded with judgment according to the flesh which led to the death of God’s son, then who or what can be against us? Who is bigger than God? What is more powerful than love? Hate? No, because hate gives way to love because it’s made of the same stuff in the negative. Indifference? It has no power but rather consumes power and love wins over indifference every time. What is bigger than life? Death? No, God demonstrated that not even death can conquer life. What is more profound than liberation? Nothing, because not even a bit of captivity will ever let you be you. And if God is the source of life, love, and liberation and God is on our behalf and we’re on God’s behalf, then should we return to a spirit of fear? Should we then return to the law to find our justification with God? Should we then intentionally miss the mark just because? Should we perpetuate death and destruction as if we’re saved from hell and that is all that matters? Should we roll over and declare everything is impossible? Μὴ γένοιτο! Anything is possible with God; herein does the good find its way, cutting through the muck and mire of humans dead set on the flesh and death.

Conclusion

Beloved, we’re exhorted by Paul in chapter 8 to press into the divine life that is with us, among us, and in us. We’re exhorted to live as those who trust God, as those who are inspired by the divine Spirit, as those who have been forgiven and who forgive, as those who can carry God’s mercy and grace forward into the world. We’re to pray as we’re led to pray—asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven—and knowing that when we pray the Spirit intercedes for us, molding and shaping our hearts, minds, and bodies in accordance with that will. We do not need to pray perfectly or repetitively; only simply. In this way, as we move about the world, we become those who can bring God close to those who are pushed far off, rejected, declared unlovable, those still held hostage and captive by unjust systems and structures. We get to be the ones who declare by word and deed God’s life, love, and liberation, to represent Christ into the world today, to participate in the fracturing the stagnant “this is all there is” and resisting lethargy, declaring confidently and defiantly to a world set on death and fear, “No, there is more here than meets the eye, for all things are possible for God who works all things together for the good of all, the Beloved, whom God loves!!”

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] LW 25, 365. “Hence it results that when we pray to God for something, whatever these things may be, and He hears our prayers and begins to give us what we wish, He gives in such a way that He contravenes all of our conceptions, that is our ideas, so that He may seem to us to be more offended after our prayers and to do less after we have asked than he did before. And He does all this because it is the nature of God first to destroy and tear down whatever is in us before He gives us His good things…”

[3] LW 25, 366. “These people [those who do not have this understanding of God and God’s will] trust in their own pious intention and presume that they are seeking, willing, and praying rightly and worthily for all things. Therefore when what they have thought of does not immediately come to them, they go to pieces and fall into despair, thinking that God either does not hear them or does not wish to grant their requests, when they should have hoped all the more confidently…”

[4] LW 25, 365. “And we’re capable of receiving His works and His counsels only when our own counsels have ceased and our works have stopped and we’re made purely passive before God, both with regard to our inner as well as our outward activity…Therefore when everything is hopeless for us and all things begin to go against our prayers and desires, then those unutterable groans begin…For unless the Spirit were helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for.”

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We Hope Because We Are Loved

Psalm 139:22-23 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts. Look well whether there be any wickedness in me and lead me in the way that is everlasting.

Introduction

God’s love liberates those God loves, the beloved. Good news! The Beloved is YOU! The beloved is everyone in your pew; the beloved is the person who just drove by; the beloved is each person. This is so because God’s love claims as God’s own all whom God loves—love turns the enemies of God into the beloved of God, flipping flagstones of the distance between God and the beloved, one by one, changing the space from enmity to beloved. And where love stakes claim, where love is, there God is because God is love and love loves the beloved and resides in and with and among the beloved.[1] The divine image is less about particular physical features of the flesh of the outer person, and more about the shared divine features of the spirit of the inner person. Thus, in the advent of God in the incarnated Word—Jesus the Christ[2]—the broadness of God and God’s love is made manifest for and among humanity, for and with each of us. “Furthermore, not only is the Christian a temple of God,” writes Gustavo Gutierrez, “every [person] is.”[3] It is not about our abilities and what we can do, it is not even about our talents or what makes us special; the divine image is born in and by love because those who are encountered by God in the event of faith are born again in love—this love is not only the amniotic fluid from which we burst forth, but is the genetic code of our being, the fuel of our actions, and the framework of our presence in the world. It is the spiritual and the material; it is the inner and outer; it is the entirety of cosmos. It is how we now see others: through the lens of divine love because God is in us in the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling in us. So, love is in us, and we love those whom God loves.

