A lot of headlines come and go, they grab our attention for awhile and then a few days pass and it gets filed away in our memories. Every now and again though, there is a big one that changes our lives. Many people remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was assassinated or on September 11, 2001. When it is big enough like that, news not only informs it changes our lives. I think we will always remember this last inauguration, the significant turning point in our nation's history. A while back I came across the famous 1945 cover photo of Life magazine announcing "Victory in Europe." I had heard people talk about it, but I wanted to see it for myself and it was really amazing because a Navy sailor is lifting in the air a woman he had never met before in a jubilant embrace that she gladly returned. In the background were perfect strangers doing the same thing. Good news, if it is good enough, can do strange things to people. In that moment these strangers were not asked to do something, but they were simply hearers - recipients and beneficiaries of the news of what had been accomplished by the Allied troops. It wasn't even their believing the news that made it true, but the announcement of the news that made them believe it.
The Gospel is not only good in terms of its content it is good news in the form of its delivery, and that's the point that Paul makes in Romans 10. He begins by lamenting the fact that his brethren according to the flesh, ethnic Jews, were still seeking to justify themselves by their own righteousness instead of embracing the righteousness of Christ that God imputes to sinners as a free gift through faith alone. First, there's that well-known lament concerning the offense of the cross, a lament because so many of Paul's flesh and blood stumble over that rock. But the rock cannot be moved, it cannot be softened, broken into pieces or absorbed in to the environment. It cannot be made relevant to the concerns generated by other stories that we happen to starring at the moment. It's just there in the way, God demands a perfect righteousness which Jews seek by their own law-keeping rather than by faith in Christ alone. And Paul works out the logic of grace quite clearly throughout that epistle, but especially beginning at Romans 8:29 it becomes a tight logical argument, "those whom he foreknew he predestined, those whom he predestined he called, those whom he called he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified. What shall we therefore say? If God is for us who can be against us?" And then in chapter 10 he laments that his brothers and sisters according to the flesh substitute their own religious zeal for faith in Christ, and his perfect righteousness. You don't have to go up and pull Christ down, Paul says, or go into the depths to bring him up. He is as near as the gospel that we preach.
You know, this is a very important discussion for us today, because the spirit of works-righteousness always says "How can I climb up to God and bring him down to me - where I am in my own experience?" Where do you think you'll find God? In Tibet or rock climbing in the Alps? Maybe a surprising spiritual epiphany? How about a visit with the Dali Lama? The spectacle of the Mass or experiencing transcendence at a Hindu ashram or Buddhist temple? There are Christian ways of trying to ascend to God, maybe the Pensacola revival or the latest outbreak of the Spirit somewhere according the extraordinary means rather than the ordinary means of Word and Sacrament. Newsweek isn't likely to send a reporter to your church next Sunday just because the Word is going to be preached. That's not where the action is and yet Paul tells us this is exactly where the Spirit is miraculously at work by his grace, and he told the Corinthians that also in Second Corinthians chapter three.
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