My family and I arrived here in Melville close to nine years ago. Having been raised on a farm, I had a pretty good idea of what we were getting ourselves into, but there were still moments that reminded us that life in a small community was different than the one we had grown accustomed to in Edmonton. There was the time we ran out of paint on Saturday evening and realized that the project would have to stand idle until Monday morning. What can you do but shrug and acknowledge that things are different here? There was the first Friday evening I spent with the youth. I had taught them one of my favourite games– “swat” and I was watching everyone running around in a kind of organized chaos trying to swat with or avoid being swatted by a two foot length of pool noodle, when I noticed that one of the boys was wearing a knife on his belt. In Edmonton this would have at the very least thrown the whole group into confusion, but here? No one batted an eye. What can you do, but smile and acknowledge that things are different here? Then there was the simple act of walking somewhere. A considerable amount of the Kindergarten curriculum at my daughter’s school in Edmonton was focused on safety. The unit on traffic safety culminated in a trip to “Safety Town” where kids could practice what they had learned in a built to scale town. Though I was a parent chaperone, I soon discovered I wasn’t much help. Each time we crossed a miniature street the kids had to correct me because I wasn’t doing it right. Crossing the street was no longer a simple matter of looking left, right and left again. There were about fourteen steps that had to be followed. Then we came to Melville and there aren’t even sidewalks! Our daughter fell into a tearful panic whenever we walked somewhere. One day she finally shouted that we were making her walk in the middle of the road where she could get hit by a car and die. What can you, but smile and acknowledge that things are different here? Then there was the Sunday School class that talked about their favourite animals and a six year old angelic blond girl announced that her favourite animal was a coyote and that she had shot one with her dad. My daughter’s eyes grew wide as saucers. What can you do, but shrug and acknowledge that things are different here?
Whether we take time to think about it or not we are, each one of us, shaped by the places from which we come. That shaping, those patterns of thinking and behaviour mark us as belonging to a particular place or a particular people. They are in ways big and small, a part of our identity. These boundary markers– our particular way of thinking and doing mark us out as belonging to a particular group. Paul spends much of Romans 1 and 2 dismantling some of the most important boundary markers in the first century. In a dramatic conclusion to those chapters Paul– a jew by birth and a pharisee by training, writes that even the most fundamental mark of Jewishness can no longer bear the weight that some would have it carry. “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God” (Romans 2:28-29)
This may not seem like a particularly big deal to you, but to Paul’s first readers it was a huge deal. What Paul is talking about is not simply cultural identity in the way that you might think of yourself as Ukrainian, South African, Filipino, or Dutch. He is talking about what marked his Jewish people as having a particular place in God’s plans for history. Perhaps you could express it something like this– history does not unfold on the first pages of Genesis so much as it explodes. It moves from creation to murder, from paradise to exile, from togetherness to loneliness. Then out of the frayed bits of history God calls Abraham. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3). As this story of Abraham continues to unfold on the pages of Scripture it becomes increasingly clear that to be bound to Abraham is to be bound to what God is doing in the world. Then in the New Testament Paul sits down in the midst of the Roman congregation and begins to work at this idea like a tangled rope. He pulls at things a little bit here, and a little bit there, and then finally in one dramatic phrase, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God” it all comes undone. One must no longer be tied to Abraham in order to be bound to what God is doing in the world. Or it would be better to say, one must no longer be tied to Abraham in the ways once thought, in order to be bound to what God is doing in the world.
For those familiar with the Biblical narrative the problem is quite obvious. Paul hasn’t just untangled a theological knot– he has unravelled the entire sweater. He has wiped away everything that the story seemed to be about, and in doing so he has brought the faithfulness of God into question. As though the God who covenanted with Abraham might do one thing today and something altogether different tomorrow. As if the faithful God might simply switch horses on a whim.
Decades have passed between Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road and the writing of this letter to the Romans. In those years Paul has wrestled with this very dilemma– not only personally, but also in the midst of real life ministry. He has faced the questions before and so he does not hesitate to share his answer with the Romans.
The question that has been raised by Paul’s picking at a theological knot is asked in the first verse of chapter 3, “then what advantage has the Jew?” It’s asked again in verse 9, “What then are we Jews any better off?” Again in verse 27, “Then what becomes of our boasting?” And again at the beginning of chapter 4, “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the the flesh?” These are all versions of the same question, “Paul, if what you say is true, and it really doesn’t matter whether one is outwardly Jewish or not then what are we to make of the story of Abraham and Israel and the kings and the exile and the hope for a Messiah? Has God simply abandoned that story and if he has then how can we know that he can be trusted?” The passage is difficult not least because though Paul’s answer to this fundamental underlying question never changes, his answer to the surface question about the advantage of the Jew does. In verse 2 the answer is “Much in every way.” In verse 9 it is “No, not at all.” Let’s take a moment then to consider what Paul means when he says both yes and no.
