Romans 5:1-11 (Lent 2B)
St. John, Galveston 2/25/24
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The message this morning is based on a portion of the Epistle reading from Romans 5. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Country music artist Toby Keith died a couple of weeks ago. He was well known for his support of our military and of the United States in general. In fact, he sang many times for our troops around the world at various USO events. After 911, he wrote a song about sacrifice and specifically about the American soldier. There is line in the song that says, “I don’t want to die for you, but if dying is asked of me, I’ll bear that cross with honor because freedom don’t come free.”

“One will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare to die.” The people for whom the soldier dies may be considered good or they may be considered bad. They may appreciate the sacrifice made on their behalf. Or they may despise the soldier’s very existence and the cause for which he or she gave their life. In the end, the soldier dies, not so much for individual names and faces, but for a principle, namely, that freedom isn’t free.

I’ll never forget the news headline from September 11, 2001. It simply read “Let’s Roll.” United Airlines Flight 93 was enroute to San Francisco, CA from Newark, NJ. Terrorists had highjacked the plane and intended to fly it into the White House, to kill and maim as many people as they possibly could. Todd Beamer, along with Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick formed a plan to take the plane back from the hijackers realizing that many, many more people would die if the high-jackers were to succeed in crashing the plane into their target. When the time came to carry out their plan, Todd Beamer signaled the other men on the plane by saying, “Let’s Roll.”  

It almost seems easier, if that’s the right word, to sacrifice ourselves for a principle than for people. I mean, let’s face it, people are messy. They have personalities and temperaments. We like them, or we don’t. They’re lovable, or their not. Still, I suspect there are those in each of our lives for whom the bond of love runs so deep that we would be willing to give up our lives for them.

Perhaps it’s a husband, or wife, or children, or a dear friend for whom you would be willing to give up your life. There is a bond in life that can bring out the most honorable of actions in us. It’s a bond of love, a bond that finds enough worth and value, even enough goodness in another person to bring out the greatest of all acts of selflessness and sacrifice, the giving of one’s own life for another person.
 
In the reading for this morning, St. Paul begins with the premise that we all probably have someone in our lives for whom we would be willing to die. But then he goes further, to express a love, namely the love of God, that far surpasses anything that is familiar to the human experience. He says, “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. God shows His love for us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Actually, in this little section from Romans 5, there are four words Paul uses to describe the people of the world, the object of God’s sacrificial love in Christ Jesus.  

“While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for us.” The apostle isn’t referring here to any sort of physical weakness. In fact, the word he uses can also be translated as sickness. “While we were still sick, at the right time, Christ died for us.” His description brings to mind other passages from the Scriptures. Jesus is the great physician of body and soul. He came for those who are sick, who are in need of a physician, and not for the righteous. This particular sickness, or, weakness renders a person unable to resist temptation, to resist sin of their own accord. One is literally trapped in a deadly condition that leaves him, or, her unable to do anything about it. “While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for us.”  

Paul continues that same train of thought saying, “Christ died for the ungodly.” To be ungodly is to be irreligious. It is to live one’s life as if there were no God and therefore, as if God didn’t matter in anyway. As St. Paul once said of the Gentiles, you were “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  

Weak, ungodly sinners is who Jesus died for. “While we were still sinners (Paul says) Christ died for us.” There is, it would seem, oftentimes a notion that God will let His face shine upon us, that He will look at us in a favorable light, and even love us, when we get our act together, so to speak, or, when we demonstrate our seriousness to Him, and perhaps even our worthiness. In many respects, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day modeled this sort of attitude perfectly. They said of Jesus, He dines with tax collectors and sinners. From their perspective, they weren’t sinners, and that perfection, that righteousness they believed they maintained is what put them in favor with God. He was, in a sense, obligated to accept them and even to love them.

Paul, on the other hand, considered himself the least of all the apostles and the chief of sinners. And so, when he considered the fact that he was transferred from death under the law to life in Christ Jesus, he said, “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And finally, “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Enemies!? Enemies with whom!? Well, when God reached into time and space through water and His Word to claim you in Holy Baptism, every last one of you was an enemy of God! Dead as you were in your trespasses and sins, you were not only ambivalent, or, indifferent to the things of God, you were hostile to them, hostile because the flesh, the old nature is not able, of itself, to know God, to be drawn to Him and to love Him.

Luther often wrote about and preached on this hostility toward God that clings to our flesh. In a sermon that he preached in 1526, on the Gospel of Matthew, he wrote, “A thief wishes that all judges, hangmen, and instruments of execution were cast to the devil for the simple reason that he would then be free to steal and rob. Although a thief speaks courteously to a hangman when he is in his power and his lips call him father, he nonetheless wishes at heart that the hangman be hung on the gallows in his stead.” He then says, “we are such deadly enemies of God, yet we make this black, ugly heart of ours look well by performing works that have a brilliant external appearance.” “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.”  

People are indeed messy. Fortunately, Christ died for us, not because of who we are, but because of who He is.

“Thou hast suffered great affliction
And hast borne it patiently,
Even death by crucifixion,
Fully to stone for me;
Thou didst choose to be tormented
That my doom should be prevented.
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be,
Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +