November 25 2007 Lectionary Reading: Romans 9.19-29

Theme: The steadfast faithfulness of God

Last year, an investigation was carried out concerning a letter in the possession of the The West Highland Museum in Fort William. In rather spidery handwriting, the letter is from a Jacobite, who had written it many years after the ’45 rebellion. It’s a letter of intriguing mystery, because it speaks of buried treasure hidden near a prominent rock at the western end of the loch, at Arisaig, near Mallaig. The treasure, of course, is well enough known, there have always been rumours about what happened to the French gold sent to fund Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s campaign. The gold disappeared sometime after April 1746, and was presumably hidden. The letter in the West Highland Museum was apparently from a man who had been among those who had hidden it, who had been in on the closely guarded secret of where the treasure was hidden. And in old age, he had written the letter revealing something of the secret.

The BBC sent a team last year to explore the coast at Arisaig, but nothing at all was found. Finally, tests at the National Archives of Scotland showed that the letter itself was written on modern paper, only about seventy years old. So the treasure remains hidden, the mystery remains, awaiting the moment, the key, the clue, when it will be solved.

There is, of course, a huge difference between the letter in the West Highland Museum and the letter to the Romans. We know that it was the apostle Paul who wrote Romans, and the letter to the Romans is profoundly, wonderfully originally authentic. But Romans too, is about treasure. It contains the incomparable treasure of the gospel. To understand Romans, takes long years of patient listening, and prayer, for we must often dig deep to find the treasures of Jesus Christ hidden there. And there is also mystery, contained in Romans. Not a mystery hidden, but a mystery that Paul wrestles with quite openly in chapters 9 to 11. We will turn to that mystery in a moment.

Over the last few weeks, because we are approaching Advent, we have been thinking about the Loving Purposes of God for the world. When we take the Bible as a whole, something fascinating is revealed to us in outline. What is revealed to us, moving down through the ages, is the loving purpose of God, and how His purposes unfold. The Bible reveals to us these great purposes, the big picture in a panorama of history.

At the very start of the Scripture, we learn first about our original state as human beings, the way we were meant to be. Genesis shows us that in a great loving movement, God, the living God of grace and love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – gave us life, and created us, to share life with Him. He so created us for life in His company that we find our true life, our true being in Him. You have created us for Yourself, Augustine, that great saint of the Church once wrote, and our heart cannot be stilled until it finds rest in You. The reason for this is that God created us for life in His company - we find our true life, our true being in Him, our true peace, our true rest in Him. This was our original state as human beings, declares Genesis.

How different things are as we read on. Genesis tells us of how the two human beings in Eden, Adam and Eve, would not listen to God. The relationship between human beings and the living God was broken and Sin entered human life. There is a gulf now, between the garden of Eden, and the world. The further we read in Genesis, the more we see the human relationship with God dissolving. Where once there was communion with God under His absolute care and protection, now we read of conflict, betrayal, deceit, lostness, multiplying. Where God made the first human beings, out of nothing, out of the soil of the earth, out of nothing, and breathed life into them, we now see human beings slipping back into nothingness as their relationship with God dissolves. Cut off from the living source in God, human life is plagued by the weakness, instability, frailty that you and I know. Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel, is simply part, a dramatic sign of things going wrong, due to the disintegrating relationship with God. Where the living God should have been life for us, where we should have lived life loving God with all our heart soul mind and strength, as a human race we have turned our backs on Him, and so rejected life, full, abundant and complete.

But to look out over the great sweep of the Bible, is to hear ringing enduringly the amazing declaration of the Scriptures, is that the living God has not given up what He has made - the women and men He has created ! The declaration of the Bible, is that the Living God still has a loving purpose for this world, this disintegrating world ! And this purpose can be traced right throughout the Bible.

In the book of Exodus, we read of one of the great moments of this. In around 1400 BC when God calls a group of slaves to Himself, and begins His work of restoring, rescuing, saving this distingrating world. We read in Exodus of how God seeks out a slave people in Egypt. A tiny, miserable, insignificant band of uprooted men and women are assured by Him that they, precisely they – are the people He is seeking, to whom He has turned in love. They, just as they are, are dear and precious in His sight, and He has come seeking for them. Through Moses God brings this slave people out from slavery, breaks their chains, their shackles, their fetters, frees them from tyranny and leads them out of Egypt in a great exodus. Out of all the peoples of the earth, God chooses and calls this downtrodden people into being - Israel. And in God’s calling of this people, seeking them, we see God restoring the relationship with Himself, The disintegration of life is halted for these slaves, life is to be beautifully ordered round holiness and rightness, praise and worship of God…..

