Sermon: Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5

Scripture: Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5

Preacher: Bailey Bjolin

Title:

I want you to imagine that you are living in Rome in the year 57 CE. 1You are a gentile, the slave in a large household, where you work cleaning the house of the large Roman family that lives there. Your days are long and the master of the house — a wealthy military commander— is abusive.

There are several other servants in the house: there is a woman who takes care of the children, several cooks, and others. No one is a Roman citizen. You are not a Roman citizen. You were taken from your town when by Roman soldiers when you were a child, and sold to this family when you should still have been playing with dolls and running rampant through the village with your friends. Once upon a time, you had a home and a family, an identity, a history. Now, all you have is hard mattress to sleep on at the end of the day. You are no one. Your home is gone, your village razed to the ground by Roman soldiers long ago. Your family was sold to other households. You participate in the household worship of Roman gods. Your history is Rome’s history: you are a part of the spread of empire, the victory of military conquest, and obedience to the emperor. It’s a small, difficult life.

But one day, something changes. One of the other slaves, the cook, has been sneaking away in the evenings to attend these peculiar gatherings. Lately, he’s started inviting the rest of the household to join him. You’re not sure about joining him because it’s dangerous to leave the house without permission, but he insists that the risk is worth it. “It’s the most incredible thing,” he says, eyes sparkling. He says it’s about hope and redemption, two words you could certainly use more of.

The first time you went to a meeting of these Jesus followers, you were shocked. All manner of people were there, not just slaves like yourself and the cook. The meeting was held in the house of a merchant family, and included the family’s own slaves and workers. There were women and men, slaves and artisans, children and elderly folks. Food was shared between everyone. Stories were told, about a man— a Jew!— who had lived and healed many people, who had died and rose from the dead, who ascended into heaven to be with God. You thought that the Jews hated gentiles. After all, they refused to eat with gentiles or worship the gentiles’ gods. But at this meeting, you are hearing something new: that God blesses everyone, not just Jews. That Jesus, the man who lived and died and lived again, was sent by God to save everyone and restore peace to the world.

Slowly, this idea grows on you. You find yourself compelled to keep attending these meetings and hearing the stories of Jesus, as well as older Jewish stories. You meet Jews who follow Jesus; they attend these meetings too. They are as wary of you as you are of them. The Jewish people do not eat the same food as you, and they refuse to partake in the shared meal at the beginning of the meeting. For your part, you are suspicious of them, because everything you’ve learned growing up in a Roman household tells you that Jewish people hold themselves apart from everyone else. It is difficult to understand how you are supposed to get along, let alone follow the same Jesus.

But then one day the cook sidles up to you and tells you something even more incredible: that the apostle Paul has written a letter to the Jesus followers in Rome. And tonight you are all going to meet to read it together. You’ve heard of the apostle Paul; you know he’s a big deal. And he’s heard of your community? How incredible is that?

Enter the Epistle to the Romans.

I would like to read this scripture again. As I read, I’d like for you to continue to imagine yourself as a Roman slave. How does this scripture passage feel different to you? Do certain points hit you differently? Can you tell why?

Romans 5:1-5

1 The result is this: since we have been declared “in the right”— that is, justified— on the basis of faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

2 Through him we have been allowed to approach, by faith, into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate the hope of the glory of God.

3 That’s not all. We also celebrate in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patience,

4 patience produces a well-formed character, and a character like that produces hope.

5 Hope, in its turn, does not make us ashamed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the holy spirit who has been given to us (Wright trans., 2011).

As a slave, how do you understand the idea of justification by faith? How do we understand the grace of God? How do you possibly find it in yourself to celebrate in your suffering? How does hope lead you out of shame?

What is the promise of “God’s love poured in our hearts through the Holy Spirit”? (Rom 5:5, NT Wright trans.)

Paul’s letter to the Romans does an excellent job of showing us how disruptive Jesus’s message is. A great example of this can be seen in how Roman treats the idea of suffering.

