Sermon: Dying and Rising (2020)

Delivered at Salem United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on June 21, 2020

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Dying and Rising

Audio Version

What then are we to say?  Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?  By no means!  How can we who died to sin go on living in it?  Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  For whoever has died is freed from sin.  But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:1-11 (NRSV)

Dreaming about Providence

And whether mice or men have second tries

Maybe we've been living with our eyes half open

Maybe we're bent and broken

From “Meant to Live” by Switchfoot

The Epistle to the Romans is undoubtedly the most famous of St. Paul's writings.  It has been an inspiration to Christians ever since it was first read to the congregation in Rome nearly two thousand years ago.  This letter has been foundational to the theology of many Christians, especially those of us who call ourselves Protestants.  It was a verse from Romans that completely changed Martin Luther's understanding of God's grace.¹  Luther read, “For in [the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'”²  He went on to light the fuse for what we call the Reformation.

The movement started by John Wesley was somewhat different from those of other reformers, but Luther's breakthrough vis-à-vis Romans did not leave us Methodists unaffected.  On one May evening in 1738, Wesley, who was going through a season of doubt and frustration, “very unwillingly” attended a Bible study on Aldersgate Street in London.  Listening as someone read Luther's commentary on Romans, he experienced God in a way that would change his life forever.  Reflecting on his experience, he wrote in his journal,
About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.³

Paul writes, in his Letter to the Romans, that “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  According to Paul, Christ gave His life not for good people, but for the ungodly, for people who could rightfully be considered Christ's enemies.⁴  In the Gospel of Luke, we read that Jesus prayed on behalf of the people who had just nailed Him to the cross, saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”⁵  Because Jesus and His Father are one, as He said,⁶ we can be sure that His mockers and tormentors were indeed forgiven.  Paul suggests that Christ gave His life for us in order to reconcile us to God, with whom we had previously been in conflict.  How can we remain hostile toward someone who would make such a great sacrifice on our behalf?  Paul claims that, because Christ was resurrected, we can be confident not only that we are reconciled to God but that we will also be redeemed.⁷

Paul calls to mind the ancient story from the Book of Genesis that teaches us about the introduction of sin and death into the world.  Manipulated by a serpent, Adam and Eve eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the one tree in the Garden of Eden from which God had forbidden them to eat.  This transgression, we read, had dire consequences for the future of humanity.  Because of sin, humans were set at odds with nature and with the ground they farmed; men and women were set at odds with each other and with their children; and humans were estranged from God and fated to one day return to the dust from which they came.⁸

Paul suggests that Adam is “a type of the one who was to come,” namely Jesus Christ.  Sin came into the world through Adam, but grace has come into the world through Christ.  Paul goes so far as to say that the effects of Adam's transgression pale in comparison to the effects of Christ's sacrifice.  He writes, “Just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all,” concluding that, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”  The sin that leads to death is overcome by the grace that leads to eternal life.⁹  In the words of the seventeenth century theologian Richard Sibbes, “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.”

Having established that God's grace triumphs over our sin, Paul asks rhetorically, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”  Paul is addressing the concern that proclaiming God's grace basically gives people permission to do whatever they want.¹⁰  Honestly though, do any of us really need a license to sin when we are all experts in justifying our own actions?  We can do no wrong – in our own eyes, at least – if our definition of sin happens to make exceptions for anything we do.  Paul answers his own question, “By no means!  How can we who died to sin go on living in it?”  Paul is being quite emphatic here.  In the King James Version, his answer is translated, “God forbid.”  It has been suggested that it would not be inappropriate to translate his answer, “Hell no!”¹¹

Several years ago, one of the pastors of my church overheard a conversation between his young son and one of his son's friends.  Regarding something his son wanted to do, the friend said, “Don't do that!  God wouldn't like that.”  His son then said, “God will forgive me.”  On the one hand, my pastor was glad that his son understood that our God is a forgiving God, but, on the other hand, he could see that there were some important truths his son still needed to learn¹² – truths, I would say, that many of us, myself included, still need to learn.

This story highlights what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace.  In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as “the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.”¹³  He writes,
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.¹⁴
Cheap grace tells us that we are forgiven for our failures, but it makes no other significant difference in our lives.

