Riches for the World: Sermon on Romans 10:18--11:32

At least it was a dry heat. The weary crowd stood and fidgeted beneath the desert sun, a few miles south of the ruins of Sodom. They were tired. But they listened closely. They knew they didn't have long yet. All their lives, they'd looked up to him. Revered him. The oldest man they'd ever seen. Their only leader all their days. And he was dying. With what little strength he had left, he wanted to impart final wisdom until he was no more on this earth. He'd just come out of the big tent in the heart of the camp, so they gathered around to hear what he'd learned. And in a wavering voice, he began to sing. Line by line. “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak...” He sang of the greatness and faithfulness of the God who led them. He sang of how one God had found them in a howling waste, had circled and hovered like a mama eagle. He sang of prosperity, satisfaction.

But he sang, too, of abandonment and idolatry, mockery and faddishness: “They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers never dreaded.” And the old man sang of the response of an offended deity: “They have made me jealous with what is no god; they have provoked me to anger with their idols! So I will make them jealous with those who are no people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation” (Deuteronomy 32:21). Oh yes, the old man warned – if they persisted in provoking their God to jealousy, he'd return the favor and use the power of jealousy and punishment to get them on the right track again. The old man sang. And he – old man Moses – explained why he sang; for in the tent of meeting, the LORD God shrouded in clouds and swirling mists had told him of how they were itching for affliction, and how “when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness, for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring” (Deuteronomy 31:21).

And so it did indeed. Over twelve hundred years after Moses sang the song and was shortly 'gathered to his fathers,' as the saying went, the descendants of the audience that day in the Jordanian desert were in the rather sad state he'd foreseen and foreknown. The promised one had come. The God that birthed them as a nation, the Rock of their salvation, had stooped to walk among them. This Messiah, this long-awaited hope, “came to his own... and his own received him not” (John 1:11). After his death and resurrection, though, there was a wave of hope. Of gathering. All of a sudden, thousands of scattered Israelites believed (Acts 2:41). More repented on a daily basis (Acts 2:47). Before long, it was five thousand (Acts 4:4). The pace increased, got faster, picked up more steam (Acts 5:14). They “multiplied greatly, … and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7). The long-awaited acceptance was here!

Until it wasn't. Things began to shift, change. Wherever the missionaries went, some believed, but then the others, the masses, didn't. So some missionaries like Paul and Barnabas announced, “Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). In time, in places like Rome, a few churches had a Jewish presence, but not all of them did. And during the season when many Jews were exiled from the city by imperial decree, the Gentiles – non-Jews – learned how to get along by themselves. And when the suffering Jews, believing and unbelieving, returned to the city, it got messy. We talked about that the other week: how some Roman Gentile Christians got a new idea. And their new idea was this: that if the door was wide open for them, it might be closing for the Jews; and if they were in God's favor, it meant they, the Gentile Church, were taking Israel's place; and all that Jewish stuff was so old-fashioned now, so obsolete, so out-of-touch with the real condition of the modern-day world. Clearly, they thought, God – and Paul – had rejected the Jews and turned to the Gentiles.

And so Paul has to wade into the muck and mire and do some explaining. And boy, does he have a lot to say! We've been listening to him for some weeks now. And he wants them to know, when it comes to opportunity to be rescued and brought into the heart of God's work now, “there's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him; for 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved'” (Romans 10:12-13). It takes just two things: confessing and believing – both centered in Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, and the good news about his arrival, his sacrifice, his rule (Romans 10:9).

God, Paul says, sent out messengers to preach this good news to Jews and Gentiles alike. But he has to admit that, at the national level, Israel has ignored them, shot them down, rejected the good news, refused to join in the celebration. “They have not all obeyed the gospel” (Romans 10:16). So what's the problem? Didn't the messengers reach them? That can't be it: “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Romans 10:17). Well, didn't they know the consequences? Sure they did. Not only had they heard the song of Moses, which now confronts them as a witness just like God said, but even Isaiah contrasted God's overtures toward this “disobedient and contrary people” with God being “found by those who did not seek me” (Romans 10:20-21). On that note, it sure sounds like the Gentile Christians of Rome are right: they've replaced a rebellious and thrown-out Israel with their Church.

But Paul explains that the story is way more complicated. “Has God rejected his people? No way!” How can that be? What's the proof? Paul says he, and other Jewish Christians like him, are the proof: “For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknow” (Romans 11:1-2) – whom he foreknew even in their rebellion and their apostasy. The way it's always worked is that, even in those moments when Israel was most astray, when Israel as a body was just totally dead-set against God – even then, like in the days of Elijah, God had kept a remnant, an elite mini-Israel, who stood in as a placeholder for the whole until better days (Romans 11:2-4). “So, too, at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5). And because of that, historic Israel is split in two: “The elect obtained [what Israel was seeking], but the rest were hardened” (Romans 11:7).

Why? Why save a remnant of a failed nation? Or why let there be such failure in a nation with a future? Those are the questions on the minds of the people hearing this letter read in all the different Roman churches – some more, some less Gentile-dominated. “Did they stumble so as to fall? No way! Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous” (Romans 11:11). It's just like Moses said long before! Because Israel clung to their ignorance, God wanted to make them jealous with a 'no-people,' a foolish nation, by lavishing his attention on them, so as to provoke Israel into waking up. Israel's stumbling, bumbling non-response to the gospel isn't the failure of God's plan; actually, it's part of God's crafty plan – God's crafty plan to save the Gentiles and the Israelites.

And that, Paul says, is what his ministry is all about: ministering to the Gentiles with an eye toward making his fellow Jews jealous, so that all can be saved. History moves in three stages. Once Israel had rejected the gospel and been set aside from the limelight, it paved the way for massive success in the Gentile mission. But the idea is that that's only step two, because it'll provoke step three: Israel's jealousy, with their acceptance and their full inclusion again – not just a little remnant, but the main mass. That's what Paul is after (Romans 11:12-16).

So Israel isn't obsolete. Israel isn't old-fashioned and outdated. Israel isn't the permanent loser – some second and now-discarded thing alongside the Gentile Church. Israel's salvation is still the end goal that God's driving at. And the whole thing – yes, even the thing that Roman Gentiles have joined – is rooted in God's covenant long ago with a man named Abraham, whom Jewish texts had started to call Israel's 'root.' That's true – and “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16).

