The church calendar and its divisions are not biblically mandated stuff. As the apostle says in Romans, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. (Rom. 14:5 ESV).” But I do think there is a reason that it was created rather early, that it perpetuated, and that it keeps coming back. Even Calvinist Presbyterians and Free Will Baptists tend to have Christmas and Holy Week these days. Which is basically how that calendar originally started. And then everything else fell into place around those “High Holy Days.”
And there is a fundamental division in that Calendar that we have gently passed. From Advent to Trinity the focus is on the life of Christ. And so our meditation tends to be about the 2nd article of the creed. It is the proclamation of who God is and what he has done for us. But when you pass into the long green season, for us the season after Pentecost – others have called it the season after Trinity and still others “Ordinary Time” – it is more about the 3rd article of the creed, what the Holy Spirit is doing. And that is calling, gathering, enlightening, sanctifying and keeping. That is the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the preparation for life everlasting. As so last week opened the season with the Call of Matthew the tax collector. The Holy Spirit calls sinners and only sinners. And the readings early will continue in that discipleship vein. How exactly does following Christ work?
And so reading Romans all summer and into fall – and that is what our lectionary does – creates a realistic problem. Summer is when we all check out, right? We’ve made it through the High Seasons, this is me time. When the livin’ is easy. And yet the calendar and assigned reading are serious stuff. We’ve received the call. What the heck does that mean for us…for me? Can’t we just kick back and let it be for a bit? It’s summer.
Most of Paul’s letters have an immediacy to them. He’s responding to some crisis in a baby congregation he founded. He writing to a young kid and the young leaders of congregations how to pastor and be a congregation of God’s people. He’s doing what we all can do, putting off the reflection and ordering of things, to react and respond to the squeaky wheel. And that wheel does need oiled. It will always need oiled. And then one day the question of why the heck am I doing this oiling of this stupid wheel at all sneaks up. Romans is Paul’s answer. Romans is an invitation to: why does this Jesus and church thing work? Why does it work for me?
And it simply starts out with a reflection on the law. Think about the law as simply “the way the world works.” And this is the trouble with that law. It works 95% of the time. If you follow it, your life will actually be better. The Taoist knows this, be water, conform yourself to the shape of the world. The living is much easier. But the problem is I don’t want to do that. I want to do what I want to do. Or the problem is the 5%. I have kept all these things since my youth, why is my life a complete mess? Paul the Jew asks, “What is the value of circumcision (the covenant marking of the Jew)?” Has God lied to me? Because exactly when I needed it to work – that 5% – it kills me. I can’t do it, or it doesn’t work. Something has gone wrong with creation because the good are punished and the evil prosper.
Why does this following Christ work? Why do I keep walking the discipleship way? Because the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law (Romans 3:23). The creation was subject to futility that it might be set free from its bondage to corruption (Romans 8:20). We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us (Romans 8:37). The hope of the disciple is not this world, but the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Which are freely given to us by faith. Because God loves us