Sermon from February 23, 2003

In July, 1996, I spent twelve days in Sierra Madre, CA. Fuller Seminary held a doctoral studies seminar there at a Catholic retreat center that nestled right up under the San Gabriel Mountains. We were far enough away that sounds from the 210 Freeway almost couldn't reach us. The seminar dealt with Christian spirituality.

As part of the seminar, our professor, Dr. Dallas Willard, scheduled 19 consecutive hours of silence for all seminar participants. They began Friday at 5:00 p.m. and ended at noon on Saturday. Eating three meals with twenty other people in silence was an experience in itself. I found it easier to keep silence by keeping to my room or walking alone on the beautiful grounds of the treat center. I prayed, read, reflected, wrote, listened, watched, walked, ate and slept, but no words passed my lips for 19 hours.

It was a powerful experience, and when the nineteen hours ended, and the talking resumed, I continued in silence as much as possible until Monday morning. Since it was the weekend, that should have been easier to do. On Saturday afternoon and evening, I kept to my room, walked about the grounds, prayed in the chapel, and generally stayed focused on the spiritual disciplines I had practiced during the 19 hours of silence.

On Sunday afternoon, it became more difficult to continue my self-imposed discipline. Several of us had walked together to church that morning. On the way the idea came up of renting a car and going to the beach that afternoon. Enough people agreed to go to justify renting a car. I declined. Now that people were going to the beach, there would be even fewer people and more quiet at the retreat center the rest of the day.

After Sunday dinner, I walked out of the main doorway, just as Enterprise Car Rentals delivered the car for the people going to the beach, and staying at the center became more difficult. There, under the cloudless (nearly smogless) July sky, parked at the front door of that place of intense spiritual disciplines, waited the perfect symbol of the cornucopia of pleasures that is Southern California - a brand new, fire-engine red Thunderbird convertible with the top down.

Not thirty paces from that exquisite machine sood something quite different. Just inside the front door of the retreat center stood a life-sized Crucifix. It did not hang on the wall. It rested on a low pedestal on the floor, nearly at eye level. More than once, I turned a corner into that hall, and the sight of the Crucifix caught me up short. I often wanted to avert my eyes from it. It was just a little too real, too accessible, too vivid a reminder.

On that Sunday afternoon, two incompatible conceptions of the meaning of human life stood facing each other, each challenging the authority of the other to command human experience. The Thunderbird seemed eager to go, to explore, to escape, even to anesthetize. It was the quintessential instrument of socal freedom and personal indulgence. The Crucifix was immobile, relentless in its gaze, able to call forth truth from your heart. It was the quintessential instrument of spiritual liberty and personal sacrifice.

How does the human heart cope with these dramatically different ways of understanding life? As a parallel, I have seen on television a situation in nature that captures something of that tension. Television offers several nature shows that film wild animals in their actual habitats. Maybe you have seen the drama in which a lionness or a cheetah chases and captures a zebra or an impala. What caught my eye were the times when there was no chase.

A herd of zebras will be grazing, and very close by a pride of lions will be lying around, apparently uninterested in the zebras. More astonishing, the zebras seem uninterested in the lions. They share the same space in spite of a million years of lions' eating zebras. You want to say to the zebras, "Get out while the getting's good."

But that's exactly how Christians live with the way of life symbolized by the Thunderbird. We share the same space with values, trends and allurements that can make the world of the Crucifix seem irrelevant and tear to pieces our relationship with God. The people who share with you the world of the Crucifix can even invite you to get closer to the lions, as my pastoral colleagues did that beautiful Sunday afternoon.

"Matthews, are you sure you don't want to go?" Beckoning were the sights and sounds of the Santa Monica Pier, and the beaches of places like Venice, Manhattan and San Pedro; maybe we would even go down to Newport Beach and the South Coast. When will this opportunity come again?

Why not go? Iknew I would be in the company of people who would keep me accountable and disciplined. It was only for one afternoon and evening. Staying at the retreat center was a self-imposed discipline. Why not balance the auditory and other deprivations of the past two days by feasting at the California banquet? What guides us vulnerable "zebras" as we share space with potentially lethal "lions?" How does the world of the Curcifix maintain its priority and integrity in the world of the Thunderbird?

The New Way of the Spirit
The Apostle Paul gives us indispensable guidance in how to do that. We can read his guidance in the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans. Let's begin with one statement that summarizes all he says in these two chapters: Romans 7:6. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. The world of te Crucifix maintains its priority and integrity in the world of the Thunderbird by serving in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

When Paul talks about the break with evil that faith in Christ causes, he often refers to it as a death. In Romans six he said, We died to sin. Our old self was crucified with (Christ). We died with Christ. Count yourselves dead to sin. It is extreme language. It reminds us relentlessly that Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil, and we are to be part of the demolition by renouncing sin.

Here in Romans 7:1-6 the apostle uses this extreme language again, but not about sin. The first four verses culminate in this statement in verse 4: My brothers, you also died to the law. It is one thing for us to make a break from sin, but how can he say we have made a break from the law of God? Where am I going to get help in the world of the Thunderbird if in some sense the law of God no longer applies to my experience?

