Becoming Who We Are, Romans 1:1-7

Shortly after I became a Christian, in 1974, I was talking to our next-door neighbor and she asserted that Christianity was actually invented by the apostle Paul. She was very assured about this (as she was about pretty-much anything she said), and I really didn’t know enough at the time to argue with her (not that doing so would have helped anyway). And over the years since then I’ve occasionally heard this repeated by others.

Recently there was a post on First Things Journal criticizing the effects of the Sexual Revolution and one person commented “why are Christians so obsessed with sex?” I had to wonder whether the commentator had even read the article, since this was not in any way connected with the substance; but it reflects a common perception, that Christianity is about limiting our choice, keeping us from doing things we want to do. And I often hear Paul blamed for this concern about behavior. The idea is that people should be left to do what they want without all these unnecessary rules and limitations.

But Paul is saying something much different in these verses. Earlier in his life he had been a Pharisee, a strict observer of the Law, but that had all changed, not because of something he invented through his own ingenuity. In fact, he was violently opposed to Christianity and was committed to destroying it. He didn’t invent Christianity at all, and after his conversion he preached a message completely at odds with his former way of life. God called Paul in a surprising way, making changes Paul never could have imagined, and what he is saying in these verses is that God’s purpose in calling us to Himself is not to stifle our freedom but to enable us to become what we were intended to be from the beginning. 

I want to call attention to three things in this passage. The first is that God has done something amazing in Paul’s life. He had been a strict Pharisee who hated Christianity and had even gotten authority to bring Christians forcibly to Jerusalem for punishment. But then Jesus had confronted him on the road to Damascus and completely turned his life around. So now, writing to the church in Rome, he describes himself as a servant, a slave, of Jesus Christ, one whose life is now given to the very thing he had opposed so strongly. He’s now become one of the people he was committed to destroying.

And he goes on to describe himself as an apostle who has been “set apart” for the gospel of God, a gospel that was promised beforehand by God. It’s not something new, as he had formerly assumed; and it’s not something that Paul invented but is rooted in the promises of God in Scripture. Jesus is “descended from David according to the flesh,” fulfilling God’s promises to David centuries before. The gospel Paul preaches is not something he came to after a process of reasoning, it’s something given by God and deeply rooted in His works in the past.

Before his conversion Paul was known as Saul, and when Jesus confronted him on the Damascus Road He said “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Paul thought he was persecuting heretics and found that he was really fighting against the Lord of Creation. So he submitted and spent the rest of his life preaching the message he had tried to destroy. He came to the conclusion that he had been wrong about Christianity, that it was a message rooted in the Scriptures, in the promises of God.

The second thing to notice is how Paul describes the church in Rome. He says they are “loved by God and called to be saints.” He begins by emphasizing that they are loved by God. God loves them and wants the best for them; he calls them to be saints, or holy ones, people who are set apart and called by His name. I’ve sometimes heard preachers point out that what Paul says here is that they are “called saints,” since the words “to be” are not there in the original, making the point that all Christians are saints, in opposition to the Catholic Church labeling certain people in history as saints. But this passage really doesn’t support what they are trying to say. We are all, indeed, called saints, and God’s call is for us to increasingly live in a way consistent with that name, to live as people who have been set apart for God. The people who are called saints in the Catholic Church are just people who lived out that calling in an exemplary way.

But this calling is rooted in God’s love for them, not His desire to control their lives or stifle their freedom. The truth is that doing whatever we want leads us into bondage in the end. We can see abundant evidence of this in the world around us. God’s love motivates Him to seek what is best for us, and He, the One who made us, knows how we function best. I’ve often heard about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI that if he hadn’t spent his life in church leadership he would have been a world-class theologian on the level of someone like Karl Barth. As it was, he wrote many wonderful books, but he also immersed himself in the life of the Church, which consumed much of his time. And throughout his life he sought to walk with Jesus and to Honor Him. I read, around the time of his death, that some of his last words were “Jesus, I love you.” God knew what was best for Joseph Ratzinger, and it wasn’t the quiet, scholarly life he might have chosen for himself but a life spent giving himself for the good of the Church.

The third thing here is that God has done this all through Jesus Christ, who was descended from David according to the flesh, but then was “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” The resurrection is a powerful declaration of Jesus’ divine nature, that He is both fully human and fully divine. This is the One who confronted Saul the angry Pharisee and turned him into Paul the apostle. Jesus is named four times in these verses: Paul identifies himself as a “servant of Christ Jesus;” after giving Jesus’ history he names Him “Jesus Christ our Lord;” says the people in Rome are “called to belong to Jesus Christ;” and also names Him, together with God the Father, as the One who gives grace and peace.  Our calling is to “belong to Jesus Christ,” to be saints, people lovingly set apart by God to live our lives in His name, growing in “the obedience of faith,” an obedience rooted in faith.