Paul wants to chase that image. He says, Imagine Israel as like an olive tree – a cultivated, cared-for olive tree. But things went a little topsy-turvy. Many of its branches got chopped off. Why? Unbelief – a lack of the fruit of faith. So now there are two things, you could say: a growing tree, with just a minority of its original, natural branches; and then, over in the corner, carefully stacked, a pile of broken-off branches. All are, in a way, Israel. But then, because of how roomy and bare the tree is, God goes and gets branches from wild olive trees, and he grafts them onto this cultivated olive tree of Israel. But once this tree's sap starts flowing into them, these formerly wild branches come to life and are fruitful. A successful operation, restoring fruitfulness to the olive tree called Israel! Yet, lest these recently-introduced branches get smug over that heap of native-Israelite wood in the corner, they need to remember: they aren't a natural fit. The only life that flows through them, comes from the holy root of the patriarchs. And if they still aren't fruitful, God won't hesitate to chop 'em off again. And whenever God chooses to graft natural branches (native-Israelite branches) back in, won't they take to it naturally? After all, it's literally in their DNA. “For if you were cut from what by nature is a wild olive tree, and grafted (contrary to nature) into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree!” (Romans 11:24). It's their own – not like this outlandish Gentile experiment that somehow works. No room for pride.

In fact, Paul says, it's still all God's plan: “A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and in the same way, all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). It's all so topsy-turvy. Jewish thinkers tended to envision the final turn of events something like this: Israel is in hard straits, but then God restores his people to glory, and the fullness of Israel is saved, and then the Gentiles will see that and be drawn to Zion. Paul flips it on its head: the Gentiles (wild branches) are already coming to join (i.e., be grafted onto) the Israelite remnant (the trunk of the cultivated tree), and when their full number is saved, and when 'mainstream Israel' (the heap of natural branches severed from the tree) is finally fed up with a view from the bench, they'll join the game again (i.e., be re-grafted onto the tree), and all will be brought to glory together. In the meantime, the Gentile Romans are right to the extent they see mainstream natural Israel's hostility to the gospel, but so wrong to think it means God's done with Israel. He can't be – his gifts and calling can't be taken back (Romans 11:28-29). But it's all been God's plan to close both kinds of people up under disobedience at one major stage of history, so that when all's said and done, God “may have mercy on all” (Romans 11:30-32).

That's a big message. And it might seem a bit... I don't know... academic? Is that how maybe it seems to us here, now, today? What are we – us here, right here – supposed to get out of this picture Paul is sketching? Is it relevant? Does it have a practical cash-value for how we think and feel and act? Before we close, I want to propose to you eight lessons – and maybe there are more – but eight lessons, eight points, I think you and I alike should be drawing from this.

First of all, there's this. This is how God sees history. This is history according to History's Lord. The entire sweep of human history over the past few thousand years, and whatever we're adding now, all the way until it wraps up, is about this: God first locked up the Gentiles in disobedience, but when it was Israel's turn, the Gentiles got mercy; but in the end, by the mercy shown to the Gentiles, all Israel will discover mercy afresh. That's what history is about: Israel and the Gentiles, and God's determination to save both in mercy. Everything else is secondary.

Here in America, and especially in the American church, we're so obsessed with the idea that history's about all our stuff. A few years ago, a popular TV show (Parks and Recreation) finished its run, and there was a character on it who humorously gave voice to the way we really think in our hearts. He said: “History began on July 4, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake.” But here's the reality. America is not what history is about. The White House, the legislature, the courts; our Declaration, our Constitution – none of it is what history is about. We are either a sideshow, or just some footnoted details as an example of one mainly Gentile nation within which some of Israel is scattered. America is not a defining feature of God's vision of history.

And that means that all the things that worry us – all the major obstacles and problems and temptations of the day – they aren't the main show either. The rise of secularism in America may not be great. But the fight between secularism and religion in America is not a key part of how God tells history. The role of other major religions in the world today, especially Islam, is a topic that we can't seem to avoid. And God has his purposes, because he's a God of details as much as of the main thing. But when God lets us in on the mystery of history, neither Islam nor any of those others fit in the title. Same's true for the big political questions. 'Conservatism,' 'Liberalism,' 'Capitalism,' 'Communism' – those conflicts aren't the way God tells history. And we'd do well to retrain ourselves to see history – even the history we're still living – the way God narrates it, and less in terms of our own self-appointed anxieties. And the way God tells history is about natural Israel and the now-grafted Gentiles having turns in the limelight, 'til all Israel – re-grafted natural and grafted wild branches, too – will be saved.

Second, what Paul says here should retrain how we think of the Church. What is the Church? Fundamentally, what is the Church? Is it a separate, new Gentile body that came into being as the torch passed out of Jewish hands? No. The Church, as we know it today, is Israel between surgeries. But note the key feature: what we're calling the Church is not a second entity alongside Israel, or a second entity replacing Israel; the Church just is Israel. We all have been grafted into Israel by being included through faith in the life of Israel's Messiah – who, as it turns out, is the main trunk, the whole tree. I don't mean the Middle Eastern country that calls itself by that name, but which is (sadly) mostly part of the pile of broken branches. The living Israel is the Church of Jesus Christ.

Which means that you, you once-wild branches, are, in a sense, adopted Israelites. That's us. Which means that the Old Testament story isn't some other story, some old and foreign story. It's our story. When we read the Old Testament, we shouldn't be saying 'they.' We should be saying 'we.' Think of it like this: When we talk about the American Revolution, don't we American citizens like to say that “we fought the Crown for independence”? Not that we personally enlisted, but that we're identifying ourselves with the same national whole who fought? And when an immigrant comes and becomes a naturalized citizen, don't we celebrate when they start referring to the American heritage as 'we,' not 'they'? Same thing here. When we read the Old Testament, that has become our new backstory, our new heritage. The patriarchs are our root, so long as we're grafted in through faith.

Which is why we keep the Old Testament in our Bibles. It's not just for background research, not just reference, but present as living scripture. The Old Testament scriptures are ours, just as much as anything the apostles wrote. And since it's all our story, we'd better get familiar with it all. But too often, when we tell people the gospel, when we explain to them who Jesus is and what he's all about, you'd get the impression he was crucified in Genesis 4! Too often, we hop immediately from the Fall to the Cross, from our problem to Jesus' solution, without seeing that Jesus on the cross is the organic center of the whole story of God and his mission-carrying people. The story of pre-cross Israel isn't an optional add-on; it's what we imply when we call Jesus 'the Christ.' There's no such thing as a Christian to whom the Old Testament is irrelevant, only Christians who are ignorant of how.

Third, Jewishness remains highly relevant to God's church. The Church is Israel with wild branches grafted in, and temporarily missing most – but not all – natural branches; which God promises to re-graft once all the wild ones meant to be added have found their spot. The church grows from Jewish roots. And the church's present life is predicated on having a Jewish remnant living in our midst. Unlike what the Romans were thinking, and unlike the ways we've tried to normalize it, a totally un-Jewish church would be a bizarrely unnatural thing. And to tell the truth, some big stretches of church history have been major failures here. We've tried to banish Jews and Jewish culture; we've horribly mistreated Jews inside and outside the church. We have to be honest, brutally honest, about those atrocious failures. Whenever that has happened, we've betrayed the gospel.

