Much Obliged, Really.

Much Obliged, Sir.

My obligations bring me, what exactly?

Paul rapturously proclaims what God does for us. God places us beyond condemnation.  He lavishes on us His Spirit, the part of God empowering Jesus and raising Him from the dead.  In the Spirit, God frees us free from wrath, sin and death.  He condemns sin in us, to help us overcome it.  God enters us to dwell in us.  WOW.

Now Paul turns to our response. 

So what is our response?  Paul: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.[1]  We stare at the Builder generation to ask, “What is this obligation business?  It’s not our style.  We love Christ’s love and free stuff!  Thanks so much!  See ya!” 

The Builders knew obligations.  The world called on them to lift us from a depression, fight World War II and Communism.  The builders responded when the world called.  They left their footprints on the moon. 

Who now takes their places?  Men and women were obliged to mortgage homes to start an economy.  They were obliged to teach scriptures, love friends, paint, change light bulbs, and sacrifice driving new cars to give to the Lord.  Who now takes their places?  People were obliged to sense God’s call on them and serve ‘round the world.  Who now takes their places?

Paul says you will take their places, if you love Jesus.

We live with obligations.  Do you know the seven dwarves’ song in the original Snow White?  “Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!”  I laughed to see a bumper sticker on the back of a Benz in Miami.  “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!”

Jill’s sister trained employees for Amex.  She said new, young ones are a bit scary.  They know what they want.  They clearly see what Amex can do for them, but have no sense of what they owe the company in return.  She found some are hard to train.

This study is about doing God’s work — building His Kingdom as we owe Him so much. 

Paul recites God’s amazing works in Christ.  We obligingly respond asking God to do great things in us: amazing things through us.  Look at vows: If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.[2]  The word, issar, is a bond, a binding obligation.

Mr. Marshall’s knees were scarred.  He promised God that if he returned from World War II he would go to church … on his knees.  He did: two miles.  His knee pads helped for 500 yards.  He painfully kept his vow.  Is your vow your bond?  Can God bank on your word?  How strong are your obligations?

The sense of obligation springs from early ideas of revenge and law.  In a personal offence a transgressor became a debtor to the injured party (I hurt you. I owe you).  Only an injured party can liquidate revenge on a debt owed to him.  That moved from personal revenge to national law, and the guilty party became a debtor to the law.  (Dump oil in an Alaskan harbor, and you owe America.  See you in court.)  In Israel it also meant a guilty party owed a penance to God.  So, if I hurt you, I may owe you, the law (nation), and God all three!

A sense of owing a debt to a virtue derives in Greek thought.  I’m obliged to fairness and honesty. Again, Greeks spoke of inner obligations.  The Jews owed debits to the Law and God.  The Greeks aspired.  Jews guilted! “He died. What’s it cost?  Two bulls and a ram?)  Philo merged both streams so we are obliged to Someone higher.  Out of Divine Law, we cherish a sense of the sacred … to be good or courageous.

The Jews got stuck thinking our relation to God is a legal relationship. Indebtedness marks our relation to God.  Jesus bridged the gap, even before the cross where He leveled the playing field.  Jesus told a story.  Do you know it?

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began settling them, workers brought him one who owed ten thousand talents. (Think trillions.)  [This slave] had no means to repay. The king commanded him to be sold, with his wife, children and all he had, to make the payment.  The slave prostrated himself before the king, saying, “Have patience with me, and I’ll repay everything!” (In a thousand lifetimes if you never eat or sleep!)  And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But the slave went out, found a fellow slave who owed him [a hundred bucks].  He seized him and began choking him, saying, “Pay back what you owe me!”  The king calls the forgiven servant to ask, “Should you not also have mercy on a fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’  And his lord, in anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ‘So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.’[3]

Jesus says we’re obligated.  Our first obligation forgives others as we have been!

Paul lived out a deep obligation to Christ’s amazing grace.  Reread this letter’s opening: I am obliged both to Greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish. [4]  Paul begins with his obligation to us because of Christ.  Now he includes us so brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.  [5]

The verse sounds so odd!  It’s a rhetorical tool, a meiosis, where less is said than intended.  This meiosis is more than what is not said, in it the direction of the thought changes. 

Let’s say I tell you how excited I am for my wedding anniversary: how Jill puts up with me, blesses and loves me.  How she makes each day possible.  As I build to a climax to say, “Thanks for the years, Jill,” I say, “I owe so much of our years, not to Elon Musk!” 

The weirdness hits you.  Elon and I are not an item… never married.  I owe him nothing.

This meiosis is even stronger.  Let’s say I tell you how thrilled I am to leave a hospital after ten surgeries … on being hit by a drunk driver.  I thank doctors, nurses, therapists and chaplains.  I build to a climax: “And I owe so much, not to the drunk who hit me.”  I stop.  What you want to fill in screams at you in its absence.  Do you fill in where Paul stops?  

