Law Book (Romans 7)

     

     Right now I'm gonna speak to those of you who've studied and accepted Jewish law. You do know that that law only means something if the person who follows it is living right? It's just like in marriage. A man and woman are only married as long as each person is alive. Once either of them dies, the law binding them together is void. But if the wife sleeps with another man while her husband is still living (or the other way around), she (or he) will be branded an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she's free to move on however she wishes. She can date, marry, play the field, etc. She's no longer bound to the marriage covenant because death made it void.

     In the same way, the law that we've been bound to for so long has been made void. Jesus devoted his life to showing us this. He showed us that all this time we'd been so bound up by following the rulebook that it sucked dry our capacity or desire to be in an actual covenant relationship with this God. And God never wanted that from the beginning. It was man's idea to turn the lawbook into a divine being to be worshiped, but it was Jesus' idea to show people that God had already paved the way for us to experience life free from that lawbook. 

     The laws always show us how bad we are. That's all they do. Everybody knows that rules are made to be broken, and no matter how hard we try, we can't do it. All they end up doing is catapulting us into this cycle of trying to follow the rules, breaking them, telling ourselves we'll do better next time, fucking up again, and repeating. It leads to a death of the heart and mind - a dead end life!

     What Jesus wanted us to know was that we don't have to live in that cycle anymore. God loves us and cares for us more than we can ever imagine, a far cry from a bunch of papyrus scrolls with Hebrew letters. Our value and merit is no longer determined by how well we've followed the rules, but is determined by something we can't even grasp - the spirit, or essence, or otherness, or feeling - of God that's found pumping through our veins. All the law did was make us slaves to shame, but now we see that we're free to follow the guidance of that still small voice that resides within. That voice can and should be trusted. 

     So, since the law produces shame, should we say that it's wrong to follow? Hell no! I can't imagine where I'd be right now if the law hadn't pointed out all of my defects over the years. The law has its function, and our job is to let the law work for us, not to work for the law. Before the laws ever came around, there was no such thing as sin in the way we talk about it today. Back then, it was an archery term. Then, it got turned into a moral term. The language started evolving and before long we had six hundred different sets of laws for things we wouldn't have even considered before. Pretty soon, Israel's whole being, her whole heartbeat, revolved around this new set of laws. 

     We humans are extremists. And so, there wasn't any middle ground with all of this rule following. You were either in or out. If you were in, you got to the front of the line with your sacrifice and the gods were happy with you. If you were out, you got stoned. There was no middle ground, which set the whole Israelite camp in a tailspin. 

     In a nutshell, the law is good as long as it works for us - as long as it exists to serve us and not control us. But does the law get to decide what it does? No! We get to decide that. So, we have to wake up first and foremost to the reality that we are free from being puppets to the law, and live under the reign of a God of grace and forgiveness!

     The law is spiritual if we let it be. It can be a helpful tool. But, we're sick people. We've got issues. Most of the time, we don't understand our own malicious actions. While our intentions are good and pure, our actions completely hijack our hearts. But it's in those moments when we do want we don't want to do, that the law does its job. It works for us, showing us how and where we screwed up. As long as we're living, there is that tendency inside of us to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and think the wrong things. We've been calling that tendency sin. Call it whatever you want. Nothing good comes from that tendency, yet we all have it. From toddlers to grandpas, we've all got it. 

     Here's the crux of this topic: anytime we do what we don't wanna do, this beast is at work. It's a beast that rears its ugly head and we really can't do anything about it besides hope that God removes it. We can use our willpower all day long to be as good as possible, but the beast continuously fucks up our plans, preventing us from doing what we originally planned on doing. 

     Anytime we want to do good, the self is waiting for a chance to take over and screw things up. Why is this? Because we're all wired to do good and to follow that voice inside of us that quietly directs us where to go. But it's like everything outside of that central core of our being is being wired to live by a different set of principles - rules that lead to frustration, shame, and ultimately death, whether that be spiritual, emotional, or physical. 

    If we're to let the good inside us rule over the bad, then we've got to become better listeners to the voice. The reason people aren't good at this is, they don't trust the voice. But, believe me, you don't want to become a slave to the beast. It'll kill you. It'll drive you to do things you never thought you'd do, just like it did me. I've killed many people, thinking I was doing the right thing, but really I was following the dictates of my sinful self. The small, still voice had been stifled for a very long time and had been hijacked. 

     But thank God we have a way out! We have a daily reprieve! We have to put ourselves in a posture to listen to the voice that directs us to peace and compassion. And when we do that, we find that we're being rescued from our sinful selves, and we find that that's been happening all along. The only difference is we notice it and can start participating in our very own journeys of restoration. 

     To sum up, at the core of our beings we are tapped into the divine, powerful, loving essence of God. But outside of that core, we're being tossed around like a pinball, constantly in the tension of selfish and self-seeking behaviors. One leads to life, and the other death. Which one is more noticeable to you today?