But on the flip side, when we've embraced our Old Testament heritage (while standing firm in New Testament liberty), and when we've welcomed the 'natural branches' still among us, it's a fruitful blessing to any local body of believers. When we have members who are in fact descended from the patriarchs – members whose ancestors physically stood and heard Moses sing his song for the first time; members whose ancestors lived under the rule of David and Solomon; members whose ancestors stood in covenant with God during long eons when many of our families were still lost – well, when we have members who are descended from the patriarchs like Paul was, we need to cherish and celebrate that! They are living proof of God's promises to all of us. They are the rare surviving natural branches, still fruitfully drawing life and health from the tree. They are the remnant who let the church be what it is. In fact, here in this congregation, we are enormously blessed to have at least one family, maybe more, of such 'natural branches.'

Fourth, all that said, we need to remember this: It really is all about grace, not works. Even for the remnant of natural branches, it isn't an entitlement. It isn't something earned. It's mercy. It's grace. Paul calls them “a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it's by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace” (Romans 11:5-6). Not earned. Not entitled. A free gift of God – even for the remnant. And just the same for the wild branches grafted in – the Gentiles. Wild branches don't bring any productivity. Wild olive trees are notorious for that – it's partly why Paul used that image. It can't be by works, for any of us. It has to be by grace, for all of us. God doesn't want anyone to get in under the illusion that they earned a spot. No, no: he wants to be very clear about this. Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, it's nothing you worked for, it's nothing you achieved; it's grace, conditioned on your perseverance in faith.

Fifth, just look at this strategic mind our God has! This careful balancing of Jewish and non-Jewish interests – this millennia long scheme to lure and entice both into the realm of his mercy – I could never come up with this. I'm just not that smart. All of us, putting our heads together, would never in a million years have come up with this plan. And yet the whole cycle, its full orbit, leads to everyone being treated on even footing. Neither will have room for boasting. Neither will have any excluded who could otherwise have been saved. It's literal divine genius. I urge you, just spend some time looking at how God's mind works – and trust him.

Sixth, note what Paul is expecting people to see in us. He expects that, as mainstream Israel sees the Gentiles enjoying with the remnant all their historic blessings, all the closeness with God that was theirs, they'll be provoked to jealousy and want back in on what they're seeing us having. The entire plan ultimately hinges on that. Think about what we're saying. Paul expects us to be enjoying so much of God that his historic people get jealous over how much deeper into God we're getting through Jesus than they can get outside of Jesus, so that they'll see how much they need Jesus. Is your relationship with God something that practitioners of other religions have reason to be jealous over? Because that's the plan. Think about that. Cultivate that. Dive into that.

Seventh, look at the way Paul talks about what the gospel has brought, right here, right now. Israel's failure means what for the rest of us? “Riches for the Gentiles” (Romans 11:12). What does their rejection mean? “The reconciliation of the world” (Romans 11:15). And what about the consequence of Israel's trespass? What do we get because of it? “Riches for the world” (Romans 11:12). We so easily get caught up in the problems of our lives. Our sickness. Our bankruptcy. Our jobs and our schedules. But do we have our eyes open – open to the fact that, in receiving the gospel, in having the opportunity to be grafted onto the tree God is tending, in encountering grace through Jesus, we're being made rich beyond our wildest dreams? Do we understand, do we see, that the gospel is in fact – right this moment, right here in this sanctuary – “riches for the world”? Jesus came, and the good news is, it's so that “you … might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). And Paul's ministry to the Gentiles, he says, was “making many rich” (2 Corinthians 6:10). Not with money, but with “the riches of [God's] kindness and forbearance and patience” (Romans 2:4), with “the riches of his glory” (Romans 9:23), with “the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7), “the riches of his glorious inheritance” (Ephesians 1:18). For Paul was called “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). And exactly that is what you have received and can enjoy this very moment, through faith in him, because the Lord Jesus is presently, here and now, “bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Romans 10:12). Do you see the value? The preciousness of the gospel?

Eighth, the last thing I want to share: All that, everything I just said, is like a trickle, a drip from a clogged hose. But there's a flood in store. “If [Israel's] trespass means riches for the world..., how much more with their full inclusion mean?” (Romans 11:12). “For if [Israel's] rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15). What we're getting now are the blessings as filtered through the remnant – the apostles and the Jewish believers in every age joined to them. It's certainly proven to be riches for the world. But it's a pittance next to the flood of wealth and blessing and life set to be unleashed when the narrow channel of the remnant is expanded wide to 'all Israel.' There's something more than these presently experienced 'unsearchable riches' yet in store. Not just more, but “much more,” Paul says. It's beyond reconciliation. It's resurrection. It's life from the dead. It's the fullness of seeing face-to-face, of knowing as we are known, of beholding the Father with unshrouded eye and walking in glorious victory in an incorrupt new creation with a resurrected Christ. It's more than words can tell. But it's the “how much more,” it's the “life from the dead,” that's waiting in store for when 'all Israel,' the general collection of natural branches, are graciously grafted in again by faith, accepting and accepted, fully included beyond the trespass – and when God has his way of mercy for all. And for that, we hope and pray – and, like Paul, we hope to “magnify [our] ministry” (Romans 10:13).

Thanks be to the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of the olive tree that grows by grace from its Abrahamic root of richness into the unsearchable riches of Christ! Thanks be to God for the remnant of Israel he's preserved, thanks be to God for the wild branches he's grafting in from all nations, and thanks be to God for the miracle he'll yet do to save all Israel and bring life from the dead. Thanks be to this God in Jesus, the Messiah, our Lord. Amen.

Meet the Hows: Sermon on Romans 10:14-17

“Expect great things; attempt great things.” That was his motto. His parting words to his countrymen before he left his homeland, never to return again. Early the following year, 1793, William Carey had gotten on-board a ship to India, with his wife, his four children, and a friend. He knew what his great thing to attempt would be – and it involved being a missionary in one of the most populous yet least reached lands on the earth. He soon wrote, “I am, notwithstanding the little success we have had, far from being discouraged; and should I never succeed, yet I am resolved in the strength of the Lord Jesus to live and die persisting in this work, – and never to give it up but with my liberty or life. The worth of souls, the pleasure of the work itself, and above all the increase of the Redeemer's kingdom are with me motives sufficient, and more than sufficient, to determine me to die in the work that I have undertaken.” And so he would, forty-one years later – by the end of which, Carey had not only expected great things and attempted great things, but achieved great things.

William Carey had settled in the easternmost reaches of India, in West Bengal. After moving to Srirampur, he'd found an enduring home. Looking back over his life from the end, he had founded numerous schools, even a college; he had accomplished major social reforms of India itself; he had personally translated the Bible fully into at least six languages and partially into nearly two dozen others. Through his ministry, hundreds of locals had been converted; hundreds of souls were saved. And millions more would be, over the coming centuries. Because Carey had done more than go on an isolated journey. He'd sparked a movement.

