Good morning! It’s been a couple of full weeks for me. Two Sundays ago, our family was sitting in morning sun in Chapel Hill, NC watching our son Jesse graduate from college. He did it- paid his final $.50 library fine, so he gets his diploma. One down, two to go.

We were in the football stadium for graduation, and had the privilege of listening to Desmond Tutu address the graduating class of 3400, urging them to join with God in doing the work of God- feeding the hungry and clothing the poor. That was especially fun hearing at a public university.

Just about the time that Tutu finished speaking, I noticed a voicemail on my phone. I went up to the top of the stadium bleachers to listen to it. It was from our music director Gary Talbert, saying that Maxine was fading quickly. And by the time we talked a few hours later, she had gone to be with Jesus.

Yesterday’s service was a marvelous time to sing, worship and to honor Maxine as well. Just the kind of thing Maxine would have loved to be part of! Maybe a few of you are like me and dragging a bit this morning.

And then last Sunday we had the privilege of Dolphus and Rosie Weary being with us again, which was wonderful. I had to chuckle at the luxuries we enjoy. Many friends of mine who are pastors agonize when they will be gone with how to find someone to preach- it’s often a real challenge, especially in more rural areas.

But at Bethany, I don’t preach for a couple weeks and we have Tim Dearborn one week, and Dolphus Weary the next. It’s sort of laughable- talk about pulling out the “A” team!

We want to continue digging into the book of Romans this morning. Over the years, I’ve had lots of conversations with people who say “I love Jesus, but I can do without the church.”

Well, in the last few weeks I’ve heard other people saying “I love scripture, but I can do without the Apostle Paul!” I can understand that to a point. Paul can be difficult reading sometimes, and his words on gender and marriage and sexuality can be very challenging. But I have to say, I hope you realize how much we would lose without Paul’s letters.

• first, we would lose about 25% of the New Testament.
• second, we would lose an approach to faith that is carefully reasoned and thought through. Paul explains the gospel.
• third, we would lose our earliest documents. Paul’s letters were written much earlier than the gospels. Which means that when Paul wrote and spoke and traveled, he was bumping into people who had actually known and seen Jesus, including the resurrected Jesus.
• fourth, we would lose this amazing original record of what a radical call being it is to be a disciple of Christ, what it looks like lived out in real life.

Today, as we come to chapter 4, it starts out with a little 3-letter Greek word called “ouv.” The most common translation is “therefore,” although our pew Bible says “then.” This “therefore” is one of Paul’s favorite words, which he uses many times in Romans and Galatians and other places.

It’s very important, because everything of Paul’s builds on what came before. So when chapter 4 starts out “Therefore,” it means “given all that I said in the first 3 chapters…this is where we go.”

So what did the first three chapters say? Paul has made it quite clear that the gospel is big. The gospel means that people are finally set right with God. And the gospel is emphatically for all people. Everyone is in equal need of it, Paul said in the famous verse in Romans 3:23 last week, “For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Reading: Romans 4:1-3, 9-10, 13.

Maybe at some point you read Alan Paton’s very powerful novel of South Africa, Cry the Beloved Country. Stephen Kumalo is an elderly black priest from the country who goes to the big city of Johannesberg to find his estranged children. He is utterly lost in the big city, robbed and confuse but he is taken in by a sort of mission community, and befriended by a younger pastor named Msimangu, who helps him search for his kids.

As the story unfolds, Msimangu’s character shines bright and his quiet and steady faith causes Stephen to begin to hold him in awe. When Msimangu realizes he is being put on a pedestal, he deflects it, and says at one point, “I am a weak and sinful man. God put his hands on me. That is all.” God put his hands on me. That is all.

Maybe we should just end with that, because it sums up Romans 4. As the Apostle Paul sees it, this is what the gospel is all about. I am a weak and sinful person. God put his hands on me, that is all.

