Romans 2 and 3: God in Us, Moving toward Us, Resting on Us

A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians

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Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay Press, a Friends publishing house

Lesson 2

Romans 1:18-23; 3:9-12, 19-20

Quakers have a view of the human heart that includes both the bent toward evil and the yearning toward good. The light of God enlightens every person (John 1) as well as the need for people to turn from their own error and idolatry to worship the true God. George Fox frequently pointed out how the churchgoers of his day placed the building and the hierarchy in the place of God, who dwells in each believer as a temple and who meets with congregations of believers to teach them in spirit and in truth.

Paul says that each person has an internal witness to truth and that the wicked in every culture ignore that witness. That witness calls us to accountability for our actions. Instead, we prefer to place creation before the creator, and we sacrifice to things that have no eternal worth.

I was startled into awareness of my own early departure from that witness within. I was reading Becky Pippert’s Out of the Saltshaker, and she referred to the myth of innocence we carry when we try to justify ourselves, to make it ok that we have violated our inner witness. I remembered a cruel exclusion of another child when I was very young. It came back to me so clearly and convicted me that I was not innocent; my meanness had scarred me, even though I was so young. Paul points out that none of us has a place to stand that makes us qualified to judge others. This is both humbling and a big relief.

Even grownup Christians can violate their instincts to do good, can disobey the light within, can ignore what the law requires, namely to love our God wholly and love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Romans 13:8-9). As Fox would have put it, we need to “possess what we profess.” When God points out a gap between what we say we believe and what we do, we need to be ready to turn around and go God’s way.

Lesson 3

Romans 3:21-31

Paul asserts that the law, the prophets, and the faith exhibited by Jesus all reveal the trustworthiness of God. The faith of Jesus in God our Father helps us understand the law and the prophets. We understand the whole Bible through Jesus.

George Fox wrote that the scripture was given forth by the Spirit of God and all people must first come to the Spirit of God in themselves by which they might know God and Christ of whom the prophets and the apostles learned; and by the same Spirit they might know the holy scriptures and the Spirit which was in them that gave them forth, the spirit of God. He told his countrymen that they did not know the word of God but only the letter.

In his search for truth, George Fox met Jesus personally: “There is one,” he heard, “even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.” This transformed him from a heartsick seeker to a jubilant and determined sharer of the good news that Jesus Christ is present today to teach his people himself. Just as the inner witness of God was universal, the nearness, the presence of the Kingdom is universal also. Jesus ransoms all from slavery to sin. In our present time, God is just what God should be, right and good, and God makes us just as we should be. We can trust God to do this because Jesus did.

  

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Prepositions are so tricky in every translation, and the ones in this phrase from verse 22, “unto all and upon all” (KJV), are telescoped into “for all” (NRSV). However, the dual sense of how we can now know that God is just as God should be is a little lost in “for all.”  This conviction about God is both moving toward and into us and resting on us. The combined sense of movement and rest shows up in the next story of Abraham (Romans 4) whose confidence in God made him right with God and helped him hope that God’s promise would be fulfilled despite his not seeing how it could be accomplished.

Jesus and the Miracle of Jonah

Preached at Entiat Friends Church

March 22, 2015

Have you ever noticed that Jesus went out of his way to bring up the story of Jonah? Jonah has to have been the least favorite prophet for Jewish folks who every day thanked God they were not Gentiles.  Jonah shows up running from God’s call to go to Assyria, Israel’s enemy, to the city of Nineveh, to preach to non-Jews.  His efforts to avoid God’s call land him in cold water and then in the belly of a fish.  He personally repents, and God gives him another chance to obey.  When he does, the people of Nineveh repent so thoroughly that even children and animals wear sackcloth and ashes.  Jonah waits for God to destroy Nineveh, and instead God forgives them, to Jonah’s angry dismay.  So when Jesus brings up the sign of Jonah, he is not only talking about disappearing for three days and coming back  (his coming death and resurrection) but also about the idea that God might care for the enemies of the Jews, the Romans, and other Gentiles as well.  No wonder these references made people mad. 

