THE VIEW FROM THE PEW
Text: Romans 2:17-29
February 27, 2005, Dave Philips
A woman once said to my father with great passion and conviction, “Dr. Philips, I may not be a very good Christian, but I’m an awful good Presbyterian!”
Folks, that’s one of our continuing problems in the Christian Church. It’s the problem that Paul identifies in the lesson we read this morning. Our problem is too many passionate Presbyterians — or Baptists, or Episcopals, or Lutherans, or Pentecostals — and not enough passionate Christians. You can be both, of course. You can be both a passionate Presbyterian and a passionate Christian, but there’s no question about which passion should have priority when push comes to shove.
Or is there? And when push comes to shove, and it’s a case of a conflict between passionate Presbyterianism and passionate Christianity, which passion will win out in God’s Church?
There’s a Presbyterian urban legend, which may be true, about the young man who was being examined before the Presbytery three or four generations ago. Every generation of Presbyterians has their own peculiar buzz words and buzz questions. In my generation the buzz words were about civil rights and the buzz question was whether we’d welcome black people to our churches. Lately our buzz questions are about women’s rights and the ordination of gays. But in those days three or four generations ago, the buzz question was different.
Finally, after the young man had been on the floor of Presbytery for a very long time, the elder that everyone knew was going to pose the buzz question got to his feet. “Young man,” he said sternly, “Would you be willing to go to hell for the greater glory of Christ?” That was the touchstone of Presbyterian orthodoxy in those days: the willingness to be damned to hell for the greater glory of Christ.
The weary young man replied with some sharpness: “Sir,” he said, “not only would I be willing to go to hell for the greater glory of Christ, I’d be willing for this whole Presbytery to go to hell for the greater glory of Christ.”
To that Presbytery the buzz word had become more important than the gospel. The young man’s reply was a wake-up call to that Presbytery to stop confusing the essence of Christianity with the trappings.
“I may not be a very good Christian, but I’m an awful good Presbyterian.” Think about the implications of that statement. Play with it in your minds for a couple of moments. Extend it a bit. Put it in some different settings.
How about this: “I may not be a very good American, but I’m an awful good Republican!”
Or, “I may not be a very good public school teacher, but I’m an awful loyal member of the teacher’s union!”
Or, “I may not be a very good manager, but I’m an awful good bureaucrat!”
Or, “I may not be a very good statesman, but I’m an awful good politician!”
Do you see the problem? The problem is confusing ends and means. The problem in the Church is missing the essence of real Christianity because we’ve chosen the trappings of Christianity. Soren Kierkegaard asked us in the Church this question: Does the inventory of a church create a church? If you’ve got a full stock of hymn books, Bibles, candles, banners, choir robes, and pulpit furniture, do you thereby have a church?1
Of course not! The inventory of items does not create the Church, the gospel creates the Church. And yet how often we get bogged down in the inventory and forget about the gospel! How often we say, “If that pastor doesn’t start wearing a robe — or if he does start wearing a robe — I’m out of here!” Or, “If we don’t stop singing those dreary old hymns — or if we don’t keep on singing those lovely, old, traditional hymns — I’m out of here!”
In some churches the pastor could stop preaching the gospel, and few would notice. But he’d better not mess with order of worship we’ve had since 1925, or we’ll have his head on a platter!
We Christians are encouraged to be in the world but not of the world. What is the consequence, though, when we Christians choose to be in Christ’s Church but not of Christ’s Church?
Paul puts his finger on this problem for his people, the Jews. Paul knows Judaism inside and out. Paul has been a major player in Judaism in his time. He knows its glories, he knows its weaknesses. He himself would say about himself before his conversion, “I wasn’t a very good Jew, but I was an awful good Pharisee!”2
Most Jews of Paul’s time would not have understood Paul’s distinction between a good Jew and a good Pharisee. They would have thought that a good Pharisee was automatically a good Jew. In fact, the Pharisees were the best Jews of all. They knew it, AND they let everyone else know it.
