March 27, 2005

United in Death and Resurrection

Text: Romans 6:3-11

My friend Steve Green tells a story about a time in his son Michael’s life when he was caught chasing a girl in school. The elementary teacher had made it very clear to the students that it was against the rules to chase one another on the playground.

Well, one day on the playground Michael and his friend began to chase a little girl around. The girl escaped only to tell the teacher that she had been chased. The teacher called Michael and the other boy before the class and asked them if they had indeed been chasing this little girl.

The first boy had a quick flash in his eye and responded, “We did, but she asked us to chase her.” Michael was now caught in a dilemma. He recounted his thoughts later to his father saying, “Daddy that answer sounded really good to me. Everything in me wanted to say the same thing and get out of trouble. But then the Jesus in me took over and I told the teacher that she may have asked my friend to chase her, but she hadn’t asked me.”

In many ways all of the Pauline passages we have looked at during Lent ask a question that could be easily posed in Michael’s childlike language. At the end of the day what voice do you listen to in your life, the one that used to possess every fiber of your being or the Jesus inside of you?

I. Should We Keep Sinning?

As we have seen in the other texts from Romans during Lent, Paul’s argument in Romans is highly dependent upon the sacrament of baptism. How appropriate that on the Sunday traditionally set aside for the baptism of new believers that our Easter Celebration text should call us to rejoice in the new life of the resurrection experienced in baptism. How exciting on this day that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that we discover again that the power of the resurrection is not for Jesus only but is an on-going power in the lives of believers.

In our text today, Paul again deals with important themes that dominate the book of Romans: law and grace, death and life, the old aeon and the new aeon, sin and righteousness.

However, Chapter six begins by Paul asking an important question, “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” This is a logical question given Paul’s argument in Romans to this point. If the inadequacy and sin of the law has been confronted by grace, and “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” then a logical conclusion could be drawn that we ought to keep sinning in order that God’s grace and glory would be multiplied.

To give an example, sometimes people will say about my wife Debbie as she puts up with all my crankiness, “Isn’t she a saint? I can’t believe she puts up with and still loves him with all his faults.” According to that line of thought, my contentiousness brings Debbie honor for her patient and enduring love. That being the case, it could be argued as logical that I ought to become even crankier and more difficult to live with because that will only increase her honor in the eyes of others for putting up with an even more difficult spouse.

Paul’s answer to this logic is, “By no means!” Or, “that’s crazy talk!” To continue to sin would only lead to a kind of irrational sinfulness that would make a mockery out of God’s grace. But more importantly, if we continue to sin, then we fail to understand what we participated in as believers when we were baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ.

II. Living into the End

In theological circles the term eschatology refers to the study of “last things.” Most people associate eschatology with folk who draw charts and write books attempting to predict future events based upon the apocalyptic writings in the scripture. Perhaps a better way of thinking eschatologically is to reflect on how we live our lives today pointing toward the end that we believe to be coming – the renewal of all the creation. To live eschatologically means that we are already living into and participating in the future coming of the Kingdom.

For Paul, as we have already seen in Romans, there are two ages or aeons going on at the same time. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus brought into history a new aeon, a new age - the age of God’s Kingdom. We are not simply waiting for the Kingdom to come someday, we are participating today in the present Kingdom as we await its ultimate consummation.

The old aeon is an age dominated by the “principalities and powers.” There is a different language that is spoken by the principalities and powers. The rulers of this age use words like slave, master, law, punishment, war, and political power. This language creates forms of life that are based upon fear, coercion, manipulation of others, and upon violence.

On the other hand, the language of the Kingdom is spoken using terms such as grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. The form of life of the age of the Kingdom is a community that calls itself the Body of Christ. In this community all parts are equal and all parts are needed. In this community outsiders and enemies are not destroyed but are loved and reconciled into the body. In this community the life of peace and grace that is to come is already being eschatologically embodied in the relationships we live out today.

But here is the problem. We are caught between the two Kingdoms. We are trapped between two forms of life. And worst of all, the earthly kingdom not only seems more real because it has power, wealth and glory, but it also threatens us with things like exile, exclusion, and maybe even death if we do not participate in its life.

III. Unmasked Powers

God’s answer was to unmask the truth about the principalities and powers in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus confronted the old age, but refused to participate in life on its terms.

Whenever Jesus confronted Pharisees and teachers of the law who wanted to shape life in the language of law and guilt, he countered with the power of the language of grace and mercy. In each of these encounters the futility of the law was demonstrated and unmasked. The law kept lepers secluded, it kept paralytics on their mats, and it kept sinners at an arm’s length. The power of God’s grace revealed in Jesus brought healing to lepers, made paralytics leap for joy, and transformed sinners into saints. What the old aeon of law could not do, the new aeon of grace accomplished.

When Jesus confronted the power of Caesar and the political posturing of the temple leaders who kept people obedient through fear of torture and death, he countered with not only a willingness to suffer and die, but he countered with an unwillingness to respond with threats of violence of his own.

The powerful violence of the empire could not change the hearts of people it could only coerce people into obedience as long as power was maintained. The power of the resurrection demonstrated that God’s life, not Caesar’s ability to create death has the final word in the world. What the power of the sword could not do – change the hearts of people – the power of the resurrection has accomplished. If the final threat of the principalities and powers is to enact death, they are now powerless, because Jesus rose from the dead.

The empire has no power now because frightened, denying disciples, through the power of the resurrection, have become cost-counting, martyrdom-accepting apostles.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! The resurrection is not only true for his life, but the power of the resurrection can carry over into your life as well. As Paul writes, “You also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The resurrection is not a one-time act by God in the life of Jesus allowing him to overcome sin and death, it is the everyday enactment of the freedom from sin and death in the life of the believer.

Most of us came to church today because we believe – even if only in our minds – that Jesus has been raised from the dead. There is a big difference however, between knowledge about the resurrection and participation in it.

So often we hear the Easter story or watch enactments of the crucifixion and resurrection as distanced listeners or observers. Even our praise and worship at times becomes about standing at a distance and thanking God for the work that he did in Christ as though it was a one-time event, done apart from us, for which we are now the beneficiaries. But it is one thing to be thankful for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it is another thing to participate in it, to live into it, to be transformed by it.

Participation in the death and resurrection of Christ is the richness of Lent and Easter that Paul wants us to come to understand. Our old self was crucified with him. We were buried with him. And now we live with him in the power of his resurrection.

What a thrill on Easter to realize that the death and destruction, the sin and the evil that we saw all around us as we journeyed through Lent does not have the last word in the world. Sin and death do not win in the life of Christ – the resurrection power of God wins.

In the same way, we come to God trapped by sin, broken by rebellion, and possessed by evil. Yet in the life of every believer the story of Lent and Easter is retold. We who were once dead in our trespasses are now alive in Christ Jesus. Should we keep on living in slavery to sin? Of course not! Because Jesus lives, we too live.
That is the gospel. That is good news.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!