And, as we know, this love liberates. To believe and trust that God loves you—as you are, where you are—is to have faith that God is trustworthy, the one who has and does follow through. Faith justifies because it does what the law—all twisted up by us, by our inability—could not do: cause us to move closer to God. In other words, this faith justifies because it anchors us in God’s love where the law drew thick lines in the sand. But even though the law was exposed as weak (because of our weakness and inability), it does not mean the law is now (or was) “bad” or pointless; rather the law is good and is pointfull because it serves us in service to our neighbor.

So, for this reason, Paul boldly says,

Romans 8:12-25

Therefore, Siblings, at this time we are debtors not to the flesh in order to live according to the flesh. For, if you are living according to the flesh you intend to die; but, if [you are living according to] the spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For how many are brought to the Spirit of God, they, they are children of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery [brought] again into fear but you received a spirit of adoption by which we cry aloud “Abba, Elder!”

Rom. 8: 12-15

Those who are encountered by God in the event of faith are the ones reborn of God’s life, love, and liberation; they are liberated, freed, loosed, released from captivity, and no longer held by chains. So, Paul says, you’re not to return to a spirit of fear—as if slaves to the law—but into a spirit of intimate, personal relationship with God—as a child to a parent.[4] God is not to be feared; God is to be loved—this is Paul’s point. So, do not return to the law to qualify your relationship with God. God is to be loved, and this means God can only be served rightly by a response of love, which is faith. God is not served by mere law obedience; if so, then we would be “debtors to the flesh” and justified by our works and it would put the entire kit and kaboodle in our laps—we could lose it all, and this fosters both fear and exhaustion leading to abandoning God in heart and body because God is scary and never near, untouchable.[5]

But, from what we’ve learned in Romans, God is *very* accessible, touchable: God desires to hold, comfort you; to walk with, run with, sit with you; to laugh, cry, weep, get angry, and die on account of your missing the mark. Jesus, God’s Christ sent for God’s people, demonstrated to us that God is not to be held distantly as a holy relic of fearful worship, not to be adored from afar as if only a deity for the clean, or feared as in brought to terror. Rather, God—as Christ represented God—is a God of being close and intimate, willing to be made “unclean”, willing to go into the depths of humanity, willing to contend with death; this God, is the one who loves even when we’ve radically missed the mark (Good Friday) and shows us that even in the law of death—the aspirations of the flesh—God’s love triumphs by moving around and through death and summoning the dead to life and liberation (Easter).

It’s this God we call “Abba”, not because of fear and threat, but because of love and promise. We do not call God “Abba” because God is terrifying; we can only God “Abba” when this is the one we would run to, climb into the lap of, want to be around just because. To shriek[6] “Abba!” is to know the one we run to in our need, bombarded by world-induced-fear, and in the troubledness of the conscience. Fear would beckon us into the anything “not God”; love beckons us into nothing else but God.[7]

Here in, embedded in faith, is our hope. Hope, like faith, is not in what is seen but anchors in what is unseen now. We hope because we love; we hope because we’re loved. It’s about now. Our longing for God—straining forward, eager expectation, awaiting eagerly, looking for—is the source of our hope. All who are encountered by God in the event of faith are burdened with the longing expectation that is hope, because we’re born of the love of God and that love is not static but dynamic. It drives us forward from one day to another; it causes us to feel the plight of neighbor, to identify with those who hurt and suffer as Christ identified with them—in soul and body. We want what God wants because we’re God’s children, sharing in God’s likeness. We can’t not hope; we’ve become one with hope because we’re one with God, and we’ve become one with whom God loves: the neighbor.[8] So we hope because we love and because with God anything is possible because faith expands our hearts and minds because we share in the mind and heart of God.

Conclusion

Hope feels dastardly right now. But to love is to hope because to love is to risk vulnerability of feeling another person’s pain, like a child-bearer feels the pain of their child no matter how old that child gets. I think the problem is that we’ve conflated future expectation and present hope. Reading through the First Testament and the stories of Israel’s journey and walk with God, Israel’s hope in God is a ripe present hope based on historical stories hallmarking the past: we hope now because God has done… Today we can press on because yesterday God saw us through it.

