2023 07 09 Sermon
Already/Not Yet
Pentecost 6A
Romans 7:15-25a
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
I was in Florida with my family a couple weeks ago, celebrating my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. My favorite thing to do in Florida is swim in the ocean. Every day we were down there, I’d go with my boys and their cousins to the beach. The water was about 82 degrees, so it was almost like walking into the bathtub—only more exciting, because the waves kept rolling in. You’d feel the power of the ocean, and how vast and beautiful it is, almost like you are becoming one with the rest of God’s creation.
Our little spot on the Atlantic kept getting nice, gentle, rolling waves—enough to bob you around, but nothing violent or dangerous. Even so, the one thing we always go over with the kids is what to do if you should get caught in a rip current that pulls you out to sea. No matter how strong a swimmer you are, you cannot fight a rip current. If you try to swim against it, you’ll be caught between your desire and effort to make it back to shore, and the rip current’s desire and effort to take you further out to sea. And that is a fight you cannot win. So rather than fight against it, you have to accept it, surrender to the fact that it has power over you. Then you can swim through it by going parallel to the shore, until you reach a gentler spot where the rip current ends, and you can swim back to shore.
We were lucky that there was no rip current this time. But what we did wait for and hope for with each wave was just a little undertow. You’d feel that little pulling sensation at your feet underwater, the ocean tugging you ever so slightly out to sea, but not so strongly as to overpower you. That’s when you knew it was a good wave that you could catch the top of and let it push you up onto shore, and you swam with the surf crashing around you. After the thrill of bodysurfing, you’d stand up laughing as you realized that your shorts were now full of sand and seashells. It was that little thrill of the undertow that kept us going for hours—the thrill of being caught in between the pulling and pushing power of the ocean (when the waves were gentle). But if the tides should turn, and a powerful rip current develop, that “in-between” power would become dangerous.
This brings me to Saint Paul and the 7th chapter of Romans. Earlier in the chapter, before the verses we heard read today, St. Paul describes how we have been united with Jesus who was raised from the dead. Because of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, our old nature full of sinful desires has been put to death. You no longer need to live under the power of “the false self”, that power that takes you away from being the full person God created you to be. God has given you new life, so that you can love and serve God, and be directed by the Holy Spirit in a new way of living, through faith. In this way, our salvation has already been accomplished, and we can begin living in our salvation right now.
But, as much as we might want to live with, and enjoy, God’s wonderful gift of salvation beginning in this life—actually doing it can seem almost impossible. Even as your salvation and new life in Christ has already been secured for you, you do not yet experience it fully. Now, if you’re lucky, you feel it in bits and pieces, maybe even in big chunks. But if you have fallen into desperate circumstances, that salvation feels as far away as the far horizon of the ocean—it always stays the same distance away no matter how far you travel towards it.
St. Paul explains, in our reading for today, that the reason for the “not yet” is because of the power of sin at work in the world. This power is much deeper than individual acts of things you’ve done wrong. Those things are sin with a lower case “s”, like the mild undertow in the ocean that might even give you a little thrill sometimes.
No, when St. Paul talks about the power of sin, he means Sin with a capital “S”—a power that actively works against the goodness of God and the goodness God has already put into the world; a power that takes us away from being the people God truly created us to be; a power that turns you away from your true self, and turns you to your false self. So that no matter how much you want to do the right things, the power of sin works like a powerful rip current and pulls you away from shore; away from where you really want to be going, and out to the dangerous and desperate open seas. Like being caught in a rip current, we are all powerless to swim against the power of Sin.
St. Paul puts it like this in Romans 7: “The trouble is not with God, but with me. I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it… I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway… But it’s not my true self doing the wrong—it is Sin living within me that does it. Even though I love God’s law with all my heart, there is another power within me that is at war with my mind… Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?”
What can we do to resolve our human dilemma? Well, St. Paul tells us, there is actually nothing you can do. But there is someone who can do something for you and within you. “Thank God!”, Paul says, “ The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” And Jesus makes a promise, which we hear in the gospel of Matthew: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The fact that the power of sin is at work in the world is not your fault, or my fault, or anybody’s fault, really. BUT, it is our responsibility. It’s everybody’s responsibility. And God has given us a Savior, who went to the cross to forgive our sins, and to defeat the power of Sin forever. Because of what Christ has done for us, he has made us free to both claim our responsibility for participating in the power of sin in the world, and free to offer ourselves, our time, our possessions, our love, and our service to the care and redemption of all that God has made.
We can experience Christ’s help through what is simultaneously the hardest and the easiest thing in the world. Surrender. Surrender to the love and mercy of Jesus, so that you don’t have to swim against the rip current that is the power of sin. Surrender to him, so that God’s divine power of grace will help you get through it, like swimming parallel to shore until you reach a gentler spot and find the new life and salvation of Christ waiting for you. The moment of surrender is when true life begins. Amen.