God loves us and accepts us just as we are, but, because God loves us, God wants better for us.  Christ came to save us not only from the consequences of sin, but also from sin itself.  I am reminded of a story from the Gospel of John.  One day, some religious leaders brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in an adulterous affair.  They asked Him if He thought the woman should be stoned to death as the Law of their religion prescribed.  Sure enough, the Book of Leviticus clearly states, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”¹⁵  Jesus knelt down, started writing in the sand, and then gave the crowd permission to stone the woman – with one caveat.  He said, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”  One by one, they all put down their stones and walked away, leaving the woman alone with Jesus, who had no desire to condemn her.  Jesus saved her life, but He did not save her life so that she could jump back into bed with her lover, continue living a destructive life marked by secrecy and shame, and find herself once again surrounded by angry men with rocks.  “Go and sin no more,” He said to her.¹⁶  We are not given second chances in life so that we can make the same mistakes we made the first time around.

Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”¹⁷  Christ showed His love for us when He laid down His life for us on the cross.  One does not “lay down one’s life for one’s friends” so that they can waste the rest of their lives.  One “lay[s] down one’s life for one’s friends” so that they can live the rest of their lives to the fullest.

Bonhoeffer contrasts cheap grace with what he calls costly grace, the grace by which Christ calls us to leave our former lives behind and follow Him.  Reflecting on what he knows about Luther's experience of such grace, he writes,
It was grace, for it was like water on parched ground, comfort in tribulation, freedom from the bondage of a self-chosen way, and forgiveness of all his sins. And it was costly, for, so far from dispensing him from good works, it meant that he must take the call to discipleship more seriously than ever before.¹⁸
Grace is free, but it is not cheap.  To receive what Christ freely offers us, we must receive it with both hands, meaning that we will have to let go of some things.

To help us to see what God's grace means in regards to the way we live our lives, Paul reminds us of our baptism.  He writes,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
According to William Barclay, Paul is writing about concepts that both the Jews and the Gentiles of his day would understand.  Converts to Judaism were required to undergo baptism, and, upon emerging from the water, they were considered newborns.  Participants in the Greek mystery religions underwent initiation rituals by which they came to identify with deities that had died and risen again.  Those who underwent these rituals were also thought to be dead and reborn.¹⁹  For Christians, baptism is an entry point, for it is the ritual by which we are welcomed into the community of faith that is the universal Church.  Baptism has other implications for our lives.  According to scholar N.T. Wright,
[Paul's] answer is that in becoming a Christian you move from one type of humanity to the other, and you should never think of yourself in the original mode again.  More particularly, in becoming a Christian you die and rise again with the Messiah.²⁰

Paul continues, “If we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”  Perhaps Paul is suggesting that our baptism marks not only our induction into the Church, but also our entry onto the path Christ walked, the path of death and resurrection.  Perhaps we do not simply benefit from the death and resurrection of Christ; perhaps we actually participate in them.  To experience the new and abundant life to which Christ invites us, we must first die in some way, metaphorically speaking.  Jesus once said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”²¹  Similarly, we could say that a caterpillar must first be entombed in the hard shell of a chrysalis before it can begin its new life as a butterfly.

This pattern of death and resurrection is illustrated quite vividly in C.S. Lewis's strange and fantastical novel The Great Divorce.  In this work, Lewis tells the story of a group of ghosts from Hell who take a trip to Heaven on a flying bus.  They are all invited to stay in Heaven, but, surprisingly, many of them, of their own free will, choose to get back on the bus for the return trip to Hell.  Ultimately, those who truly want to stay in Heaven must die to whatever would keep them in Hell.  They must let go of whatever they would make themselves miserable to keep.²²

One of the ghosts who visits Heaven is seen walking around with a small, red lizard perched on his shoulder.  The lizard flicks its tail against the ghost's back like a whip and whispers incessantly into the ghost's ear, refusing to settle down until the ghost agrees to do what it tells him to do.  When the ghost gives in and does what the lizard wants, it shuts up and goes to sleep.  The ghost is not particularly proud of his “passenger”: in fact, he seems to be rather ashamed of it.  This lizard is not his pet but rather a physical manifestation of something in his life – something that nags him constantly and seems to have a measure of control over what he does.

At the lizard's insistence, the ghost agrees to go back to the bus to return to Hell.  On the way, he is met by an angel who offers to silence the lizard for him.  The ghost is quite grateful for the offer until he learns that the angel is offering not to merely quiet the lizard, but rather to kill it.  At first, the ghost refuses the angel's help.  The lizard is a source of constant misery for him, but it is a part of him, and he fears that killing the lizard would destroy him as well.  The lizard wakes up and begins to plead for its life, and it even tries to bargain with the ghost.  Having finally had enough, the ghost relents and accepts the angel's help.  With flaming hands, the angel grabs the lizard, wrenches it until its back breaks, and throws its dead body to the ground.  The ghost passes out from pain.