So, Paul is telling us that hope is about God; hope is more about what God has done and the trust that is born from those stories, and that faith. If we allow God to be God (the Creator) and humans to be humans (the created, the creature) then what the future is, is God’s alone because time is in God. And we can be here, now. We can’t declare what is impossible or possible. The only terminology we’re given to speak of tomorrow is the language of yesterday’s possibility. What is is never all there is, thus we live in the collision of the impossible and possible performing revolutionary resistance to the powers threatening to take our lives and the lives of our neighbors (material, spiritual, social, sexual, financial, political, etc.).

Here in is hope’s realm. Here in is hope’s shriek, “Abba!”

Hope always takes up residence in the present with every anthology of the past stacked against her walls. Hope whispers to us: what is right now, isn’t all there is right now; there’s more here than meets the eye; all things are possible with God. Hope latches on to possibility. Hope has eyes to see this one step and not that one just changed everything. Hope has the ears to hear the whisper filled wind of history surging and coursing around our fatigued bodies. If I’ve made it this many days, to this spot, can I make it one more? It’s possible.

[1] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973. p.190. “The Biblical God is close to [humanity]; [God] is a God of communion with and commitment to [humanity].”

[2] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193. “Christ is the point of convergence of both processes. In him, in his personal uniqueness, the particular is transcended and the universal becomes concrete. In him, in his Incarnation, what is personal and internal becomes invisible. Henceforth, this will be true, in one way or another, of every [person].”

[3] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193.

[4] LW 25, 356. “…the spirit of slavery is contrasted with the spirit of sonship, and servile fear with filial love. Hence this term ‘slavery’ ought to be taken in the abstract, so that, if it is permissible to say it, the term ‘slavery’ is derived from slave as ‘sonship’ is from son.”

[5] LW 25, 357. “Second, this spirit is called the spirit of fear because this slavish fear also compels men to give up their outward obedience to the works of the Law in the time of trial. This fear ought to be called a worldly fare rather than a slavish fear, for it is not a matter of fulfilling the Law but he slavish fear of losing temporal goods or of suffering impending evils, and thus even wore than slavish fear.”

[6] Κράζομεν verb: present active indicative, 1st person plural. “We scream”, “we cry aloud”, “we shriek” (first principle part: κράζω

[7] LW 25, 358. “‘Now that you have been freed, you have not received this spirit of fear a second time, but rather the spirit of sonship in trusting faith.’ And he describes this faith in most significant words, namely, when we cry Abba! Father! For in the spirit of fear it is not possible to cry, for we can scarcely open our mouth or mumble. But faith expands the heart, the emotions, and the voice, but fear tightens up all these things and restricts them…”

[8] LW 25, 364. “Thus love transforms the lover into the beloved. Thus hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for, but what is hoped for does not appear. Therefore hope transfers him into the unknown, the hidden, and the dark shadows, so that he does not even know what he hopes for, and yet he knows what he does not hope for. Thus the soul has become hope and at the same time the thing hoped for, because it resides in that which it does not see, that is, in hope. If this hope were seen, that is, if the one who hopes and the thing hoped for mutually recognized each other, then he would no longer be transferred into the thing hoped for, that is, into hope and the unknown, but he would be carried away to things seen, and he would enjoy the known.”

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According to the Spirit

Psalm 119: 105, 111-112 Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path. Your decrees are my inheritance for ever; truly, they are the joy of my heart. I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes for ever and to the end.

Introduction

Paul is faithfully walking us through the depths of divinely gifted grace, mercy, and faith—the material expression of divine love. Faith surges forth from God’s love, plumbs the depths of human existence and returns to God’s love, carrying with it God’s beloved, you. There’s nothing you can do to fracture that love because it’s not yours to fracture and you didn’t cause it; you are the beloved because God declares you to be the beloved, because God loves you without a why or wherefore. When you believe this love is for you, this is faith: faith accepts God’s promise as true, bringing glory and honor to God, proving God truthful—worthy to be trusted. This is loving God for God’s self. Just love… pure, unrestricted, uncalculated, unconditional love. This is the type of love noted by the popular Mumford and Sons song, “Sigh No More”,

Love, it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment
A cry of my heart to see
The beauty of love as it was made to be[1]

Love is the great alignment; love aligns us to itself because love liberates. Love aligns us to God because God is love and the source of love; and in this alignment we are aligned to our neighbor and ourselves. We love others and we love ourselves. Blemishes and all; meager attempts to change and all; hot beginnings and tepid endings (or the reverse) … love, God’s love, bears all things. This is why Paul can say in Romans 8,

