Romans 4:22-5:11
February
25, 2018
Lent 2
William G. Carter
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ
died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous
person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to
die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners
Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his
blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we
were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more
surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than
that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have
now received reconciliation.
Once
in a while, we hear about somebody who dies a noble death. Of all the stories
from Parkland, Florida, last week, the most compelling is the story of Scott
Beigel. Scott was a geography teacher at Stoneman Douglas high school. When the
shooting started, he unlocked a door to let in some students, so they could
hide from the gunman, Nikolas Cruz.
“We
thought our teacher was behind us,” said one of the students, “but he wasn’t. He was in
the doorway and the door was still open. The shooter probably didn’t know we
were in there. If he had come into the room, I probably wouldn’t be alive. Mr.
Beigel saved my life.”
It
was a courageous, virtuous act. Scott Beigel died shielding his students from
gunfire. As one of his friends said, “He made the ultimate sacrifice to do what
he so often did – make the lives of other people better.”[1]
His
death was tragic, premature, unexpected, and above all, noble. Maybe you and I
would have the same courage if the situation required it. Scott died for his
students.
But
here the question nobody wants to ask: who died for the shooter? Did anybody
die to save him? In the text, the apostle Paul gives his answer: “Jesus died
for the shooter.”
Take
a breath, and let that sink in. That disgruntled young man had been expelled
from the school. He plotted an attack when it was least expected. All the
sidewalk psychologists want to diagnose his mental state or delve into his
anger issues. There is nothing honorable or human in what he did.
His
violent act has stirred up a necessary backlash against unnecessary weapons. A
movement of students has risen up against the gun lobby and the politicians they
have purchased. And who knows? Maybe this will finally be the singular event
that turns the tide against the persistent violence in places that we expect to
be safe. We can hope so.
Yet
in the meantime, the apostle Paul speaks about the noble death of Jesus, and
the implications are bracing. As someone paraphrases his words in Romans 5, “We can understand someone dying for a person
worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire
us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering
his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.”[2]
That is a harsh
assessment of the human condition: people who are “no use to God.” Whom would
that include? Those who gun down innocent teens and teachers are no use to God.
Neither are those who offer thoughts and prayers with no action. They are “no
use” to God. And yet, and this is the Gospel for today, Jesus dies for them.
It is an outrageous claim
to make because it lies at the heart of the Gospel. Jesus dies for the ungodly.
I wonder sometimes if Paul
is speaking first-hand about his own experience. In his letters, he doesn’t say
much about his own story. If we want to hear more of that, we have to read
about it in the Book of Acts. In the book of Acts, Luke writes about Paul persecuting
the church. He was pulling the Christians out of their churches and ordering
their deaths. He thought he was doing God a favor and saving the world from
those heretics. In truth, he was “no use” to God. Ungodly.
And then, one day, on the
road to Damascus, the Risen Christ appeared to him in a vision and knocked him
off his high horse. “Why do you persecute me?” he asked. And Paul had no good
answer. It was a holy intervention, a conversion moment, a second chance – and it
totally turned Paul around. As he reports what the Christians now said, “The
one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried
to destroy.” (Galatians 1:23).
Oh yes, I think that when
Paul writes his words in Romans 5, he’s not far from remembering his own story.
Do you know I think that? Because nobody who has had such a major turnaround in
his life is going to forget what he was – in light of what he is now. It’s
impossible to forget about “before” when you’re living in the “after.” A true
conversion, an authentic turnaround, is going to keep you humble.
Just ask the person you
know, the person who is so much more than the person they used to be. What
happened? What turned you around? Then settle down and listen to a long story.
A lot of Presbyterians
struggle to tell stories like that. They are respectable folk, for the most
part: teachers, attorneys, business folk. They may have flirted with a little
sin, but they haven’t got into a lot of trouble.
Well, maybe. One of your
children was telling me how she fell into a heroin addiction. “The white powder
became more important than life itself,” she said. “It never occurred to me until
later that I had become just like my dad, except his drug of choice was vodka.
He hated himself for it. I hated myself too, and never thought I’d break free
of my slavery to the needle.” It was her second attempt at rehab where a
hard-as-nails counselor broke through the fog, and the young woman said, “It
was the first time in years that it occurred to me that I was worthy of love.”
