Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ grace and peace to you from Jesus Christ who loves us and frees us from our sin, Amen.  What an unusual way to begin a reading from scripture.  Today's first lesson, from chapter six of Romans, begins with a conjunctive adverb, the word therefore.  My mom, who is an English teacher, is in town, so I asked her about conjunctive adverbs while we were gardening because who isn't interested in a little grammar lesson now and again.  As I now understand it, conjunctive adverbs such as according, indeed, moreover and therefore, are words that are used to connect two clauses or ideas.  Interesting.  So the text we have before us today is linked to something else by the use of conjunctive adverb therefore.  While this may be grammatically interestingfor about three of you, by beginning with therefore, we are beginning in the middle of the story.  To be sure we have a great part of the story in front of us today, slaves to sin, slaves to righteousness, impurity, iniquity and sanctification.  Paul has some really great stuff to talk about in this sixth chapter of Romans, but we aren't getting the whole story.  Where's the first part?  In fact we are missing the most essential part.

In dropping us off in the middle of chapter 6, the people who put together the appointed readings for each Sunday are making some big assumptions.  First they are assuming that everyone who is here for church this Sunday was in church last Sunday.  Even if we were all here every single week what if last week was the one Sunday of the year that you were out of town? We would have missed the first part of the story!  Secondly, and I think it is an assumption that many of us make, but it is a dangerous assumption, we assume that we know the story.  We assume that we know how the story goes so we can pick up at any old place.

Often we begin with the therefore in our lives, we assume that we know so well how the first part of the story goes, so we plow on ahead without hearing anew how the story really goes.  And without hearing the first part of the story, life after the therefore, life in the second half of the story, can be confusing, disturbing and overwhelming.  Let's look at the text from Romans again and I hope you'll see what I mean.

In verse 19 Paul says, "I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification."  First off slaves to righteousness isn't exactly the most accessible phrase.  But what Paul is encouraging his readers to do is to become slaves, deeply obedient people, who are committed to God's righteousness or rather God's way of being in the world, so that they may be holy and blameless.  Right, piece of cake, not a problem.  The slaves to righteousness  phrase was better off inaccessible, at least that way I am not reminded that I fail miserably at executing it. 

Seriously, I'm a slave to many things in this life, and seldom am I mirroring God's way of being in the world.  I am consumed by material wants and desires.  I am envious and jealous of friends, family and acquaintances.  I am selfish and self-centered.  I destroy and damage relationships which I could be creating, restoring and nurturing.  I'm a slave to many things, but seldom am I a slave to God's righteousness.  And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.  We are each slaves to many things but seldom are we slaves to God's righteousness.  We can each articulate for ourselves what it is that binds us, the things that holds up captive, the things that separates us from living into God's righteousness.  We each have them and they are very real.  They frustrate us and cause us pain but we feel as though we can't escape them.

Then in verses twenty-one and twenty-two Paul turns up the heat a little. He says, "When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death."  The end of sin is death.  The fruit of our slavery to material things, individualism, to envy and jealousy, the fruit of our slavery to everything outside of God's righteousness is death.  Verse twenty-two says, "But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life." 

The right choice seems pretty straightforward here.  Choose life, choose God's righteousness.  Seems easy enough, but I wonder, do you feel freed from sin and enslaved to God?  I must admit I don't always feel that is the case.  In fact, I often feel as though I am in bondage to sin as one of the old order for confession and forgiveness says and I can't free myself.  As much as we may want to, we can't choose life.  We can't choose God's righteousness.  The wages of sin seem to be the only way for us.  How can we conceive of being slave to God's righteousness when the shackles of our bondage to this world still grip us tightly?  Dropped off in the second part of the story, even Paul's declaration that we are freed from sin does not sound like very good news.  With only one side of the therefore there isn't much hope.  Other may be free, but I certainly don't feel like it. 

Today we are finishing up our sermon series called "You've Got a Story to Tell."  This week's theme You've Got a Story to Hear, may seem like an odd pairing.  But, this week we are reminded that to tell God's story, we have to hear that God's story is our story each and every day.  To tell God's story we need to hear over and over again the other side of the therefore, the first part of the story.  We need to hear precisely the truth that enables Paul to make these radical and contrary claims about each and everyone one of us, claims that fly in the face of our own logic.  We need to hear the truth that liberates us from our bondage; that truth that sets us free.

Immediately preceding the therefore in verse 12 that has been causing all sorts of trouble today, Paul says, "The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."  The story that we absolutely need to hear is a story about sharing.  It is that simple, it is about sharing.  In baptism each one of us shares in Jesus' death and resurrection.  We participate in Jesus' dying and rising to new life.  In baptism we put on Christ, we are a new creation.  Everything that separates us from God's love and care is no more, it no longer binds us, it no longer holds us captive.  It is as newly created, beloved creatures of God that we awake each and every day. 

The life that is ours in Jesus is defined not by the broken, fractured world that we see all around us, but by wholeness of God's future that we participate in now.  In Jesus we participate in the in breaking of God's reign and realm that is characterized by radical generosity and abundant love.

To be sure sin, pain and death are still present.  Brokenness is still all around us, but it is not who we are, it has no claim over our lives.  We are a people that in baptism are defined by God's future.  This is the story we have to hear.  It is the story that is ours, that needs to be heard and told over and over again.  In verse two of chapter six Paul asks, "How can we who died to sin go on living in it?"  As we hear the story that defines our identity, the story of death and rebirth in Jesus, we can't help but live as instruments of God's righteousness, to be signs of God's reign and realm breaking into a broken world.  We can't help but live as instruments, of the God who enters into our flesh so that each of us escape the chains of sin and death that bind us. 

Tomorrow, when you wake up and head to the bathroom, look in the mirror, turn on the faucet, get your hand wet and draw the sign of the cross on your forehead.  Hear the story, that in baptism, death and sin have no claim over you.  You have been freed to live as a child of God, to be God's righteousness for the world.  Then repeat it the next day and the day after.  Hear the story each morning this week, maybe even this month.  You got a story to hear, it is the first part of the story a story of liberation, a story of freedom.  Hear the story, then, let's get busy living out the second part in a world thirsty for the liberating love of God in Christ Jesus.  Amen.