Romans 8:1-11

So then at this very time [there is] not one punishment following condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life liberated you in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. [2]

(Rom. 8:1-2)

There is, in other words, no condemnation for those who trust God, who consider God trustworthy. This means that the person and being of the human being who misses the mark, isn’t categorically worse than one who has not missed the mark. It is not that those who trust God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit are now without sin as if they do not sin. Rather, it’s about being exempted from condemnation for sinning; because the believer is justified by faith apart from works, even bad ones…even good ones! While there still maybe be “horizontal consequences” for missing the mark, with God, with Love, it is not determinate of being God’s beloved. Thus, Paul continues,

For the powerlessness of the law by which it was weak according to the flesh, God sent God’s own son in the form of sinful flesh and on behalf of sin condemned sin in the flesh so that the commands of the law might be fulfilled in us, not for those who walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Rom. 8:3-4)

The law, according to Paul, is not able to grant the necessary strength to fulfill it (to do the law); the law is powerless to make one obey its commands. In this way the law is made weak, exposed as weak according to flesh—our inability to do it. The law can only declare what’s to be done and what’s not to be done, but the law cannot cause the law to be fulfilled and upheld. Only love can do that.[3] Even if the law is fulfilled in deed while the heart and mind grumble—lacking love—this is not fulfilling the law because there is no love and it’s dry, heartless service to the law. We are in the thick of serving ourselves, and only ourselves.[4]

So, if the law is placed as a door granting access to God only if it is completed or fulfilled, then there’s no access because not only can we not do it rightly and fully, but the law cannot grant the power to do so. Thus, it can only deny entrance. However, God’s love exceeds the law, herein is mercy, grace, and freedom from the demand to do anything else but just love in response. Mercy and Grace eclipse the law because God’s love can move around the law to the one being commanded and usher that one into God’s love as the beloved. This is what Christ did: God sent God’s Son, Jesus, to be the representation of God and God’s love in the world, to be the door (the way, truth, and life) to God and God’s love, to show those who walked according to the flesh how to walk according to the Spirit.

How did Jesus’s life and death demonstrate this? By his resurrection. Here’s the key: Paul writes,

For those who exist/live according to the flesh, they judge/observe the things of the flesh, but the ones who [exist/live] according to the Spirit, [judge/observe] the things of the Spirit. For the aspiration of the flesh [is] death, but the aspiration of the Spirit [is] life and peace. On the very account that the aspiration of the flesh [is] hostility toward God, for it is not submitted to the law of God, indeed it cannot; now those who exist/live in the flesh are not able to please God.

(Rom. 8:5-8)

First, what is God’s law? To love God and to love the neighbor (these two are one; the ten break into these two). Working all the way back to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, what happens? Jesus’s baptism. Who speaks? God. What does God say? “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (or some rendition). Fast-forward to Jesus’s trial: whom do we release and whom do sentence? Barabbas and Jesus, respectively. Thus, in this moment it is highlighted that the law is not kept in two ways: we sentenced God’s son to the cross—the one who spoke to us about love—and we clearly did not listen to him. We chose our own wisdom over God’s and determined who was in and who was out, who was to live and who was to die—this is judging according to the flesh, and the aspiration of the flesh is death.[5] Judging according to the flesh, we forced the law to do the very thing it was not supposed to do: condemn to death an innocent man who was our neighbor and condemn God. In this, Christ bore our sinfulness (fully) took it into himself, took on the guilt that was not his[6]—the Sinless one became the sinful one, identifying fully with all those oppressed and marginalized by the judgment of the flesh and the worshipping of law at the expense of God and neighbor—to the point of blatant hostility toward both.[7]

But God! Exclaims Paul:

But you, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so then the Spirit of God dwells in you…Now, if Christ [is] in you, then the body is dead concerning sin, and the Spirit is alive concerning righteousness. Now if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ form the dead will make [you] alive…

(Rom. 8:9, 10-11a)

What happens after Jesus died? God resurrects Jesus. This is the vindication of the righteous life of Christ that becomes (mercifully and graciously) ours by faith alone. It is in this crazy story of Christ being resurrected where we see the ultimate act of divine love, mercy, and grace: we are exposed, yet we are summoned forward into God’s love and not into God’s condemnation. Not only did we not get what we deserved (mercy) we received something we did not deserve (grace); this *is* the epitome of the actuality of divine love for you, for us. By divine mercy and grace calling us forward out death and into (new) life, how do we do anything but run to the very arms of God, and throw ourselves against Abba, loving God for God’s sake because we were first loved? [8] And here, in the lap of God, embraced by and embracing God, the law is done.[9] It is silenced; it has no stake here because love is bigger than the law and love is the point. Here, the law returns to its rightful spot: a means by which we serve our neighbor in love, mercy, and grace (sometimes by obeying it and sometimes by breaking it).

