In our tradition, the Lutheran tradition, part of the role of the clergy is to be the theologian-in-residence for their communities. One of the factors behind the Reformation was Luther’s concern about the lack of education of the clergy, and the effect that had on the faith of the laity. This is why our tradition has such high academic requirements for ordination.
Normally, I fulfill the part of my letter of call that directs me to “preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions” through preaching and teaching on the assigned lectionary texts. But these are not normal times. And while we will get to the Gospel text I just read, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently brought a verse from Paul’s Letter to the Romans into public discourse, I feel an obligation as the one you have called and ordained to be the resident biblical scholar of this community to start there.
The verse Sessions referenced is Romans chapter thirteen, verse one, which reads: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”[1] After citing the verse, Sessions added, “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”[2] And Sessions is not wrong; our Lutheran theology makes a similar argument. Article Eleven in the Augsburg Confession states: “the gospel does not undermine government or family but completely requires both their preservation as ordinances of God and the exercise of love in these ordinances.”[3] Laws help us live in healthy community with one another. When Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and to freedom, one of the first things God did was give them Ten Commandments, ten laws, to help them live together well. My Confessions professor in seminary described it like stoplights. Just because we are free from judgment under the law does not mean we are free to interpret stoplight colors any way we want, because that would be chaos. But there is a difference between lawless anarchy and unquestioned obedience. Article Eleven of the Augsburg Confession continues: “Christians owe obedience to their magistrates and laws except when commanded to sin. For then they owe greater obedience to God than to human beings.”[4] It references Acts chapter five, verse twenty-nine, where Peter said, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”[5]
So what was Paul up to in the thirteenth chapter of Romans? Paul’s most systematic and thorough explanation of the gospel, the letter to the Romans clearly articulates how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ set believers free from the bonds of sin and death and created a new community for everyone, whether Jew or Gentile. The central most important theme of Romans is that salvation comes through the grace of God alone, and not by anything that we can do. Romans chapter three, verse twenty- three, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is Christ Jesus.” And later, chapter five, verse eight, “But God proves God’s love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Paul drove this home at the end of chapter eight with one of my favorite lines of scripture, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing. That, dear people of God is the good news of Jesus Christ according to the Apostle Paul.
Having made that assertion, in chapters twelve and thirteen, Paul laid out for the Romans what that Christ community was to look like. In chapter twelve, Paul described the marks of the true Christian, starting at verse nine, “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor.” These ways of living within the community spill out to how believers are to interact with those outside of the community. Starting at verse thirteen, Paul wrote, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers… do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly… if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” For Paul, since God showed love to us when we were God’s enemies, then we too are to show love to others.
So then, finally, we get to Romans chapter thirteen. As we read Paul’s admonition to “be subject to the governing authorities,” it is important to remember that the head of Roman Empire claimed divine status, he claimed to be Son of God. When Jesus used the term “Son of God,” Jesus was not only making a claim about his own divinity, he was making a statement about his authority over and above that of the Emperor. For Paul, there is one Lord, and it is God, not any earthly political figure. Verse seven reads “Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” The Roman leadership is worthy of honor, but only as they are God’s servants. The reference to “what is due” implies an obligation on the part the one receiving the honor.[6] Part of earning “what is due” means living in accordance with the marks of Christian leadership outlined in chapter twelve. But Paul provides an even clearer summary of our most important obligation in the next couple verses, the obligation of mutual love. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Paul quotes Jesus, “The commandments… are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[7]
OK, so having fully analyzed Paul’s Letter to the Romans, let’s get to the Gospel now, shall we. One of the themes of Mark’s Gospel is Jesus showing up in liminal spaces—places of transition and risk, marginalized places on the border between one place or time or reality and another. After crossing the sea, Jesus will heal the Gerasene Demoniac in a graveyard, bring a girl back from the brink of death, and heal a woman who’s bleeding had isolated her on the edge of society. Much of his ministry took place at geographical boundaries, like the wilderness, mountaintops, or even the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi. And he regularly crossed socio-political boundaries, eating at the home of the tax collector, and entering Jerusalem in a mock political parade at the beginning of the Passover. The Sea of Galilee is just such a borderland. It is both a geographical boundary, separating one shore from the other, it also has socio-political implications, both sustenance for the Galileans and a resource for extraction for the Romans.[8] Jesus crossing the Sea in Mark, something he does several times, is a demonstration of how borders, geographic and political, have no sway over the one whom “even the wind and the sea obey.”[9]