I wonder if, one late day in the early 1830s, amid the humid breezes and river turns, walking among the thatch-roofed huts and the soaring trees – I wonder if his mind ever turned back to how it all started. He'd been born many decades earlier, in the middle of August 1761, in a tiny and little-known village in the heart of England. Even today, the population there is maybe half that of Gap, and a few hundred less than Terre Hill; how much less in the 1700s? Educated only until the age of twelve, he'd long had a fascination with reading books about travel – the stories and recollections told by voyagers who ventured the globe – so much so, his companions in youth nicknamed him 'Columbus.' While still a teenager, Carey attended the preaching of a dissident minister and was converted to an evangelical faith in Jesus Christ. At the age of twenty-two, in 1783, he got baptized.

Soon, he had three lines of work going on. In the evening, he'd manufacture and repair shoes for people. In the morning or afternoon, he'd teach schoolchildren. And when Sunday came around, he'd preach. To prepare for preaching, he immersed himself intensely in the Bible, even taught himself Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. But to teach his students geography, he kept reading the stories of great explorers, especially Captain James Cook. Gears in his brain started turning. He stitched together paper, made a world map on his wall, started jotting down information on every country on it. Soon, he was ordained as a full-time pastor.

That year, 1786, he was at a pastors' gathering, and the chairman solicited ideas of what they should talk about. All were silent, until Carey suggested the continuing relevance of the Great Commission. Among these church circles, you see, many people thought the Great Commission was only for the apostles, not for later generations of believers. And so Carey got a stern rebuke – was told to sit down and be quiet; that if God wanted the heathen converted, he'd do it himself or send a second Pentecost to restore the gift of tongues to ease the way. Otherwise, they said, it just couldn't be done.

Carey was mortified at the rebuke. But it set his brain into higher gear. He wrote, and eventually published, a little book – it wasn't very big, and didn't sell too well at the time – but a little book called An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. Was printed in 1792, a year before he said goodbye to merry old England and set permanent sail for India. It's since been recognized as one of the foundational documents of the modern missions movement in the church. And on the title page, do you know what other words he put under the title? He added a quote from the Apostle Paul. And that quote was this:

For there is no Difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all, is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a Preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?

The very words of scripture we're here to talk about this morning. If you were here last week, you remember the first couple verses of that. Paul insisted that the sequence of salvation included believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and calling on his name, starting with the prayer of baptism, to be saved in relationship to God through Jesus. And that's the same terms given to Greeks, foreigners, as to Jews. And so Paul tells them that the same Lord is Lord over all things, all nations on the earth, regardless of their history (Romans 10:12). And he urges them that anybody, from any nation, from any background, who in any language calls out to invoke the name of Jesus, can thus be rescued from what ails the human heart, soul, and life: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).

But for Paul, that raises some questions – some hard-hitting questions. And all four start off the same way. The same four are the ones we have to face today, because he's asking us just as much as he was asking the churches of first-century Rome. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm delighted to make a formal introduction. I would invite you now to “meet the hows.”

And the first How to come along and shake your hand is this one: “How, then, will they call on him in whom they have not believed?” (Romans 10:14a). See, that's the thing about prayer. That's the thing about calling out in the dead of night, or in the brightness of noon. You can't call on a name you don't think will catch the attention of a viable helper. If I were over at the hospital, and suddenly I felt my chest constrict and my right arm grow numb, and I thought to myself, “This is a heart attack; I need help right now!”, you know what the last thing I'd say is? “Stairway, help me! Elevator, help me! Floor tiles, help me!” That isn't even going to cross my mind! (I'm not that crazy...) See, my trust in a medical emergency won't be in the stairwells or in the elevators or in the floor tiles. But I just might say, “Doctor, help me! Nurse, help me!” Or even if I just cried “Help!”, that's who I'd have in mind. A person with medical training and certified skill, who knows what to do and has the power to do it. In an emergency situation, I'm going to call out to somebody I trust – somebody I think is real, is there, and is able and willing to help, and to whom I entrust myself in a case of urgent need.

To do the opposite just doesn't make sense. Stuck on the train tracks, I won't be shouting for help from the local ant colony. Caught in a flooding river, I won't be asking for Elvis. Because Elvis ain't around, so far as I can tell, and the ants may be there, but they can't understand me, can't react, can't do a thing for me. I'm not going to call on someone I don't believe is real and available to be present to the situation – I'm not going to call for Elvis. And I'm not going to call on someone or something I don't think I can trust to be useful or worthwhile – I'm not going to ask the ants. You can't, you don't, you won't call on someone in whom you haven't believed. That just ain't how it works. And the first How knows it. That's why he's asking.

So then a second How hops over to join his brother and shake your hand, too: “How are they to believe in him whom they have never heard?” (Romans 10:14b). This How gets brought up a lot when the age-old question comes up, “But what about those who have never heard? Don't they have a chance? And if they don't, can we really still believe in a God who conditions everything on a message some folks never get?” Theologians debate exclusivism and inclusivism – whether can there be such a thing, as Karl Rahner put it, as an 'anonymous Christian.' Well, I'll be dodging that question this morning. Even Billy Graham moved from one side to the other. Whatever the answer is, it's the justice and mercy of God. Whatever contingency plan he may or may not have, I've got my suspicions but no clear word, so we can dive down that rabbit-hole some other time.

The important thing is this: To actually believe, to actually know and trust, requires having heard of them. If I was one of those kayakers who had to get rescued on the Conestoga River yesterday afternoon during all the wild flooding – how likely do you think I am to yell out, “Save me, Mr. Schnickelbüdel!” Not too likely, because I've never heard of any such 'Schnickelbüdel' guy! Now, maybe it turns out that one of the local rescue workers, somebody within earshot, just so happens to be Stan Schnickelbüdel. But if I've never met him, never even heard of him, if the name's never reached my eyes or ears, how am I going to know he's there and call on him by name? I can't! That's the point this How is making. He might well be around and available to help, but if I've never heard of him, I won't be able to believe in him; and, like the first How showed us, if I don't believe in him, I can't call on him and get his attention and get rescued from the mess I'm in.

Just when you had gotten to know the first and second Hows, the third member of this How clan jogs past and reaches over, catching your attention: “How are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14c). If nobody's out there announcing the news, are you going to get the news you need? That's the reason people have been so stirred up the past couple of years about the state of the media. Whatever you think on that, the idea is, with so much neglect and distortion going on, the audience isn't hearing the real news because it isn't being told. Again, whatever your politics, and however well or poorly you think this or that media outlet is actually doing, that's the idea behind the complaint some are making. Whether you think they're right or not, we can see the problem it creates if they're right. If the news isn't being clearly and distinctly announced, if nobody is getting on the air and covering that story, the result is that you won't know about it.