Conclusion

We are called to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the Flesh. This is not about “not sinning” this about showing mercy and grace and love to those who are held far off, those who cannot do right by society, those who are condemned already, and those who are oppressed and ostracized. The law is not bad, but when we use it defend our desires or mold the world or other people according to our judgment according to the flesh, it becomes bad and a means to exacerbate our sickness of othering, casting out, eliminating, condemning, determining the livelihoods of bodies not ours.

Walking according to the Spirit is not about elevating this or that commandment or decree; it’s about love, it’s about mercy, grace, forgiveness and absolution. It’s about loving God and loving our neighbor just because.[10] It’s about seeing the other person standing—vulnerably and humbly—before you, and giving them space to just be. Love will always liberate. Mercy will grant life. Grace will provoke love. And there we go around again.

Beloved, you are loved. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Loved. And when you forget look to the cross, because Christ died and rose again to bring you the fullness of new life. And then go love as you’ve been loved.

[1] Mumford and Sons “Sigh No More” Sigh No More 2010.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted; “Sin” is also “missing the mark”

[3] LW 25, 345. “Therefore, unless faith gives the light and love makes us free, no man can either have or do anything good, but only evil, even when he performs the good.”

[4] LW 25, 346. “But nature set for itself no object but itself toward which it is borne and toward which it is directed; it sees, seeks, and works only toward itself in all matters, and it passes by all other things and even God Himself in the midst, as if it did not see them and is directed only toward itself.”

[5] LW 25, 345. Human nature “…in particular cases human nature knows and wills what is good but in general neither knows nor wills it. The reason is that it knows nothing but its own good, or what is good and honorable and useful for itself, but not what is good for God and other people. Therefore it knows and wills more what is particular, yes, only what is an individual good.” And, “This curvedness is now natural for us, a natural wickedness and a natural sinfulness. Thus man has no help from this natural powers, but he needs the aid of some power outside of himself. This is love, without which he always sins against the Law ‘You shall not covet,’ that is, turn nothing on yourself fand seek nothing for yourself but live, do, and think all things for God alone. For then a man will know the good in every way along with all particular good things, and he will judge all things. Thus the law is impossible for us.”

[6] LW 25, 349. “For the sin by reason of which sin in the flesh is condemned is itself the penalty of sin which Christ took into His own flesh which was without sin, yet for the sake of the penalties of sin He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. Therefore sin which is in the flesh of all other people is condemned because of the sin of Him in whose flesh there was no sin.”

[7] LW 25, 344. “It is certainly true that the law of nature is known to all men and that our reason does speak for the best things, but what best things? It speaks for the best not according to God but according to us, that is, for things that are good in an evil way. For it seeks itself and its own in all things, but not God. This only faith does in love.”

[8] LW 25, 346. “For grace has set before itself no other object than God toward which it is carried and toward which it is moving; it sees only Him, it seeks only Him, and it always. Moves toward Him, and all other things which it sees between itself and God is passes by as if it had not seen them and directs itself only toward God.”

[9] LW 25, 348. “Thus the law is fulfilled because God alone is loved. For he who does not fear death because of God, likewise does not love this life more than God, and therefore he inwardly hates himself but loves God above all things. For he who loves God more than himself, surely loves God above all thing, since a person loves nothing as much as himself. But this is impossible for the flesh; for the wisdom of the flesh makes a person love himself above all things, even more than God.”

[10] LW 25, 350. “To be sure, the Law in itself is very good. It is as with a sick man who wants to drink some wine because he foolishly things that his health will return if he does so. No if the doctor, without any criticism of the wine, should say to him: ‘It is impossible for the wine to cure you, it will only make you sicker,’ the doctor is not condemning the wine but only the foolish trust of the sick man in it. For he needs other medicine to get well, so that the then can drink his wine. Thus also our corrupt nature needs another kind of medicine than the Law, by which it can arrive at good health so that it can fulfill the Law.”

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