Sermon from October 27, 2002

The ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings has a feature called "Your Money." It documents some outrageous Pork Barrel project in Congress or widgets the Pentagon bought for $35 that should have cost 35 cents. Most news programs, national and local, have stories like that.

The mother of all such exposés is the CBS show Sixty Minutes with Mike Wallace, Morley Safter and others. They confront people on camera with embarrassing revelations. I have often wondered why people allowed themselves to be subjected to such painful exposure.

Rightly or wrongly, I have viewed Sixty Minutesand other shows like it as fighting for the little guy by calling the big boys to account for their arrogance and stupidity. They knew and cared and wanted us to know and care about corporate and government wrongdoing. Their motives were profoundly moral. Today, I am not so sure. I now have a hunch that, whatever their motives, all these programs have a different meaning for many viewers.

They no longer fight for the little guy. They entertain the little guy. Viewers now know but no longer care about corporate and government wrongdoing, they are entertained by corporate and government wrongdoing. Insofar as that is true, we are a less moral people; we are bystanders to evil. We fiddle while Rome burns.

In one way I can excuse it. Even when we cared, we had no power to stop the corruption we saw exposed on television. We hoped the exposure would put a stop to it and discourage others from it. It has become obvious that the wrong and the wrongdoers mulitply like rabbits. The little guy has no more power than he ever did to stop the corruption, and now he knows that Sixty Minutes doesn't either. But the exposés are as entertaining as ever. So, the ratings rise, and CBS adds Sixty Minutes Two.

There is a message here for preachers: Don't dwell on evil; you may turn sin into entertainment. I can remember in my youth listening to preachers come down hard on sin and sinners. It is heady stuff, when youfirst hear it. You think that anyone, hearing his sins denounced in such uncompromising terms, would be stricken with guilt, flee the husks of a dissolute life and return at once to the Father's house. It does not happen.

Two things happen instead. Those who agreed with the preacher stayed and said amen and took pleasure in hearing the preacher talk about somebody else's sins. Denouncing sin became a minor art form, and appreciative audiences found themselves entertained mightily. Unfortunately, they also became bystanders to the cultural revolution in 20th century America. They fiddled while Rome burned.

Those who disagreed with the preacher simply stayed away. They found plenty of alternativees to being called names and plenty of fellow travelers on journeys that did not follow the way of Christ.

Under Sin
My conern in preaching through the first two chapters of Romans has not been to dwell on evil. The great apostle did not do that. He called a spade a spade, and he made it clear that there will be the piper to pay for our sins. But he doesn't ride this theme as a hobbyhorse. He is interested in sin, because he is far more interested in God. He makes his motives abundantly clear in our text today, Romans 3:9.

In verse nine he picks up the main thread of his thought. What shall we conclude then? What was I driving at in chapter two? I was asking, Are we (Jews) any better than the Gentiles I described in chapter one? Not at all! The next sentence summarizes what he has been driving at since Romans 1:18. We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. The key words here are under sin. What does that mean? Listen to this.

"Man experiences (consciously or unconsciously) a power which works in him to bind him wholly to his mortality and corruptibility, to render impotent any knowledge of God or concern to do God's will, to provoke his merely animal appetites in forgetfulness that he is a creature of God - and that power Paul calls 'sin,'" (Dunn, Romans 1-8, 149).

But wait! I don't experience life as an unbroken desire to do evil. I get along with people pretty well. My life is not out of control. Most of the time I'm willing to take responsibility for my actions, including my failures. Yes, I have failures. Most of the time they are small. I have done some things I am not proud of, but not too many.

I have also done things I am quite proud of; maybe not as many as I should but enough. It does bother me that other people seem to take more notice when I mess up than when I do something good. Why is that? It's also true that now and again someone gets angry at me. I can understand that sometimes, but sometimes I think the person just isn't trying, can't see past his own nose. It especially ticks me off, if people go off and tell friends about what they call my thick-headedness. One of these days I'm going to get in their face and tell them they're a witch with bad judgment and a loose tongue.

I'm sorry. Why do I get so worked up like that? And I won't tell you about my fantasies when I get worked up. I am not at all happy about some of my fantasies. Too much violence. Too much sex. Too much self-pity. Too much useless daydreaming. I was praying the other day, and I started having the filest thoughts go through my head. Where did they come from?

I've never acted on these fantasies. Well, not on the worst of them. I've never done physical violence to another person, never slept with another woman. Once in a while the cat gets out of the bag, but I'm pretty discreet about these occasions. I know that sounds like I'm covering up, and I suppose I am. After all, what business is it of anyone else anyway to know about my failures?

I mean, don't you ever cover up something you had rather no one else know about? I may not be any better than you are, but I'm sure no worse, so you can just come down off your high horse.