Do you remember the Old Testament story of Abraham? How God spoke to Abraham and his wife Sara, moved them away from their family and stability and told them to go down to the land of Canan? It was to Abraham that God spoke the amazing three-fold promise: that God would give him a land; that God would make of him a great nation (more descendants than the stars); and that he would be a blessing to all the people of the earth.

It was this Abraham who gave much of the good land to his relative Lot, Abraham and his wife Sarah who couldn’t have children- then impossibly did, Abraham who was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac- until God pulled him back from the edge, Abraham who went traveling and denied that Sarah was his wife.

Paul looks back into this Old Testament story in order to explain the gospel. Why? Why not just tell them that Jesus came from God, was God, was crucified, died, and resurrected and that this had both fulfilled and changed everything? Why not simply say the words “creation, incarnation, atonement, justification, sanctification, resurrection” and be done with it? Because those words wouldn’t mean anything.

Paul is trying to explain the gospel in a way that can be heard by his listeners in house churches in Rome.. Abraham was a very well-known figure, revered among the people of Israel. The people reading Paul’s letter knew Abraham, regardless of their background.. In fact, it’s hard to overstate how important Abraham was seen to be. It’s as if Paul thinks “If I can explain the gospel in a way that connects with the very familiar story of Abraham, I might be able to connect the people to Christ.”

We could take a lesson here, couldn’t we? Sometimes we get stuck in a rut thinking that the way in which the gospel was explained to us is the only way to do it, or the way Billy Graham explains it in a football stadium full of people is the only way to do it.

We treat the words of the gospel story as though they are magic, and somehow and someway if the right words are spoken, regardless of how people might hear them, amazing things will happen. But it’s not just a question of whether the word is true…but also whether it can be heard.

If I go downtown, inevitably there’s a street preacher propped up on one street corner or another, screaming and yelling and threatening people. Carrying a big black bible. Gonna frighten people into the kingdom. Gonna just shove Jesus down people’s throats. The thing is, plenty of the words he’s saying are true. And he might go home at the end of the day and say “Well, I really preached the word today.”

But if no one can hear him, what good has it done? He said the magic words: sacrifice, atonement, resurrection, but nobody heard. We need to think about how we can be both true to the gospel and say it in a way that might be heard. The scholar N.T. Wright says this is “part of the joy and stress of being a thinking Christian: constantly having to figure out the best way of saying essential things in an ever-changing culture.”

So Paul uses the Abraham story. Paul knew that the religious people of his day held Abraham in extremely high regard. They knew the stories. They knew that Abraham was special. And they assumed that Abraham was special because he was so righteous. He acted right, he was circumcised, he did the right things, and so (they thought) God had rewarded his behavior with special exalted status, and the promise of blessing- land, a mighty nation, a blessing to the world. And Paul thinks: “If I can get them to see Abraham in a new way, a clearer way, they might understand the gospel of Jesus.”

So Paul throws it out there, quotes the Abraham story from Genesis 15 that Todd read earlier. “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now, this sentence says a whole lot, but in words that we don’t usually use. So let’s think about them for a minute:

Righteousness = justified, being made right, whole, human, being in right-standing, right relationship with God.

Faith=belief=trust that God would do what God promised, regardless of outward circumstances. So in verse 19 Paul uses the story of Abraham and Sarah bearing children, even though they were clearly long past childbearing age. Realizing his own powerlessness, Abraham receives from God. Trustes.

Reckoned = a financial term, a business term. You put something onto somebody’s account. You give them credit. You impute something.

11 times in this chapter Paul uses “reckoned.”. Reckoned to him. With our bank account, how could this happen? Either someone earns it (wages, what is due- which Paul says “no, this is not what I mean”) or they receiv it as a gift (to which Paul says an emphatic “yes!”).

Paul’s point is that far from Abraham being special because of something he had done…Abraham was simply a receiver. When God made the promises to Abraham, they were unconditional. God didn’t say “I’ll do these things if you do those.”

