A Sermon Based Upon Romans 1: 14-17.
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Sunday, August 17th, 2014
“…For I am not
ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has
faith…, (Rom 1:16 NRS).
Back in September of 2009, the firebrand
Jewish Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, slammed the United Nations for
giving Iranian leader, Ahmadinejad, a public forum to speak because he had
called the Holocaust a lie. Netanyahu pleaded:
“In behalf of my people, the Jewish people, Have you no shame? Have you no sense of decency? http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/24/us-un-assembly-netanyahu-ahmadinejad-idUSTRE58N5GK20090924.
Shame is an interesting human emotion. It points to our moral nature, our human
responsibility, perhaps even the image of God within in us. Having a “sense of shame” gives us the
ability to develop integrity, dignity, honor, self-respect and an inner moral
compass. When as a child, I did something
I shouldn’t have my mother would sometimes say to me, “Joey, I’d be ashamed.” She was not only trying to give me to
develop a sense of shame, but she was also trying to get me to admit my guilt. There is a big difference between guilt and
shame. Guilt is how we should feel
about what we do wrong or haven’t done right.
Shame, on the other hand, is more about who we are, who we aren’t, and
who we should be. When Benjamin
Netanyahu appealed to shame, he was appealing to what the UN should be.
If we have no shame it could mean that
we are missing something. If you
recall, the Bible opens with Adam and Eve being ‘naked’ and ‘not ashamed’. Shame
did not come into the picture until Adam and Eve found themselves hiding from
God. Again, shame was not simply about
what they did wrong as much as it was about how who they were and how their
relationship with God and with each other had negatively changed. Their sense of shamed made them feel naked, uncovered
and exposed. This is what still happens
when people do stupid things and should know better. Shame may point us back to being who we
should be.
SO,
WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING CHRISTIAN
Shame is an interesting word Paul choose
to use as he opens his letter to the Romans.
He says: “I’m not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ!” (1.16). Paul is
saying there is no shame in being a follower of Jesus, nor is there any shame
in the good news Jesus brings. We can
surely understand what Paul is saying, but why does he have to say like
this? Who would ever consider it
‘shameful’ to be a Christian?
Recently, I read an article by Tom Fate,
about losing his Father to Alzheimer’s.
Tom’s father was a pastor, and it was difficult to watch how his Father’s
memories faded away, even though his Father was still present, he was also becoming
absent. Spending some final days with
his father reminded him of many stories.
One of them was in 1974, when as a teenager, Tom was going through
Confirmation classes taught by his Father.
(Confirmation is how those churches who baptize infants, confirm that
that they are true Christians, after they put the youth through several months
of studying and learning the Christian Faith).
At the conclusion of the classes, the youth are to stand before the
church and acknowledge that they are confirmed, believing Christians. Tom says he went through his Father’s
confirmation class at age 14, just at the time when his hormones were ragging. After several months of classes, the day
before Confirmation on a Sunday morning, Tom told his father, “I can’t go
through with it.” His Father ‘hit the
roof!’ “Why not?” Tom told his Father, “I don’t know, I guess
I’m one of those ‘Egg-nostics’. I just
can’t answer “yes” to the require questions: Do you believe in God, the maker
of heaven and earth. Do you accept Jesus
as your personal savior? Do you believe
Jesus to be the Son of God?.... I’m like
that doubting Thomas guy, Tom concluded.”
Can you imagine what that father/pastor must have felt when out of all
those children, his own child was ashamed of becoming a Christian? (From, The Christian Century, June 25, 2014, p 31.).
What would make a person ‘ashamed’ of
being Christian? What makes the Christian Faith and the
Christian Life so offensive that someone would be ashamed of it? Maybe we can understand a little bit of why
Paul chose this world ‘shame’ when we consider how he spoke about ‘shame’
elsewhere. Speaking about the ‘offense”
of the gospel for certain Jews and Greeks, Paul wrote in his first letter to
the Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God
chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in
the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so
that no one might boast in the presence of God.