Each time Jesus mentions Jonah, he does so in the context of clarifying what is really important to God. This means that we can look at what comes right before and right after to help us understand what Jesus is clarifying. These clarifications take four or five main directions.

Here are the passages:

Matthew 12, summary of context: After being confronted for “harvesting” grain on Sabbath and healing a man’s hand on Sabbath, Jesus asserts he is Lord of Sabbath.  After being accused of casting out demons by a demon, Jesus asserts his authority over demons and warns against attributing the work of God to the devil. Then he says:

 “How evil and apostate, how faithless to God are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of the prophet Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and nights in the big fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and nights in the depths of the earth. On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you, because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach, and I tell you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Matthew 12) Following this, his mother and brothers show up and Jesus asserts that his true family are those who hear and obey God. Then he tells the story of the Sower and the Seed and the various kinds of Soil.

Matthew 16, summary of context: After being confronted for eating with unwashed hands, Jesus asserts that uncleanness is a heart condition, not a problem with hands. He heals a Canaanite girl, a Gentile, and feeds a crowd of over 4000 in a Gentile district, Decapolis. The Pharisees and Sadducees ask him for a sign.  Then he says this:

“You can foretell the weather from the sunset or sunrise, but you cannot interpret the signs concerning these times. How evil and godless are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of Jonah.” (Matthew 16) Following this, Jesus warns his disciples against the “yeast” (teaching) of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Luke 11, summary: Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, praises Mary for listening, teaches the disciples to pray.  Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy, and the crowd speculates he is doing so by the power of the devil.  Jesus asserts that the kingdom of God has come among them, and that the blessed ones are those who hear and obey God.  Then Jesus says:

“How evil are the people of this day! They ask for a miracle, but none will be given them except the miracle of Jonah. In the same way that the prophet Jonah was a sign for the people of Nineveh, so the son of Man will be a sign for the people of this day. … On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach; and I assure you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Luke 11) Then Jesus talks about letting  light shine without blocking it, so that others can see by it.  He attends a dinner at a Pharisee’s house and takes the opportunity to confront their emphasis on external piety without caring for cleaning up their hearts.

Although each passage occurs in its own context, threads of meaning tie the contexts together.  Here are those threads.

First, the context teaches us that God cares more about humans and their needs than about the Law. When we look at what precedes and follows these comments by Jesus, we find the following.

Matthew 12 raises the issue of Sabbath-keeping. Several Old Testament prophets condemned Israel to God’s judgment specifically for breaking the laws about Sabbath.  So you can imagine that folks who carefully followed the law like the Pharisees are shocked when Jesus’s disciples “harvest” and eat some grain from fields as they walk along on the Sabbath, and when Jesus heals a man with a paralyzed arm on the Sabbath. These actions and Jesus’s words make the Pharisees so angry they plot to kill him. Jesus reprimands those with a legalistic view of the Sabbath by reminding them of what Hosea the prophet said: God desires goodness, kindness, faithfulness, not sacrifices.  This means that the actions proceeding from a good, kind, faithful heart are what God has as a priority.  Jesus announces to the legalistic folks that even they would pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, and that doing good to humans on that day is also important and perfectly lawful.  He asserts that he himself, “the Son of Man,” is Lord of the Sabbath. 

Second, Jesus shows that we cannot limit God’s generosity and grace to those who are like us, and that if we limit these for others, we limit them for ourselves.

Jesus heals a man possessed by an evil spirit in both Matthew 12 and Luke 11.  The Pharisees attribute this miracle-working power to the devil rather than to God.  Jesus says that this is first impossible, and second unforgiveable.  Why is it unforgiveable?  Because when the Pharisees refuse to welcome the healing and freeing power of God for others, they set themselves outside it as well.  I can’t be forgiven if I’m not willing for God to forgive others; I can’t be healed if I’m not willing for God to heal others; I can’t be the one God chooses to live in if I won’t allow God to live in others, also. And further, God does all the good we see—every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If the Pharisees had known God, they would have known this truth. When Jesus teaches about prayer in Luke 11, he gives his followers a model prayer and encourages them to persist in praying because God is good and gives good gifts.