The Lens of Grace (Romans 6)

  

   So what do we do now? Do we keep on screwing people over since there's an unlimited amount of grace available to us? Hell no! How can we - in the same breath - enjoy our freedom and entrap ourselves to things that kill our hearts? Jesus wanted to show the world that it was and is possible for our dead end lives to have meaning once again - that in a way, our wreckage has been crucified and immersed in death. There's no such thing as a dead end anymore! We've all been given a do-over, a fresh start, and a chance to walk in the light of hope that this God provides. We are united through this new school of thinking and acting, both through the death of our old sin-obsessed lives and the revival of our new hope-filled journeys. We are free now, no longer being trafficked around by the carnage of shame and guilt. And since we share the common hope which Christ put on display (the possibility and reality of our dead-end lives being done away with), we share the same spirit of the movement that Jesus so radically started. That movement my friends is only growing. It's not going away anytime soon. Even death isn't strong enough to overcome this movement. And the springboard for this growing movement is this: Jesus wanted us to see and believe that this God does not look at us through the filter of what we've done wrong. Instead, this God looks at us through the lens of relationship and harmony and communion. In other words, we're dead to that old way of trying to fix ourselves and banging our heads against the wall, but we're alive to this God who's in the business of freeing and restoring our hearts, minds, and all of creation. As a result, we don't have to listen to the voices inside our heads that tell us to do things that in our deepest being we know aren't right. We no longer have to use our hands, feet, and tongues to bring chaos to our own lives and the lives of others. But now, we can use every part of our being to thrive in this communion with God, and to take part in this ongoing journey of restoration in the world around us. We're no longer bound by a set of rules and guidelines, but bound to the grace of this God.

     I can still hear some of you turning this thing over in your mind, "Since we're no longer bound to that shitty system of laws, we should be able to just do anything we want." Yes and no. If you wanna be a slave to shit, you'll be a slave to shit. But, if you wanna be free, you'll put yourself in positions to act as free beings. Thank God all of us have the code of freedom written on our hearts! And if we listen carefully, we'll know which direction we need to go to experience more and more freedom as each day goes by. We're slaves to freedom now, and we're not interested in strapping chains to our feet anymore! And I know more than anybody how hard it is sometimes to stay away from chaos, but we have the opportunity to turn all those liabilities that we once carried around, into assets that will be used for good. Chaos looks so good sometimes that we unthinkingly jump right into it, but it doesn't take long for the remorse to set in, and then the shame. Our hearts die and our minds follow closely behind, so hold onto the reality that we've been rescued from that vicious cycle and we are servants to this God who's continuously dispensing grace. This is what they mean when they say eternal life: when we wake up to the reality of the freedom that is engulfing us, time ceases to matter. We live in the moment - not the past and not the future - but here and now because we can't get enough of it!

The Dark Cloud Doesn't Have to Define Life (Romans 5)

     You see, what Jesus showed us was this: we all have peace with God because this God is making us right one day at a time. He also showed us that we're continuously swimming in the overwhelming grace of this God. We've been introduced into a faith that works, not due to our own fledgling belief systems but due to the faith that this God has in humanity. This God is constantly drawing us into that grace, and we can celebrate that! When we're hanging on for dear life and all the world around us is breaking into pieces, and we can manage to just take a deep breath and whisper "I trust you God with the results," we find that there's an energy reserve just waiting to be drawn upon. That energy reserve is this grace that we're talking about - the grace that Jesus put on display through his words and actions. And when we discover that gracious energy reserve, we find that we can persevere through the chaos that once felt hopeless. And that perseverance helps build our character. And the more our character builds, the more hopeful we become about both the current situations and the future. And hope is what keeps us going because the love and grace of God isn't running out, and it's running through our veins, pumping life into all of our being. 

     There couldn't have been a better time to have Jesus put this radical display of grace on for the world to see. We were walking zombies, hopeless and without a clue, grappling for whatever would relieve this mess we called life. Hardly any of us would sacrifice our own lives for a righteous person, much less an alright person. But when Jesus went to the cross - that ultimate Roman torture that so many of our brothers and sisters have faced - he wanted us to see what God is like. He wanted us to believe that God is willing to do anything to rescue us from dead end living. Jesus' death was a eulogy to that old way of hopeless living. His blood was a symbol of God's love pouring out onto us - God's favorite creatures. In a way, the blood cried out, "Don't you see it? You don't have to sacrifice anymore! You don't have to keep figuring out new ways to appease the gods! This God loves you more than you'll ever know!" Though we didn't think so, we were once enemies to this God. But we've been made right and are being made right. We're being saved moment by moment because we hold onto the hope that this God is restoring everything to its original intents and purposes. We can celebrate this reconciliation with God. Bring out the food! Bring out the wine! It's party time!

     The reality of sin infiltrating the minds of men was inevitable. Our oldest narratives all point to a time when humanity fell. And that sin was like an infectious disease that spread. It crossed borders and generational lines. It didn't discriminate. Everybody got it and has it. This dark cloud started spreading over humanity and no one knew how to get rid of it or bypass it. It was here to stay so it seemed, all the way from Adam to Moses to now. This dark cloud hovered over us, but a long time ago a new story started emerging about a God who was bigger than that dark cloud - a God who was more interested in restoring humanity than punishing humanity (like all the other gods). 

     Stories started coming out about a God who matched sin with grace, and this God wasn't interested in having humanity offer sacrifices to make up for their wrongdoings. This God was more concerned with working within humanity instead of withdrawing. Over time, people started realizing that this God wanted a relationship with people. And people started realizing that when they tapped into the power of this God, something profound would happen - they would experience an endless supply of grace even though the dark cloud still hung high. 

     And that's where we find ourselves today - the dark cloud still hangs, but we have an out. We have relief. We have hope. There is never a time when the dark cloud can't be matched with grace and peace through this God. 

     Even the litany of laws that our ancestors created as a semi-relief from our own wreckage didn't come close to the relief that comes from this God's grace. And Jesus showed us that. The laws only increased our misery. They only made things worse. But all that time, we were blind to the reality of this God's grace. We are awake to that now though. We see it! And thanks to the work that Jesus did, we recognize that no person is left out from that grace