You can see how Paul infuriated his fellow Jews by what he said about the law, which God had given to Israel. It is not the first time he has done that in Romans. Out of half a dozen here are two other statements he has made about God's law in Romans. The law was added so that the trespass might increase (Rom. 5:20). Most Jews would say the law reduced trespasses. Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law (Rom. 6:14). Most Jews would say the law prevented sin from being your master. The apostle needed to explain himself.

He first makes another inflammatory statement in verse five. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. The inflammatory idea says that the law of God arouses our sinful passions. If Paul is wrong about that, he deserves all the suspicion and contempt he received from Christian and non-Christian Jews alike.

But if he's right about that, then he is right in verse six to call the law of God the old way of the written code as if it were obsolete. If the law of God arouses sinful passions in us, then no matter how pious it sounds, it is not going to help us to live with integrity in the world of the Thunderbird. Paul sets out in verses 7-13 to explain why he believed he was right about the law.

The Deeper Purpose of God's Law
In verse seven he begins with what many people thought he was saying about God's law. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? That's what it sounds like. Paul needs to explain himself. He does it first in verse seven with a flat denial. Certainly not! Then, he proceeds to explain his unvonventional understanding of God's law.

Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. Sin means behavior that offends God. How do we know what offends God? How doees your child know what offends you? You tell the child. What you tell him usually takes the form of short, memorable, clear and oft-repeated commands.

Stand behind a mother with small children in the checkout line at a grocery store, and you will hear this maternal goddess handing down an incessant stream of orders, usually accompanied by threats of pediatric mayhem if the child oesn't obey. "Put the gum back; we're not buying gum today." "Don't take the wrapper off the candy; it's not yours." "Don't stand up; you'll fall and break your neck." "Stop pulling your sister's hair!" "Get your finger out of your brother's eye!" "If you ask me one more time for mints, you're going to Time Out as soon as we get home." "Stop crying! I'm sick of hearing you cry."

THe chld knows what his mother wants, because she has made it clear. We know a child is willful or stubborn, because the child defies his mother's orders. We are more grown-up and sophisticated, but it comes to the same thing. God tells us what he wants, and we disobey. Paul gives a specific example of what he means.

For I would not have know what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. Listen again to that last statement. It offers a penetrating explanation for Paul's offensive statements about God's law.

But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. The commandment said, "Do not covet." Paul said that as a result he experienced every kind of covetous desire. Did God's commandment cause every kind of covetous desire? No. That is not what he says. He says, Sin ... produced in me every kind of covetous desire.

The mother's directions to her child in the checkout line do not cause her child's defiance. The defiance comes from the child's defiant will. God's command does not cause the covetous desires. The covetous desires come from a disorder in the human will. So, what does the commandment have to do with it?

First, it reveals it. The MRI does not cause the herniated disk; it shows what something else has caused. God's command not to covet does not cause every kind of covetous desire; it shows what sin has done to the human will. But something else is going on here that a medical illustration can't help us with.

A herniated disk is entirely passive when it is imaged by an MRI. The disorder in the human will is active. It hears the command, "Do not covet," and responds by saying, "Says who? Nobody is going to tell me what I can and can't want;" and the person proceeds to assert his own will and attempt to get his own way.

Is anything wrong with the command, "Do not covet"? Of course not, and Paul draws exactly that conclusion in verse 12. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, rightous and good. Contrary to what people though, Paul had nothing but good to say about God's law. How could he? It was God's law, and God Himself is holy, righteous and good. The problem is not the law. The problem is the disorder that coils in the will of every human being. Paul will bring this home to us in an unforgettable way in the second half of chapter seven.

Revealing the sinful disorder in each of us is the deeper purpose of God's commandments. Verse 13: Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. The deeper purpose of God's law is to show us how serious our rebellion against God really is. That is Paul's point about God's law all through Romans.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Has it ever occured to you that the psychological masters who stock the shelves of checkout lines have all the advantages? It's fun to chew gum. The candy wrappers are brightly colored, and the candy inside tastes good. The mints are sweet and sticky now. What chance to a mother's imperious commands have in the face of so much goodness? Her commands, even when acompanied by credible threats, can only stop behavior momentarily; they cannot change a child's heart. Something else will be needed for that.

It is the same for us who engage in the spiritual warfare that erupts between the Crucifix and the Thunderbird. If all we have at our disposal to deal with the world of the Thunderbird is a list of rules telling us what not to do, the battle will be brief and bad for us. The psychological masters who stock the shelves of that world would then have all the advantages. What's not to like about cruising highway 101 with the top down? What's not to like about parties on the beach? Of course, the lions are there; they are everywhere, and they often seem indifferent to the zebras that find the grazing good.

The alternative to that impotent list of rules telling us what not to do is what the apostle calls the new way of the Spirit. The world of the Crucifix maintains its priority and integrity in the world of the Thunderbird by serving in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

The new way of the Spirit - the very sound of it feels like the first warm day after a long cold winter. The new way of the Spirit is the way of love. Not romance only or primarily, but the deepest, most uncompromising preferences of the heart. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt. 6:21).

Tell me what you love, and I will tell you where your treasure is. The new way of the Spirit is what the Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, called "the expulsive power of a new affection." When the love of God captures a person's heart, it gives the world of the Crucifix a fighting chance in the world of the Thunderbird. One can still appreciate the beauties of the Thunderbird, but the beauties of the Crucifix overshadow them; and we become much more sensitive when the lions begin to stalk their prey.