Last week I told you how the Greeks looked down on all other people, thought of them as not quite human, called them barbarians. The Greeks, though, couldn’t hold a candle to the Jews in this department. The scorn of Jews for all other people was proverbial. The Jewish Pharisees of Paul’s day had developed scorn for outsiders into a fine art.
The Roman historian Tacitus said of the Jews, “Among themselves their honesty is inflexible, their compassion quick to move, but to all other persons they show the hatred of antagonism.” And Juvenal, the Roman satirist, said that if a Jew were asked directions on how to get to a certain place, he would refuse to give any information except to another Jew. And if people were looking for a well to get a drink, Jews would not lead them to it unless they were circumcised.3
So the Jews, especially the Pharisees, had an extremely high view of themselves. Paul calls that high opinion into question.
You Jews think of yourselves as the teachers and guides to all of humanity, says Paul. But have you teachers learned your own lessons? Do you really know your textbook?
You say that a person should not commit adultery. But do you do that?
In Paul’s day there was a certain woman who was married to a rabbi whom she suspected of being unfaithful to her. She proved his unfaithfulness by disguising herself as another woman and in that disguise she encountered her own husband, who, thinking she was someone else, propositioned her.4 Even then we had problems with ministers not being true to their marriage and ordination vows!
You say, says Paul, that a person should not steal. But do you do that? The rabbis in Paul’s time taught that a Jew shouldn’t rob a Gentile, but that if a Jew found a Gentile’s stolen property, he could keep it.5
You say, says Paul, that people should not defile themselves with idols. But do you defile yourselves by sneaking into pagan temples and robbing their treasuries? Jews in those days felt justified in doing such things by the same sort of reasoning that leads some professed Christians these days to say, “You shouldn’t set off a bomb under your neighbor’s house, but it’s O.K. to bomb abortion clinics.”
The question Paul is raising for us in this passage is: what is the essence of real Christianity? And who is the real Christian? Last week we heard Paul’s assessment of the moral pagan and the inability of morality to save a person’s soul.
Today we’re thinking about the religious person who depends on his membership in a religious community to get him to heaven. I’m calling my sermon “The View From the Pew”. Paul has finished his devastating critique of paganism. Pagans of every stripe have been hit by Paul’s broadsides, whether pagans who think there is nothing more in life than going for the gusto, or high minded pagans who live relatively moral lives. Pagan religion, pagan philosophy now lie in ruins. But Paul is not finished.
Now Paul turns his guns on religious people. Who’s that? That’s us! By the end of the third chapter of Romans, all of us will have come under this devastating critique.
I’d like you to get out your pew Bibles. Take a look at Romans chapter 2 verses 25-29. I’m going to substitute a couple of words, and I want you to try my revised version on for size:
“Baptism indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your baptism gets reversed. So, if someone who is not baptized keeps the precepts of the Bible, won’t God look on them as though they were baptized? Then those who are not baptized physically and yet live by the Bible will condemn you who, even though you have the Bible and baptism, are a lawbreaker. People are not Christians if they their Christianity is only on the surface, nor is baptism merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Christian if he or she is one inwardly; and real baptism is a matter of the heart, spiritual, not by the letter of the law. Such a person's praise is not from people but from God.”
Let me paraphrase that 25th verse a little differently. Stay with me and listen to this: “Having a Damascus Road experience and answering an altar call at an evangelistic meeting is valuable if you then do what Jesus Christ commands, but if you don’t follow Jesus, it’s as though you had never gone forward.”
Or, how about this: “Getting ordained as a minister or an elder or a deacon is a valuable and wonderful thing, but if you get ordained and then pay no attention to God’s word and your ordination vows, it’s as though you had never been ordained in the first place.”
I’m convinced that if Paul were the preacher of the morning at Grants First Presbyterian Church, or in any church anywhere in the world, and he were commenting on this second chapter of his letter to the Romans, he would be as tough on Christians as he was on his own people, the Jews. It’s exciting for us Christians to cheer Paul on when he criticizes the pagans. And then we cheer enthusiastically when he criticizes his own people, the Jews.