Man, why am I getting so defensive and irritable? Why do I feel like you are judging me? Why do I sometimes feel so guilty when I think you are judging me? Why do I have so much to cover up? Why do so many have so much to cover up? But it's good that we want to cover it up. That shows our basic decency. We know the difference between right and wrong, and covering up at least shows we care about right and wrong.

Some people don't even try to do that. I remember the eight-year-old boy in Chicago who shot another child to death. When the police questioned him, he just wanted to know when he could go home; he had things to do. It was as if he had squirted the other kid with a water pistol.

Why do some people do that? Why do they scam old people of their life savings? Why do they exploit women and children in pornography? Why do they cook the books and deprive thousands of workers of their retirement funds? Why do they fly planes into tall buildings? Why are human beings like this? What is wrong with us? Isn't Holy Scripture trying to tell us why?

We ... are all under sin. And scripture says this dominion by sin applies to religious people just as much as to irreligious people, and no one can shake off this power.

The renewal of our mind and the transformation of our character grow out of Christian realism about human sin; and the reality is that our human nature has become snared by this force that does harm to human life. It contradicts our good intentions. It can mushroom into demonic, global proportions. We all have first hand experience of it in large and small ways. But so what? What does this realism about ourselves and all humanity mean? The apostle leads us to the answer through a litany of Old Testament quotations.

Verse 10 quotes the great Old Testament skeptic, Ecclesiastes 7:20. One thing that made that writer world-weary was the contradiction between the professions of righteousness he heard all round him and the terrible moral failures that people were prone then, as they are prone now, to sweep under the carpet. We do well just to read the string of quotations that leads us to Paul's first major conclusion.

As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."

"There throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit."

"The poison of vipers is on their lips."

"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."

"Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know."

"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

This is all there is to human beings. He is saying, "This is what human beings are capable of." Just look around. Any one of us might behave this way. Something within us has gone terribly wrong and left us vulnerable to everything on that list.  But, again, so what? What does this realism about ourselves and all humanity mean?

The apostle was not just finding fault. He was not feeling good about feeling bad. The whole sad story of chapters one and two serves one purpose. He got us started on that purpose in verse nine. Now he brings it to focus in the powerful words of verse 19.

Accountable to God
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. The key words here are accountable to God. These words describe "the state of an accused person who cannot reply at the trial initiated against him because he ha exhausted all possibilities of refuting the charge against him and averting the condemnation and its consequences which ineluctably follow," (Dunn, 152). God holds us responsible for the sin that snares us and mars us.

Paul pointed out this responsibility several times in chapters one and two. Romans 1:32 said, Those who do such things deserve death. This accountability to God may land us in trouble in this world, as in chapter one where it says God givees rebellious, unthankful people up to their own devices and their frightening consequences (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). It will also land us in trouble in the world to come, on the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed and God "will give to each person according to what he has done," (Rom. 2:5-6).

"But wait! I am only answerable for evil behavior that I choose to do."

"Yes. So? Are you answerable for no such behavior?"

"Well, yes, of course, but nothing heinous. I may not be better than the next guy, but I'm no worse."

"Okay, you can trust God to judge fairly; He is the only one who knows the whole truth about you. Do you know the whole truth about yourself? Can you admit the truth you do know about yourself?"

The renewal of our mind and the transformation of our character grow out of Christian realism, not only about our sin, but also about our accountability to God for our character; and the reality is that on the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed, God "will give to each person according to what he has done," (Rom. 2:5-6).

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Now, we are ready to hear the questions Paul raises thus far in Romans. Inasmuch as humanity is answerable to God for repeated and often willful moral and spiritual failures, how can any of us have grounds for hope on the day of God's wrath?

Romans 2:4 offers us the possibility of repentance. But on what grounds do we think our repentance will make any difference to God? Have you never repented of something and then gone right back and done it again? The Psalmist said one time, If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who can stand? (Psa. 130:3). We speak of God's forgiveness, but on what grounds can we be confident that God offers us His forgiveness?

Can any of us have grounds for hope on the day of God's wrath, when He judges us impartially according to our actual deeds? Can matters be right between God and His wayward, human creation? I commend those questions to your conscience. I commend to your conscience even more fervently the answer to those questions proposed by the Apostle Paul in the next few verses of Romans three. The destiny of human beings hinges on that answer.

We like to say that God displays His almighty power in mercy and pity. They are comforting words, but how do we know they are true? We like it every week, when the angels on Touched by an Angel say to troubled human beings, "God loves you." They are comforting words, but how do we know they are true? Does God demonstrate to us clearly now that He will treat us with mercy on that great Day of His Judgment? All right thinking about humanity starts with that question. The renewal of our mind and the transformation of our character begin with that question, and with God's answer to that question.