We are
beginning a series in Paul’s letter to the Romans, and it felt like a shock to
my system. I quickly realized that we are in difficult territory. Having just
finished a series on Genesis, this sort of took me by surprise – no one would
say the stories in Genesis are not difficult. The difference is we know how to
follow the lines of a story; following the lines of Paul’s logic is more
challenging. The unsuspected gift, however, is that we are already seeing some
connections between the lines of Genesis and the lines of Romans – and the
lines of our lives.
Before we looked
at the text, we listened to some thoughtful words written by Hugh Prather,
words about peace. The notion that spoke most clearly to me was the way we have
of expecting something in return for everything we do. Our expectations set us
up to be angry, disappointed, sad.
We
continued with some reflection on the scripture of two Sundays ago, the binding
of Isaac. Although looking beyond the particulars of the story was hard for us,
we did recognize a message for our lives, one that we don’t really want to hear:
that we need to hold nothing of ourselves back from God. This was a powerful idea
for us. We began, again, to see again our human tendency to withhold, wanting something
in return for our efforts.
The truth
is we sometimes need to look right into our own sinful nature. While I love to
get lost in the stories of Abraham and Sarah and their family, I need to find
myself and my own flaws in the story too. And while it is easy to get lost
(really lost) in the theological arguments of Paul’s letter to the Romans, I
need to identify my own “fleshly” tendencies.
Our
selfishness, our efforts to engineer our own lives and those around us, our
expectations of some kind of payback for whatever we do, all betray the mind
that is set on the flesh. To set the mind on the Spirit, as Paul suggests, is to
offer one’s all to God, to live generously, to forgive fully. If I can’t do
that, or at least try to do that, I will not have the kind of peace spoken of
in the words of our meditation.
Sometimes
you really need to follow the lines all the way through, to spend some time with your own brokenness. Then see that God
is there too.
Photo credit: By Liz Sullivan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47141585
