Romans 1:1-7
Advent 4 - Year A
Are you, or someone you revere, old enough to have been a mouseketeer? Remember, or ask about, the energy needed for that position.
Paul claims to be a gospelteer. Imagine the energy that needs as you play back and forth between prophets-of-old and not-yet saints.
Is this an intersection where you have been playing? Or have you focused overmuch on a prophetic end and getting a message “right”? Or have you focused overmuch on imaginary saints that might someday be, but who are unable to jump from here to there, and blind to a next step on such a journey?
To helpfully play between is a place filled with tension and fear. You risk a prophetic message by trying to literally translate it into each new situation rather than being a prophet in your current time and space. You risk being co-opted by some definition of saint rather than modeling saintly living in the here and now without waiting for some certification of X-number of miracles.
No wonder Paul finally blurts out—Grace and Peace!
Well, enough. To receive Grace and Peace is to claim permission to energetically play with both revered prophets and almost saints. Play on!
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Paul writes of being a servant apostle. Its always good to have a tension somewhere in one's self-understanding. It helps growth keep happening. If Paul were living today he might talk about being a servant leader.
Here is some lingo from a report to the 2000 United Methodist General Conference, Call Forth Covenant Leadership:
"Making disciples requires lay and clergy servant leaders who come together with one another and God in covenant to use their gifts as they prepare local churches and the whole church for God's mission in the world. Developing a servant leadership will require that The United Methodist Church move away from being a clergy-dependent church to one where ministry is shared among clergy and laity. Some United Methodist churches today are too dependent on the leadership of appointed clergy and staff. In the Wesleyan spiritual formation model, laity and clergy alike are ministers and share in the calling to make disciples of Christ. A transforming church will enable us to truly live out our belief in the ministry of all Christians. An emphasis on building spiritual leadership will engage the talents and energies of leaders throughout the church. It will energize and nurture local congregations and faith communities and build a sense of shared spiritual accountability."
Both Paul and a contemporary denomination employ very dense language. Basically, Paul is going to use his experience of conversion (obedience to faith) to engage others around its value and invite them to follow where conversion leads them. What is your intention?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html
Were you, or someone you revere who is old enough to have been, a mouseketeer? Remember, or ask about, the energy needed for that position.
Paul claims to be a gospelteer. Imagine the energy that needs as you play back and forth between the prophets-of-old and the not-yet saints.
Is that where you have been playing? or have you focused overmuch on the prophetic end, getting their message "right"? or have you focused overmuch on imaginary saints that might someday be, but are unable to jump from here to there and blind to a next step on such a journey?
To helpfully play between is a place filled with tension and fear. You risk the prophetic message by trying to literally translate it into each new situation rather than being a prophet in your current time and space. You risk being co-opted by some definition of saint rather than modeling saintly living in the here and now without waiting for some certification of X-number of miracles.
No wonder Paul finally blurts out - Grace and Peace!
Well, enough. To receive Grace and Peace is to claim permission to energetically play with both the revered prophets and the almost saints. Play on!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html
Ready of not, here I come! So ensues another game of hide-and-seek.
Ahaz is an excellent hider. He will be diligent in finding the very best hiding place and is willing to stay there for a very long time. No matter how close a Seeker comes to finding him he will not breathe or move. (Note: This is a different category of Seeker than recent church growth folks market to.)
Trying to bargain with Ahaz is a lost cause. He doesn't respond. Even "Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free" doesn't catch his ear. If it did he would have to acknowledge something larger than his own expertise. Most folks, by the time of their teen stage know how to refuse evil and choose the good, how to not hide but be in community. But not the tribe of Ahaz - real HE-men (Hiders Extraordinaire).
So something larger is needed to restore us to our selves, something larger than ritual, incantation, creed. Something larger is needed for "resurrection" and "grace" and "revelation" (key words in the last three pericopes).
What can't be chosen by Hiders is especially offered by Seekers - "withness". After calling our freedom and not having it responded to, Seekers continue seeking for the destruction or loss of any is not a part of the game for them. They are willing to be made fools of, to be ineffective Seekers, to lose the game if that will bring a return of community.
Though this quality of intentional seeking can have a dysfunctional aspect to it, intentional, strings-free, and creation-beginning Immanuel-offering is yet preferable to leaving folks in the dark of their hidey-hole.
