Sermon - On The Inside

Preached on July 10, 2011 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Biblical text: Romans 8:1-11

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers on television. Mr. Rogers was trained as a minister, but he decided instead to learn about child development and to host a television show. I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that every afternoon, Mr. Rogers called me his neighbor, and he said “I like you, just the way you are.”

A journalist was interviewing Mr. Rogers some years ago, and as they walked together on a city street, they saw a young boy of about six or seven, out with his mother, brandishing a long toy sword. Mr. Rogers said to the journalist, “often when children carry weapons, it’s because they don’t feel strong on the inside.”

Paul was writing a letter to the Romans, and I think that if he had known that people would read his letter for centuries all over the world, he would have been a little less honest, and a lot more protective about the things he chose to share. Or maybe not. Either way, Paul isn’t carrying any swords. He opens up and lets it all out there. Paul is telling his secrets.

Writing to the church in Rome, he admits to them that even though he wants to be a person of righteousness, a person of integrity, compassion, generosity, a person who fulfills his potential and measures up for God, in fact he makes a mess of it. He can’t live it. Not because he doesn’t want to, and not because he doesn’t know what that life would look like. He just can’t. He tells them:

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
(Romans 7:15, 18b-19a?)

Those lines come just before the part that we heard today, and he’s probably still thinking about himself when he talks about what it’s like to live in the flesh. Now, the flesh is a concept of Paul’s that needs some defining. What he means is the part of being human that gets lost even when we’re sure we know the way. He means the part of being human that breaks something by accident and then just walks away if no one was looking. It means the part of being human that is so broken, we don’t do what we want and we do what we don’t want. That’s the flesh, for Paul, so then he says:

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires…the mind governed by the flesh is death.”

To live in the flesh is to live only by what you can do on your own, and no matter who it is, Paul knows that to live on your own is a losing race. He can’t do it on his own. His own failings get in the way.

Paul tells his secrets in this letter, but I wonder if Paul is also telling our secrets.

How many times do we fail to live as we would want to, and the next week, or the next day, or even in the next moment we wonder “why did I do that?”

Someone’s cell phone rings, and the name on the screen is that of an old friend, a friend whose elderly parents have recently died, and who probably spent the day cleaning out their home. So why doesn’t this person answer the phone. Not wanting the friend’s pain as an interruption, the call goes to voicemail. Why did I do that?

A mother wonders why she screamed at her children in the parking lot after the baseball game? They were tired and she was tired, and they were late for dinner at grandma’s, and the kids just couldn’t pay attention.

A man asks himself, after a couple at church has asked if he would help them to prepare dinner for the homeless families staying at our church, why did he say “next time” when in fact that is the answer I’ve given every time.

It isn’t that we don’t want to be people of goodness and compassion, and it isn’t because we don’t know what that looks like, Paul says. It is something inside us that turns us the other way. We can see the person we want to be, and we can even pretend that we are that person, but the secret we hold inside is that we are not. We do not measure up.

When Mr. Rogers was describing that young boy with the sword, he could have been talking about any of us. We don’t feel strong on the inside, but instead of carrying swords, we put on a good show of having things together. We create an identity that is successful, and happy, and most of all, lovable. And we really do love that image that we carry around. But inside, we’re not so strong. Inside, we’re not so lovable, because we know the things that we’ve done and the things we have failed to do. But that’s not the face we show. In public, we carry the sword.

Thankfully, God has never been one to just sit back and wait for us to get it right. We do not worship a God who is keeping track of good deeds and bad deeds and assigning our names to one list or the other. We worship a God who is with us, whose Spirit lives within us. We are not on our own. At the center of our lives is not the secret of our failings. At the center of each of us is God.

Paul writes about the frustration of failure and the sickness we feel about our shortcomings. I know how it feels, he says. I can’t do it either. No one can. But you are not alone. You are not alone, because the Spirit of God dwells in you. Deep inside of you, at the centermost place, is the Spirit of God.

Listen to his words again:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free.
…You are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, since indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
…And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

We talk about God out there, but Paul talks about God in here. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus Christ, also dwells in you, and who knows what new life will rise within you? Yes, you’re still you, you still have a mixed up human life that fails you, but you aren’t living in your failings, you’re living in God’s Spirit. There is something more within you, and the something more in you, the something more that does more than you can do alone is God, a spiritual presence working in you and with you to live more fully than you even think is possible.

In Christ, God has dealt with our failings, and they no longer keep us from God. God loves us in the midst of our broken promises and broken dreams. God loves us when we are unlovable. And God’s love actually frees us from the power that our failings have over us.

God frees us from a law we had to live up to, and the result of this freedom is that we can finally fulfill the law through the power of Christ dwelling inside. We finally do that which we want to do, not by redoubling our efforts, not by telling ourselves sternly that next time will be different, but by the outpouring of God’s spirit, the way a that a dry river bed, when the snows in the mountains melt and the spring rains fall, fills with water that splashes onto the riverbanks. It isn’t our own resources, but God’s. God sees that we are just tripping all over ourselves trying to earn God’s love, and God comes in and loves us preemptively. God dwells within us, and God’s spirit wells up from within us to fulfill all that we were meant to be.

By God’s resources, we answer the phone to share the burdens of a friend; we find reserves of patience when we are tired, and we throw our hands into service even when it makes us uncomfortable.

I think of mission trips that I have taken to meet our brothers and sisters and to be of service to them. A cluster of comfortable, middle class people like me show up at their homes, and the first thing we see is the rusting laundry machine in the yard where the children play, the soaked and decomposing sofa cushions strewn on the dirt lawn, the car battery, leaking acid, and the smell of rotten food. We show up and take in the sights and sounds, and some of the kids, and especially some of the adults have an involuntary physical aversion. They have come here to love and serve with these neighbors in Christ, but how can they do that if they feel too ill to stay more than five minutes? But there is something else within them. The desire to turn away passes, and they do love their neighbors, they embrace their neighbors, and later in the week, looking back on that first day, they say that it was the love of God inside of them.

“I would never have done that on my own, but something inside me kept me going.” That something inside is the Spirit of God, doing more in you, and more in all of us, than we could ever do ourselves.

The mother of the boy with the sword recognized Mr. Rogers. “Look, son, it’s Mr. Rogers.” And the boy slips slightly behind his mother’s legs. Mr. Rogers kneels down at the boy’s level, leans in and whispers in the boy’s ear.

Walking away, the journalist asks him. What did you whisper back there? What did you say to that boy with the sword?
What he whispered was this “you are strong on the inside.”

Hear the words of Paul, writing with such honesty, because these are words about you. Paul kneels down beside you, with your sword in your hand, and he whispers in your ear: “On the inside, in the centermost place. That’s where God lives. The Spirit of God lives in you, is a part of you, makes you who you truly are. Put away your swords. You are strong, on the inside."

- The article about Mr. Rogers is "Can You Say...'Hero'?" by Tom Junod, first published in Esquire, and collected in The Best Spiritual Writing 1999, edited by Philip Zaleski.