In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’m not all that familiar with the music of Bob Dylan, but it seems that many Biblical scholars are, because nearly every commentary I read about today’s passage from Romans mentioned his song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The song lists people from all walks of life and notes that every single one of us will have to serve somebody. Here’s a bit of it: “You may be an ambassador to England or France; you may like to gamble, you might like to dance; you may be the heavyweight champion of the world; you may be a socialite with a long string of pearls. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” That, in a nutshell, is what St. Paul writes to convey in today’s passage from Romans.
Two Sundays ago, the lectionary began a fourteen-week run of readings from Romans. From June through September, our epistle readings will all come from Romans and I’m making the commitment to focusing in on Romans through the summer. And though Romans is sometimes avoided because it can seem dense, this run of readings from Romans gives us the opportunity to really go deep into Paul’s work and encounter the grace of Jesus Christ.
While I’ve been away at Sewanee, I don’t know if the guest preachers touched on Romans or not. So as a reminder, two weeks ago we heard Paul write “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” This is one of the major themes in Romans - the graciousness of God; Paul makes it clear that Christ did not save us because we were worthy or because our actions warranted it. Rather, in our weakness, God redeemed us. Then last Sunday, you’ll recall that Paul told us how it is that we are redeemed - through Baptism, we are united to Christ’s Death and Resurrection. The final verse in last Sunday’s reading was “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is where today’s reading picks up – the new life of grace.
It’s a question of where you pledge your allegiance – will you live in the dominion of sin or of grace? I know that we’d all like to answer “grace,” but one honest look in the mirror and at the newspaper tells us that isn’t as true as we’d like it to be. What does all of our striving say about who we serve? Don’t we all strive to make a name for ourselves, to be well respected, to be seen as important? We want to have it all – a balanced work and home life along with a good financial portfolio. We want to be faithful in reading Scripture and praying. We want to be involved in our community with volunteering and civic responsibilities. And to make us well rounded, we’d like a hobby or two.
It’s simply too much. I don’t have that much time and neither do you. We have too many masters demanding our time and telling us what to do and what to think. Often, what happens is that we end up giving into one of these masters as a way of escaping from the others. For some, the master becomes constant exercising. Or we worry about the opinion of others and are constantly trying to fit into the image that we think they have of us. Sometimes masters promise an easier route, and so we give into less healthy habits that are all about pleasure.
For St. Paul, one master is the law – the notion that there are certain things that we have to do in order to be worthy of salvation. The simple truth is that none of us have the ability to live perfectly. Whether because we are tired, hurt, or confused, we all do and say things that we regret. It is impossible for us to always do the right thing. And that actually is good news.
It is so easy to misunderstand Paul when he says that we are all sinners. He’s not saying “You’re a wretched and terrible person who deserves punishment.” No, he’s saying “Perfectly following the law isn’t within your grasp, and you’re just going to beat yourself if that’s what you’re trying to do.” Paul doesn’t want us to rely on following rules to find righteousness, rather he wants us to know that we are graciously given righteousness by God. We won’t earn salvation by serving these other masters; instead, God’s grace is what saves us.
Paul wants us to know that we have a new master to live under – the grace of God. This can be difficult for us to grasp though because we don’t often like to think of ourselves as slaves under a master. Obedience isn’t something that we think of as a virtue. On Tuesday, this nation will be celebrating the anniversary of its independence – of its rejection to the obedience of kings and the authority of others. We will celebrate things like liberty and freedom. We like to think that we don’t have to serve anybody. But this passage from Romans says “not so fast.”
We’d like to think that we can live without any masters over us, that we are our own sovereigns. But you can take your pick – psychology, philosophy, quantum physics, biology, or Scripture – all point us to the reality that “you gotta serve somebody.” Some have gone so far as to say that free will is merely an illusion, but rather our passions, desires, and actions are all shaped by hundreds of factors, none of which we have complete control over. The simple truth is: we’re gonna have to serve somebody.
So which of these do you want to serve? Where will you give your obedience? Paul tells us that giving ourselves to grace will lead to experiencing the fullness of eternal life, here and now. And he also tells us that all of these other masters will lead only to death. Paul says, sure you can have money and power, but that won’t stop death from coming and if we’re busy serving these masters, we’ll miss out on the freedom, love, and joy that we find in being ruled by the grace of God. In other words, “since you gotta serve somebody, why not serve the one who gives you life?”
So what does it look like to be a servant in God’s household of grace? I don’t know about you, but when I think about grace, the great hymn Amazing Grace comes to mind. It was written by a man named William Wilberforce, who served in British Parliament. In 1785, he encountered the grace of God. He was ignorant of the horrors of the slave trade that was going on, but when he came to learn of the great injustices happening, he became the moral conscience of a nation and worked tirelessly for the abolition of the slave trade in England. Grace looks like seeing things from a new perspective and being able to say “I was blind, but now I see.”
I’ve just gotten home from three weeks away at Sewanee. I’ve told our oldest daughter, Ellie, that I want to take her out for ice cream to thank her for being so helpful at home while I was away. But the truth is, there is no world in which I wasn’t going take her out for ice cream, because I’m just glad to back home and I want to spend time with her. I’m not taking her out for ice cream because she earned it, but because I love her. Grace looks like ice cream and unconditional love.
Remember that time you tried to sneak a cookie before dinner, but in your haste to flee the scene of the crime, you left crumbs all over the counter? Instead of your grandmother telling you that it’s okay or that you’re forgiven, you watch her clean up the crumbs without saying a word. Grace looks like forgiveness without guilt.
There is a man in Europe who has power, wealth, and fame beyond measure. And yet, he is so devoted to the Gospel and serving the poor that he routinely leaves his comfortable home at night as often as he’s able to slip past his bodyguards to feed the hungry. Grace looks like Pope Francis sneaking out into the streets of Rome to do the work of God, not because he has to, but because by the grace of God he can do nothing else.
Living under the reign of grace looks like people that donate blood for people that they’ll never meet. Being ruled by grace looks like taking money that you could spend on a vacation or nice bottle of wine and instead giving it to charities that support refugees. Serving grace looks like giving people the benefit of the doubt, like giving without wanting or expecting anything in return, like living a world ruled by the love of God instead of the fear.
The thing about grace is that is isn’t just another set of rules to follow. Rather grace is a response to the fact that God loved you before you spoke your first word. Grace is about living differently, not as a servant to the masters of prestige, or wealth, or popularity, or power, or being right. But to live as a servant of grace means knowing that you are loved so deeply that you have enough love to share with others. To be obedient to grace means putting your whole faith and trust in God – meaning you can task the risk of loving, of being generous, of prioritizing God above all else, of allowing yourself to be surprised by joy. To give your allegiance to grace means that the master of career advancement and productivity might find that you’re not interested in giving up time with your family or it might mean that the master of partisanship and anger might find that you’re not going to give up any more passion to the rhetoric of division.
And the thing about being a slave in the household of God’s grace is that it’s actually easier to do because it’s natural; it’s how God has created us to be. That’s why giving feels so good, why when you volunteer you say that you got more out of it than the people you went to help. As Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” These other masters won’t make that claim, but rather they will work us to the bone. So if you’re tired of the grind, disgusted with the rat race, or running on empty, you might try hitching yourself to the master of God’s grace.
God has opened the door of grace for you to enter into, but it’s up for you to walk through that door. You’re gonna have to serve somebody, who will it be?
