The Rector's Blog

Reading from Romans 8 is a well known part of the Bible. Nothing can separate us from the love of God made known to us through Jesus Christ. It's rather easy to make a sermon on the subject of God's  love from our reading, because there are numerous sermons on this subject floating on the internet. Tweak it a little here and a little there and no one will ever notice.But I was taken by what it says in our reading inverse: 33; "Christ Jesus, Who died, yes Who was raised from the dead." When Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, he was writing primarily to non-Jewish people. The church in Rome was not founded by Paul, but he was eager to write them a letter of support. Paul also wanted to visit them, but because he didn't established the church in Rome we was careful not to trespass on someone else's missionary work. For this reason Paul says in his letter to visit them in passing. In this letter to the Romans Paul explains the fundamentals of the Christian faith. In the first sentence of his letter, he is calling himself an apostle and servant of Christ. Already in the next sentence he describes the gospel as concerning about Jesus Christ, which he said is designated the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. So, from the very beginning, even before explaining any of the fundamental principles of the Gospel, Paul emphasises the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without His resurrection, Jesus Christ would never have been the designated Son of God. It's not the first time we see Paul explicitly taking the resurrection of Christ as the driving force for the proclamation of the gospel. When Paul was in Athens he walked through the city and as it says in chapter 17, he was provoked by the many idols placed in the city. And when he was in Athens he preached in the synagogues and evangelised on the market places. Paul used one of the idols he saw named "to an unknown god" as a starting point for his mission. When more people became aware of his mission they said to each other; where is he talking about. And the answer they came up with was; he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he preaches Jesus and the resurrection. So, whenever he was in Rome, the capital and symbol of the Roman Empire, or in Athens, the symbol of the Greek Empire, Paul had one message; Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and that's the gospel. In this day and age however, the emphasis seems to have changed from the resurrection to the love of God. The love of God has become the main theme and we can find it as the basis for much of the church';s new mission. With the love of God comes the church's call to spread this love of God to the world and to the society in which it stands. God is love and so now is the church. But, the famous words of Richard Niebuhr from his book Christ and Culture published in 1955 are still very true today: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross". When the love of God is not firmly rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to reconcile us again with God, it becomes a human phrase. The church has then become like one of the many social institutions fighting for social justice and equality. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not the calling of the church. The church is called to preach and is established on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection is the proof, the evidence, the vindication of the ministry of Jesus Christ.  Trusting in the love of God begins with believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.