Read the verses again.  Paul never answers the second half!  Do you? 

Brothers and sisters, we have an obligation ¾ but not to the sinful nature, to live according to it???  For if we live according to the sinful nature, we die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the body’s misdeeds, you will live, because we who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s children!  For we did not receive a spirit making us slaves again to fear, but we received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit (my most true self) that we’re God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order to also share in His glory. [6]

Sin in me, law, religion, anything less than Christ’s miracle in me, in my soul, is worthless.  Paul: I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ![7]  If you lose nothing, give nothing, obligated nothing, you miss this truth. 

Jesus promises.  We leave behind our debts our obligations as we forgave others.  And forgive us our debts, (failed obligations), as we forgive our debtors, [8] Jesus’ word is the one Paul uses: opheiletes; a debtor, culprit, indebted, owed as failed obligations!

Jesus explained further: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father also forgives you.  But if you don’t forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Jesus hates wrecked obligations.  Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If I swear by the temple, it means nothing; but if I swear by the temple’s gold, I’m bound by my oath.” Blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?[9]  

Do you think we have a problem with obligations? We thank God for His gifts, yet spend 2% of our incomes on philanthropy.  How much are you obliged to God for His gift in Christ to you?  Skip smarmy sap.  Look at your scheduling app and check book.  Read the truth there. 

Do you think losing obligations affects us?  Bankruptcies fell to 683 thousand last year.

A lawyer friend recently remarked how many people are criminally irresponsible in finances if they have no picture of obligations.  Why is all this happening?

Alexander Pope described a man he despised.  Pope condemned the man saying he blamed everyone else for his shortcomings.  Worse, he made a timid foe and suspicious friend.  Even fools and flatterers dreaded him.  The worst, though, was that “He was so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d (sic)” [1607].  People have ducked obligations for a long time.

Bankruptcy, divorce, cheating in marriages, workplace theft all show missed obligations. 

Is there a minimum amount of obligation…say for moms?  Governor Mike Huckabee and the courts agreed with Marie Riggs. She deserved to die. She was executed within two years of her crimes, at her request.  She asked for morphine and potassium chloride: she used them on her babies.  Marie told jurors: “I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want the death penalty.”[10]

People need at least our minimum obligation in Christ.  In Jesus’ story of a failed minimum. a master vested a servant with a hefty amount, one talent.  As others doubled each trust, he buried his.  Felt bad doing nothing.  Fretted over his follow-up interview with the lord.  He wasn’t immoral.  He didn’t lose it.  He sat on it fearing his master.  Jesus says the servant of the failed minimum was banished to darkness: with weeping, gnashing of teeth and maybe Marie Riggs? 

See another thing.  Our highest obligation is a calling to stagger the imagination: those led by God’s Spirit are His daughters.  You did not receive a spirit making you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  By Him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit: we are God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings we may also share in His glory. [11]  What an obligation!

See then a wide range of obligation. In a bare minimum slaves and unhappy people work all the way up to the astounding reaches of being God’s sons and daughters, heirs worth their word!

Blessing:  When you find yourself out in life this week, and hear God’s greatest confidence in you, your deepest obligation, be thrilled, “I knew I could count on you, my child.”

---

[1] Romans 8:12

[2] Numbers 30:2ff

[3] Matthew 18:23ff 

[4] Romans 1:14

[5] Romans 8:12

[6] Romans 8:12 ff

[7] Philippians 3:8

[8] Matthew 6:12 

[9] Matthew 23:16ff 

[10] (USA Today, May 3, 2000, page 4A).

[11] Romans 8:14 – 17

Still She stands.

Torch flaming, a gift from another country, Lady Liberty is beautiful, though for reasons we rarely attribute to her.

There in the folds of her garb are differing formulations for counting slaves in our first documents.  All of the compromises so slave owners could keep their “property” and make people who hated slavery cooperate with hunters.  The Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth are there as clearly as ANNA towns, Tulsa and Atlanta and a host of other riots, lynching, all the way to the amazing election of a black man to the presidency.

No one can tidy up the story.  No one honest denies the twists, horrors, or inequities.  Along with injustices to Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Irish and Slavs, she stands with her torch held high and astonishingly, people still flock to her.

She stands taller not due to a pedestal, but because she unflinchingly rises above the swamps, detritus, lies, anger, and racism.  Yes, she is an ideal, and oh yes, we fail her.  But she is an ideal for which men and women fought, died and gave us a choice: either unite as the ideal is greater than our differences, or be less than those who died hoped for us.

Her torch unflinchingly lights today’s strife, insouciant biases and lies about ourselves and others.  She lights those shortcomings to appear so dark, so depraved because she is an ideal.

Here is to Her and besting our failings.  Here is to her ideal in a measure of hope that we will appeal to the “better angels of our nature”, as one president agonized and gave his life hoping for us.