If no media outlet reports, if no eyewitness goes public, if no grapevine of gossip relays, about, say, the suicide bombing against a mosque in Afghanistan on Friday, or about the attempted assassination of the Venezuelan president yesterday – well, if no media outlet reports about them, if no eyewitness blogs about them, if no chain of gossip gets the word to me, I'm not going to know about it, am I? I can't hear what the news is unless there's somebody out there telling it, and unless that telling reaches me – in the black-and-white of newsprint, on the radio, on the TV, on the Internet, in the prayer guide in our church newsletter, or through an in-person relay of information, or however else it might get distributed, unless the news is told and the telling reaches you, you won't hear about it. There has to be a teller if you're going to hear. That's what the third How wants you to get.

And then, as if there weren't already enough Hows around, the last of their household drops in for a visit. This fourth How introduces himself this way: “How are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:15a). The question might strike you as a bit odd. Why does somebody have to be sent? Why can't they just start talking about it? But the word 'preach,' in Paul's Greek, means to be a herald. Back in the old days, how would news get out? Other than the Acta Diurna posted in the Roman Forum, there was nothing even vaguely resembling a newspaper, much less Fox or CNN. And even then, most couldn't read. So how did news get out?

Well, a lot of the time, it was the town crier. The herald. The guy who, in medieval England, would stand in the town square and ring his bell and shout, “Oyez, oyez! Hear ye, hear ye!,” and then give you the scoop. Could be the latest deals in the market; could be changes in the local laws or bylaws; could be royal pronouncements. But they'd get your attention, they'd shout at you to listen, and then they'd tell you what's what. Some heralds had to go a long way to get the message out. You know the story of Paul Revere's ride. Long before that, Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles to Athens to tell the news of a Greek victory over Persia at a spot called Marathon, and then keeled over dead – hence why people I don't understand have run marathons ever since. In Paul's world, there were some heralds sent out by the imperial court, using horses and chariots, to get news and commands quickly to distant parts of the empire.

But to get that news out, they had to be authorized. They had to be sent. The emperor wouldn't be happy if a bunch of random people just started going around the empire peddling lies in his name. To be an authorized herald, to preach whatever 'good news' Caesar wanted told in this or that town, they had to be sent by Roman authority. And Paul says the same thing's true for the gospel. To be an authorized herald, to preach 'good news' from heaven's Lord, there has to be a sending by divine authority. “No one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God” (Hebrews 5:4). There needs to be a sending for the message to be authoritatively announced; and it has to be announced if people are going to hear it; and if it's credibly announced to people who hear it, they might just believe it; and if they believe it, then they can call on the one name that saves.

So once we've met these four Hows, there's just one question left: Has God sent any heralds? And that's when Paul, following hot on the Hows' tracks, whips out his Bible and quotes from the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:15b; cf. Isaiah 52:7). And the picture there is an advance scout, showing up on the hills to bring news to a city under siege – news, good news, that reinforcements are on the way, rescuers are riding down, they can lift up their heads and fight knowing the victory is at hand, and safe haven will be soon. Paul quotes this so that we know that God does send heralds. And if God sends heralds, then he must want them to announce this good news. And if he wants his heralds to proclaim the good news, he must want folks to hear the good news. And if he wants folks to hear the good news, he must want them to believe the good news and trust the One at the heart of it. And if he wants them to trust the One at the good news' heart, he must want them to call on him. And if he wants them to call on this Good News Man named Jesus, it can be for one and one reason only: that God is aiming to do some saving!

And yet there are people in this world who are still drowning in the river. There are people in this world still stuck in the path of that oncoming train. There are people in this world still languishing and falling and dying. There are people who seldom call on the name of the Lord and who appear, maybe very openly, to have no saving connection to Jesus. Some of them live in the Middle East. Some of them live in India and China and Japan. Some live in Europe. Some live in DC and the Windy City and the Big Apple. And some of them live in Lancaster County, and maybe not too far from your door. Do all your friends and relatives and neighbors have a saving connection to Jesus, confessing his Lordship and believing in his resurrection and calling on his name? Probably some do, but does each and every one? And if not, where's the breakdown?

There can be no breakdown between the calling and the saving – that's a promise straight from God: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). So is the breakdown between the believing and the calling? For some, it might be, if you define believing as just mental assent. Agreeing with ideas isn't Paul's idea of believing. But there are people out there who have some stuff in their head that never makes it to their heart. One of William Carey's assistants was a local man named Ramram Basu. And Ram helped Carey translate the Bible into his native language of Bengali. And Ram wrote books denouncing idolatry and praising Jesus. And Ram wrote the very first Christian hymn in his language – the first one! But into his dying days, so far as anyone knows, Ram stayed a Hindu. He wrote, “I understand something of the gospel, and can make it known a little to others, but I cannot leave my caste. This is my great difficulty.” There were things in his Hindu life he knew he wasn't willing to give up, so in spite of knowing the good news and seeing its goodness, he wouldn't call on the name of the Lord to be saved. Some are like that.

But not everybody. For the rest, is the breakdown between hearing and believing? Maybe the words get in their ears, but not into their heads or their hearts? For some, sure. Paul quotes Isaiah again, the next chapter, and the words he finds go like this: “Who has believed what he heard from us?” (Romans 10:16b; cf. Isaiah 53:1). So some don't “obey the gospel” – a disconnect between hearing and believing (Romans 10:16a). Maybe some of your neighbors fall in that camp – they've heard, somebody's told them, it's reached their eyes and ears, but they just aren't buying it and aren't obeying it. Some of the fault may rest on our lives being very unconvincing advertisements for the gospel; and some of the fault may rest on their hardened hearts. Some are like that.

But not everybody. For the rest, is the breakdown between preaching and hearing? People try to tell them, and it isn't that the recipients don't let it sink in, but that they don't even stick around long enough to really get it in their ears; they just push the messenger away? Well, sometimes, sure. But I think even today, just as in William Carey's time, a bigger breakdown falls between sending and preaching. Oh, the sending happens – God authorizes heralds – but then the heralds stay home and stay quiet. And in many cases, even here in Lancaster County, let alone that wild and woolly world out yonder, here's the problem.

See, when Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18), he wasn't just talking to the eleven men standing in front of him. Nor was he limiting himself when he said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). It's for all of us. We're all commissioned. We're all authorized. We're all heralds. We're all sent. Ours are meant to be those beautiful feet on the mountaintop, bringing news of rescue to a city under siege!

But here's the problem, and William Carey had our number in 1792 in his Enquiry. He wrote: “...multitudes sit at ease, and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow-sinners, who to this day are lost in ignorance and idolatry.” Can we honestly say that we aren't Carey's targets there? Isn't it true we have a tendency to “sit at ease, and give [ourselves] no concern about the far greater part of [our] fellow-sinners, who to this day are lost in ignorance and idolatry”? They may be lost in the house next door; they may be lost just down the street; they may be lost at your family reunion! And still we don't think about it, and even if we think about it, we think, “Well, that's a shame,” but yet we just sit and don't do anything.