As we give our lives to God, seeking to live in obedience to Him, we increasingly become the people we were created to be. And this brings glory and honor to God. May He enable us to offer ourselves to Him daily and repeatedly throughout our lives, to grow in His image and increasingly become the saints we are called to be. And may He enable us to grow in love for our Lord so that we may arrive at the end of our lives, as Joseph Ratzinger did, praying “Jesus, I love you,” waiting to be welcomed into His presence.

Who Runs the Church?

At one point in my pastoral term I started wearing a robe to lead services. Not an alb—this was some time before I started moving toward the Catholic Church—but a Geneva Robe, which had been given to me by good friends. My decision to do this was influenced by the great Welsh Presbyterian preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and I explained to the congregation that the point of this was to emphasize that I am not there to represent myself as a professional but as someone set apart in the name of Jesus. The robe was a way of deemphasizing my personal identity as an individual.

I received some very positive feedback about this from members of the congregation, but not everyone was positive. One person in particular commented, “I don’t want to be part of a church where the pastor wears a robe.” From this perspective, which is very common in America today, one chooses a church based on one’s preferences and expectations; the marketplace of churches exists to provide a variety of styles to meet the needs of churchgoers. In the late 1990’s Michael Horton wrote a very interesting article on the commercial captivity of the Evangelical movement and observed “Like popular music, which depends on the favor of a mass audience, contemporary Christianity is institutionally incapable of disappointing the crowds. Its entire network of churches, ministries and institutions requires it to be answerable to a wide audience of consumers. To refuse to be answerable to the world of public taste, the evangelical movement would risk its very existence” (“Time for a Commercialism Break” in Modern Reformation).

When I was in college, the church on campus was led by Dr. Robert Ives, who was a very good preacher. His preaching was solid and biblical, and there were many young people like myself who were drawn into membership through him. But that raised a problem for some of the lifelong members, because they felt like they were losing control of something that belonged to them. They even voiced that concern in a congregational meeting, saying that all the new people coming into the church were turning it into a place where they would no longer feel at home.

I remember hearing, around that time, about a leader in the denomination whose major concern was defining what it means to be part of that church. Who are the Brethren in Christ? What is their identity and what is it that sets them apart from other groups of Christians? This was his main concern, almost the thing that came to define him. There were new people coming into the denomination, which threatened the identity of the group, which would undermine the historic culture of the denomination. This was not about theological orthodoxy but about what sets “our” group apart from other groups of theologically orthodox Christians.

To my mind this raises the question of whether we have the right to say what we want the church culture to be like.  The church doesn’t belong to us, after all.  The church is more, and other, than a voluntary society where people get together because they share a common interest.  And I find it hard to not think that this project was theologically problematic in a really fundamental way.  He was trying to preserve something that he really had no right to try and preserve.  He had the right to emphasize things, parts of the gospel message, that were an important part of the history of the denomination.  But not to try and prevent new members from changing the composition of the group identity.  He was trying to hang onto something that was not in any way under his jurisdiction (nor that of any member of the church leadership for that matter).

Which leads to the question, who is in charge of the Church? Recently a friend of mine posted a quote by Cardinal Robert Sarah, saying “I’m afraid we are tempted to build a human Church, according to the times and according to our ideas. But the Church is not ours.” The Church is not ours. In Matthew 16, Jesus says to Simon Peter, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church….” (16:18). Jesus is the one who is building the Church, His Church, and it does not belong to any of us.

Mary’s Witness to Jesus

The last time I met with him, my spiritual director observed, “you seem very drawn to Mary; what is it about her that attracts you?” I stumbled around some trying to answer that question but don’t think I did a very satisfactory job, so I thought it might be worth some reflection today. I’ve mentioned, in an earlier blog post, that as I was beginning to learn the Rosary using non-Marian prayers, I found myself drawn to Mary in a way that I could not explain. At the time I talked to Fr. Nick, my spiritual director, and after some discussion he affirmed this as something God was doing in my life. And now, more than 20 years later, I am still drawn to her.

I was interested to read Pope John Paul II on this subject, saying that early in his life he was concerned that Marian devotion would draw him away from Jesus but what he found, over time, was that Jesus actually pointed him to Mary. Some of my fellow pastors around the time of his death dismissed him as a “Mary worshiper,” but that perception was formed with no knowledge of the man himself, from a perspective that sees any attention to Mary as necessarily detracting from Jesus.

