All right, let’s transition to our next pericope. It’s Romans 5:1–8. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 6 in Ordinary Time, June 14. Matt, would you read it for us, please?
[00:19:19] Matt:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
[00:20:07] Anthony: Hallelujah. There’s a lot contained in that passage. So, if you were preaching this text to your local congregation, what would you proclaim?
[00:20:15] Matt: I think the first thing would be what we alluded to a little bit before this — who’s faith idea. In verse one, since we are justified by faith the human predilection is to try to put our effort into something.
[00:20:27] Anthony: Of course.
[00:20:59] Matt: That by adding our intelligence, our experience, our fortitude, we can somehow make something better. And sadly, a lot of the English translations, particularly those that base itself off the King James, do tend to focus a lot of this emphasis on it being the faith of us that impacts and changes us rather than an external faith that’s given to us by God, and in which case it actually is a triune faith that’s imparted to us. The big theme of this passage for me at least, is this idea that divine action and intervention is not conditioned on our conduct or on our capacity to understand.
[00:21:12] Anthony: Come on.
[00:21:14] Matt: This learning for the purpose of somehow manipulating the will of God to our own human will really has to be jettisoned for the garbage theology that it is.
That’s not how love works. If the nature of God isn’t just to be loving, although he is, but is love in its most expressed, perfect, truest form, all that Father, Son and Spirit do within their interactions with Creation through that perichoretic union, it has to be synthesized down to love.
And throughout this passage … verse eight, “but God proves his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We focus a lot on the sinners part of this, which is an accurate presentation, but I think the bigger theme here is when humanity is at its worst, we do the most vile and evil things to one another to the Creation itself, that is the moment where we’re looked at and God says, “Yeah that that’s a people worth loving, that is a creation that is worth the surrender of the most meaningful thing that any of us have, life itself, and being willing to lay down that life on behalf of this very broken, confused, distorted creation.”
I get the question a lot from students, especially … And it seems the question’s asked … the earlier in their academic journey, it’s asked, I can gauge what branch of fundamentalism they went through. But the question always comes up of this, why did Jesus have to die? And I’ve heard lots of great answers. Brad Jersak has a wonderful perspective on this, but where I’ve settled is right within this verse. It’s the means by which God proves his love.
[00:23:14] Anthony: Yes. Come on.
[00:23:16] Matt: We had nothing to prove to him. At the cool of the day, after Adam and Eve consumed the forbidden fruit, they start hiding themselves and try to cover themselves. God still shows up in the cool of the day, well aware of what’s happened, yet nothing changed on God’s front. He still shows up at the same time they always met.
It’s man that hides. It’s man that needs something to cover what we perceive as sinfully standing in the way of our relationship with God. I don’t know what more a person can do to prove love than be willing and following through on, giving up the thing that we as humans value the most, life.
[00:24:02] Anthony: Stated, sir. So, given what you just said, that he proves his love for us while we were sinners, why suffering? And here’s the thing, suffering is universal, amen. None of us get through this life unscathed. We all experience affliction.
And in any church on a Sunday morning, when the gospel’s being proclaimed, there are people who are knee deep in suffering, they’re hurting. And so, I’d like to invite you, if you’re willing, to make this personal, how have you experienced suffering which leads to hope, as pointed out in the Scriptures here? And again, I’m grateful in advance if you’re willing to share.
[00:24:42] Matt: Sure. Yeah. I’m happy to. If I could, I’d like to just throw a general request out there to the pastors and preachers who are listening to this. It can be very uncomfortable when you are ministering to people and you know they are hurting and so you want to be there and step into that with them and that’s a wonderful cruciform thing to do.
But to try to make it better by downplaying the suffering. It is not effective. It is not Christlike. We don’t see Jesus do that. Right before he resurrects Lazarus, he’s weeping with them that his friend is dead. He acknowledges the pain that they’re in. It would be wiser to say nothing than to attempt to sugarcoat or explain away suffering.
[00:25:33] Anthony: Yes, preach.