Lincoln’s hope for her as an ideal demands more of us.   As others live in less than freedom, less than fearlessness, we find ourselves with work to do.

The Lady, and Lincoln hark back to a non-white man who died young on a cross, and whose followers overcame slavery because they believed, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  The origin of that impossible ideal?  Maybe.

I learned the word “impossible” as if it were the essence of American.  We should return to impossible hopes like our forebears did facing fascism.

Michael, you made us great.

When the Greatest Generation returned from defeating the Axis powers to build anew this country they had an unspoken “why?” or “how will we know” written on their collective consciousness.

They had liberated camps in Europe where Jews, Gypsies and problematic Christians were industrially disappeared.  They found mass graves of Poles of incomprehensible numbers.  They liberated our own men from Bataan, and Korean and Chinese girls and women from Imperial Army brothels.  They uncovered experiments on humans. They whispered and collected the memories.  They returned home.

“Home” was racially divided, patriarchal, and had a thousand challenges and somewhere, or in a thousand somewheres someone or a few hundred someones were sitting in churches and synagogues and university student unions in overwhelming numbers and they saw people like Michael, friends’ babies like Michael and knew that Michael represented a baseline for care.  Not only that, but people began to talk about, demonstrate, petition representatives and insurance agencies, schools, city governments on behalf of Michael and friends.

The question was, “What about Michael?” or “What about all of the Michaels?”  Those questions set us researching a hundred trails of cures, and that pushed watches, walks, runs, pink ribbons, pink JFL jerseys, food investigations, bad meds, pollution and so on.  Those answers made us a great country.  They are making of us a better country.

But it all began with that nagging question  Jesus put front and center, “What of the least of these?  What will you do with the least of these?”

And it wasn’t just governmental and research responses.  Basketball players got to come to Michael’s birthday parties.  Students knew when Michael was working and if they were mature, they talked to him and Teresa and others as they cleaned their tables.  Amy and Peter grew up taking it for granted they would care for you after mom and dad could no longer do so.  That made them taller and stronger, for you.  You reminded all of us at church that Jesus said you were thunderously important.  You reminded us that conversation is always important, on whatever level we can conduct it.  You advertised that people who argued for abortion if a baby might be problematic missed you.

You reminded us that a great nation, like any real church IS great when it answers well, “What do we do with the least of these?”

Have we written the final, best answer to that question?  No, Michael, we have not, but we promise to keep working on whatever the front page or back pages of the newspaper says is another place to answer, “How have I learned to appreciate and help the least of these?”

Do we miss you?  More than we could have known.

Thank you.  I was blessed to know you and your family.  Hey, if when we get to heaven you have a cool mansion, and I am sweeping streets, can we do sleep overs at your place?

Happy New Wait A Minute

Happy Epiphany.  January 6.  Wise guys visit Jesus.  12th Day of Christmas.  All of that I get, but the convention of the date is my problem.

First of all, we may have gone “around” the sun in 365.25 days, but the sun moved.  We are nowhere near the same place as this time “last year”.  This spiral arm of the Galaxy moved.  Don’t you remember that crazy day in elementary school when someone delighted in telling you the eight or nine ways we are moving, leaving you queasy!?

I have welcomed the new year watching a ball drop in Times Square, the largest outdoor restroom for a night.  Really, the ball just drops and that means something?  Are you certain marijuana was not legal in New York decades ago?

I have welcomed it on my knees praying at that exact moment when the new year began. 

I have welcomed it asleep, driving, eating in some diner, playing games, with a few hundred screaming teens, and I have welcomed it with just Jill.  My favorite.  Not your business. 

And I have made resolutions, plans, goals with attendant tasks and been moderately successful in them.

But here is my point.  Why at this point in a calendar (don’t get me started on “calendar”) do we have hope for newness?  How did that come to be?  Why not Hannukah, Christmas, Ramadan, or Easter?  Going the other way, why not Halloween or Mardis Gras? 

It is just the first day of January.  Stay with me.

All the other months have a first day, Right?  Why THIS first day of THIS month?

Random.  If you want to compare my work check with the Jews and Chinese for their first days of their new year(s) dates. 

Don’t get depressed and sappy on me, just think about it.  Some very well meaning people chose this day after all their work on their “calendar” as a day to reset the months and days and begin again.  We attached all the rest of our hopes for weight loss, working out, saving, studying more, smoking less, quitting drinking, whatever to this Random Date.

SO, if you have already screwed up, fallen short, blown the resolution — pick another date and start again.  How about tomorrow?  If there is anything Christian in applying grace practically, that would be it.  Why don’t we start our relationship, business plan, forgiveness, kindness, savings again – first thing in the morning?  Any day is as good as some January 1!

There.  See Random can work for you occasionally.  And happy Epiphany.