This month I’ve been reading Sally Read, who grew up in a determinedly atheistic family and says that Mary’s “was the hand that would lead me slowly to her son” (The Mary Pages, p. 4). In her experience Mary led her to Jesus, not away from Him. All in a very unexpected way, through seeing pictures of Mary in her grandmother’s home. “But that was how Mary got in—not through statues or cute Christmas cards, not through prayers or teaching or through a historic wheel, but through these pictures. Mary got into my head against all likelihood, against the mighty determination of my father that our lives would be devoid of anything religious. She got into my head, just as a door that’s slammed and locked and the chain pulled across cannot keep out air.”

My first inclination, at this point, is to turn to some historical works on Mary, like The Mystical Rose, by St. John Henry Newman, which is sitting on the table next to my computer, or to outline Marian doctrines in The Catechism of the Catholic Church; and I think those things are worthwhile and helpful. But Sally Read’s comments point to something different, to Mary as a living presence in the Church, not just a theological idea to be explained and defended. She describes Mary leading her to Jesus, though she herself was unaware of what was happening. She sees Mary getting into her head “against all likelihood.” She sees Mary being involved in her life in a very real way over time, bringing her into the Church when everything within her being was pulling in the opposite direction. She doesn’t see Mary as God—there’s never any confusion about that—but as a living person in the Church who is able to cooperate with her Son in the lives of people on earth.

To understand and reflect on this requires, I think, that we put aside our assumption that the saints are far removed from us, that heaven is “somewhere out there,” and that although God, through the Holy Spirit, can intervene in our lives, we are otherwise cut off, separated, from the life of heaven. Sally Read’s understanding is that Mary, the mother of the Church, the New Eve, has access to us and is able to be involved in our lives, drawing us to her Son. She’s thinking in a way consistent with both Orthodox and Catholic perspectives on the communion of the saints.

Why, then, am I drawn to Mary? I find her immensely attractive as a model of Christian discipleship, one who from the moment of the annunciation was immersed in things she couldn’t possibly grasp but persistently held all these things in her heart, becoming the great model of contemplation and who humbled herself, becoming the Queen Mother who intercedes with her Son. "She is continually involved in mysteries the sense and meaning of which tower over her, but instead of resigning herself to bafflement she gives them space in her heart in order continually to mull over them there (the Greek word Luke uses at 2:19, symballein, really means to throw together, to compare and hence to consider from all possible angles)" (Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Mary for Today, p. 36).

I find all these things compelling, but I believe there is more than this, which is why I say that years ago I found myself drawn to Mary in ways I could not understand or explain. It didn’t make sense, given my position as a Protestant pastor where Marian devotion was anathema. But I couldn’t get away from it, and I believe Fr. Nick was right in affirming that this was something from God and that Jesus Himself was leading me to cultivate a relationship with His mother.

Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical on Mary: “Mary can be said to continue to say to each individual the words she spoke at Cana in Galilee: ‘Do whatever he tells you’ (John 2:5). For he, Christ, is the one mediator between God and mankind…. The Virgin of Nazareth became the first ‘witness’ of this saving love of the Father, and she also wishes to remain its humble handmaid always and everywhere. For every Christian for every human being, Mary is the one who first ‘believed’ and precisely with her faith as spouse and mother she wishes to act upon all those who entrust themselves to her as her children” (Mother of the Redeemer). My experience, like that of Pope John Paul II, has been that, not only does Mary not lead me away from Jesus, but that Jesus Himself leads me to His mother.

Careerism and Distorted Community

“How can you say such things!” This German student, whose name I no longer remember, was angry at Patrick Burke, our graduate school professor.  It wasn’t that he thought Patrick was saying something wrong. He was convinced in his mind that what Patrick was saying was true, but this was unacceptable to him. 

His response was, “I can see that what you are saying is true, but if I go back to Germany and say these kinds of things I will not have a job, and I will disappoint those who sent me here.”  His concern was for his career and for the response of those he was going back to in Germany.  The truth was immaterial, and by presenting truth that was unacceptable, Professor Burke was creating problems.

This overwhelming concern about careerism is one of the things that put me off in the academic world.  I had thought, going in, that this was a place where truth mattered, that if one made a strong argument others who disagreed would be expected to respond with a counter argument.  But I found just the opposite; that truth is fine, as long as it remains within acceptable boundaries; unacceptable truth is subjected to outrage, not counter arguments.

The concern about maintaining one’s career led to a lack of courage which, it seems to me, has continued to characterize much of the academic world today.  Making an argument really doesn’t count for anything unless that argument supports the “correct” point of view, and making an unacceptable argument, even one that seems inescapably true, often endangers one’s career, with the result that very many academics are unwilling to ask questions that might lead to unacceptable ends.

This student had a strong sense of obligation to the community of those who had sent him to America to study.  “If I go back to Germany and say these kinds of things, I will betray those who sent me here.”  But this is a troubling sort of community.  They will only welcome him back if he continues to think in ways that they find acceptable.  If pursuing the truth leads him outside of this acceptable range he will no longer be welcome as a member of the community.

