Put Right with God (Romans 3:21-28)
June 29, 2008 by Mary
The story so far. Sixteen verses after the opening greeting Paul makes a striking proclamation: “I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith. “This raises questions which take a further couple of chapters to deal with – for instance: Why we need salvation (look at the state of the world); the difference between Jews and Gentiles (is there any advantage in being a Jew?) and, most important, the relevance of the Old Testament law to the Gospel. The passage we are looking at today seems to sound a startling, new, positive note. I’ll come back to that in a moment. First, I want to make a general point. Part of our difficulty with the letter to the Romans – for it is a difficult letter – is that it involves an abstract argument, not a narrative, or a pictorial illustration. Paul is working out for himself and for the Christian converts just what the life of Jesus Christ was all about. He came to the conclusion that it is, quite simply, for all human beings, the most important thing in the world (NB His conversion was not the consequence of an internal argument, but an encounter with Jesus himself.) Without this understanding nothing in the world is going to make any sense. We believe in God. What comes of that? Jesus repeatedly referred to God as “Father”, and after his crucifixion, rise from the dead, what comes of that? Well, one of the most important things that comes of it is that Jesus has restored our broken relationship with God. Does that really matter to us?
The Bad News before the Good Part 2 (Romans 2:1-3:20)
June 22, 2008 by Simon
This sermon was preached in three small sections, with singing or other activity between each. The break points are marked.
So here we are, at the beginning of Wimbledon fortnight and approaching the end of Euro 2008. Both, no doubt, to be remembered for their lack of any discernable British success. You can’t really have a competitive football or tennis match without an umpire or a referee. Both have to make quick judgements which, at least up until now, have to be made without the benefit of technology and action replays. Now I won’t embarrass any of the men (or possibly some of the women either) by asking if you’ve ever found yourself at a football match or at Wimbledon, or even watching either on the telly and you witness a poor umpiring or refereeing decision and then you’ve found yourself screaming out loud at the poor decision. I think I must be becoming a grumpy old man myself because, although I don’t scream out at poor sport reporting, I find myself doing something similar at the news when someone says something apparently idiotic in an interview or something. It’s easy to point the finger at someone else’s mess up, isn’t it? It’s easy to find fault in others without being willing to acknowledge our own. For those of us joining the congregation today, we’re going through week by week one of the Letters written by a man named Paul that are in the Bible. Paul is in the early stages of a long letter in which he is going to explain why faith in Jesus Christ is such good and wonderful news. In these early chapters, though, Paul has to explain something of the bad news to humanity before they can hear the good.
The Bad News before the Good Part 1 (Romans 1:18-32)
June 15, 2008 by James
I want to start with sex, and then park it. Since the Team Rector has, in his usual firm, kindly and godly fashion, thrown me the hospital pass, I have resolved to catch it, run with it a bit, and then put the ball down to go instead on to the main pitch (which is also quite near the hospital!). On the main pitch is idolatry. But this hard-hitting early passage from Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome refers to sexual perversion quite explicitly. And because there is far too much sex casually bandied around in our society and because sex and same-sex relationships in particular have been the noisy dominating factor in the recent years of the global Anglican Communion of which we are part, that bit might have stuck in your mind and you might be wondering, well what’s he going to say about that? Or it may of course speak of my own particular fascination with the subject. Which is perhaps not improper in a still relatively young man, depending on what I do with it. Anyway. It is striking that Paul is writing not of love but of sex, and unnatural sex at that, shameful lusts. If you’re conservative and traditional on this matter, then this passage serves as a clear and forthright condemnation of any same-sex relationships, period; on the other hand, if you’re progressive, liberal, radical, or heretic – it’s interesting how the choice of word to describe a position on a subject says a lot about whether you think it is positive or not – a bit like terrorists and freedom fighters – anyhow, there is a strand in the literature suggesting boldly that God’s love and blessing is manifest in same-sex relations of similar characteristics to the holy matrimony ordained between a man and a woman – that is, relationships which are permanent, faithful, and stable. This places sex into its wider, proper context of loving commitment – and so, the progressive argument says, Paul was not talking about this kind of loving same-sex relationship at all in condemning idolatrous ‘unnatural relations.’
Paul’s Theme: God’s Gift of Relationship (Romans 1:16-17)
June 8, 2008 by Penny
This is the second sermon in our series on Romans. We come to Romans 1:16-17. St Paul writes: I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith. What is the gospel according to Paul? Why might it be shocking? Why might he be ashamed of it? What is new about it? Why is it so exciting for us? Those are the questions I’m going to try to answer this morning as we look at these two verses in Romans in the light of a powerful story from Matthew’s gospel. Our two verses from Romans are a summary of the theme of the whole letter. They touch on four key ideas. Gospel; salvation; faith; and righteousness. They also show Paul’s very engaging concern for his own people the Jews and his struggle to understand their role in the salvation story. Could you say in no more than 3 sentences what you think the Good News of Christ is? You might like to take that as your challenge for the week. Perhaps you could have a go later over coffee or in your house group. I’ll start you off with the answer quoted recently by Bishop Nick recently at a Readers’ meeting. God is. God is as he is in Jesus.