'Twas Ever Thus, And Ever Shall Be : a sermon for Year B, Lent 2

Preached on Sunday, March 4, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found here.

The Letter to the Romans is, like so much of our earliest Christian scriptures, an attempt to settle a squabble. The earliest communities of Christians were libel to get into an argument. The Letters to the Corinthians, this letter to the Romans; they all address issues, conflicts, differences of opinion among the group of people who wanted to follow Christ. Given some of our recent history, we might say, “And ‘twas ever thus...”

The problem at Rome that Paul sought to address in his epistle was, more or less, a problem of identity, a problem of ethnicity and primacy. At Rome, a community of Christians had formed in the early years following Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Rome, being the cosmopolitan place that it was, boasted a very diverse church. There were gentiles, of course, and given that this was the capital of the Roman Empire, probably many different groups of gentiles from many different places throughout the Empire. And then there were Jewish Christians in the church at Rome as well. Part of the many Jewish communities spread throughout the Roman empire; well known, persecuted at times by some, but often respected and revered for their ancient faith, and strong ethical traditions.

When gentile and Jewish Christians came together, there was often conflict. The Jewish Christians were, well, Jews, of course, just like Jesus was. They knew and understood the whole of salvation history. The covenant established with Abraham, the Exodus out of Egypt, the giving of the law – a law they adhered to in letter and spirit. They remembered the battles for a homeland in Palestine, the captivity in Babylon. They revered the greatness of King David and of his son Solomon. All of this rich, rich history was part of their understanding of themselves and part of their understanding of Jesus, whom they saw as the fulfillment of this history, the long hoped for messiah, the fulfillment of all the law and prophets. 

Gentile Christians followed a different path to the faith. They came from what were seen as pagan cultures. Usually from an official state religion that featured a pantheon of gods, some good, others somewhat notorious, some dedicated to the hunt, others to war, still others to the harvest. From this rather diverse tradition, they had come to believe that there was, in fact, only one God, who was creator of all and God of all. A single, supreme God who had given a son; and in that was something they understood from the tales of their former gods. And this divine Son, who had been borne of a human mother, again, a familiar trope to former pagans, had done something completely new. He had died and risen again, and then ascended to heaven. And through belief in this miracle child of God, one could also be born again, after death, into the life eternal. 

Two such different groups, approaching the same object, drawn to belief in the same God and the same Son of God, but coming at it from such different histories, different points of view... well, we can see how the conflicts might have come about, how competition, even real acrimony might develop.

So Paul writes to the church at Rome to help them come to an understanding of each other. Paul tries to lead the different factions in church at Rome to respect each other’s differences and recognize that there was room for everyone in the salvation Jesus offers. Paul wants the Romans to accept and embrace the diversity they encounter in those drawn to the faith. I have to say it again, “And ‘twas ever thus,” isn’t it? We are still trying to get this particular point of Paul’s...

Paul knew, of course, that the Jewish Christians saw themselves as children of Abraham, so he uses Abraham’s history and identity, to support his argument that the new covenant established by Christ was consistent with the covenant established by God with Abraham. Both covenants were rooted in faith, in belief and in keeping faith with the one God who keeps faith with us. Paul tells the Romans that in addition to the traditional understanding of righteousness that comes through adherence to God’s law, there was a new understanding that wasn’t in the end, so new, but one that fits well with the tradition handed down by Abraham.

Tradition, Scripture, Reason. There’s the Apostle Paul at his most Anglican!

Quite similar to Paul’s problems with the Romans, Jesus is having a problem with Peter in our gospel reading today. Like the Romans, Peter has an understanding of himself and, he thinks, of Jesus. Peter is a faithful Jew, and Jesus, he has just proclaimed in his Great Confession, is the messiah. Jesus of Nazareth, Peter proclaims, is the long predicted, long awaited one to come to Israel.

There were a great many messianic expectations in the air in Jesus’s time. And, as if often the case, the issues and challenges being faced by the people tended to color somewhat the ideas and expectations they had of God and of God’s messiah. The people of Israel were deeply troubled by the Roman occupation, to put it mildly. And they harkened back to a time when they were independent and powerful and their religion was the established religion of the state, rather than Roman paganism. They longed for a return to that power and they craved a leader who would come and reassert their prestige and primacy. They wanted some ‘old time religion’ being orchestrated from the seat of political power. Let me say it yet again, “And ‘twas ever thus.” 

So when Jesus tells his disciples that the Son of Man is to suffer, and be rejected, and die, Peter’s just not having it. That’s not his conception of what the messiah is supposed to be. Peter wants a messiah who is to ascend the seat of power, not suffer. Peter wants a messiah who is to rule and reign, not be rejected. Peter wants a messiah who is to live gloriously, not die ignominiously.

But Jesus offers another way. Jesus is one who has come to serve and to suffer, not to reign supreme. Jesus has come not to escape death, but to succumb to it, as we must do, but also to transcend death, and to mark the way toward an eternal life that death itself cannot kill.

To the Romans, and to the disciples, Jesus and his apostle Paul make clear; there is another way. With God, there is another way. That way is a way of inclusion, a way of harmony, a challenge to come together in Christ, for Christ, by way of a shared faith, with those we might rather reject, those who might reject us. 

With God, there is another way. And it is not the way of nations and states, and power and prestige, wealth and well-being. Such things are ephemeral, they pass away as they must. But God’s way is eternal. God’s way is the way of life. And not a life that escapes death, but one that transcends and transforms even death itself.

God’s way is the way of the cross. Rather than take up the honors this world offers, we are to take up the cross. Rather than to ascend the seat of power, we are to serve the powerless. Rather than to live gloriously, we are to give glory to God, and give our lives in God’s service and to gain lives eternal through the grace of God.

Yesterday, our own Sarah Kooperkamp, was ordained to the transitional diaconate, a step on the road to her eventually becoming a priest. Some of you were there at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine yesterday and you heard our Assisting Bishop Bruce Caldwell preach an excellent sermon. Bishop Caldwell told of being in Belfast in the north of Ireland during some of the worst of The Troubles. Tensions were so high in Belfast at the time, a wall had been erected between the Roman Catholic and Protestant sections of the town, in an attempt to keep the peace. Well, some Christian peace activists decided to try another way. The got someone to open a door in the wall that had been welded shut. Taking up the cross of Christ, they processed through that door in the wall, and joined the people on the other side in a prayer for peace.

That, my friends, is taking up the cross. That is following Jesus. The way of the world is to build a wall; but the way of Christ, is the way of the cross, and the cross breaches the wall. The cross transcends it; and we find ourselves taking another way, we find ourselves sharing the peace of Christ with those the world says should be our enemies. 

There is another way with God. A way of unity in diversity, a way of peace, a way that transcends all sorts of walls, even death itself. There is another way with God. 

And ‘twas ever thus... and ever shall be, world without end. +Amen.