2. “Locating Ourselves in God’s Great Story” (Romans 1, Part 2)

Our Need for Story

Every week as I prepare the sermon for that Sunday, one of the questions I constantly feel the weight of is quite simple. Is this practical? I’m a big picture thinker, and I know one of the problems with that is that I can often fail to touch down into well, life. Life is rarely lived at the altitude of big ideas and massive theories. It’s lived in the context of changing a kid’s diaper at 2AM when you know it was your spouse’s turn to wake up, or realizing you need to confront your employee over poorly done work, or feeling hurt because your friend blew you off at lunchtime yesterday. That’s where life is almost always lived, and so we need to understand how God’s word speaks to those practicalities.

But I want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, focusing only on practicality gets it wrong. That maybe, just maybe we sometimes need to get really impractical in our study of the Bible—or at least feel like we’re getting impractical. Because there is a sense that as long as we live in the details, we can miss something larger. As long as our minds only focus our attention on the really small story of what I need to do to make it through today, we lose track of the big story that makes it all meaningful. And that big story is important. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously wrote “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” Our small choices only make sense as part of something bigger. What we do in the moment makes sense only when we know what we are doing in life. Who are we and where did we come from? What obstacles are we trying to overcome? And where are we trying to go—what is our “happily ever after”? When we pay all our attention to being practical, we keep ourselves from thinking about the bigger story that really determines our actions.

And so I want to get really impractical by talking about stories. For a moment I want to talk about Star Wars, and about the Matrix, and about Harry Potter. Not only are these fictional stories, but they’re even about a world that is clearly different from ours. There are not wizards walking among us; there is not some impersonal spiritual force; we are not all plugged into some vast computer simulation. Could you get any more impractical?

But have you noticed how these movies, all incredibly popular and lasting in our culture, how they all tell the same basic story? They begin with a person who feels uncomfortable in this world: Luke, or Harry, or Neo, who feels restless, or maybe at odds with society, out of tune with what seems to be the way things are. But then comes the moment of revelation, when they discover that the world is bigger and more mysterious and more exciting than they believed. Think of Morpheus’ conversation with Neo:  “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the the truth. Or Obi-Wan: “The force is an energy field created by living things that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together.” Or, of course, Hagrid’s “Yer a wizarrd Harry.”

And with this new revelation of a bigger world also comes the knowledge of a big cosmic battle that they previously hidden from sight. The dark side against the Jedi; Voldemort against the wizards; the machines of the Matrix against humanity. They learn that there is an evil force at work and that there is a need for things to be set right. And, importantly, there is a power available to them for them to join in the fight: there is magic, there is the force, if they desire to take hold of it.

In this moment of revelation about this larger world and this need to overcome the forces of evil, as our main character learns these things, he is faced with a life-defining choice: will he allow this new understanding, this new story to change his life? Our characters could reject it and just go on with life as normal. But of course if they do so, they will go back to the life that is not fully life, because it’s living a lie. And yet if they accept this new revelation, they will never be the same. To quote Morpheus again, “After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” To go down that rabbit hole is to leave their old life and old community and join a new life and an new community as a wizard among wizards, as a Jedi among the rebel alliance, as Neo among the resistance.

Do you see what I mean? It’s the same story. And yet it really works! Why is that? Why does this particular plot strike a chord, connect with so many of us? Is it possible that our culture tells this story again and again because we sense that in this fiction lies a truth that is actually truer than the “true” stories we tell every day in our news and our classrooms and our conversations? Could it be that we resonate with the main characters’ deep sense that we also are not in sync with the world that has been presented to us? That we also feel restless, not quite in sync with society, uncomfortable with what is supposed to be reality. That we also are stuck living out a story that we feel deep down isn’t the right one. Could it be that we know that there is a larger world, a larger cosmic battle largely ignored and hidden?

The Real Story

Now, I want to suggest to you—and if this sounds ridiculous, just give me a minute—that undergirding Paul’s letter to the Romans is a story very similar to the ones we’ve been considering. If we pay attention to the clues, we will see that the Romans Paul is writing to are struggling with their sense of their story. Paul speaks of a desire to strengthen and encourage them, and he speaks of how he’s not ashamed of the gospel, a claim that only makes sense if the Romans were tempted to feel that shame. As we read further in Romans, we find Paul talking more explicitly about suffering and groaning in the face of persecution. About division and confusion in the church. The Roman Christians, very new to the faith, are likely feeling weak as they live in the shadow of the great Roman emperor, glorious and powerful even as they face persecution. They are likely feeling spiritually unimpressive as they compare themselves to the very religious Jews with their careful law observance. They’re small, weak, unimpressive, discouraged. Perhaps they’re wondering if this Christianity thing is a dead end.