So when Paul introduces us to the Hows, he's got a good reason. Do we realize that God has been trying to send us? Why aren't we going to those “lost in ignorance and idolatry”? Why aren't we announcing the good news, why aren't we preaching? Don't we realize that, if we aren't preaching, it means they ain't hearing? And if they aren't hearing, they sure ain't believing? And if they aren't believing, they sure ain't calling on the Lord? And if they aren't calling, they sure ain't finding safety on the higher ground called Christ our Rock? If we want them to be saved, we have to see them call; and if we want them to call, we have to help them believe; and if we want them to believe, they need to hear; and if we want them to hear, it's got to be us who get up and preach it?

Is that always a comfortable thing? No. In William Carey's early years on the field, he was lonely, he was sick, he was miserable. He lost children. His first wife cracked under the strain and went literally insane. To preach the gospel in India was, for William Carey, a costly thing. It took him seven years before he saw his first native convert. And even then, progress was slow. Nor did it always pan out. He later admitted that many of his early converts “have pierced us through with sorrows.” Amidst it all, he wrote, “This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me. But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here.”

He was right. God was there. Another Bengali man was saved and then went back to his family and said this:

At length I heard of there being a new way preached at Serampore. I have been there, and I have heard glad tidings, that Jesus Christ came into the world and bore the punishment due to sinners. This is a great word, and it has filled my soul with hope and joy. Hence I have laid aside the proud thought of making amends for my own transgressions. I make my refuge in his death, and consider all my holiness as a heap of sin. I have been baptized in his name. If I can believe in him, and obey his command, I shall get over my everlasting ruin. If you can unite with me in becoming the disciples of Christ, then I shall find my home, my mother, my brother, my wife, and a Savior all at once; but if you cannot, then I will abide in my Savior, and go everywhere proclaiming his name. If I die in this work, under a tree or anywhere else, verily it shall then be well with me.

See the sequence. A 'new way' was being preached. When he was there, he heard the glad tidings. And what he heard, he believed. And so he called on the name of Jesus and was saved. And once saved, he determined to “go everywhere proclaiming his name,” including to his family. And we're told that, when he preached to them, they heard, believed, called, and were saved, too. Like the Apostle wrote, “Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

And William Carey said, “Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth aspiring to. Surely it is worthwhile to lay ourselves out with all our might, in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ.” It was worth it, because God was there. And God is here, too, no less than in India two centuries ago or in Rome two millennia ago. And here, God is sending us. God is sending us to preach, so that others may hear, believe, call on Jesus, and be saved. Will we? Will you? The Hows, and their God, are waiting for our answer. Will we? Will you?

Mouth and Heart: Sermon on Romans 10:6-13

A man kneels, trembling, tears streaking his cheeks, on the dirty and fragmented stone tiles at the edges of the forum. All around him is silence. Other than torches in the hands of public slaves who stand watch nearby, the world is empty to his eyes – a black abyss. Quivering, he clenches his sword in white-knuckled fists. The fire of the torches glints and gleams off the sharpened tip as it hovers inches from his thundering heart. Would you take a moment to picture the scene? Would you indulge me just a minute or two and imagine with me what's going through this man's mind?

His grandfather, perhaps, was a veteran, who served in one of the legions. As a reward for his service, he was given land here, one of the earlier waves of thusly rewarded military settlers. But the grandson had squandered that all away. Still, he'd gotten married. His father-in-law, too, perhaps, was a veteran. But the son-in-law, the man in the dirt with the sword, wasn't. He'd never been found fit – he could never be good enough, never be man enough. So for years now, he'd pushed himself, asserted himself, overcompensated.

He had become a brutal man. Brutal enough to get into the corrections business. Brutal enough to be good at it, to make his living off torture and confinement and extortion. He made good money off of it all – not like his lost patrimony, but enough to support his family. Financially, at least. He knew he wasn't much for supporting his family emotionally. Brutality is a hard thing to leave on the doorstep. He carried the weight of his work home with him. He knew how often he treated his wife and kids like the hardened criminals he was assigned to guard, like that pair of bleeding charlatans committed the prior morn. He hated seeing his wife flinch whenever he drew close. But in everything, he hardened himself to what he felt had to be done.

At some level, he knew he was no good man. He tried to make a virtue out of his vices, justifying himself to his tattered conscience. But he was lost in life. The daily grind was a storm to erode even the roughest rock. The fictions of law were often all that separated him from the criminals he guarded; what he saw when he glimpsed his reflection in pools and what he saw when he looked at his prisoners – it all blended together. He had no peace in the day, no peace in the night, and labored to convince himself peace was overrated. Now a lifetime of bad choices had caught up with him. He'd been awakened, called back to the job site from a nightmare-troubled slumber. There'd been a disaster. A well-timed tremor had left the roof on the prison, but knocked out every security feature. All on the inside was silent, vacant. He'd surely be found negligent for letting every prisoner get loose. For even one, he could be killed. With a trial, he'd be evicted from his housing, have all assets confiscated, and then die in disgrace. His wife and children would starve in the streets after he was gone.

What could the earthquake be but the wrath of some god? Some obscure deity was vengeful and out for his ruin – and fearsomely efficient. Perhaps the god announced by the most recent arrivals, maybe not charlatans after all, but everything the pint-sized pythoness said, and more. That strange god would now take everything from him, displaying him in public as the failure he always knew he was. That god would cast him into a darker prison than he'd ever overseen. He couldn't bear the shame, couldn't stomach the consequences. But what was left for him to do? Where could he turn for rescue from piercing justice, punishing bosses, and wrathful gods? Where could he run to? What option was left? Everything was too little, too late. He couldn't 'ascend,' couldn't rise out of his situation, couldn't run off and find some last-ditch turnaround. There was only one dignified way he could see now. If not to 'ascend,' then to 'descend' – to the grave, with his sword, and at least spare himself the public humiliation and his family the consequences (Acts 16:27).

Few of us have been in his exact situation. But haven't we, at some time or other, had to admit we were out of ideas and at the end of our rope? That's where all the human condition is lived – at the end of our rope. The only difference is that, every now and then, some disaster piles on, or some awareness clicks in our heads, and makes us admit it for a change. But we come to realize that we're in trouble, that some prison and some wrath are at the door, that we stand at the end of a string of bad choices, that we're on the wrong side of something big, that some radical decision or solution is required.