[00:25:33] Matt: So, sit with them in it. I think specific to your question — many years ago now, my youngest brother died by suicide.
[00:25:43] Anthony: Oh, I’m so sorry.
[00:25:44] Matt: And that carries all kinds of baggage with it and I don’t want to nullify anybody else’s experience that’s similar to it. But when you are a psychologist, there’s an added guilt that comes along with it: how did you miss this? You knew he was not well, but you didn’t believe it was this severe, under the impression he was getting some kind of help.
That event, the most — I’m in my mid- 40s and still the most difficult thing I’ve ever seen in life has been my parents try to move forward. And they did. It took time. It took a lot of healing to be revealed within them. But that was hard to watch. It was hard to not … I’m the oldest of three brothers and so there’s this sense of being the one to say, “Okay, we’re going to … here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got to plan.” And to not have a solution to that other than time and inertia letting the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit was going to do in the timeframe my parents needed it in rather than in the timeframe I would’ve preferred, yeah, of my own choice or volition. But that changed, that was …
I had a theology of suicide.
[00:27:10] Anthony: Yeah.
[00:27:11] Matt: I had a theology of death in general. I had a theology of death that, that seemed to deviate or delineate between individuals who had some type of salvific experience and those who did not. But then I also had a specific concept of theology based on suicide, the act of death itself.
It’s funny, theologies are interestingly formed when they’re academic. When there’s no skin in the game.
Anthony: Yep, preach.
Matt: This wasn’t close to me, right? That this was something that I was almost in an ivory tower. Most of my career has been in academia more so than the pulpit. And I’m in my ivory tower and I had structured a theological rubric based on various proof texts I had selected that seemed to fit the mold.
And all of that came crashing down with an experience where the theology I had formed in no way aligned with how I saw the Godhead revealed in Christ. So, I had to rethink that belief. And that led to rethinking a variety of things. I’m not a fan of the term deconstruction. I understand its basic logical use and I don’t criticize when it’s used. But I really do prefer rethinking, or even reconstructing, renovating, identifying those things that do not align with the rubric we’ve been provided as to who God: Jesus Christ.
If it doesn’t look like that, it has to be reevaluated. And that began that for me. It really hasn’t stopped. It’s something that’s, I think, a lifelong journey of looking at the beliefs we hold most dear and then allowing our encounters with Father, Son and Spirit to reset the lens, like going to the optician.
And yeah, the prescription that I used to wear doesn’t work anymore. I can’t see clearly with it anymore. I need the prescription adjusted and allowing the Holy Spirit to do that. So, honestly, the majority of what I do professionally today is remarkably informed by that experience.
It sounds, it’s an odd statement to make, and I hope it’s understood in the context I mean it. It has birthed remarkable fruit. Still a tragedy. I miss my brother every day. I still wish he was here, but it doesn’t, it does not nullify what came out of it, the beauty for ashes that was able to come out of it.
[00:29:50] Anthony: I’m humbled that you shared, and I’m so sorry for the loss of your brother, and we give thanks to God that he’s good, he’s great.
Matt: I know.
Anthony: And this is why even thinking of that line: suffering is universal. Yes, it comes to us all, but it’s also meant to be experienced by others.
I think it’s one of the reasons God in his wisdom placed tear ducts in our eyes, because it’s meant to be seen and shared and experienced with others. We mourn with those who mourn and we sit with them and we know that, as you pointed out, Jesus crying at Lazarus death, even though he knew he was going to raise him to newness of life and a resuscitation, he still weeped.
The death is, man, that doggone death. It’s still there. There’s no spiritual sting any longer, but it sure hurts on this side of the veil, doesn’t it? And …
Matt: Yeah.
Anthony: … it’s meant to be shared together in the body. And another beautiful thing I hear you say is how certainly God was not the Genesis or the cause of your brother’s pain, but boy, is he at work in it to bring about goodness where there was such deep pain and suffering. And I just think there’s so much we could dive into there in terms of the way that we experience this life, but thank you for sharing.
[00:31:09] Matt: Absolutely.