And what does Paul do? Like Morpheus or Obi-Wan, he seeks to orient the Roman Christians into the larger, hidden story. We began to see it last week: he reminded them, “You are loved by God, called by him.” Verse 8 he says, “I think God, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” Paul is expanding their vision, their story. Look, the God of the universe is actively involved in your lives; something historic and cosmic is taking place—”your faith is proclaimed in all the world.”

If it seems a stretch to liken this to the moments of revelation in the stories I previously mentioned, that’s only because this isn’t the whole conversation. Paul is writing to remind them of what they had already been told, to support the work of the previous messenger who was the first to initiate them into this new understanding of a transcendent world and a cosmic battle infused with meaning.

If we want to understand what Paul is doing, we need to imagine the first encounter these Roman Christians had with this story—the first time someone came to them to tell them what was previously hidden.

Rather than trying to recreate how that would have gone to those people, I’d like to try using our imaginations to think of how Paul might speak of these things to us in our day, of Paul introducing us for the first time into this grander story.

So, imagine Paul sitting across the kitchen or dining room table from you, both of you having coffee. He’s in his mid-forties, big beard, dark hair with hints of gray, olive colored skin, and a quiet confidence when he speaks. You’ve asked him to meet with you because you have a sense that he knows something, something that you want to know. After a little friendly back and forth, Paul moves the conversation forward.

He begins, “I want you to understand something. What you know deep down is in fact true. There is actually much more to this world than you can see. There are transcendent, spiritual realities that are beyond our comprehension. This world is far bigger and more mysterious than you have been led to believe by the way people talk and act and go about their days. You know,” he says, “as you look at the best of this world around us, that beauty is not just something we’ve made up—that beauty is real. And that beauty is a call to recognize that there’s something more. You know that love is not just some evolutionary response, because you have experienced it. You know real love is the most powerful force in the universe. And as you encounter other human beings, as you see a baby born into this world and as you say good-bye to someone breathing their last breath, you know that human beings are not just glorified meat machines. We are creatures with souls. What you know deep down is true: there is much more to this world than you can see. For it is a world that lives and moves and has its very being because of a beautiful, loving, living God.”

After taking a sip, Paul continues. “You also know something else: that there is something deeply wrong with this world. Something tragically broken. And no matter what the economists say, this wrongness is about more than the fact that not everyone has enough wealth; whatever the politicians say, it’s about more than the wrong people being in power; and even the psychologists don’t quite get it when they say it’s because some people have experienced awful childhoods. This wrongness cannot be reduced to simplistic material explanations. It’s bigger than that. The best way to speak of it is to use the old-fashioned word: evil. Armies engage in mass genocide, heartlessly mowing down innocent people, including children. That is evil. Entire populations have been willing to enslave others for the color of their skin, treating them like animals. That is evil. There are men who repeatedly degrade women and even children by sexually abusing them. That is evil. In this world that is bigger and more mysterious than we act, the wrong is deeper than we admit; there is in this world an evil. And so in this world there is a need for things to be made right.”

In this imagined conversation, how do you think you’d be feeling right now? Would these words be resonating with you?

And Paul continues: “Now here’s the part that most people get wrong. Here’s the part that almost everyone misunderstands. This evil isn’t something that stands outside of us, it’s not just an archvillain or some nameless force. Evil is a corruption that pervades every element of this world, including us. Evil is about this world having become disordered.

See, where there is goodness, where there is life and health and beauty, we find order. We see it in the vastly intricate human body; we find it in the delicate balance of an ecosystem; we hear it in an achingly beautiful song. Where there is goodness there is an order, a harmony; everything fits together rightly. When that order is corrupted and turned toward disorder: when cancer cells begin to multiply or an off note is played, we find something wrong, something broken. That’s how the world works.

And that’s how the transcendent reality that lies at the heart of the universe works. This world created by God was ordered in such a way that everything and everyone finds its perfect place in its relationship to God. As the sun is the source of heat and light, the gracious God is the source of all good and beauty and love. And all the world, and especially humanity, finds its freedom as it turns itself in love and faith toward God. When all the world relates rightly to God; when humanity worships God with joy and the earth is filled with his glory, there we find harmony and beauty and what is good: order.