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus….. (1 Cor. 1:
27-29). Is it any wonder some might be ashamed of
becoming Christians? Being Christian can
be about being what some might call foolish, weak, despised, or nothing. No wonder the Christian faith or the
Christian Life doesn’t have a lot going for in a world that likes to be smart,
strong, popular, or have something everyone else wants. We might even wonder how in the world
Christianity ever got as far as it did, and became as widespread as it has,
even though today, it is dying in Europe, North America, and all the world we
call the west. If it is about foolish,
weak, despised, and an unwanted life that someone might be ashamed of, how did
it get this far?
When I was a missionary in eastern
Europe, I worked among German Baptists in a small city where there were also
two Lutheran churches, one of which had survived in the that city over 700
years, also surviving both the evils of Hilter and Stalin. When I was there in the early 1990’s, they
had just put a new roof on the building which was bombed in World War II, but
the church, though now a small congregation, still survived, barely. The pastor told he that it was difficult have
much attendance on Sunday. Recently, he
had gone into his neighborhood taken church bulletins to invite his members to
church. The ‘welcome’ they gave him as
pastor was either to lock their door when they saw him coming, or to slam the
door in his face. And that was people
who had their names on the church rolls!
Are we headed in the same direction, as
our own neighborhoods are increasingly unchurched, secularized and negative
toward local churches? Are even church
folks, so called Christians, becoming more ‘ashamed’
of the gospel or more ignorant of what it means to live a Christian Life? Once upon a time, the apostle Paul said that
he was ‘not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ’, but what about us? Have
people forgotten, even Christians forgotten what it means and why it is still
important for us to live a faithful Christian life? What is going on with the decline of churches
and Christianity in our own ‘religious’ America or in the Christian west as a
whole. Churches, for the most part, are emptying
and the morale and excitement is waning?
Why are we not ashamed of
being ashamed of living a faithful
Christian life?
WHAT'S RIGHT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY
I want us to try to recover why Paul
said he was ‘not ashamed’ and
furthermore, perhaps discover the more positive reason, Paul was glad, if not
proud to be a Christian. Do you hear
what Paul gives as his own reason in our text?
Paul says that he is ‘not ashamed’
of the gospel of Christ, because IT
IS THE POWER OF GOD FOR SALVATION …”
(Rom. 1.16). But just what kind of “power” and what kind of “salvation”
excites and motivates Paul? There are
still people excited about Christianity in our world, but it’s not always the
right reasons. I hear people say they
are Christians because they want their children to have a good, positive
foundation. I hear others say they go
to church because they like to go Wednesday Family Dinner night? I’ve also heard that people will even put
with dysfunctional church, if they have a good youth program. What excites you about Christianity? Are you excited about the right thing or are
you just excited about your own thing?
Paul says God’s saving power excites and
motives his life of faith. How do you
imagine this? We need to be clear about
what Paul means, because there is a lot of misunderstanding about what it means
to experience God’s saving power. Some
might think it as having a big congregation, a large attendance, great music,
or even good preaching that results in decisions being made, like a Billy
Graham Crusade. What does Paul means by
God’s power and could it also excite us into living the Christian life? As I have already shown, when Paul spoke
about the ‘power’ of the gospel, he is speaking of a very different kind of
power than most of us think about. It is not the power of the smart, the strong, or
the popular; but it is the power of things that might be considered foolish,
weak, despised, and, to quote Shakespeare, “Much ado About Nothing.” What kind of power is this?
Since it is summer time, one of the
greatest evidences of power see on display in nature this time of year, is
lightning storms. One evening this
summer, there was a video on the news of a pickup truck in the Midwest being
struck by lightning, as it was driven down the road. If you saw that clip, that was certainly a
display of unmistakable power. (A Van
filled with Youth in a Greensboro Church where I was pastor in the late 1990’s
also had lightning strike right beside it and it knocked burned out the
electrical wiring and blew all four tires.
Now, that’s power).