These days, she’s in a
church some Sundays. She says the best part is not the sermon, not the music,
not even the people – but looking up at a cross and remembering who loves her
most. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ
died for us.”
And I looked up the word.
The word is “us,” as in “all of us,” as in “nobody is excluded, because ‘us’
means ‘all of us.’” Even the ungodly, especially the ungodly, even the shooter
in Parkland, Florida; whether he knows it or not, Christ died for him, too. Would
somebody tell him that, please? That’s the Gospel.
Left to our own devices,
I suppose we would opt for punishment. Or retaliation. Or obliteration. Or
giving an Uzi to the art teachers and the lady in the office who sniffs the
white-out when nobody is looking. I mean, talk about the ungodly!
Have you noticed? The God
of the Gospel is not in the punishment business. God is in the salvation business,
the salvage operation business, the turning-from-darkness and turning-to-light
business.
When the Temple leaders
get Jesus condemned on trumped-up charges, God does not strike them down. When
Pontius Pilate orders the crucifixion, God does not retaliate. When the
soldiers drive spikes into the wrists and ankles of his Son, God does not mow
them down with bigger weapons. That would be perpetuating the sickness of violence, and it
would be ungodly.
No, God shows divine love
for us, in that while we are at our worst, Christ dies to forgive our worst. God
cancels the sin in order to win us back. And it’s up to us, beloved church, to
do two things: to announce this Gospel to the world, and to let God win us
back. Because Christ dies to cancel our sins too. He calls us to turn from the
ways of death to start living his life.
One of my favorite writers,
the Episcopalian Robert Capon, said this about Paul’s words:
The Gospel is not
some self-improvement scheme devised by a God who holds back on us till he sees
the improvements. Above all, Jesus wants to make sure we understand he doesn't
care a fig about our precious results. It doesn't even make a difference to him
if we're solid brass [jerks], because "while we were still sinners, Christ
died for the ungodly." By the mystery of the Incarnation, he has included
everybody, from Aalborg to ZZwickendorf. He's had you home free from the start,
no matter what you've done; all you have to do is believe him.
Therefore, God isn't fair: if he were fair, we'd all be in the soup. God
is good: crazy, stark-staring-bonkers
good.[3]
That’s good news. It’s the best news there is.
Billy Graham died this week at his home in Montreat, North
Carolina. There was nothing particularly admirable about his death; he was
ninety-nine years old and worn out, but there was plenty to admire about his
life. Whatever else we could say about him, he consistently preached the Gospel
of forgiveness, the Gospel of God’s second chance.
Sometime in the 1970’s, a woman named Velma
Barfield fed her North Carolina preacher husband some tapioca laced with ant
poison. It did him in. When the state medical examiner suspected foul play, they
dug up the man’s body. The sheriff supervising the investigation was asked if
an autopsy would confirm the murder. Apparently, he said, “All I know is there
ain’t an ant within a mile of this cemetery.
It turned out Velma murdered a lot of
people, some by poison, others by arson. She was easily convicted and ordered
to be executed. While some protested the death penalty, Billy Graham’s wife
Ruth began writing letters with Velma on death row. The conversation went deeper,
Velma repented, asked Christ into her heart, and was redeemed.
With that, Ruth Graham began to plead with
the governor, a Methodist, to spare Velma. Billy Graham took up the cause, as
well, and the appeals went all the way to the Supreme Court. But nothing
changed. The governor refused, leading someone to quip, “the governor was a
liberal; he believed in equal rights for women more than he believed in the God
of the Second Chance.”[4]
After her death, Billy Graham led a prayer
meeting at the prison where she had been held. He praised her for the big
impact she made on inmates’ lives before her execution. “She worked tirelessly
to help other prisoners turn their lives around,” he said. Someone else added, “Everybody
talks about rehabilitation, but here’s a woman who looked at her life and
helped others.”
So, what do you think? Did she get off easy? Of course she did.
She believed Jesus died to cancel her sin, our sin, all sin.
And I believe it too. How about you?
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[2] Romans 5:8, in Eugene Peterson, The Message
[3] Robert Farrar Capon, The Mystery of Christ & Why We Don't Get
It (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 90-91.
[4] Drawn from Will Willimon's reminiscince, at https://willwillimon.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/memories-of-billy-graham
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