But where do we go? What do we do? In truth, these days, it's an almost endless buffet of options. People will turn anywhere. A lot of people try the route of descent – going 'down' to look for answers. Maybe we descend into ourselves, turning to deep introspection, to psychological tinkering, to a meditative inner journey to try to ferret out an explanation for why we are who we are. Maybe we pursue the route of materialistic resignation or nihilistic bacchanal – we look for answers, or at least comforting pleasures, in the everyday things of this life and close our minds to any awareness that anything's wrong; we anesthetize ourselves to the wrath to come. Or we try to anesthetize ourselves more literally with drink and drugs, to cloud our minds from the painful reality we're in. Or we try to manage our lives through earthy commonsense wisdom, just like grandpappy used to tell. The avenue of descent. But “who will descend into the abyss” to fetch an answer there (Romans 10:7)?

And then some try the route of ascent – going 'up' or 'around' to look for answers. Maybe we ascend a literal mountain, searching out some great guru whose proverbs can crack open the puzzle that puzzles us. Maybe we go on a spiritual trek, relocate, shake up our lives in hopes that enough disturbance will help things settle into a stable place somehow. Maybe we come up with some pattern, some program, some political agitation that has the offer of a 'heaven on earth' that we can bring down right here: If only we do this, everything will work out fine, we say. Or we invent a self-help program to raise ourselves up by our own bootstraps all the way to heaven's height. But “who will ascend into heaven” to fetch an answer from up there (Romans 10:6)? All these schemes of descent or ascent – in our rare honest hours, doesn't history showcase them all as empty efforts?

As that man knelt long ago, sword in hand, ready to 'descend' to the grave as a last-ditch attempt to escape his problem in a way that's clearly no solution at all – in the moment of distress, as his fingers twitched sweatily on the hilt in the witching hour, he heard a voice from inside the prison he thought vacant, assuring him that there was another way. He doesn't have to ascend to come up with a solution from somewhere 'out there.' He doesn't have to descend to fetch a solution from death. 'Ascending' and 'descending' – those were Israel's questions of old, which they muttered in their deepest selves, in thinking they earned the promised land through their own great triumphs (Deuteronomy 9:4; 30:12-13). No, the real answer, this voice says, is in fact “near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (Romans 10:8; cf. Deuteronomy 30:14). Already near. Already open. Already wide. And so the man with the sword dropped it. Let it clang in the dead of night. Ran in and fell down to beg with a burning thirst to know – just as we should – “What must I do to be saved?” – What way is this that's so near, so accessible, so available to even me, even here, even now (Acts 16:30)?

It starts with the heart. Your heart is the center of your self – everything that makes you you. We think today of the heart as where the emotions are, where you feel. Not so much back then when these words were written. It had some of that, but mainly the heart was where you did your deciding, where you committed to what kind of person you would be, where you managed the attachments that define your life. It can soften or harden, turn this way or that, be guarded or forsaken; everything that matters is what comes out of the heart (cf. Mark 7:20-21). Your heart is where you're attached to what matters most to you, and where you decide accordingly; and the rest of your life, so far as it depends on you, is downstream of your heart.

And so the answer we're given is that the first step involves “believing with your heart.” It's just the verb form of having faith. And another way of saying 'faith' is 'trust,' and still another way of saying 'faith' is 'loyalty.' It's about a whole-life disposition – a reliance on and attachment to someone or something, the sort where we anchor the center of our self in it. This is deciding the direction your heart will gush in, the channels its outflow will flow through; and more than that, it gets to what the wellspring is pumping up at the source. To believe in something with your heart begins with deciding that it's the most important thing, your core attachment; it means trusting in it, relying on it, being glued to it at the very control center of you.

So what are we supposed to believe in with our hearts? One word says it above all, here: “Jesus.” Believe in Jesus. Have faith in Jesus. Trust in Jesus, rely on Jesus. Be attached to Jesus, united to Jesus, loyal to Jesus. “Believe in God; believe also in me,” he says (John 14:1). To believe in him changes the heart's output, and he himself said it: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'” (John 7:38).

So what should we believe about Jesus, if we're to believe in him? Well, the key thing is this: “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9b). Of course, that implies that he was dead. It implies the message of the cross. It implies the story we know: that Jesus was charged, convicted, put to death like a common criminal; that he bore shame and disgrace, that he endured pain and agony, that he suffered and gasped and ultimately his synapses stopped firing, his muscle fibers stopped twitching, his blood drained away through the puncture in his side. And he claimed to do it to carry the weight of all our failure and strain and evil away from us. But then that wasn't the final chapter.

To believe “that God raised him from the dead” is a whole new episode. It implies that after his execution at the hands of the authorized powers of the land, God singled him out as somebody worth keeping. A whole host of teachers, philosophers, prophets, you name it, had come on the earth and gone under the earth – like Shakespeare said, “All the world's a stage, / and all the men and women merely players; / they have their exits and their entrances.” But God refused to budge the spotlight, refused to have Jesus surrender the stage without an encore eternal. He lifted him up, raised him back on, restored him to life. Which implies that God's identity is now fully fleshed-out: he is the 'Jesus-Raiser.' To know who the real God is, to pick him out of a lineup, that's all you need. 'Jesus-Raiser' is a unique and sufficient description, it's all you need to look for on God's ID. God is the sort of God whose defining act is resurrection and who thinks Jesus deserves the spotlight.

So to “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,” here, means that the center of your self can't be anchored in what you do, what you like, where you come from, where you're going – that's not what anchors, what holds, what glues to your heart. It means that the center of who you are will be anchored in the Jesus who gives God definition as the God of Resurrection, a God to whom crosses are no disqualifier but a qualification.

So what then? What after you believe in your heart? The next organ you'll need is your mouth – your organ of expression, of speech – literally the mouth for most of us, but whatever does the function the mouth signifies, be it hands making signs or fingers clenching pen or hitting keys, or indeed the mouth forming syllables to string together. And what does the mouth have to do? “Confess with your mouth.” It means to align yourself with, to endorse, to declare publicly, to commit yourself publicly, to announce in a binding way.

A lot comes out of our mouths, don't we know it. What are they for, though? What should they be confessing? What should we announce in public, what should we commit ourselves to? Once again: “Jesus.” What about Jesus? We're told elsewhere that “whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). Here, we're given the same truth in other words: “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9a). But what are we really saying when that confession comes out of our mouth?

A 'lord' has authority to command. A 'lord' has authority to lead, to guide and direct. A 'lord' cannot be traded or amended. A servant can't just swap lords – it doesn't work like that. A servant has no right to just walk away from one lord's service, scot-free, and go to another one. A servant is bound to his or her lord – bound, committed, owned. Nor can a servant ignore with impunity the directions that his or her lord gives, or the way his or her lord wants things done. That's what it means to have a lord: the lord runs the show.