Third, Jesus goes on to say that no one gets to sit by and stay neutral. 

Those who meet him have two choices—to gather close like fish in a net, or like folks welcomed into a home, or to run away in terror, to scatter. He also points out that we can tell what is in people’s hearts by what they say; perhaps this is like the psychological tendency to project on others what is actually true (and what we dislike) about ourselves. There is no way to stop this process except to admit the nature of our own hearts and open them for God to change. The gospel of John puts it like this:  this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people prefer the darkness because they think it hides their evil deeds.  C.S. Lewis puts it this way: God is the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from (Mere Christianity).

Fourth, Jesus warns his listeners to be authentic and make sure the light in them isn’t darkness. He makes that really specific by accusing the Pharisees of hypocrisy—cleaning up their facades while carrying around greed and wickedness; tithing spices while neglecting justice and the love of God; loving status while being dead inside; loading up others with burdens while offering no help to carry them; building monuments for the prophets while planning to kill Jesus.

In Matthew 16 and Luke 11, Jesus warns his followers about the yeast of Pharisees and Sadducees—their teaching and their hypocrisy.  Their teaching is that only by careful obedience to the Law can a person be redeemed, and their hypocrisy is that they teach this while allowing themselves loopholes and justifying their disobediences. God doesn’t like this:  God wants us to repent for own disobedience and to be merciful to others, giving them room for God to work on them without attributing the work of God’s Holy Spirit in them to the devil.

Fifth, Jesus teaches that obedience is the identifying characteristic of the family of God. When Jesus turns around and hears that his mother and brothers have come to see him, he spreads his arms wide to include all his followers and says, “All who do what God wants them to do are my family.” When a woman blesses Jesus’s mother, Jesus in reply blesses those who hear and obey God.

What might keep people from obeying God? The story of the sower and the four kinds of soil illustrates how having hard hearts, being unwilling to suffer, or worrying about money prevents people from hearing and obeying the good news.  But some accept it, let it sink into their hearts and grow, and bring forth the good, kind, faithful actions that show their hearts have changed into good, kind, faithful hearts.

To summarize the threads of meaning in this passage:

Religious hypocrisy separates people from knowing God; authenticity makes knowing God possible.  How can we become more authentic? The way to authenticity is honesty about our neediness before God and obedience to the voice of God’s Holy Spirit.

We can put human needs ahead of rules because God authorizes us to do so.

We have to keep God’s justice for ourselves and distribute God’s mercy on others.

We have to take our light out from under the barrel of politics and legalism and obey the mandate to be a light to the world.

Jesus says that the answer to our fears is to gather with him, to press closer to him, and not to split up and run for it. 

Our stance toward those in need around us is to heal, to give food, to set them free from the evil one.  Our stance toward ourselves is to focus on the inside of the cup, not the outside, and be honest about what’s there. 

What exactly is “the miracle of Jonah”? Is it that he was swallowed by a fish and then vomited up?  That previews the burial and resurrection of Jesus. Is it that he actually did obey God?  Though certainly not his preference, yet he did what God said. Is it that God used Jonah to redeem people who were enemies to the Jews and who did not know God previously? This is a sign that God’s love and redeeming work are for the whole of humanity, not just the Jews.

We are called to listen to God and obey. Jonah eventually did this. Jesus always did this.  Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, who is voice of God to us, guiding us truly and guiding us closer to truth.  Jesus himself is the Truth.  Like Jesus, we point to a God who cares that all repent and be redeemed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This frees us to live at peace with God, reconciled with God, able to look into God’s eyes and see the love there, and to share that reconciliation with others.