Evil exists because that order has been broken. Evil is pervasively present in this world because humanity broke its connection with God and gave itself in worship to other things. What the Bible calls idolatry is what lies at the heart of evil. Disconnection from God is the ultimate source of all of the corruption, all the disorder, the not rightness we experience. All that is wrong with the world, all that is wrong inside of us, all things that are broken are because we are disordered. We,” Paul says to you, “will only be made whole, and the world will only be made whole when the God who made everything is worshiped once again by everyone.”

Just pausing for a moment, I realize that some of us might be feeling skeptical about this point, and if so, I want you to know that Paul will be explaining this more in the passage that follows. But to get the whole picture, we need to keep going.

Paul takes a sip of coffee and looks away, thinking carefully about what to say next, and perhaps also taking a moment to give you a chance to just consider. And then, he looks you in the eye and says, “But here’s what I want you to know. Here’s the part that you absolutely need to understand. This broken, disordered world is being made right. In fact, right now, in this very conversation as I’m talking to you, something extraordinary, something of cosmic significance is happening.”

Paul opens his Bible that’s been lying on the table next to his coffee and says, “When God spoke to one of our ancient prophets, Isaiah, he promised—not once, but repeatedly, that he would make right what we have broken. He told Isaiah that he would fill the world with his righteousness. That’s how he spoke of it. That his righteousness would come and defeat evil; his righteousness would restore order; his righteousness would restore us back to him. His righteousness would set the world right.

And God told Isaiah he would do this, he would bring his righteousness through an appointed king who would come out of Israel. A divinely empowered king would make things right by his rule and would lead people back into life-giving worship of the true God. When this king is enthroned, God said to Isaiah, God’s righteousness would not stop transforming Israel. No, when all authority was given to this king, this king would send special emissaries out into the world. Isaiah writes that these emissaries “shall declare my glory among the nations, and they shall bring people from all the nations as an offering to the Lord.” People from all over the world will be restored back into worship of the true God until, we are told, the earth becomes full of the glory of God. And the world is made right. That’s what God told our prophet centuries ago. That’s what we find in our ancient Scriptures.”

And perhaps in this moment you begin to understand where Paul is going with this. You sense his voice quivering with excitement as he says to you, “And here’s the thing. It’s happening. It’s happening right now. The gospel I preach everywhere about Jesus’ resurrection: that’s the gospel of God’s appointed King being enthroned to set everything right.

And I, Paul, I am one of those emissaries Isaiah spoke about a long time ago. I have been sent by Jesus as an apostle, lead people back to worship of God, equipped with the very power of God in this gospel that I preach to save this world by turning people back to God in worship.

And you, he says to you across the table, are also the fulfillment of God’s promises that he made in Isaiah. When this gospel comes to you, a member of the far off nations, if you let it in, if you receive this news by faith and allow it to change you, to lead you back to worship of the true God—when this happens, you are in the very middle of God’s work of making this world right.  

If have been able to imagine this, if you’ve understood what Paul has said in our imaginary conversation, then you can see what Paul is doing in our passage. “I am the apostle sent by king Jesus to bring the obedience of faith among the nations, and you are called by God. The whole world is speaking of your faith, because it’s the fulfillment of what God said. The nations are coming to worship. And that’s why I’m so excited about the gospel. Because it speaks of the righteousness of God! God is making things right.

When I was a kid, whenever I heard stories like the ones we began with, like Star Wars, I felt a deep longing within me to be part of this kind of adventure. I imagined what it might be like to have someone come to me and reveal to me some bigger and more wondrous world and offer me the ability to be part of some great work to fix what is wrong with it.

And what want you to know this morning is that every one of the stories, about wizards or Jedi or the Matrix or entering into wardrobes or carrying the one ring—the list could go on—whatever the stories are, they all pale in comparison to the real story, the one that many have ignored or forgotten. There is a cosmic transcendent adventure going on where evil is real and pervasive and where the God of the universe has ACTED to set things right. And you and I have been brought in. We’ve been called to join in this work of King Jesus, to join with God in restoring to this world the beautiful order it once had, restoring the world to worship of the one true God.

And we have been given a supernatural power to do this, greater than any magic or force: the gospel of the Son of God crucified and risen, has come to us from God, in the power of the Spirit. It calls us to leave the life we once had to begin something new, and as we take hold of this gospel by faith, it doesn’t just come to us, it comes into us, making our very souls and bodies right in worship. It transforms our lives bit by bit, diaper change by diaper change into a life of worshiping the true God, into a life that leads the world into worship of the true God.

Where it begins for us is in repentance, letting go of the old life, the false story, and in faith taking hold of this new greater cosmic adventure.