In the very beginning of the letter, Paul introduces himself in his letter as “a slave of the Messiah, King Jesus” (Rom 1:1). This is a stunning subversion of the idea of slavery. Why would anyone want to call themselves a slave? That identity is shameful, the lowest of the low. Paul using the word ‘slave’ as a way of aligning himself with Jesus would have shocked early Jesus followers, many of whom were themselves slaves . When he writes later of “celebrating in our sufferings[…] because[…] suffering produces patience” (Rom 5:3), he is likewise subverting a common idea at the time that enduring affliction was the result of mastering one’s emotions (Lancaster, 2015). We have no choice but to suffer; we have no choice but to follow Jesus. Neither of these things are things that we can control. Both of these things, though challenging, can produce hope through the promise of the coming kingdom of God.

But what is that promise, exactly? As in, what is the kingdom of God? And how does that translate to hope for Jesus followers in Rome?

There is a tendency to think of the kingdom of heaven as existing somewhere “out there,” beyond this earth. When we say the Lord’s Prayer, we say: “May your kingdom come/may your will be done/on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-13).

There is an idea that the kingdom of heaven and God’s kingdom are the same thing. This idea justifies a lot of theology that causes us to turn away from the workings of the earth, the pain and suffering, and instead shrug our shoulders and say, “at least we have heaven to look forward to.”

Many New Testament scholars, including NT Wright, dispute this idea. According to NT Wright, the promise of the kingdom of God is breaking into our present world. That is why we have events like the ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell among us: rather than taking us away from the earth, God dwells with us on the earth, and we become “agents of the transformation of this earth” (Wright, 2007).

Let’s be clear here. We “become agents of transformation of this earth” through the grace and the workings of God in the Holy Spirit. God guides our efforts and is with us, always. No matter what we do, we do not do it alone. But different people have different ideas about what exactly this means. Does this mean that we exercise our judgement when deciding how we should be “agents of transformation”? In other words, how do we discern the voice of God in our lives?

Orthodox Christians have an idea of salvation called thesosis2, which speaks to how God works in and through us. According to this idea, Christians share in the life of God through the experience of God’s glory, living in and through God. This kind of union with God is considered to be the goal of the Christian life, and so Christian life involves preparing oneself for this union. This is sometimes also known as “sharing in the life of God” (Lancaster, 2015).

But what this all means is that to “celebrate in the glory of God,” we must “share in the life of God.” And because God’s plans are for the revitalization of the earth as it is in heaven, we must participate in this revitalization.

Let’s go back to our Roman slave and their questions. We’ll try to address them one by one.

How do we celebrate in suffering?

Your life is full of suffering, and it is inevitable. You have no home, no family, no control over your life. But something has changed: you’ve begun to hear the story of a man named Jesus, who was also Christ, and this produces something new in you. Maybe this new thing is hope, maybe not. But for the first time you begin to believe that there might be something in store for you and your new friends, something beyond the daily horrors of slavery.

Hearing Paul’s epistle to the Romans, you begin to understand something else: this promise is for everyone— it upsets the hierarchy that exists throughout Rome: where the people in power own everything, even slaves. The epistle makes new claims: that you are part of this promise, specifically you, in your specific time and place and status as a slave. Things are “set to right” by justification through faith— restoring to right what has been wronged. Paul himself identifies as a slave, and has experienced persecution like yours for his faith in Jesus.

Suffering is transformed from meaningless brutality into anticipatory promise— the suffering itself does not become less, but it has been identified, and more importantly, you have been identified. You have been seen, maybe for the first time in years. It is like God has set God’s eyes upon you and said, “I see you, and I am here with you.” The celebration of suffering is the celebration of reunification with family— God’s family.

How does the promise of the kingdom of God produce hope?

The promise of the Kingdom of God is the promise of home. It is the promise of everything you’d thought you’d lost. It is the restoration of God’s creation for the sake of God’s creatures, that they may flourish. And you, along with your family— fellow followers of Christ— have a hand in rebuilding that home together, alongside God.