God just put something on him. God looked at Abraham, a pretty normal man with strengths and weakness and plenty of screwups, not a spiritual giant, and said “I declare you righteous.” Not because of what he had done, but because God chose to do it. Abraham did not figure out how to get close to God. God got close to Abraham. He reckoned him righteous. The only thing for Abraham to do was receive, to trust.

The Greek word for “reckoning” is related to “logos,” or “word.” God worded Abraham, God spoke him into righteousness, imputed it, declared it so. Made him something out of nothing. Created him (v17).

It might well have been Abraham who said “I am a weak and sinful person. God put his hands on me. That is all.”

That is all. So Paul has explained how this righteousness came to Abraham. He also says how it did NOT come. The righteousness did not come by works as though it were due, or owed to him, but as a gift. And Abraham received God’s free declaration, his promise long BEFORE he was ever circumcised ( which didn’t happen until 14-29 years later, the time span Genesis chapter 15 to chapter 17), so the righteousness wasn’t because of that.

And it wasn’t because of the law, because (Paul says in Galatians) that was still 430 years away from even being given to Moses. No, it was clearly a free gift. That doesn’t mean the way we live, the membership among God’s people or the law were unimportant…only that they came after God set things right in grace.

How about a picture. Imagine that your home was destroyed in an earthquake. Insurance didn’t cover it (interestingly, “an act of God”), you had absolutely no way of rebuilding, and you had no money. Now imagine that someone walked up to you, handed you the deed to a new house and the keys and left you with your mouth wide open.

Now of course, immediately a few things would happen. One, you would be responsible for paying the next round of property taxes. Secondly you would be the one to do any upkeep required. Of course.

Now, does the fact that you are investing money mean that you earned the house? Of course not. You were absolutely given it as a gift. You didn’t deserve it, lots of people lost houses. You didn’t earn it. You weren’t given the house because you paid the taxes on it…those came after. And if you choose to let the house fall apart and utterly disintegrate and turn into the shame of the neighborhood, that’s your choice.

But I doubt if you are going to do that. Instead, I think you will be so grateful, so moved by what you’ve been given…that you will steward it. Share it, have people over. You won’t do those things because you have to, but because your heart is full.

What Paul says here is that this was Abraham’s experience. He received from God in spite of doubts, failings, deception…trusted in God before the law, the sign or any good works could be calculated. God drew near. That is all.

And if this was Abraham’s experience, it could be anybody’s experience. Didn’t matter if they were Jewish or Gentile or black or white or anything else. Didn’t matter what they had done. They belonged to God because God said they belonged to him.

And if it could be Abraham’s experience, it could be your experience. We can then live out the joy of being in God’s family through good works, through the mark of being part of God’s family (think baptism, maybe, instead of circumcision), by obeying God’s law. But the order matters. It’s all God first, then response.

If Abraham can receive the promise based only on God’s reckoning…how much more might we receive the fulfillment of the promise in Christ, based only on God’s grace. Which means that Paul has circled back around to Jesus, which was his intention in the first place.

Now. Our amazing Director of Congregational Care, Linda Cutshall, has a favorite phrase that she has used so many times, it has rubbed off on me over the years. If you are ever in a meeting or conversation with Linda that requires some thinking outside of the box, some dreaming, some brainstorming, she will often say “I wonder what it would look like if…?

So this morning I thought I’d leave you with two “What would it look like?” questions, one at a time, and give you just a minute to reflect between each one. Close your eyes if it’s helpful.

What would it look like…for you to be passionate about sharing Christ with other people…in a way that they might be able to hear? (repeat) And who might those people be? (reflection)

What would it look like if you could live life knowing you were deeply loved by God already…and didn’t have to perform to earn it? (reflection)

Again, from Cry the Beloved Country: Then Stephen said, “in all my days I have known no one as you are.” And Msimangu said sharply, “I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.” Let us pray.