Untitled Sermon (3)

1. Trinity season is so often filled with example in the Gospel of Jesus doing Jesus things and encouragements to model him to the world. And for sure I hope that to you.

a. But today our Epistle reading wants us to focus who how we go from doing non-Jesus things to Jesus things. What motivates and empowers our Trinity season labors.

b. The hard part of epistle readings is they are hard. They just are…I pulled this text apart on Tuesday and had to chew on it till Friday like a piece of hard taffy until God revealed a thread to pull.

c. This is not me saying give up reading the epistles. Just know it’s okay if at times you are not 100% clear. It is okay to plumb the ancients and the great commentators of our time for help.

d. We are the Body of Christ and we life and interact with the Scriptures together as a family.

e. The main point I want to draw for today is that we will always live in service and slavery to something. Let us then live in service and slavery to Christ.

2. The Text

a. [19] I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

b.

i. Now we can pause here and allow ourselves to be super offended as he just said he is going to make this as easy as possible in order that we might understand it. But let’s put our egos aside for a moment and see if we can stay with the flow of the argument that is going to be complex.

ii. We once chose for ourselves a slavery to sin and now choose the slavery of obedience. Instead of those words we have impurity leading to lawlessness vs. righteousness and sanctification.

c. [20] For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

i. In our slavery to sin, St. Paul is arguing that we feel free from having to live lives of righteousness. This freedom feels good momentarily but then comes with consequences we were not expecting.

d. [21] But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

i. The bible seems to like fruit as the metaphor for cause and effect. God’s wrath comes as the product of grapes in the OT and Rev., that is it is often compared to wine. Jesus curses a fruit tree from not producing to show his disciples what a life devoid of righteousness end with. Do we in our American parlance might say you have made your bed now you can lie in it…well here it is about fruit. Fruit is the outcome of your actions. And when the people where slaves to sin it produced sin that they now understand is something to be ashamed of. They lead to death. Not just spiritual death but also relational death. The things of our past create relational barriers in the present.

e. [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

i. Being redeemed of God means that we have transferred our service from sin to God. 3 big thoughts here.

1. The ancient word for purchasing a slave out of slavery is to redeem. So Jesus our redeemer has purchased us out of slavery. Set free from the slavery of sin as St. Paul describes.

2. Much of our modern thinking about slavery comes from what we know of chattel slavery in the south. Very racially motivated, a large population enslaving a smaller population. And it was done as the west was asking question about the morality of slavery. In the Roman empire slaves where often just conquered people, and it was not a ethnic or racial distinction. It was the product of military conquest. The slave population in Rome was huge in comparison to the free population. Finally No one was asking moral questions about slavery. In fact many early Christians where slaves and few had any political rights. In the American South. Christian slave owners had many political rights and power and the moral questions was should they use that to end slavery. In Rome having no rights meant that you could not do anything about your slavery and you just assumed it was the way of things. So St. Paul to talk about our slavery to sin transferring over to a slavery of righteousness, would not have irked early readers, they knew they were going to be slaves anyway…just what are they slaves to?

3. Finally being enslaved to Righteousness meant that the end was way better. Heaven instead of hell. Good fruit of life over the fruit of death.

f. [23] For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

i. And unlike Romans slavery the slavery to sin verses Christ does have wages…the wages what is earned in sin is death.

1. First death is mortal death. Adam and Eve were never meant to die. But their rebellion means that they will now die, as will all the children of Adam and Eve. Our experience of human. Death is not natural but is a consequence of our racial makeup…we are the Race of Adam.

2. We have relational death. That is how we relate to those around us is affected. Eve would not live in opposition to Adam. And we all know that as close as our closest relationships are, there is always in them the strain of relational death.

3. Finally spiritual death…hell. God is the source of all life. Life that brings love, hope, connection, contentment. But we are enslaved to the other thing that bring the opposite. Not love but hate, connection/isolation, hope/despair, contentment/covetousness.

ii. In Christ those wages are replaces…not by anything we earned but entirely what Christ earned. We get eternal life. That which he proves at the empty tomb is now ours for the taking.

g. The main point I want to draw for today is that we will always live in service and slavery to something. Let us then live in service and slavery to Christ.

3. So what do we as modern readers need to be mindful of here?

a. First let us foray into free will and predestination for a second. Those of you who have talked some theology with me know that I am committed to the idea of predestination over free will. Other Christians, including Anglicans like CS Lewis, are committed to humanities free will. Let me give a few thoughts.

i. Slavery is quite the opposite of freedom. A slave exercises freedom only as far as the master allows. The slaves marries only if the master allows. The slave may eat this off his place and leave that but is only served what the master designates. In the same way we live with an illusion of freedom. We begin enslaved to sin. We may think that the Pre-Christian us chose righteousness for its own sake, but if we do good deeds in order to build our own reputations we continue to serve sin and not God. And even the Christian us continues at times to make “Choices” that serve the wrong master. It all feels like freedom, but is it?

ii. We are now no longer enslaved to sin. We are enslaved to Christ. All our “free choices” serve his ends at his own pleasure. And just a reminder a slave never dictates his own sale. The transfer of a slave as property is the pleasure of another.

b. Second the slavery of sin is as all encompassing as the opposite. To try and make life choices based on a commitment of absolute freedom becomes a slavery to absolute freedom. Absolute freedom has its own outcomes. In the name of absolute freedom I am not going to obediently sail this boat on water, I am going to sial it down main street. What happens to that boat?

i. Our commitment to sexual freedom vocational freedom, financial freedom is killing us. And we don’t even know that it has shackled us as we have come to love the slave holder. Addicts serve their addiction. They know what it is doing to them, and yet they can do nothing else. We are the same way with sin. And it has earned us eternity apart from God.

ii. All this has made a prophet of Bob Dylan…

1. You may be an ambassador to England or France You may like to gamble, you might like to dance You may be the heavyweight champion of the world You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

2. But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You're gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody

3. Might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief They may call you doctor or they may call you chief

4. But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are You're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody) Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

c. And yet for those who have been enslaved to the reality of Christ our service comes with different wages. Eternal life. A return to that which Adam and eve lost.

d. The main point I want to draw for today is that we will always live in service and slavery to something. Let us then live in service and slavery to Christ.

4. It is so important to me that we always turn our eyes to the Cross and end at Calvary…today we will look at Calvary, but we will end in the waters of baptism. Your enslavement to sin was so compete the price so high that only one thing could ransom you away. That is the death of Christ on the cross. Jesus Christ gave his own life as payment to buy you out of the slavery of sin. He deserved all the freedoms that you imagine you have and instead he took the ultimate price of your slavery to pull you from death. There is a way to know if you have been a part of that mystical transaction. The Bible does not leave the believer wondering what it takes to have your slavery transferred. It is the work of God in Baptism that transfers us from one to the other. It is the adoption ceremony from being children of Adam to children of Christ. And there is a downpayment given you. The Holy Spirit. Just as the Spirit comes upon Jesus as his baptism so he come on you. A baby adopted from one family to another has no choice in that process. It happens to them. In the same way baptism happens to us. I know I usually end up talking about Communion but today baptism. If you have experienced the mystical washing, by sprinkle, by immersion, as a baby or as a teen, you are now a slave to Christ. And as all slaves do you eat what is given to you by the master. In our case we eat with the master and of the master. He calls us friends. Friends if you have not yet said yes to the new reality of Christ. Repent change your mind and say yes to the slavery and service of Jesus. If you have already been baptized and are living in opposition to your new family. Repent, change your direction and live for Christ. Be God’s Holy Spirit people. Do the good works of our trinity season. Amen.