But what kind of community is this, really?  It appears to lead to a sort of bondage in which one doesn’t have the freedom to think, to pursue the truth wherever it might lead.  It requires closing one’s mind to anything that the “community” might not approve of.  This is what Richard Neuhaus described as the “herd of independent minds.”  This is what soured me on the idea of becoming an academic and still today causes me to have a negative view of the academic world.  Not because I am opposed to education or the life of the mind, but because I no longer believe the environment of the academic community is intellectually healthy.  It’s a place where one is expected to toe the line and think like other academics think.

I was actually shocked at this guy’s honesty.  I know he didn’t plan any of this in advance.  It took him by surprise to find himself agreeing with what Professor Burke was saying.  The usual thing would have been to respond with something more like a sneer.  But he didn’t.  He spoke honestly and clearly, said he believed the argument was good and that what Patrick was saying was true; his point was that the truth was unacceptable to the people he had to answer to.  So, to his credit, he responded with honesty, and the conflict led him to anger.  I wonder what became of him.  I assume he went back to Germany and became a professor.  But did this conflict continue to plague him in the back of his mind, or was he able, eventually, to squash it in the interest of happily pursuing his career?

Praying with Our Bodies

During Lent I’ve been listening, on the Hallow app, to the story of Takashi Nagai, who lived in Nagasaki Japan during WWII. Although he grew up practicing the Shinto religion, he had become an atheist during his medical training, dismissing all religions as empty mythology. But the experience at his mother’s death bed impressed upon him that there was something lacking in his worldview, that his atheism didn’t explain what he knew to be true as a human being. He began to feel drawn to Christianity, but then found himself floundering. He was strongly attracted to the idea of faith but didn’t know what to do about it.

How do we learn to believe? How do we develop faith? For most of my life I’ve understood this to be an intellectual thing, that one develops faith by reading books, weighing the evidence, knowing more about the truth. If one is persuaded inwardly, this is then followed by some outward changes, maybe going to church, seeking out other believers, becoming part of a small group Bible study. The process begins with the inner life and only later does this begin to show itself in actions.

But the advice Nagai found in Blaise Pascal moved in the opposite direction. He read in the Pensees, “You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you…. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believe, taking the holy water, having masses said, &c. Even this will naturally make you believe….” Start acting as if you believe, doing things that believers do, (for Pascal these things had a distinctly Catholic form) and you will find your faith growing. It’s not that information and logic are unimportant, but they are only part of the story. We are not souls inhabiting a body but human persons consisting of both body and soul in union each having a profound impact on the other. And the impact can go in either direction.

I recently read a book by David Easterly, a wood carver, writing about his experience studying the style of the great carver Grinling Gibbons. “One day it occurred to me that you couldn’t fully understand how Gibbons developed his style unless you understood something about his tools and his medium. I made a note to try to find an art historical study on woodcarving techniques. In the meanwhile, just to divert myself, I thought I might as well get some chisels and wood and see what carving felt like. Just to divert myself.  No sooner do I write that phrase than I know it’s false. I was being borne toward carving by a tide stronger than I could control, a tide made up of all that I’d thought and read and experienced in the years before. Writing a book wasn’t going to answer to it. More than the mind needed to be deployed. And this was the turning point for me: not the epiphany in the church, but the decision to try the tools of the trade” (The Lost Carving, pp. 52-53).

Easterly started out as an academic, examining the technique of a great carver, but the physical act of carving, handling chisels and wood, turned him into a wood carver. And the same thing is often true in our spiritual lives. Acting in faith, using our bodies in prayer and worship, even just making the sign of the cross, can have a deep impact on our spirits. “We ought to take advantage of this union of body and soul and benefit from it during prayer…. repeating the metanoia [repentance] gesture, even when it is performed only with the body, is just as effective as tears in breaking the spell of that interior ‘wildness’ and insensitivity that seems to kill all spiritual life within us. In a mysterious way the body, which in its posture is actually the ‘icon’ of the soul’s interior disposition (Origin), ultimately draws the reluctant soul along with it” (Gabriel Bunge, Earthen Vessels, pp. 178-79). 

Years ago, a friend of mine shared that he was at work, feeling oppressed and weighed down and he impulsively shouted out loud, “praise the Lord!” And suddenly the weight on his spirit disappeared. He understood it at the time as a victory over demonic oppression, and this may be accurate. But his help came through something he did with his body, not just thinking or praying silently but shouting out loud in praise of God. If we’re stuck spiritually, we may be helped by a new book or a sermon, but we also may find help by walking into a church, dipping our fingers in holy water, making the sign of the cross, and kneeling in the Lord’s presence. Or, at other times, going for a walk in the woods, praising God out loud for the beauty He has created. Responding to God with our bodies can breathe new life into our spirits.