Your Judgments: Justice and Mercy in Psalm 119

The word judgment has negative connotations in today’s conversation.  To say of a group that “they are so judgmental” is essentially to say they are unapproachable and unattractive because they judge others to be less than themselves. But if you substitute some of the other possible ways to translate the Hebrew word mishpat, you might say that “they are so just” or “they respond so appropriately, so rightly.”  It’s clear that the idea behind mishpat is one we are actually attracted to—the ideas of justice, equity, even-handedness, fairness. It comforts us to be able to say with the psalmist,  “Righteous are You, O LORD, and upright are Your judgments” (Psalm 119:137). This can be paraphrased to show the emphasis and insistence of the psalmist: “Just are you, O LORD, and just is your justice.” The word “upright” places in mind an absolute vertical line between heaven and earth.  This stands and stands firmly. We need this to be so.

We notice particularly when we are treated unjustly. “How many are the days of Your servant? When will You execute judgment on those who persecute me?” (Ps. 119:84).  “I have done judgment and righteousness: do not leave me to my oppressors” (Ps. 119:121).  We all feel it keenly when someone harasses us, hems us in, dogs us, exploits us, violates us. Like this psalmist, we appropriately take these acts of enmity against us to God. “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense” (Deut. 32:35) and “Say to those who are fearful-hearted, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, With the recompense of God; He will come and save you’” (Isaiah 35:4).

I confess that this is often where I have to start when I feel wronged. I start by praying for justice: “The Lord watch between us while we are estranged, while we are enemies.” Keep an eye on that person, God, and bring your justice to sort things out between us. After a time of praying this way, I often find that God shows me how I too have been unfair, have done wrong in the relationship. God does indeed sort things out fairly.  And in the word “recompense” (shillem) is not just the idea of “paying someone back,” as we so often want to do or want God to do, but the idea of removing the injury, making peace, making good, making whole (shalam). 

This hidden peace-making is emphasized overtly in Jesus’s words, “But I say to you, love your haters, wish good to those who wish you harm, act honorably to those who detest you, and pray for those who insult, abuse, and threaten you and drive you away, that you may be children of your Father in heaven, who makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). After I have prayed for justice for awhile, I come to recognize that I actually want my innocence vindicated, more than I wish harm to the other person. The words of Jesus help prevent me from escalating the conflict.  Paul gives very similar advice: “Repay no one evil for evil, injury for injury. Wherever people look, let them see you care for the honorable, the excellent, the good, the honest. If you are strong, make and keep peace with all. … Do not be conquered by evil, by what is wrong, but conquer evil with good, with what is right” (Romans 12:17-21).

“My soul breaks with longing for Your judgments at all times” (Ps. 119:20), writes this psalmist. “My entire being breaks into pieces, is crushed with longing for Your justice now and always.”  And yet, to be fair, it is not always comforting to realize God is just.  The psalmist wrote, “My flesh trembles for fear of You; and I am afraid of Your judgments” (Ps. 119:120).  “My body shivers, my hair stands on end from terror and dread; I respect and fear your justice.”  I remember learning from Rebecca Manley Pippert (Out of the Salt Shaker…) about “the myth of innocence” we carry as regards ourselves. The unbelieving shrug, palms up, of the athlete who has just been whistled for a foul is a tiny example of our inability to see clearly how we have done harm or how we have omitted doing good. It is a heavy burden to continually have to protect our image and prove our innocence; if we can lay it down and let God sort things out, we will find freedom in God’s justice.

As we pray for justice, we will soon learn to add these prayers as well: “Look upon me, and be merciful to me, as Your judgment is toward those who love Your name…Hear my voice according to Your lovingkindness: O LORD, revive me according to Your judgment…Great are Your tender mercies, O LORD: revive me according to Your judgments (Ps. 119:132, 149, 156).  “I love you, God, the One who is; be merciful, be gracious, be just to me. Hear me because you are good, kind, and faithful; sustain my life with your justice. You cherish me, you love me tenderly; your justice keeps me alive.” 