In Roman society, within an extended household of a man and his wife and his children and their servants and their hired help and their animals, it wasn't uncommon for the paterfamilias, the man of the house, to be spoken of as the family's 'lord.' Legally, if not always in practice, he had absolute power there, even over life and death. The family lord runs the house, takes charge, determines the direction of the family business, decides the overall commitments that the household is to have, and enforces their cooperation in the goals he's chosen. And to confess that Jesus is Lord is to yield that role to Jesus – to admit him as the real faultline of all business and all family – to see Jesus as the one who runs our house and determines its direction; Jesus as the one deciding our commitments, both as the overall household of God and as our households at home; to admit that Jesus will enforce our families' cooperation with his goals; to see that our family life, our business life, is centered on him and subject to his jurisdiction.

But in Roman society, there was another big use for the word 'lord.' And it was royal, it was imperial. “Caesar is Lord” was the imperial slogan. The emperor Caligula insisted on being called dominus, 'Lord,' even by Romans, and he tortured and whipped nobles and made senators kiss his feet and ordered even free Romans to act as his slaves. And while most emperors didn't go so far, many were called 'Lord' in common speech; one inscription calls Nero “the Lord of all the world.” The emperor, standing at the political and societal head of the empire, played a role for the empire not unlike a man in his own household. A 'Lord' like the emperor was the defining political figure, and the key member of society. To Roman eyes, society and politics had their center in the emperor, the 'lord,' the first citizen. And to that, we say, in confessing that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus – not Trump, not Clinton, not the donkey or the elephant, not Putin or Kim or Assad or any world leader, not any judge or any senator or any president or potentate – no, Jesus is the real faultline of all politics and all society. Any political discussion that doesn't turn around Jesus, is provincial and irrelevant. Any society not organized around this Lord Jesus must be converted or be consigned to history's wastebin. Any agenda, any nationhood, any activism is judged in light of the Lord Jesus and his methods and his ideals and his Spirit – and all else falls. To confess Jesus is Lord is to put all our political opinions at his feet, to put all of society at his feet, to turn our ballots over to him, to see him as the President and Governor and Judge to whom we must answer above all.

And then, in Roman society, there was still another big use for words like 'lord.' And it was divine. Religious celebrants in the Greek and Roman world could call Zeus “the lord of all” (Pindar, Isthmian Odes 5.53). For one of their gods to be 'lord' meant a mastery and ownership of their whole cosmic domain; it was a claim to be deserving of the devotion and sacrifices of the people. To call a divine figure a 'lord' is to claim them as the proper object of devotion, whom it would be wrong not to worship, give sacrifice, render loyalty and trust for blessings in this world and beyond. Paul dismisses the pantheon of the Greeks and Romans as merely “so-called 'gods' and so-called 'lords'” (cf. 1 Corinthians 8:5), but he insists on announcing that “Jesus is Lord.” In confessing that, we say that Jesus is the real faultline of all religion and all culture. The worth of any religious idea, any religious act, any religious practice, any religious tradition, is how Jesus sees it and how it submits to him. Any religious opinion that doesn't mesh with the Lordship of Jesus is mere profanity. To confess that Jesus is Lord is to put all our religious opinions at his feet, to see all religion and all culture in light of him, to dethrone all celebrities and the other gods of this age in his presence, to render him devoted worship.

And more than that, 'Lord' was the word Greek-speaking Jews used to gloss God's name in the Old Testament. Where Moses and Isaiah and Joel and all the rest had written the mysterious consonants of Yahweh, Hellenized scribes wrote Kurios, 'LORD' – we see it in all-caps in our Old Testament texts. And in context, that's exactly what Paul is applying to Jesus. He ain't just 'Lord' in little letters; he deserves the all-caps treatment. He is the LORD God we meet from Genesis on – not divorced from the Father, but one LORD God with him. To really confess that Jesus is LORD is to reject every theology that carves the Old Testament away or demotes Jesus too low. He is the God of creation, the God who thundered from the mount, the God Isaiah saw encircled by six-winged angels, the God Ezekiel glimpsed on the blazing chariot. That's what we admit when we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord: he's the unmasked face of God's eternal self. And to say all this about a man with crucifixion scars, to say that an executed death-row inmate is not only alive again but is the Lord in all these ways, is to say that the world works nothing like we ever thought it did before.

When did an early believer first start calling on Jesus as Lord, confessing him as Lord in all these ways? In the early church, this was the confession people made at their baptism, and that's what Paul has an eye on here. To be baptized was how believers received the touch and presence of Jesus into their lives – how they were united with him in a death like his, down in the abyss, so that they could rise into a life like his, reserved in the heavens for us, all through a word already near (cf. Romans 6:4). Baptism was no private affair, in the main; it was how believers publicly became part of Jesus' body, publicly became part of his fellowship – by publicly confessing Jesus as Lord and joining him through the water. Baptism is, we're told, a wet and embodied prayer, “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21). In baptism is where we who believe get to “call on the name of the Lord” for the new life we could never get on our own.

And Paul writes that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). He says that “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 with the heart, one believes and is justified, and with the mouth, one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9-10). And accordingly, when the man who dropped the sword – the Philippian jailer – heard the voice of Paul and Silas from inside the inner cell of his prison, and when he asked them what he had to do to find the way of salvation they said was near, together they answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31) – and so he believed and, to confess, “was baptized at once, he and all his family” (Acts 16:33).

He surely wondered if it could be that simple – if it could be for the likes of a hardened warden like him, for a foreigner like him, for a pagan and an abuser and torturer and killer like him. But Paul says that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). He says that “everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame” (Romans 10:11). He says that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same one is the Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Romans 10:12). For “God is one, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (Romans 3:30). There is here a “righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe; for there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:22-25). Equal terms – to Gandhi and to Dahmer, to Mr. Manson and Mr. Rogers, to Clinton and to Trump, to me and to you, the same terms are open and equidistant, take them or not. This faithful word, this message, this salvation, is “near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (Romans 10:8).

Believing, confessing, calling on his name – you can do that as a Jew, and you can do that as a Greek; you can do that on a mountain high, or you can do that in a valley low. The only cure for wrath, the only cure for disgrace, the only cure for missing out and falling short, the only avenue to rescue, is to trust in the Risen One and confess this same Jesus as Lord and to call on him – wherever you are in the world, wherever you are in life, wherever or whoever you've been. And he makes all the saving difference for all what ails you.

If you're here this morning, and you've heard this word, and you realize you haven't believed in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, or you haven't confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, or you haven't offered up that baptismal prayer and so called on the name of this Lord – if you realize you're still missing out – then let's talk it through and get things straightened out. Don't leave, don't balk, don't hesitate. There's rescue for you. And if you're here this morning, and you've heard this word, and you've believed and confessed and called, but you're coming to see what that means in a new light now, then I'd invite you to really explore that – to find out how to believe in the resurrection more fully, how to confess Jesus as Lord more fully, how to call on his name with greater gusto. Be made righteous, and live righteous; be saved, and live saved. “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Thanks be to the God of Salvation, the Jesus-Raiser, with his Son and his Spirit – one God, one Lord, world without end. Amen.