And we heard last week how again and again, God moves to rescue, to restore his people throughout their history. When the people find themselves slaves for a second time in their history, in 587 or 586 BC, this time they are taken to far off Babylon. In the midst of the years of forced labour, in exile, far from home… once again, the prophet Isaiah comes with a new, fresh Word from the living God.. Isaiah the prophet declares that God had redeemed them in the past – and He will do once again. The wonderful declaration of the prophet, is that God will make a new way, a new exodus for His people. Though Israel had been faithless, deaf to God’s call, yet, declares Isaiah, Israel will be led along a way it had never expected, and as was promised, so it happened, the people returned home. Such are the loving purposes of God.

To then turn and read the Gospels, to ponder the gospels, is to find that God’s loving purpose is not just for Israel, but for all the peoples of the world.

What is set before us in all the gospels is an account of the life of Jesus: a human life of unbroken communion with God, and of perfect faithfulness to God, a life lived always in God – always in the Father’s will, a life of love. The declaration of the Gospel is that into this disintegrating world, the Father has sent His servant, Jesus. In Jesus is the new source of human life. In Him, through Him, with Him, through His cross and resurrection, the restoration of the world, the restoration of men and women, you and me, continues.

Now we can return to the letter to the Romans, with a new understanding of its place in the whole Bible. Why did Paul write to them ? Well, to offer help, guidance, encouragement. If you take a walk up to Swanston, you will see the city to the north, spread out in all its breadth, that’s one view, if you climb Arthur’s Seat, you will see the centre of the city, lying below you to the west. And in his letter to the Church at Rome, Paul speaks of the loving purposes of God. But he does so in a different way, from a slightly different perspective. In Romans, Paul deals with the centre of things, the centre of the Gospel. In chapter 3, he speaks of how all human beings have fallen short of all that God had planned for them. But through, Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul continues in chapter 5, God has restored us to Himself, has brought us back to Himself. Because, Paul declares, God in His loving purpose for us, is faithful. This is the incomparable treasure, in Romans, the wonderful treasure of the gospel. But what of the mystery, contained in Romans ? Where is that to be found ? Well, it’s a mystery, a problem, that Paul wrestles with quite openly in chapters 9 to 11.

The background to the mystery is this. The apostle has journeyed for several years among nations far from Jerusalem, and Israel. He has often seen a great response to the news of Jesus, among these peoples, he has seen the Holy Spirit working. He has seen the good news of the Gospel slowly spreading, kilometre after kilometre round the Mediterranean. Peoples and nations had welcomed the gospel. But many in Israel had refused to listen, many had rejected the good news. And Paul agonizes over this, he is grief stricken at the resistance of so many to the gospel. As with all mysteries, at the heart of this mystery lie some very important questions: Such as: What has happened ? What about God’s loving purposes ? Having brought His people out of slavery in Egypt, out of exile in Babylon - has He abandoned His people Israel ? Why do the nations and the peoples often listen gladly, but many among His own people Israel do not ? Well, Paul deals wonderfully with this in several ways. We only have time this morning to think of two of these.

First, the letter to the Romans declares that though though many in Israel may reject the good news, this is only the way things are at the moment. Though this may look like a mystery at the moment, yet as history unfolds, the living God still has Israel in His care. As the hymn says: God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. The message here for us is that if things look to be working against the gospel, if the situation looks serious for the Church, if we cannot understand why we find ourselves in bafflingly difficult circumstances – when we look at Jesus, live in Jesus, we see that the living God is always steadfast and faithful.

Secondly, the letter to the Romans declares that even though many in Israel have refused to listen to the good news about Jesus, this has not halted or stemmed the flow of God’s loving purposes. Instead, like a great rich, deep, clear, life giving river, the great current of God’s loving purpose has flowed on and out to the all the peoples and nations of the earth. As Jesus proclaims, despite wars, rumours of wars, earthquake famine and destruction, all the seeming signs of disintegration, God’s steady faithful purpose for the world is steadily unfolding, His loving purpose is still develop, still being lovingly worked out.

And in fact, this is how God has always worked. Though His people were slaves, enslaved, trapped in Egypt, yet God led them out, through the desert and to the promised land. Though His people were taken into exile in Babylon, oppressed, far from home, powerless, yet God led them out, through the desert and to the promised land. Though, at the cross, the disciples fled, the world rejected Jesus, the lowly servant of the Lord, yet God has made Him Lord of all, Lord of our lives. For the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, new every morning, great is His faithfulness……….

So, as we begin to look forward to the season of Advent, with the rest of the Church, we are not simply reading through the readings, singing the hymns and carols, as we always do. We are celebrating the awe inspiring, great and loving purposes of the living God down through history, celebrating the awe inspiring, great and loving purposes of the living God who has sent His own Son to us, in Jesus Christ our Lord, who in His death and resurrection, has restored us to life

AMEN.