And as important and powerful as Jesus crossing boundaries both natural and man-made is, this story is more than that. Because this story takes place in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, right in the midst of the barrier between one people and another, between the haves and the have nots, between life on the land and death at sea. And right there, right in the middle of the borderline, right in the place of separation, right in the middle of the chaos of those divisions, when the disciples were panicking, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing,”[10] with a word Jesus rebuked the chaos, declaring, “Peace! Be Still!” And at once there was stillness. A “dead calm” in the NRSV, but a better translation is “a great calm.” Because the same Greek word is used to describe both the intensity of the wind and the severity of the calm that followed.[11]
So what does this mean for us, today, in the places and spaces where boundaries exist both natural and manmade? For me, what this text tells me is that in those places of separation and fear, Jesus is already there. Jesus is in El Paso and Laredo and the Chihuahuan desert. He is in gang-ravenged streets of Honduras and El Salvador, in the volcanic destruction of Guatemala, in the civil war of South Sudan, in Gaza, in Myanmar, and in all the places where people flee in desperate search for a better life for their children. Jesus is with those seeking asylum, those so poverty or panic-stricken as to not have that option, and those who return to rebuild destroyed lives. He is in the so-called “tender age” shelters in Combes, Raymondsville, and Brownsville Texas,[12] in the refugee camps in Jordan, Kenya, and Bangladesh, and just down the street with the ICE detainees at the Calhoun County jail. In all those places and in so many more, I have to believe that Jesus is already there proclaiming peace amidst the chaos, calming the storms of fear, and easing the hearts of those who struggle in such troubled waters.
I believe Jesus is in all of those places, but I believe Jesus is somewhere else as well. I believe Jesus is here (head), and here (heart). I believe Jesus is in us, bringing peace and calm to the storms that rage within us. Because often in my own life, when Jesus calms the storms around me, the storm that often gets calmed is not the one outside, but the one within. The storm of fear and anxiety, of isolation and helplessness, the storm that paralyzes me in uncertainty like the disciples were paralyzed on that day on the sea, and prevents me from moving forward. In my life the storm Jesus generally calms is the one within me, so that I am set free to go and be about the work he has called me to do.
After Jesus calmed the storm, he and the disciples came to the other side where there was more work to be done. There was a man whose demon confined him to life in a graveyard, a leader of the synagogue who’s daughter was gravely ill, and a woman pushed to the fringes by a hemorrhage that would not quit. And just as Jesus showed control over the storm at sea, with a word and even a touch he cast out the demon, raised the girl, and healed the woman. Whatever storm needs facing, the promise of this story, of the gospel itself, is that Jesus is there. “For I am convinced,” wrote Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[13] Thanks be to God. Amen.
Footnotes:
[1] Romans 13:1 (New Revised Standard Version).
[2] Emily McFarlan Miller and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
[3] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 49, 51.
[4] Ibid 51.
[5] Acts 5:29 (NRSV).
[6] Michael J. Gorman, “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community,” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 396.
[7] Romans 13:8, 9 (NRSV).
[8] Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41,” Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[9] Mark 4:41 (NRSV).
[10] Mark 4:38 (NRSV).
[11] Skinner
[12] Kendall Karson, “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS, June 20, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[13] Romans 8:38-39 (NRSV)
Works Sourced:
*Gassman, Gunther and Scott Hendrix. “Chapter 6 The Lutheran Confessions: The Christian Life, The Arena: Church and World—Two Reigns of God.” Fortress Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999. Pg. 141-149.
*Gorman, Michael J. “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community.” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. Pg . 338-411.
*Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jensen. “10: Christian Life—Brave Sinning. The Crucible: Life in Two Kingdoms.” Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976. Pg. 142-145.
*“”. “13: Politics—Two Kingdoms?” Pg. 179-190.
*Karson, Kendall. “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS. June 20, 2018. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
*Kolb, Robert and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text.” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000. Pg. 31-105.
*Miller, Emily McFarlan and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
*Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41.” Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
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