George MacDonald said that God’s mercy and God’s justice are two ways we see the same attribute of God.  He said that God will make every excuse for us that can be made, and that God will also treat us as responsible where we are responsible.  God is glad to see the muddy child run into God’s arms, and God will lovingly and tenderly scoop the child up, disregarding the dirt, and equally lovingly and tenderly wash the child clean.

As we pray for God’s justice, as we pray for God’s mercy, as we do what Jesus tells us and what Paul reinforces, we will become more just and more merciful.  People will not see us as judgmental, but as fair and kind.  “Make my whole self fully alive and whole, and I will flash forth light; your justice surrounds and helps me” (Ps. 119:175).  “Let your light shine out where others can see your good, beautiful, honorable, excellent works and celebrate the shining splendor and majesty of your Father who surrounds you and encompasses the universe” (Matthew 5:16).  

Jesus, Jonah, and Authenticity

Preached at Homedale Friends Community Church

May 6, 2012

Jonah has to have been the least favorite prophet for Jewish folks who every day thanked God they were not Gentiles.  Jonah shows up running from God’s call to go to Assyria, to the city of Nineveh, to preach to non-Jews.  His efforts to avoid God’s call land him in cold water and then in the belly of a fish.  He personally repents, and God gives him another chance to obey.  When he does, the people of Nineveh repent so thoroughly that even children and animals wear sackcloth and ashes.  Jonah waits for God to destroy Nineveh, and instead God forgives them, to Jonah’s angry dismay.  So when Jesus brings up the sign of Jonah, he is not only talking about disappearing for three days and coming back  (his coming death and resurrection) but also about taking the possibility of reconciling with God to the enemies of the Jews, the Romans, and to other Gentiles as well, despicable as they are.  No wonder these references made people mad.  They understood he was saying that God loves more people than the Jews.

When I started thinking about Jesus referring to Jonah, the above was what I thought would be the main idea. However, each time Jesus mentions Jonah, he does so in the context of clarifying what is really important to God.  These clarifications take five main directions.

Here are the passages:

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the Law say, “Teacher, we want to see you perform a miracle.”

“How evil and apostate, how faithless to God are the people of this day!” Jesus exclaims.  “You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of the prophet Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and nights in the big fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and nights in the depths of the earth. On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you, because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach, and I tell you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Matthew 12)

Jesus says, “You can foretell the weather from the sunset or sunrise, but you cannot interpret the signs concerning these times. How evil and godless are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of Jonah.” (Matthew 16)

Jesus says:

“How evil are the people of this day! They ask for a miracle, but none will be given them except the miracle of Jonah. In the same way that the prophet Jonah was a sign for the people of Nineveh, so the son of Man will be a sign for the people of this day. … On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach; and I assure you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Luke 11)

Since each passage occurs in its own context, I looked for threads of meaning that tied the contexts together.  Here are those threads.

First, the context teaches us that God cares more about humans and their needs than about the Law.

Several Old Testament prophets condemned Israel to God’s judgment specifically for breaking the laws about Sabbath.  So you can imagine that folks who carefully followed the law like the Pharisees are shocked when Jesus’s disciples “harvest” and eat some grain from fields as they walk along on the Sabbath, and when Jesus heals a man with a paralyzed arm on the Sabbath. These actions and Jesus’s words make the Pharisees so angry they plot to kill him. Jesus reprimands those with a legalistic view of the Sabbath by reminding them of what Hosea the prophet said: God desires goodness, kindness, faithfulness, not sacrifices.  This means that the actions proceeding from a good, kind, faithful heart are what God has as a priority.  Jesus announces to the legalistic folks that even they would pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, and that doing good to humans on that day is also important and perfectly lawful.  He asserts that he himself, “the Son of Man,” is Lord of the Sabbath. 

