Friday • 7/12/2024 •
Friday of Proper 9
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 16 & 17; Deuteronomy 31:7-13, 24-30; 32:1-4; Romans 10:1-13; Matthew 24:15-31
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
The apostle Paul was acutely aware throughout his life that he and his fellow Jews were a people of privilege. They were “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). They were to provide the bloodline through which God was going to redeem the world: “from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ” (Romans 9:5). They had been bequeathed the pattern of worship that would bring glory and honor to the living God: “to them belong[s] … the worship” (Romans 9:4). It broke his heart to find his people rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah and the world’s Savior. They were failing in that stewardship, just as he had done before the risen Christ came to him personally. Rhetorically at least, he would have given up his own share in the blessing if they could be included in his stead (Romans 9:1-3). Here in Romans 10, Paul comes around to what he actually—not merely rhetorically—wishes for his kin. Here is Paul’s heart for his fellow people of Jewish privilege: “that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1).
It’s fascinating to see how Paul unpacks his desire for his people—and, accordingly, how he has come to understand his own heritage because of, and in, Christ Jesus.
Image: Holy Grail, by Alice Popkorn, https://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/
No righteousness on our own. Blessed with the revelation of just what God’s standard of righteousness is, Paul has come to see—and wants others to see—that it is impossible for any of us to establish a righteousness of our own. Paul would have us look at the perfect standard of righteousness that has now been made clear by the life of Jesus Christ, and confess that none of us could possibly measure up. Currently, we are afflicted with a pandemic of “judginess”—some coming from the left, and some coming from the right. There is no “again” of greatness to which to restore America that was not stained by the flaws of its founders or its people. There is no banishing of guns from our streets that will banish the violence in our hearts. There is no safe haven of “anti-racism” that frees any of us from the reality that we all pre-judge people. “There is none righteous, no not one!” (Romans 3:10, quoting Psalm 14:1).
Righteousness as a gift from God through Christ. But that’s not where things end. When Paul says that “Christ is the end (Gk., telos = goal) of the law” (Romans 10:4) what he means is twofold. First, as we’ve just seen, the goal of the law was to make clear to us that none of us is righteous. But then, second, the goal of the law was to make us aware that there is one exception to the rule. It’s to this end, I think, that Paul quotes Leviticus 18:5’s “the person who does these things will live by them” (see Romans 10:5). I think that Paul is describing a particular Person. Jesus Christ “did these things,” and not only “lives by them,” but has won life for us by his obedience to them. None of us is righteous in ourselves, but there is One who was, and is, righteous for us.
In him, we are found in a righteousness that comes from God himself (see Philippians 3:9). There is a righteous that comes “from God” and is given to us “by faith.” “Faith” that is, in the first place, the faithfulness of the Son to the Father. And “faith” that is, in the second place, our believing response. Salvation, says Paul, is “from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17). It is from Christ’s faith in the Father’s promise to accept his obedience in place of ours (see Romans 5:12-21) to our receiving that gift with the open hands of receptive, obedient trust (the “obedience of faith”—see Romans 1:5; 16:26).
Christ is the goal of Israel’s story. Intriguingly, in this chapter, Paul appeals to Deuteronomy 30, where God threatens Israel with exile, but then promises rescue on the far side of exile. In Deuteronomy 30, knowing Israel will rebel against him after he leads them in conquest of the Promised Land, Yahweh lays out both near-term consequence and long-term promise. Exile will come, but it will be followed by rescue and return.
Even so, the language that Deuteronomy uses to describe the eventual return from exile looks far beyond anything that happened when Israel was brought back into the Promised Land after the Babylonian exile. The Lord told Israel that they wouldn’t have to “ascend into heaven” to bring rescue down (Deuteronomy 30:5). Paul extends the logic: nor would they have to “descend into the abyss” to bring rescue up. Paul wants his readers—and us—to know that as far back as Deuteronomy, the Lord had been pointing to his own plan to send Christ from heaven in the incarnation and to bring him up from the abyss in the resurrection, for the salvation of Israel and of the whole world. All this the Lord would do—and now has done—to secure for us the ultimate return from exile: return from the exile of sin and of death. All this is on his dime, not ours. All this is by his efforts, not ours. All this is by his own merit, not ours. All this is by his own righteousness and faithfulness, not by ours. All this is by his own commitment to keep covenant, not by ours.
Glory be. What possible response could there be except the one Paul puts before us: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+