The Rev. Kathi Johnson
9 July 2017
Text: Romans 7:15-25a
Back in the days when I was a
young teacher in a Lutheran parochial school, I re-discovered Paul’s Epistle
(or letter) to the Romans. I had heard it read before, but had never really
listened. I had read it for myself, but had never really paid attention.
Martin Luther loved the
Epistle to the Romans. He believed it to be the purest explanation of the good
news of God’s love for us, and he thought that people should read and meditate
on the book of Romans every single day.
So, there I was, the Chapel
Coordinator for a large Lutheran school and, one week for chapel, I had to
preach on Romans 7. This chapter, in part, describes the Apostle Paul’s
struggle: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” he
says. “I can will what is right, but
I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do.”
And, encountering my own
inward struggle with my own sinfulness, I began to think about how to present
this text to a large crowd of 6th-12th graders.
I preached on a large stage
in the cafetorium, and on chapel days, there was a big cross on that stage. I
recruited a couple of my braver students to chase me around the stage, trying
to stick post-it notes on me – post-it notes which had sins written on them
(which I somehow had explained to the assembly beforehand). Those kids chased
me around for what felt like an eternity, but really was maybe a minute and a
half, and, in that minute and a half, I almost felt as though evil was chasing
me around that stage, until –
I threw myself at the base of
that cross and shouted out: “Who will rescue me from this body of death?!”
And I think that this is how
many of us find ourselves – we struggle because we do what we know we shouldn’t
do, and we don’t do what we know we should. This is our human condition.
- We say the word that we should keep silent, or we don’t speak up when we should.
- We take the thing that we should just leave sitting right there, or we leave the thing that we should pick up.
- We go over here when our presence is required over there, or we interject ourselves in ways that are unhelpful or downright mean.
- And at our very worst, we kill, we tear down, and we destroy at will.
For I do not do the good I
want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
What I love about this
passage from Romans is that Paul’s anxiety here is real – it’s palpable. He is
struggling within himself and he’s dumping that inward struggle into his letter
to the Romans. He’s writing to a group of Christians in Rome – a group made up
of Jews who are still trying to follow the Law, and Gentiles, who aren’t really
sure where that Law fits in to faith in Jesus Christ. It’s as if Paul here is
trying to comfort the Jews and the Gentiles alike with the news that, as a
good, Jewish man, even though he knows the Law of God quite well, he finds
himself living at odds with that Law quite often.
In an episode of the
political drama, “The West Wing,” a Congressman named Matthew Santos is
speaking to the Democratic National Convention. Before the convention, news has
broken about his opponent’s wife struggling with mental illness. Santos is the
underdog, so his campaign staff explains that the only way he has a chance to
win the nomination is to tear down his opponent by publicly tearing down his
opponent’s wife. Santos is a man of great integrity – and they know this – but
his staff also wants him to play their dirty game so their guy wins.
So, Santos gets to the podium
to make his convention speech, and no one knows what he’s going to say. And he confesses
to the crowd and the television audience what some on his staff and some in the
Democratic leadership have asked him to do – to publicly demean his opponent’s
wife - but that he’s refusing to do that. Why?
“Because,”
he says, “We’re all broken – every single one of us, and yet we pretend that
we’re not. We all live lives of imperfection…”
 |
| Who will rescue us from this body of death? |
And how
helpful it would be if, in real life, we had some sense of not only our individual
brokenness, but our corporate brokenness, too. The word “corporate” comes from
the Latin word that means “body” – and our body is broken. Our humanity is
broken. Our souls are broken. And our world is broken, too. And this is where
we find ourselves, just like Paul, for we do not do the good we want, but the
evil we do not want is what we do.
Who will
rescue us from this body of death?
Paul
himself gives us the answer to his own question. He asks, “Who will rescue me
from this body of death?” and then he proclaims, “Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord!”
But Paul
doesn’t end there, for Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8. “I am convinced,” Paul
says, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Which means that no matter
how much we may frantically run around, trying to outrun the evil that always
finds us – nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.
My grandmother once gave me a
broken seashell. The outside of the shell is rough and pitted. The inside of
the shell is beautifully colored with pink and purple and orange. Granny told
me that a friend had given the shell to her and had said that it was only in
the shell’s brokenness that we can see the beauty inside.
We’re all broken.
But the promises of God
assure us that our brokenness doesn’t end us. Our brokenness doesn’t get the
final word. As people of God, we have within us the powerful and beautiful
Spirit of Christ. And so, through God who loves us, we are able to throw
ourselves into the waiting arms of Jesus – the same Jesus who tells us that
when we are weary of our brokenness, and when we are burdened by the cares of
this world, we can go to him.
Thanks be to God through our
Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
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