Second, Jesus shows that we cannot limit God’s generosity and grace to those who are like us, and that if we limit these for others, we limit them for ourselves.

Jesus heals a man whom an evil spirit has made unable to see or speak.  The Pharisees attribute this miracle-working power to the devil rather than to God.  Jesus says that this is first impossible, and second unforgiveable.  Why is it unforgiveable?  Because when the Pharisees refuse to welcome the healing and freeing power of God for others, they set themselves outside it as well.  I can’t be forgiven if I’m not willing for God to forgive others; I can’t be healed if I’m not willing for God to heal others; I can’t be the one God chooses to live in if I won’t allow God to live in others, also. And further, God does all the good we see—every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If the Pharisees had known God, they would have known this truth. When Jesus teaches about prayer, he gives his followers a model prayer and encourages them to persist in praying because God is good and gives good gifts.

Third, Jesus goes on to say that there is no sitting by and evaluating. 

Those who meet him have two choices—to gather close like fish in a net, or like folks welcomed into a home, or to run away in terror, to scatter. He also points out that we can tell what is in people’s hearts by what they say; perhaps this is like the psychological tendency to project on others what is actually true (and what we dislike) about ourselves. There is no way to stop this process except to admit the nature of our own hearts and open them for God to change. The gospel of John puts it like this:  this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people prefer the darkness because they think it hides their evil deeds.  C.S. Lewis puts it this way: God is the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from (Mere Christianity).

Fourth, Jesus warns his listeners to be authentic and make sure the light in them isn’t darkness.

He makes that really specific by accusing the Pharisees of hypocrisy—cleaning up their facades while carrying around greed and wickedness; tithing spices while neglecting justice and the love of God; loving status while being dead inside; loading up others with burdens while offering no help to carry them; building monuments for the prophets while planning to kill Jesus.

Jesus warns his followers about the yeast of Pharisees and Sadducees—their teaching and their hypocrisy.  Their teaching is that only by careful obedience to the Law can a person be redeemed, and their hypocrisy is that they teach this while allowing themselves loopholes and justifying their disobediences. God doesn’t like this:  God cares more about repenting for one’s own disobedience and being merciful to others, giving them room for God to work on them without attributing the work of God’s Holy Spirit in them to the devil.

Fifth, Jesus teaches that obedience is the identifying characteristic of the family of God.

When Jesus turns around and hears that his mother and brothers have come to see him, he spreads his arms wide to include all his followers and says, “All who do what God wants them to do are my family.” When a woman blesses Jesus’s mother, Jesus in reply blesses those who hear and obey God.

What might keep people from obeying God? The story of the sower and the four kinds of soil illustrates how having hard hearts, being unwilling to suffer, or worrying about money prevents people from hearing and obeying the good news.  But some accept it, let it sink into their hearts and grow, and bring forth the good, kind, faithful actions that show their hearts have changed into good, kind, faithful hearts. 

Religious hypocrisy separates people from knowing God; authenticity makes knowing God possible.  How can we become more authentic? The way to authenticity is honesty about our neediness before God and obedience to the voice of God’s Holy Spirit.

• We can put human needs ahead of rules.
• We have to keep God’s justice for ourselves and distribute God’s mercy on others.
• We have to take our light out from under the barrel of politics and legalism and obey the mandate to be a light to the world.

Jesus says that the answer to our fears is to gather with him, to press closer to him, and not to split up and run for it.  Our stance toward those in need around us is to heal, to give food, to set them free from the evil one.  Our stance toward ourselves is to focus on the inside of the cup, not the outside, and be honest about what’s there. 

We are called to listen to God and obey, just as Jesus did.  Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, who is voice of God to us, guiding us truly and guiding us closer to truth.  Jesus himself is the Truth.  Like Jesus, we point to a God who cares that all repent and be redeemed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This frees us to live at peace with God, reconciled with God, able to look into God’s eyes and see the love there, and to share that reconciliation with others.