Then something incredible happens.  The ghost begins to transform, becoming bright, solid, and healthy like the residents of Heaven.  At the same time, the dead lizard begins to move again.  It grows and transforms into a beautiful stallion.  The reborn spirit mounts the steed and rides it into the mountains to continue his journey in Heaven.  The man's lust, which was represented by the lizard, died and was resurrected as a holy, God-given desire, which was represented by the stallion.  The corrupted part the man once served was redeemed and transformed into something that would serve him greatly on his journey, but it had to die so that it could be resurrected.²³

Paul teaches us that, through our baptism, we die with Christ and rise with Christ.  He goes on to say that, because we die and rise with Christ, we “also must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  There are parts of us that need to die so that they may be resurrected.  Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”²⁴  Nobody takes up a cross without dying on it.

There is more to the saving work of God than justification.  Salvation involves not only a change in our legal standing before God but also a change in our character.²⁵  John Wesley spoke of three modes of God's grace at work in salvation.  Prevenient grace is the grace that draws us to God; justifying grace is the grace that forgives us and reconciles us to God; and sanctifying grace is the grace that renews and transforms us.²⁶

I think that Paul, in his letters, points those of us who have experienced the justifying grace of God toward the process of sanctification.  In another letter, Paul writes, “Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it.”²⁷  I do not think that Paul suggesting that sanctification is as simple as changing clothes, for transformation is rarely simple, clean, easy, or quick.  As a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly within its chrysalis, it is broken down and reassembled.  So it is with sanctification.

Sanctification is not something we can accomplish on our own.  According to Wesley, “We are enabled 'by the Spirit' to 'mortify the deeds of the body,' of our evil nature; and as we are more and more dead to sin, we are more and more alive to God.”²⁸  In yet another letter, Paul writes, “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”²⁹  These are the kinds of “deeds” the Holy Spirit enables us to “mortify.”  Paul continues, “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”³⁰  These are the kinds of things the Spirit brings to life within us.

In the words of St. Paul, “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  Christ laid down His life to prove God's love for us, so that we may be reconciled to God, but Christ did not lay down His life for us so that we can remain unchanged.  In His own words, He “came that [we] may have life, and have it abundantly.”³¹  To experience the abundant life Christ offers us, the old things in us must die so that new things may be born in us.  Everything God does for us and in us is an act of grace.  By grace God seeks us out; by grace God accepts us and forgives us; and by grace God transforms us into what we were created to be.

Thanks be to God.


Notes:

1. Wikipedia: “Theology of Martin Luther”
2. Romans 1:17 (NRSV)
3. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/journal.vi.ii.xvi.html
4. Romans 5:6-11 (NRSV)
5. Luke 23:33-34 (NRSV)
6. John 10:30
7. Romans 5:6-11
8. Genesis 3
9. Romans 5:12-21 (NRSV)
10. Joel B. Green, William H. Willimon, et al.  The Wesley Study Bible (NRSV).  2009, Abingdon Press.  p. 1374
11. Jason Micheli, Taylor Mertens, Teer Hardy, and Johanna Hartelius.  I Like Big Buts: Reflections on Paul's Letter to the Romans.  pp. 78-79
12. Jonathan Tompkins.  “I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins.”  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church podcast, 05/21/17.
13. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  The Cost of Discipleship (translated by R.H. Fuller and Irmgard Booth).  ch. 1
14. ibid.
15. Leviticus 20:10 (NRSV)
16. John 8:2-11 (NKJV)
17. John 15:13 (NRSV)
18. Bonhoeffer, ch. 1
19. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Letter to the Romans.  2002, Westminster John Knox Press.  pp. 98-100
20. N.T. Wright.  Paul for Everyone, Romans: Part One.  2011, Westminster John Knox Press.
21. John 12:24 (NRSV)
22. C.S. Lewis.  The Great Divorce.  ch. 1-9
23. Lewis, ch. 11
24. Luke 9:23 (NRSV)
25. The Wesley Study Bible, p. 1374
26. John Wesley.  Sermon 43: “The Scripture Way of Salvation.”
27. Colossians 3:9b-10 (CEB)
28. Wesley, Sermon 43
29. Galatians 5:19-21a (NRSV)
30. Galatians 5:22-23a (NRSV)
31. John 10:10 (NRSV)

The photograph of the chrysalis was taken by Viren Vaz and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.  The photograph of the butterfly was taken by PJC&Co and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  Neither photographer is in any way affiliated with this blog.