Third Sunday after Pentecost (Fr. Guiliano)

We’ve entered the long green months. Outside, the heavy rains are producing tremendous growth; there’s a cornfield I pass on Windsor where the plants are well above knee-high. It’s green inside the Church as well: green vestments, signifying the long season after Pentecost in which we hope to grow as Christians, nourished by God’s Spirit poured into our hearts. 

Every summer at Mass, we read our way through a couple books of the Bible. This year, it is the Gospel of Matthew and St Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The pairing lasts until mid-September. In our sermons this summer, the clergy are focusing particularly on the Letter to the Romans. And there are reasons why. 
 
Positively, this is one of the most important texts in the New Testament. If you want to understand Christian teaching and what we call “the Gospel” or good news, you must read it. Our teaching about God and creation, about sin about salvation, about what it means to live a life in union with God, are all greatly impacted by this letter. The same goes for our teaching about baptism, about faith in Jesus, about the good life, about government, about so many things. We can’t ignore this letter.

Negatively, there’s a reason to preach on Romans for a summer, too. It’s simple. Most Episcopalians don’t know St Paul very well. Our clergy tend to preach on the Gospels, not the Epistles. And St Paul’s writing has been used to support so many forms of subjugation and exclusion, that it has led to a kneejerk reaction against all his teaching, as if the Church is not mature enough to distinguish between what was for his time and what is for all time. But I think we can be mature. 

Today, we’ve read Romans 5:1-8, which means we’re missing a lot of the argument of the Letter already. Chapters 1 through 4 do a lot of scene setting. Paul lays out a vision of God’s communication of himself to all people.

Crucially, too, Paul describes how readily human beings have rejected God’s call, commandments, and love, turning aside instead to their own way. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he says (Rom. 3:23).  And by all, he means all. Paul means the people of Israel, who were chosen out of the whole earth to be a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Paul means the whole Greco-Roman culture in which he grew up, which was so marked by idolatry, greed, and violence. Paul means every human person: you, me. 

All have sinned. “There is no distinction” (3:22), no set of people who are faultless and good, uniquely exempt. We’re all in the same boat and it is sinking. I think we know this. Our conscience accuses us when we’re being honest. We know our little sins and the great ones to which we are liable. We know some societal sins with which we are complicit or which we tolerate complacently, going about our lives as if they are not taking place. We know, and we know we ought to know better and do better. 

“All have sinned.” “All have fallen short” of that glory and honor for which God made us. But we have not been left in a place of failure and darkness. God, “who is rich in mercy” (Eph 2), has acted decisively, not counting our sins against us. He would have been right to condemn us as the great judge of all the earth. But God is not only just; he is also, as St Paul says, the one who justifies. He grants us a share in his own justice – through our faith and baptism in Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the point of triumph, exultation, and “boasting” with which our reading began today. It only makes sense if you know the foregoing chapters, the long tale of human failure, the hypocrisy and weakness of human judgment, the grace God has shown again and again. 

The biblical story of human existence is a tremendous drama, in which the failure of humanity and the mercy of God are twinned.

For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. … rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

That is good news. God doesn’t love us because we’re just innately wonderful. Think of the kind of life we would have to live if God’s love depended on our behavior and character. We’d be sunk! “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” That is good news.

As St Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith…” (Rom. 1:16). It is freeing and liberating to know that we are loved in our sins. I mean, my God, I am a sinner! I fail all the time! I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Wait, isn’t it your job to be a good person?” Yeah kind of. But I fail. 

I fail, and I am so thankful for grace, to be “justified by faith,” to know that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and that we shall even share through Christ in “the glory of God.” 

I am so thankful God is not done with me or with you. He is transforming us through the sufferings of this age, producing endurance in us, producing character, inspiring hope. 

Every day, if we have been joined to Christ in faith and baptism, “God is pouring his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” We have the knowledge of his love now, not just a head knowledge, like when the preacher tells you God loves you, but a heart knowledge and a knowledge in our bodies, in our whole being. 

For example, as we come to the altar rail, the love of God is manifest to us in Holy Communion and in blessing. When the bread hits our hands, we know God has accepted, nourished us, poured out his Spirit.

“God proves his love for us.” God’s love is in our hearts, minds, and bodies. In this green summer season, as we make our way through Romans, let us trust that this love of God will fall upon us like the rains, nourishing us and making us grow.