- - -
desperately seeking a reset button
tears as bread, tears as drink
restoration yearned for
reset neededunknown saints, unknown beloved
resurrection ungracefully limited
reset neededdeeds of power without response
revelation missed again
reset neededwillingly seeking
intentionally seeking
persistently seeking
seeking with good cheer
seeking with hopeful heart
seeking with open hand
seeking with a gift
"with" - reset found
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
It is very easy to turn "according to the flesh" and "according to the spirit of holiness" into a dualism, pitted against each other, separated. This makes it easy to claim that I am flesh and Jesus is holy. It becomes equally easy, after identifying with Jesus, to claim that I am holy and you are but flesh. It's not long before this way leads to doctrinal, theoretical, philosophical litmus tests. Those who pass are holy, those who don't, aren't.
It is helpful to remember just a verse later that we have "received grace and apostleship" – both. We are holy, graced, and enact our apostleship in our flesh. I wish the word "and" was capitalized, italicized, and bolded to help us better relate our being true flesh and true holiness, just as we claim Jesus to mysteriously be fully human and fully divine.
During this advent time we still have a little time to carry our receiving of grace and apostleship into disciplines of faith. It is not so much, here, that these disciplines are memorized, no matter how heartfelt, beliefs, but the actual enactment of life-giving actions for ourselves, others, and G*D. Don't just stand there believing, do something.
As we approach these final days of advent we might pause to consider what we have learned these past weeks, what we have practiced, where our growth edges are, and what we need to continue working on.
The celebrations of Christmas will come and go, perhaps lasting as long as 12 days; the practices of Advent will continue beyond what we can yet see. Thankfully we begin our year with advent and not Christmas. By this time next year we can expect to see some changes in our living because of something we instituted in these few four weeks. Blessings upon your deciding to be different, your practice to be the needed change in your setting, and your evaluation of your advent work as you progress through the year.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html
How would you measure your spirit of holiness? For Paul it apparently is only recognized in resurrection. Going off to prayer, standing up to temptations, affirming one's belovedness, accessing an appropriate parable for the moment, healings, feedings, etc., etc., wouldn't be holy in and of themselves - only in the light of resurrection.
So, will only passing a pearly gate give credence to your otherwise mundane holiness? That seems a bit iffy for ever being able to confirm your holiness.
Perhaps your holiness will be acknowledged if you insist that those who are not of your particular faith are constrained to become just like you? If you can get a modern-day Gentile to obey your faith, you must be holy?
What say we take a step back and not do so much claiming of authority. It may be that holiness is not measurable or a commodity which one can have more of than another and thus lord it over them. In a Gumpish sort of way, holiness is what holiness does.
So at this last minute of Advent, don't just stand there - do something. Practice, as they say, will bring its own reward. Oh, wait, I mean perfection. Isn't that what is meant by holy - not fleshy, just spiritual.
It sounds like Paul maybe meant to start his letter, "I, Paul, friend of Jesus, write to you who need to be servants of Jesus." While it doesn't sound as nice as his second draft, authorized authorities can and do take some liberties with liberty.
Are you holy enough yet to belong to a Holy Club? Well, keep trying, you'll be on the guest list one of these days.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/12/romans-1-1-7.html
If you are reading either the KJV or the NRSV and not breathing hard at the end of a 7 verse sentence, you weren’t paying attention as you went along. It will take an accomplished Shakespearean actor to come close to giving this justice. It will be all too easy to proof text from this complex assertion.
In coming to this section it is good to hear the confession of N. T. Wright in The New Interpreter’s Bible: “Perhaps not surprisingly, it remains the case that anyone who claims to understand Romans fully is, almost by definition, mistaken. It is common to list saints and Christian leaders whose lives have been changed by reading this letter; the catalog could be balanced by a similar number who have radically misunderstood it. Troublingly, the lists would overlap.”
The New Community Bible delineates some of the different paths found here: “Numerous theological notions have been derived solely or in part from Romans. Augustine acquired his idea of original sin from Romans 5; Luther gained his understanding of justification by faith alone from Romans 3-4; Calvin obtained his doctrine of predestination from Romans 9-11. John Wesley got his distinctive teaching on sanctification from Romans 6 and 8, and Karl Barth learned of the importance of the righteousness of God from Rom 1 and 2.”
The Common English Bible, among many others, breaks this into sentences (CEB version). They also note in their Study Bible, “Paul introduces himself, the good news (or “gospel”) he proclaims, Jesus as the content of the good news, and his reader’s participation in it.”
In all the G*D and Jesus talk it will be very easy to overlook an important participation phrase—Through Jesus we have received grace and apostleship/appointment to graceful living.
Which of these translations are you Adventing toward?
... to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles
... to bring all Gentiles to faithful obedience
Are you oriented toward order or grace? Yes, too broadly put and open to “radical misunderstanding”, but asked anyway.