But, you see, self-righteousness is not the sole property of pagans or Jews. Phariseeism is something that keeps bothering us in the Church. It’s as much of a problem today as it was in the days of Paul. And if Paul were here this morning, commenting on this second chapter of Romans, I doubt very much that he would be saying to us, “You have no problem with Phariseeism in this church.”
All of us have a strong tendency towards Phariseeism. I call myself a recovering Pharisee. I hope that adjective, “recovering”, is accurate. I know my own tendency to self-righteousness. I very much want you to see me as humble, as non-judgmental, as warm and accepting and tolerant of the faults of others, but I know my tendency, and I hope you are aware of yours, to want to be just a little bit better than others. I know my tendency, and I hope you know yours, of wanting to be in the position — not having the role, mind you, only being in the position — to sit in judgment on everybody else in the world. And like a recovering alcoholic who dares not take a sip of alcohol, I dare not take a sip of self-righteousness. Now you know the truth about me (as if you didn’t know it before!).
Garrison Keilor tells of a young man who had a problem with humility. He quoted the young man as saying, “I deflect every kind word directed to me, and my denials are much more extravagant than the praise. ‘Good speech!’ Oh, it was way too long, I didn’t know what I was talking about, I was just blathering on and on, I was glad when it was over. I do this under the impression that it is humility, a becoming quality in a person. Actually, I am starved for a good word, but . . . no word is quite good enough. ‘Good’ isn’t enough. Under this thin veneer of modesty lies a monster of greed. I drive away faint praise, beating my little chest, waiting to be named Sun-God, King of America, Idol of Millions, Bringer of Fire, The Great Haji, Thun-Dar The Boy Giant. I don’t want to say, ‘Thanks, glad you liked it.’ I want to say, ‘Rise, my people. Remove your faces from the carpet, stand, look me in the face.’”6
And now as we finish chapter two and read through chapter three, we find that Paul is through with his critique. His critique has taken two chapters and part of a third out of sixteen total chapters in Romans. What is the conclusion? No one is in a position to stand before God. No one has lived a good enough life to deserve God’s favor. No one has lived a good enough life to deserve heaven. All of us are beggars without any resources of our own. All of us — pagans, Jews, even Christians — need God’s grace.
Even Christians who have lived in the Church life long, who have been nurtured in the bosom of the Church. In fact, the recognition of our need and the seeking of God’s grace is what starts us on the road to victory in Jesus Christ. Of all the people in the world who should understand their need for God, and their abject spiritual poverty apart from God, Christians should be number one.
No one is righteous before God. But there’s wonderful good news in this realization. We can all relax! Your spiritual or secular pedigree is irrelevant here in this place of grace. You don’t have to put on airs. You don’t have to impress anybody. Least of all God. God won’t love you any better if you try to impress him. He loves you as you are, with all the little games you play with him and with your neighbors and with yourself. He loves you whether you are a card-carrying Pharisee or a recovering one. He loves you no matter what a miserable life you have lived, and he loves you if you’ve lived a very ordinary life and have no great story of how he rescued you from the depths of sin and degradation.
He invites you to join that great society of recovering Pharisees called the Church. He invites you to be an enthusiastic Presbyterian — or Baptist, or Episcopal, or Lutheran, or Pentecostal, he doesn’t care what denomination you are passionate about! — but, most important, to be a passionate Christian, and to know that passionate Christianity is “where it’s at”, not passionate denominationalism.
The view from the pew is a bleak one — if all we can see on our horizon is our own need to impress God that we are better than others, and our own abject failure to make Christianity work on these terms.
But look! Lift up your eyes! Behold the Cross of Jesus Christ! There at the Cross all these burdens are lifted from our weary backs, we discover and experience God’s amazing grace, and the days of our pretending to be righteous can come to a merciful end.