In verse 2 he answers the question with a definitive “yes.” It is not simply that the Jew has an advantage, but that that advantage is “much in every way.” For, he says, “the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.” With that explanation he has veered into territory that is unexpected to us, and I expect, to his first readers as well. When we think of advantage our thoughts turn immediately to privilege. For us advantage is about skipping to the front of the line, enjoying a discount and getting the best seat at the table. If God is faithful then there must be some perks to being among his chosen people. Paul has something different in mind. Not privilege, but responsibility. “The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.” This may feel like a bit of sleight of hand. Perhaps Paul sounds to you like a parent telling his child “You don’t have to wash the dishes, you get to wash the dishes.” But, don’t dismiss Paul’s idea as nonsense without considering the economy of God. How many times have you found that serving God is a privilege and honour? How many times have you set out to pass on some blessing and found yourself blessed beyond measure in return? I have so frequently found this to be the case that my most honest description of pastoral work is to say simply that it is to have a front row seat to watch God at work. In God’s economy responsibility and advantage sit side by side.
Of course, when Paul thinks of the particular Jewish responsibility– being entrusted with the oracles of God, he quickly comes to the conclusion that this responsibility has not been carried particularly well. In fact, judging by the pages of the Old Testament if there was one word to describe his people, Paul thinks that faithless would work pretty well. Yet, their faithlessness only serves to highlight the faithfulness of God in bringing his plans to pass. God is faithful and he can be counted on at this point in history, precisely because he has proven himself faithful at every other point in history.
“Alright then,” somebody in Rome wants to ask, “If God is faithful and if there is advantage for the Jew, then why all that stuff in chapter 1 and 2 about ‘circumcision as a matter of the heart?’” Paul’s response is to ask the question again, “What then? Are we Jews any better off?” Only this time rather than answering it with a resounding “Yes” as he did in verse 2 he responds with a firm “No.” Yes, the Jew has an advantage in terms of responsibility- he has been entrusted with the oracles of God but, no the Jew has no advantage in terms of salvation. Because both Jews and Greeks are “under sin.” He challenges his Jewish readers to look at their own Scriptures. Their prophets do no praise their morality, but instead declare to them their sin.
How many of us have looked back at our own personal histories, sometimes with some sense of embarrassment about the choice we made and then looking for solace said something like “we did the best we could with what we knew” or “if we had known better we would have done better.” I do believe that Paul would say that when we talk in such ways we just may be giving ourselves a little too much credit. There is often a wide gap between knowing the right thing to do and doing the right thing. Those who have been entrusted with the oracles of God, do not always do what the oracles of God require of them or “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” The law has incredible power to diagnose the human problem, but everyone knows that diagnosis and cure are two very different things. The law gives us language to describe the sickness, but it offers no cure.
Both Jews and Greeks remain under sin. I suspect that to many of us “sin” sounds like a rather flaccid diagnosis of the problem. It is the kind of thing that grandmother’s worry about, but not us. Sin is a word for moralizers looking to label the behaviour of others, but it does not seem to us to be a real problem. Sin is a religious word. It is not a word for the real world.
D. A. Carson relates the story of an American woman who took a significant step towards faith while she was in Papua New Guinea. Just before she left a priest who was due to retire and return to the states was arrested for paedophilia. He had abused more than two hundred boys.
For some reason, out of all that the woman– who held a PhD in journalism, had seen in the world, this story story grabbed her. She started thinking of all the damage done to the boys… and their marriages… and their families. She started thinking of the way that abused people frequently become abusers, and began to wonder where it all ends. Shaken by this she shared with a Christian friend who asked her simply, “Was it wicked?” That was a difficult question for the woman to answer than you might expect. “Well, probably this priest was himself abused by someone; probably he’s a victim himself. There are reasons why people do these things.” Her friend replied, “Sin has social dynamics that affect other people, I’m not asking you to explain why this man did certain things; the question is, the things that he did, were they wicked?”
She didn’t want to give an answer because the didn’t want to judge anyone, yet she couldn’t escape the question. It grabbed her and would not let her go. Was it wicked? She actually lay awake thinking about it. It distracted her constantly. She woke up one night with the question bouncing around in her head, she stared out the window of her kitchen unable to say either yes or no. Finally, she said in a burst of intensity, “This was wicked. This was evil.” Then it dawned on her. We do not all stand or fall based on our own categories. There is a category for wicked and she must now ask where she fits in. (This story is found in Michael Bird’s commentary on Romans in The Story of God Bible Commentary)
There is a moral universe and we must ask the question of where we sit within it. Paul’s message is that we are adrift in a sea of evil and that we act as seafaring marauders. Evil is not limited to dictators. murderers and molesters. Evil lurks within our own hears and minds and finds expression in our own bodies. What we need, Paul says is something far more than rules and regulation, what we need is redemption and renewal. In this no one has an advantage.