NEW LIFE IS RIGHT NOW
Psalm 116
Romans 8:1-11
Stephen Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin March 9, 2008
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Once upon a time, a person nobody really knew showed up and changed things. Before that, things worked by the rules. Life was according to expectations. Soon, though, other people felt a new spirit. There was new life. Everything changed. Eventually, that one person moved out of the picture. His spirit continued, though, in a very real, very powerful way. Now people, pay attention: I do not often use sports metaphors for preaching, because they tend to be either trite or idolatrous, and they annoy non-sports-fans. Besides that, even though I’ve spent half my professional life in Wisconsin, when it comes to football I cheer for the Michigan State Spartans and the Minnesota Vikings. Even so: I dare say that the most anti-sports person in the state could not avoid noticing that one of the great ones retired this week. After Brett Favre’s news became public, some people said, “Wisconsin will never be the same.” It’s true. My first job as a minister was up in Douglas County, south of Superior, from 1983 to 1989, and on Sunday afternoons in those years, after I had preached in two or three different churches, we collapsed on the couch and watched the Vikings lose, and then watched the Packers lose. Or the Packers lost first, then the Vikings. I told Les Steckel jokes. Mostly we were Jan Stenerud fans. In 1989 I started doctoral studies at Vanderbilt, and we moved to Tennessee, the land of NASCAR, barbeque and Dolly Parton’s friends; by the time we got back to the snow, Brett was in charge, and everything changed. Now, let’s get something else straight: Brett Favre is not Jesus. Understand? That poster about “Our Favre, who art in Lambeau . . .” is a blatant violation of the commandments against blasphemy and idolatry. Still, #4 made a huge difference to the home team. The people who said “Wisconsin will never be the same” are right. There has been a presence here that will live in a very real way, long after the number 4 is retired. Switch to Jesus, now. It’s a sudden jump, I know, but you can keep it straight, because He had a beard all the time. Jesus changed more than Wisconsin. Jesus changed the world, and His Spirit is still here to help us. Because Jesus lived, the whole world has been changed. Once upon a time is right now.
Think about what Jesus did. Jesus came to chase us out of the law. Jesus lived and worked with people like us to push us out of law as the way to life, and to push the law away from us. When He died on the Cross, the verdict rendered was against religious legalism. It was not a judgment against Moses or the Torah, and not against centuries and generations of people trying to be faithful to the way of God. The work of Jesus was to transform our understanding of how we are to live. Any legalism that insists that it knows the difference between right and wrong, always and in every situation, is condemned. Instead, in Jesus, every movement of love that lifts other people up and draws them together, is honored and celebrated. The work of Jesus was to help people: healing them, lifting them up, and teaching them to see value in their lives especially as they connected with others. No one in the picture gets a free pass, though. Part of lifting up the value in every life is making sure that those higher up do not block the way. Jesus shatters the stained glass ceiling so that everyone can be lifted up. In His way there is no higher or lower. Instead, there is love that builds up the community and every person in it. Any approach to life that does not welcome every person into loving community, and seek to make the community ever larger, works against the way of Jesus. Religious law of any kind is swept away, because every such approach evaluates people based on their performance compared to objective measures: did you violate the Sabbath or not, did you or did you not give alms in addition to a full ten percent of your income. You can go a long way toward fulfilling any law without giving much regard to people, and that is not what Jesus wants. So, he tries to move us to a different approach. Jesus pushes us away from religious law.
The Spirit lets us share the work of Jesus. To be in Christ is to share His mission, and the Spirit lets us do that. Jesus lived out what it means to be fully and perfectly human, which means fully in the image of God. Now, His spiritual presence continuing among us allows us to share His mission of loving and welcoming and including all people in a growing fellowship. It is the life of Jesus, not His death, that shows us what God wants humanity to be. His death shows what God does not want. The way of God is not accusation, judgment, and punishment. It is life in spite of death. It is love that overcomes hate. It is healing wherever there is pain, even when healing means breaking the rules. The reality of the spirit of Jesus still living among us keeps us trying to follow that plan. Of course, it is possible to help neighbors and work for peace without being Christian. It is not possible, though, to work to build up genuine community for reasons that are ultimately self-serving, so anyone who shares in that good way serves Christ’s purpose. The Crucifixion is the ultimate divine message that things are not as they should be. The Spirit that came to live among those who first witnessed that day continues with us now, urging us not to fall back into patterns of separation and division. That is why we are bold enough to claim that Jesus really is the Savior of all people: anyone who lives with the purpose of trying to bring all people together is living in the Spirit of Jesus. People who do not claim the label “Christian,” as well as all who do, move in the Spirit when we work toward the full humanity that Christ embodied. Whenever people move together for the good of all, the Spirit of Jesus moves with us. The Spirit we share keeps us working.
