Romans 10:5-15

Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say?

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Sermon Text

Scripture impacts us differently depending on when we read it. We can hear the same verse dozens of times and not find anything exceptional about it. Suddenly though, with no seeming trigger, that same verse can become an overwhelming source of life and assurance. Sometimes the difference is a matter of life experience – a verse describing the love between a parent and child will not hit someone without children the same way it will someone with children. Other times the difference is something completely beyond ourselves. John Welsey famously felt assured of his salvation after hearing a public reading of an introduction to Romans. He had read Romans throughout his life, but something about its introduction that day hit him in a way it never had before.

Paul, in writing to the church in Rome, was primarily addressing the question of how Jews and Gentiles could live together. There are different perspectives on whether the primary audience were the Jewish or Gentile Christians in Rome, but either way there was a problem between the two groups. The issue at hand was not as simple as saying one group or the other was mistreating the other – instead long running societal tensions had caused a divide between the two groups. Romans, as a rule, looked down on Jews. Jews, likewise, had reason to distrust Romans – especially in the capital city. Claudius, the Emperor at the time, had expelled all Jews from the city, and the underlying antisemitic feelings in Rome probably bled into the Church.

Paul, a Greek Jew himself, had been born in the Turkish town of Tarsus. His family had sent him to Judea to be trained under rabbis in Jerusalem. There Paul suppressed his Greek identity – beginning to call himself the far more Jewish sounding, “Saul,” rather than the far too Greek “Paul.” It was only after Jesus appeared to him on the roadside that Paul embraced his status as a Roman and a Jew. After spending time in the Damascus Church he returned home to Tarsus, and then began his ministry that would last for his entire life.

Paul would not go to minister to the Roman Church until the final months of his life. We see his mindset then in the book of Philippians. Paul abandons much of his theological complexity to simply declare the power of Christ’s incarnation, and the necessity for the Church to stand together in love. This probably shocked the Roman Church who had only known him through letters before that. Letters like what we call “Romans,” a complex argument for the equality all people experience under Jesus Christ, but also for the importance of the unique gifts we all bring to the Church.

In the midst of his explanation of God’s grace, Paul comes to a verse I’ve already named as a favorite of mine. We are given an interpretation of Deuteronomy 30 that transforms its message in a way that could only happen in Paul’s mindset as a minister to God’s people from all walks of life. The passage Paul quotes, in full, goes like this:
            “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” – Deut. 30:11-14

The message of this passage is pretty different in its original context than what Paul gives it as in Romans. In Deuteronomy the message is about how we can keep God’s commandments, that God is not asking us to do anything impossible by asking us to do the right thing. This is something we often forget, we decide its ok to do what’s wrong because, “Nobody’s perfect!”

For Paul the message of Deuteronomy 30 takes on a different shade. Rather than being about how God’s commands are within our power to keep, the message becomes on about faith itself. Paul, elsewhere in Romans, wants to make very clear that goodness and salvation are two separate conditions of the faithful life. A person is saved regardless of how good they are at that moment, they become more perfect in their goodness as a result of their faith. Put in the language of this passage, the confession of their faith saves while the reality of their salvation makes them good. Christ in our heart and Christ upon our lips, two parts of the same whole we call faith.

Paul takes this duality and applies it to the need for us to testify to our goodness. To proclaim Christ’s salvation wherever we go, so that we might embrace the entire world. Through this embrace, we bring people into the community of the Church. As part of the Church, we learn to love Christ and one another more perfectly, and then are ready to be sent out into the world to testify about the same salvation that brought us into the family of God in the first place. A circle of action that constantly revivifies and preserves the work of the Church.

I think we all understand this on a basic level, it is the foundation of our mission in the United Methodist Church. We make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and that comes through our proclamation of Christ and our living our of the life Christ has freed us to be a part of. However, I think another lesson comes from the scripture we just read, one that is expressed predominately in the fact Paul makes the argument he does at all.

Scripture has definite meaning – it cannot be made to mean whatever we want it to. However, the way that God reveals the meaning of scripture is often tied to the place we are in life. People, Churches, movements, all are shaped by scripture and by the world around them. God often uses one to inform the other. Just like how Paul found new meaning and life in Deuteronomy that he would not have known before, we can find new meaning and life in the scriptures we hold in our hands, each and every day. – Amen.