What is the promise of “God’s love poured in our hearts through the Holy Spirit”?

It is the promise of God-with-us. We are not alone; we live in God’s world.

Once, you were alone. You had no home, no family. You lived according to the rules of a military society, intent on exerting its force on everything and everyone in its path. But now?

Now, you are not alone. God is with you in the Holy Spirit, wherever you go. You have a family of Jesus followers with whom you share food and comfort one another.

You have a home in the kingdom of heaven, which is breaking into the earth where you live now, promising a restoration to wholeness of all things.

You live by a new power. One not of militarism and empire but one of peace, justice, and love. Now— you live in God’s world.

But what about us?

I want to be clear: there is a long tradition of Christians identifying with the subjugated, with the oppressed, when in fact we are most often more aligned with the Romans than we are with the slaves. So I would invite you, now, to picture someone else’s story.

You are a Roman citizen, the head of a household. You work long and hard in the Roman military, securing peace throughout the Empire. It is difficult work, and you were given your current position through hard work and dedication to the Rome and its cause. The gospel you are used to is the “good news” of military victory— another land conquered, another people working with the Romans to grow and spread.

Your home is your tiny empire. It is where you can throw lavish parties or kick back and relax. Like most Roman householders, you have several slaves. You treat them well, allowing them to visit the Roman temples to worship and giving them adequate quarters. Mostly, though, you do not think about them.

A few months ago, you heard whispers that some of your slaves were sneaking out of the house to attend some Jewish messianic meeting with other fringe people in Rome. You discipline them appropriately for leaving the house without permission, but something about the nature of their meetings bothers you. Someone in your household comes to you with news of a letter to these people from another Slave-- someone named Paul? Apparently this Paul guy is riling these people up and telling them things that go against the Rule and Order of the Empire.

Well, you’ve never seen anything like it before. You don’t know what to make of it, but you know it can’t be good. It threatens the very fabric of your life— your career, your beliefs, your allegiance to Rome. But, you think to yourself, this kind of thing could never last. The empire is sure to prevail in the end.

There’s an easy thing we can do in reaction to this story. We can deny our identification with this Roman householder. We can say to ourselves that we are Christians, so we are not them. This may be so, but it’s also important to think about the ways in which we do ressemble this person. Our allegiance to our country, the ways that we subjugate— or simply refuse to lift up— people who are not like us or do not have the same fortunes that we do. I know that I feel uncomfortable when I imagine myself as this Roman householder. But I also know that I am more like them than not.

The harder thing we can do is take a look at ourselves and then think, again, about the slave. This is not the oppression olympics, so we do not have to beat ourselves up because we have had the good fortune of growing up in a place not ravaged by war, a place with clean water, a place that allows us to practice our faith freely. But when we think about the good news in Paul’s letter, we should know that this good news has different implications for us than it does for the slave. Like Ingrid preached last week at our 100th Anniversary service, to really live into the call of the gospel requires work. It requires that we be brave and vulnerable, that we give some of ourselves up for the sake of others. And lest this feel like a bit of a downer end to the sermon, I want to reiterate that this is good news.

This is because God offers us the same family, the same home, and the same path to follow as the slave. For those of us who have lived relatively comfortable lives, free of subjugation, we see ourselves in the early Jesus followers who insisted on sharing meals and fellowship with the “other”— slaves, Jews, foreigners, children, the elderly— even when it was uncomfortable. As Paul reminds us, “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). I pray that we may all be one, that we may delight in the kingdom of God as it breaks into our world, and that we may always sing the praises of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— three in one.

1. This is the conceit of Chapter 2 of Romans Disarmed by Keesmaat and Walsh (2019), and it really helped me to reimagine the lives of early Jesus followers and what exactly they were up against.

2. In the United Church, we share a version of this theology through Wesleyan theology— thank you, Methodists.