Meeting Jesus Sermon on Romans 7 March 26, 2018

This is part of our Lenten sermon series at Bethany on “Meeting Jesus.” On this last Wednesday of Lent, we explore what happens when we meet Jesus as ourselves?
Reading from Romans 7: 15-19: 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
So, confession time, who has ever done something and thought, ugh why did I do that? I do! All the time! Things we do…
This is human nature! What do we typically do though when we do things that we know are not good things to do…do we tell people? Do we announce it to everyone we know? NO! We bury it, we hope no one notices, we hope that people forget. There are many politicians and celebrities that operate this way, what always happens? Yep! It gets revealed! And when we try and spin it, it often gets worse! Cover up is never good. And the root of cover up is mostly fear and shame. Fear that we will be unlovable and shame that we ARE unlovable. We can’t even admit it when we do something wrong to ourselves most of the time, or we convince ourselves that we are correct to act that way, someone deserves it, or it really isn’t THAT bad….
But shame is real, vulnerability with our imperfections is hard. Brene Brown is a well known researcher and author on shame and vulnerability and hear is a nugget of her learning in studying shame and vulnerability for about a decade. Guilt is an emotion that tells us we have done something bad, shame is an emotion that tells us we are bad. When we can’t be authentic and vulnerable with ALL of who we are, then we can get stuck in shame. Mostly shaming ourselves. This is a powerful emotion that only causes us to go into a complete tailspin and keeps us from being all of who God created us to be.
The apostle Paul knew this. Paul had been who previously? Saul! Yes and what did he do as Saul? Persecuted believers and followers of Jesus! He was a Pharisee who knew the Torah and all of the purity laws inside and out. And he did really bad things! He killed people. But then he met Jesus. Jesus struck him blind, made him reflect on himself, made him look introspectively at his actions, sent him to Ananias who laid hands on him and told him that he would see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Saul saw himself through Christ differently. Jesus law of love revealed to Saul what the law he espoused could not: his need for grace, mercy and forgiveness through Jesus. He saw his deeds as heinous and yet, those deeds didn’t define who he is to God. God says that we are more than our deeds, right or wrong, we are simply God’s children, created in God’s divine image. When God created the world God declared it GOOD but do you remember what God declared when he created humanity? That we were VERY GOOD! VERY GOOD! Not just ok, not sub par, but in God’s own image and worthy of relationship and love.
We can’t get stuck in shame because the bad things we do are not who we are. Our spiritual journey with Jesus is about this growing awareness and need to be our authentic and vulnerable selves, bad things and all. Sin is real and we must deal with it head on and know that Jesus collided with the sin of humanity head on in the cross and yet, didn’t let that real sin and violence control his love for us. We will live in that tension our whole lives, doing the evil things that we know we shouldn’t and not letting sin take over. Knowing that who we truly are to God is a beloved people, knowing that God’s Holy Spirit dwells within us and brings to the light our actions and thoughts that are not who we truly are. And not only as individuals, this is not a individualistic journey, we will need to be Ananias to one another to remove scales from each other’s eyes to reveal who we are, where we are going, to reveal Jesus to each other and to know that Jesus will meet us on the road over and over again to walk with us and to love us. The real us.