Let’s be clear about the spiritual life. Let’s be as specific as we can about what it means to be “in Christ” and “in the Spirit.” When those phrases appear in the Bible, they often sit side by side with the claim that Christ and the Spirit are “in us.” What does that mean, though, in real-world terms? The outward signs are easy enough; we have just been thinking about behavior that contributes to building up community. It does not have so much to do with the kind of songs we choose, the language we use, or which doctrines we feel are fundamental. As a matter of fact, explicitly Christian phrases sometimes have the effect of turning away people who might otherwise move toward an authentic community of faith. They get turned off by stereotypes about Christian divisiveness and exclusivity, which unfortunately have far too much basis in fact. The inward reality of life in the Spirit and of the Spirit dwelling in us is a little harder to track. Surely it includes a deep disposition to care for all people, who all are created in the divine image, as part of profound respect and a desire to care for the entire creation. It includes wanting to be with other people who are eager to carry Christ’s purposes forward. It is living in the large story and the many smaller stories of the Bible and the church, so that they become part of our story and we are part of them. It is something like the connection many people feel to their colleges or high schools: they know the songs, the cheers, the traditions and the legends; they check on the teams, even if they don’t care about sports; they are proud of the choir on tour, even if they don’t know a flat from a fermata. In Christian life, it means that beyond knowing some of the songs, we feel them; it means feeling deeply moved in worship, occasionally or very often; it means recognizing how many phrases in common speech actually come from our faith story; and it means that even as we allow others the grace to practice faith in their own ways, or not at all, it matters to us that we are identified with Christ. A big part of being in the Spirit is that you want to be in the Spirit! Feel what it really means.
Now, we can live. Right now, we live in the Spirit with Jesus. Right now—not in delayed anticipation of supernatural glory, but right here, in this life. The Letter to the Romans challenges the common teaching that the cross sets us free from sin. Listen carefully to the words: “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, God condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” By living as the perfect human embodiment of what it is to be created in the image of God, Jesus defeated sin long before he went to the Cross. The Crucifixion was the result of the fact that He remained faithful to His holy calling, refusing the temptation to pretend to be less than the divine image beings we were all created to be. During His human life, Jesus condemned sin by not sinning. Please notice: Jesus drank wine at parties, and made lots of wine for one party; He frequently hung out with well-known sinners; and He was visibly and physically angry with self-righteousness. When we say Jesus did not sin, that does not mean He was prissy. It means He did not let doctrine and systems force Him into compromising His mission of building up a universal fellowship of love. He did not allow the power brokers of His culture to keep help from getting to people who needed it. He did not tolerate ethnic discrimination. He also expected people touched by His love to change. Folks, salvation is about right now. It is about helping neighbors. It means not tolerating standard lies, about things like health care and taxes and government spending. Salvation means that right now, we allow the Spirit of the Holy to shape our behavior to help neighbors, to welcome strangers and foreigners, to insist on social policies that provide effective care for the sick and aged, and to demand that our government seek peace instead of war—not as a matter of political accommodation, but because God wants the world to be at peace. Live that way. Live for hope. Live for health. Live for hospitality and peace. Live for joy. We can do it, because Jesus leads the way. New life is right now.
Live today. Feel the presence of Jesus today. A person we do not see is not necessarily gone. There is power and presence that continues after our physical lives. We don’t understand that reality completely, but it is true. So, live. Live now. Salvation is about how we reach out to others. Salvation is all about today. New life is right now.
Let us pray.
God of our lives, God of this life: focus our sights on Jesus, and set our steps beside His, that we may learn how to be people who honor You in all we do. Amen.