Below is the sermon I preached this Sunday as we began our summer sermon series on Romans (as it appears in the RCL this summer).
Scripture: Romans 5:1-8
Maybe it’s because school is ending, but I was reminded this week about a final a took in college. It was a financial management class my senior year. In the weeks leading up to the final we kept waiting for the professor to give us an outline or any idea what was going to be on the final. When she didn’t we finally asked her and she said, “All I can say is that the final will cover everything we have talked about the whole semester. It doesn’t focus on one area, it covers all of them equally.” It was going to a 100-question test, and so I studied as best I could. Now, we got like 3hrs to take each of our final exams. Typically, it would only take me half that time at most. You know how when you take a test they tell you the first go through, answer the ones you know and skip the ones you don’t, then go back? Well, it did that on this one and after my first pass, out of 100 questions, I had answered like 20. So, needless to say, this example, took me the whole 3hrs, and I still wasn’t sure when I turned it in. When I asked the professor, she said she’d have them all graded by the end of the week. And so for 5 days I stressed over this test because I was convinced I had failed!
So, at the end of the week I went to her office where she had the scores posted up on a window. I search for my student number and when I saw the number next to it, my heart sank. I only got 55 out of 100 questions correct. 55! I had never done so poorly in my life on anything!!! When my professor had surveyed my knowledge of everything I knew about a capstone course, it was pretty empty. I was so distraught that I had gotten only 55 out of 100 right that I looked again at the sheet of people (you know, just in case it miraculously changed in the meantime). And when I looked again….it hadn’t changed, I still only answered 55 right, but I noticed a second number next to the 55 that didn’t make sense. Being really confused, I stood there for a second trying to figure it out. When I was about to walk away, the professor showed up at her office and I asked her about my score. She looked at it and said, “yeah, you did pretty bad, huh? I expected better from you. But, as it turns out, the most anyone got right was 60, so I gave everyone 40points.” WWWHHHHAAAATTTT?!!? You mean you graded on a curve? Even though I deserved a failing grade, I got an A?!?!? The professor had justified my grade as a gift.
And I tell you this story, because this is what it means to be justified by grace! If you read the first 5 chapters of Romans, this is what Paul means when he said in chapter 3:23-24 “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that it is Jesus Christ.” The whole point of chapter 1 and 2 (and all the sin’s he talks again) it so he could make this one statement in chapter 3 – ALL have sinned, therefore ALL are justified by God’s grace as a gift. Not just us, but every person. Paul is saying that through Jesus God grades on a curve (through Christ we all get A’s (all of us…like Oprah, “you get an A, you get an A, you get an A”).
And as we begin our sermon series on Romans that is the first and most fundamental thing I want you to take away. That our (and every bodies) relationship with God is grounded in grace. If left to ourselves and to God expectations of holiness, we wouldn’t score so well. We wouldn’t get a Zero, but none of us would pass. Like me on my final, Paul says in 3:10 – “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding.” And so it is by sure grace and love that God makes up the difference. We cannot move forward in our understanding of Paul and Romans unless we get this one point.
And I bring this up, not only because Paul references this in the first verse of chapter 5 when he says “Since we have been justified by faith,” But also because (ad this is the second point I want you to take away) it is from this foundation of God’s grace that we can have hope in our suffering. Because, since we are justified, “we have peace with God.”
But how is that? How can we have hope in the suffering we experience? Well, because through Jesus God grades on a curve (bringing us all to an A) we know (and I know I’ve said this before) that God’s not angry! Since we live by grace we know that God isn’t the one causing the suffering we experiencing in this life.
On a side know: If God isn’t the one causing it. If it’s not part of God’s plan, then we can be very honest about the suffering of this world. We can be honest in the fact that much of the suffering is caused by us humans. We make bad decisions, we act insecure, we act selfish, we are broken. We can acknowledge and this world and even us are broken. It is not the way God desires. So when we stop blaming God and start owning up to it. That is where true repentance starts (knowing we’re lost, knowing we need help, knowing we get it wrong sometimes). But also we can hang on tightly to God’s dream of renewing the face of this earth – we can expanding our understanding of salvation as not escaping this world, but God renewing this world (and us)
And that is what gives us hope in our suffering. If God didn’t cause it – if suffering, mourning, crying, and pain are not God’s desire (or plan). When we can, as Paul says, Boast in the presence of God in our suffering. And knowing God is with us give us the endurance to walk through the suffering – to repent, to make the changes we need to in order to get through it (to rely on God more fully). And knowing we’ve gotten through one ordeal give us the character and fortitude to handle the next one. For (as Paul says in Philippians) “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” And this character, living into this peace that God is not angry, knowing that God is with us through hard times, give us the hope that this too will come to an end one day (mourning and crying and pain and suffering will come to an end.
So, as we begin this Roman’s sermon series, I want you to take away these two things: Christians are people who live totally and completely by Grace and because (#1) God is fundamentally a God of Grace. Through Christ, God grades on a curve. Through Christ, we have peace through God, because a grace-filled God is not angry!!! And if you doubt that (Paul says in 5:8) that God has proven the divine love for us in that while we were still sinners (while we were failing) Christ died for us!
And (#2) since God is grace-filled We are a hope-filled people (especially in suffering). The suffering we experience isn’t caused by God – God isn’t trying to teach us a lesson or anything. God is right there with us in our suffering and God is on a mission to renew the face of the earth through grace. And that gives us hope, for if the God who raised Jesus from the dead is for us, nothing and no one (not even death itself) can ultimately prevail against us. AMEN!
Faith Camino 