As we’ve been reading about Abram, as we’ve been exploring his story we’ve been looking for Gospel echoes. Because we believe that the Gospel runs from Genesis to Revelation, it doesn’t begin with Jesus. And in our passage today, in a throwaway line about Abram’s belief, and in an incredibly strange ritual, we find the strongest echoes yet of the Gospel in which we believe.
We’re once again in a wonderfully rich part of Romans, if you’re familiar with the Bible and with Romans there will be quite a few bits you’ll perhaps recognise in this section. And once again there’s far too much to talk about in one sermon here, but we’re going to focus on the pinnacle of this reading, the pinnacle of not just the chapter but all of this letter ‘If God is for us, who can stand against us’.
What does it mean to be a Christian? Is it about an extra set of practices we need to keep: reading the Bible, praying, doing good? Is it about a few extra things in our diary like worship on Sundays and other things throughout the week? Is it about a new set of beliefs we sign up to and say ‘yes, that’s what I believe’ as we do each week in the Creeds? All of those things are true, but they don’t get to the heart of it, they’re the working out of a bigger and more fundamental truth: to be a Christian is to be adopted into the family of the God of the Universe.
Christian faith involves living a new way, turning from sin and going God’s way. So how are we to battle against sin in our lives? Is what is needed more effort, more knowledge or something else?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was tohu va bohu. We tend to translate those words formless and void or empty. It’s a picture of chaos and disorder and yet here over the waters is the God who brings order and life out of chaos and darkness.
The end is nigh, or is it? Jesus could come back tomorrow, or in another 2000 years. Jesus and Paul in our readings today remind us of the importance of readiness. And they also tell us what to expect, what to expect when we’re expecting, the end of the world.
Back at the start of Matthew 24 Jesus draws attention to the Temple buildings, pointing out that a day will come when it will be destroyed. And as they sit down on the Mount of Olives, sat across from the Temple, the disciples ask the obvious question; ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ As we join them in verse 36 Jesus is addressing the second question.
The Bible both reveals who God is and what he has done, and also reveals to us what we must do, how we are to respond. Without the Bible we would be groping around in the air, and yet God in his mercy and grace has given us his word, given us the inspired words of Scripture.
And what a gift it is. The record of God’s actions in and through his people down the ages and his promise of the Messiah as recorded in the Old Testament. And the record of God the Son come to us in the person of Jesus Christ as that Messiah with much of what he said and did, most importantly of all his death and resurrection for our sake. And the record of the life and teaching of the early Church in response to those events all wrapped up in the New Testament.
Who is the Holy Spirit? And how does the Spirit draw us into the life of God?
We’re on the sixth part of our series on the Nicene Creed and we finally come to the Holy Spirit. And in the original version of the Creed, as agreed at the Council of Nicea in 325, it ended like this ‘and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit’… That’s it. It ended there. But a generation later, with things slightly settled down on the person and role of the Son, new errors were popping up, these to do with the person and role of the Holy Spirit.
We have two rather short readings today, five verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and four verses from John’s Gospel. They’re short but they pack a punch, and speak to us boldly not just about God as Trinity, no doubt why they were chosen for today, but of God’s saving acts for us. Those readings are in some ways a tale of two advocates, two who stand alongside and on behalf of. Two who speak on behalf of another. Jesus earlier in the conversation happening in our reading from John says that he will ask the Father and he will send another advocate, the Spirit of truth.
There are broadly speaking two approaches to wrongdoing in our day and culture. Ignore it as it’s not your issue, move on, like that relative who seems to say the most inappropriate things. Or, shout it from the rooftops, shame them and then cast them out of the collective with no chance to explain and no way back. Jesus calls us to a different way.