The other story on the news was about a
man in his backyard in Atlanta, who, while he was doing some cleanup work, was
struck by lightning and it blew a hole in his shoes. The video showed his tennis shoes still
smoking, with the toes blown out. That too
was a great display of raw power. But
do you know what was the greatest display of power in these three stories? It was even greater power that diffused,
absorbed or insulated all that energy so that both passengers in that pickup,
and the person in the yard, (or all the youth on that van) where able to live to
tell about their ordeals and survival.
Now that’s and even greater power, than both of those lightning bolts,
isn’t it? But who would ever call 4
rubber tires or rubber soled tennis shoes a real display of power? But it was, and it was a power even greater
than one of the greatest forces known in the natural world.
Maybe this kind of story can help us
begin to understand what Paul means by the ‘’power
of the gospel.” It is certainly not
the same kind of ‘power’ that we can visibly see, as Paul himself defined
it. It a ‘power of God’ which is most often
displayed in ways that might go unnoticed, unseen, disregarded, or
unappreciated, except to the most perceptive and discerning. Paul took
notice of that power and it saved him.
He came to believed beyond any doubt that this same kind of saving power
is available to ‘Everyone…who calls upon
the name of the LORD’ (Roms 10.13). Paul
became certain about that and that is why he lived the life of a
Christian. Are we that ‘certain’?
To understand more we need also look
into Paul’s own story. If you recall,
Paul was not always a Christian, nor was he always an advocate for the
Christian way or the Christian life.
Once Paul was named Saul, and in his own words, Paul said that he had “persecuted this Way up to the point of
death …… (Act 22:4 NRS). The books
of Acts, also tells us how Paul monitored and approved the stoning of one of
the very first Christian martyrs named Stephen (Acts 7:57-8: 1). This is who Paul was before. He was against the Christian way and the
Christian faith in Jesus until he experienced a powerful, spiritual, and saving
encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road.
Even at that time Saul was still threatening to murder. But one day, while traveling on the road to
Damascus, a flash of light (was it lightning) knocked him to the ground, but
did not kill him. Whatever it was, it
was in that moment, as he fell to the ground, that Saul also heard a voice
saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you
persecute me?” When Saul inquired about this voice, the voice said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting!” Such power saved many lives, changed the
course of history, and it also gave Saul to power to become Paul, a new person
(9: 1-5).
There is no dispute that something
happened to Saul persecuted that made him into Paul, the one was willing to follow
Jesus and be persecuted for the following and living THE WAY. But what about us? What kind of real ‘power’ of God is in it
for us, or for the world today? Can we
even relate what happened then to what happens now?
GOOD
FOR EVERYONE
This brings us to the final way Paul speaks
of Christianity and the Christian gospel.
He speaks of the gospel of Jesus as a power that can save anyone and
“everyone who has faith, to the
Jew first, and also to the Greek.” (1.16).
Here’s the catch, do you see it?
If God’s power is to become real in you, like it did in Saul who became
Paul, you’ve got to start with faith.
You’ve got to get over your fear or your shame about what might seem
foolish, weak, despised or like a lot of nothing. You
have to take a leap of ‘faith’ beyond what you think works. And if you do make this ‘leap of faith’, it
does not matter who you are, what race, nationality, religion, non-religion nor
anything else, there is a power that you and I still need, and need not be
ashamed of. The key to understanding the
value, the purpose and the power of the Christian life, means you must have the
faith to follow and to try it. As the
song say, “You’ve got to have faith!” and the faith you’ve got to have it the
faith to believe that God’s power can have a positive impact in your own life
and in our own world.
Earlier in this message, I stated that
one might wonder how a religion that is about what people might call
foolishness, weak, despicable, or nothing, would ever grow and last for 2,000
years, as it has. The Christian faith,
in spite of human failure, flaw, sins and weaknesses, has endured, but only
since the 1960’s has begun to fade before our eyes. But again, the question is, what kind of
power is this that saves, that made people, even skeptical people willing to
take that ‘leap’ to follow Jesus and try to live a Christian life? What made it such a powerful movement in the
first place?
No major popular study had examined
this, until a Social Scientist named Rodney Stark took on the challenge a few
years ago. Dr. Stark did a lot of social
research about the early Christian movement and he studied many historical
statistics about when and how Christianity grew, going from a small, local
group of churches, to become a regional, national and then global phenomenon. Do you know what kind of ‘power’ pushed
Christianity into the limelight, making kings and major population areas take
note and accept the Christian faith as a true and viable way of life. Stark says the major thrust of exponential
growth took place during major outbreak of infectious and deadly diseases and plagues
hit the Mediterranean region and especially Asia Minor and Southern Europe. Historical documents and testimony say that
while city officials, physicians and even family members fled the area to leave
the dying to die alone, it was Christians, that is real Christians, those who
took up the cross of compassion, while taking no thought of the dangers, remained
alongside the suffering, and some even rushing in, to care, show compassion,
and bring help and healing. It was such
daring, selfless, and self-denying acts of compassion and care, that made
people take notice, that Christianity had something the world didn’t, but
desperately needed. These Christians
were not ashamed of their faith, and they truly believed, that even if they
died while caring like Jesus did, that Jesus was preparing a place for
them, and would welcome them into his
eternal kingdom. Those Christians lived their
life on an entirely set of values, and there was not only no law against them
(as Paul says), there was great need for
such values in this world. (http://www.foresthomechurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Epidemics-Networks-the-Rise-of-Christianity-by-Rodney-Stark.pdf).
What would make Christianity valued and appreciated
like that again? What would make people
take notice and not be ashamed of the Christian faith? What would make people willing and eager to
live a Christian kind of life? Would it
not also be that people actually see other Christians taking risks to live and
care about people who are at risk? Would
it not be Christians who truly lived as Jesus taught them, and showed them to
live? One of the major descriptions of
Jesus in the New Testament is that Jesus ‘went
about doing good’ and the greatest good Jesus was doing, according to Acts,
was that had a helping and ‘healing’
ministry among the poor, the outcast and the despised so they could overcome oppression and domination by the evil
forces in the world (Acts 10.38).
The powers of evil are still with
us. Few would dispute that. Then why might someone dispute that God’s
power is not also still with us and needed to help us overcome? What good are we empowered by God to
do? Will we do it? Will we live it? Will we have the faith and take the
risk? When we truly live the Christian
life, we become the voice, hands, and feet of Jesus Christ in this world, so
that we too can tap into the power of God that heals, cares, and brings ‘good news’
to those who need to recover and be redeemed
from both the sins of a society like ours and from our own sins. The question is not is there a power to help
or heal, but the question is will we have enough faith to tap into it?
Just the other day, NBC News ended with
a story of disabled veterans having a sports camp along with disabled
children. Most of the veterans has lost limbs while
serving their country in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The children has lost their limbs due to birth defects, disease, or accidents. What they all had in common was a love to
play baseball or softball and to be with others and not be judged or oppressed as
lesser people. I loved the final quote
from a young girl. She was around 11 or
12. She said, “I came to camp to learn about playing ball,
but I’ve learned a lot more. I’ve
learned about living my life with others like me, and to be happy with who I
am. “ I don’t think you can explain the
power of the life of a Christian any differently. The true faith teaches us how to live a life
that is full, free and beautiful, no matter what we are up against.
Finally, we need to remember that Jesus
did not come to make us all Christians, but Jesus himself said, “I came that they might have life, and have
it more fully (and abundantly, John 10:10). Can you imagine yourself having a fuller,
more empowered and more passionate and compassionate life? The great power of God is not as much like a
lightning bolt that strikes you like a bolt out of the blue, but it could be
more like the rubber soles of your shoes that can neutralize the greatest negative
forces of this world, so that these shoes on your feet, are able to walk in the
footsteps of Jesus, go to a new place, give you a new vision and a new mission,
and enable you to have a bigger heart that makes a difference. Now , that’s power. Amen.
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