I was thinking that we’d skip the sermon today, and I’d just offer some highlights from the last 10 years! No, of course we’re not doing that. We’re continuing in our Romans series.

In 1925, as the poet Thomas Stearns Eliot (T.S.) was wrestling with becoming a Christian, he wrote a poem called “The Hollow Men.” It is one of his more famous poems, including the ending of it which you probably recognize “…this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” which left generations of English students pondering exactly what he meant. But earlier in the poem, and easier to understand, is this fascinating stanza:

“Between the idea
And the reality,
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.”

I’m not an expert on Eliot’s life and thinking, but I believe he was grappling with the discouraging disparity between the life a person may desire to live…and the actions actually lived out. Eliot wasn’t the first one to deal with such an idea. The Apostle Paul deals rather famously with the same dilemma. Please stand with me if you are able.

Reading: Romans 7:14-25a.

I have absolutely loved these June summer mornings we’ve had, haven’t you? They make it easier to get up, easier for me to go exercise in the mornings, easier to come to work early. Several times in the last weeks I’ve been sitting at a table outside of Starbucks before 7am, drinking my coffee and reading a book or writing. It’s nice because before 7 am, the Ave hasn’t quite woken up yet and it’s pretty quiet.

Directly in front of Starbucks is a NO STOPS zone. From the corner on, the curb is painted bright red. And there is a very visible 2 foot square sign which clearly reads “NO STOPS- TOW AWAY ZONE.” It’s marked that way to make it safe for pedestrians at the crosswalk, and to allow room for the large Metro buses to swing freely around through the intersection.

So I was interested and amused to watch three mornings in a row, drivers pull up in front of Starbucks, obviously see the red curb and sign, park their car anyway, get out of the car and eye the “NO STOPS TOW AWAY ZONE ” words and casually lock their car and go get their coffee or bagel or whatever.

Time after time, blatantly illegal. They knew exactly what they were doing. What I always wanted to say but never had the courage to was “Wow, you must be really important because we all have to obey that law but obviously it doesn’t apply to you!” I mean, it’s the law, right? It tells us what’s right and wrong.

The Law. When Paul uses that phrase in Romans, he’s not talking about civic parking laws, but something much, much more important. He’s talking about the law of Moses, the Old Testament law that guided Jewish life and which might be represented in shorthand form by the Ten Commandments that Steve read earlier- have no idols, don’t steal, don’t covet, etc.

In many ways, it was the foundation of life and faith for Jews of Paul’s day. The Law is God’s Word, written down, studied, soaked in. It was dissected and interpreted and exegeted, especially by Jewish scholars and leaders just like the Apostle Paul, who had been educated and trained as a Pharisee. The Law was a just thing, a holy thing, a good thing, Paul himself says in Romans 7:12.

But…nearly every time Paul has used “The Law” up to this point, it has been in a negative sense. The Law is connected to flesh, to death, to sin. And Chapter 7 is “the Law chapter” in Romans. The Law is mentioned 31 times in 25 verses in this chapter. 31 times! So I’m thinking we’re supposed to notice it. Now, you may say “What on earth does OT Jewish Law have to do with us in 2009? We’re Christians!”

There’s a wide spectrum at how people have looked at the Law. On the one hand, there’s my friend Bob. When Bob was considering the Christian faith, we talked a lot about it…and what became clear is that Bob thought of Christianity as merely a code of conduct, a set of laws to live by. When I explained that I thought we could actually KNOW God, Bob was totally befuddled. He was comfortable with rules to live by, but not so much with a relationship with God. Some people think Christians are law-livers.

On the other hand are the people who say “We’re Christians, we’ve moved beyond the Law…the New Testament trumps the Old Testament, right, so we don’t need to worry about the Law anymore, right?.” Theologians would call these folks antinomians, “anti-Law” folks. Maybe like the drivers who park in the No STOPS ZONE, they’ve been freed from the Law! BUT then there’s the matter of Jesus saying that he came to FULFILL the Law, not abolish it.

So. Do we simply throw out the Old Testament Law? Our spiritual ancestors of the Reformation would emphatically say “no.” People like Martin Luther talked about two uses of the Law: First, that it was given to restrain public unrighteousness. That without some legislation, some benchmark, if people were left to their own devices there would be a kind of unrighteous anarchy, so the Law was good for providing that.

Second, the Law convicted people of sin and thus pointed them towards the need for a Savior, a Rescuer in Jesus. Then John Calvin came along- and by the way, in Presbyterian circles this year there are all sorts of events and things being written to celebrate the 500 th anniversary of Calvin’s birth…I feel sort of obligated to tell you that! Calvin advocated what has come to be known as the “third use of the law,” that is, that it can act as a guide for our lives.

Paul’s point in Romans is NOT that the Law is bad, rather it’s the sin that resides inside of people which tries to make the Law into something it isn’t. The Law wasn’t intended to save people, it wasn’t intended to be God. You might say the Law can point us to righteousness, but it can’t produce it in us. Following a law doesn’t lead to life. Merely being legal is no way to live.

On Tuesday morning this week, I went once again to sit on the Avenue for coffee in the early morning. This time I was at a table in front of Peet’s Coffee- just so you don’t think I’m stuck in some kind of rut! As I sat down, I looked a couple shops down to the left that also has chairs out front, and saw a shabbily-dressed man sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the shop door, sleeping or passed out or something. From where I sat, I could tell he was breathing regularly.

I wondered what I should do. I thought about the small amount of time I had that morning. I thought about the lack of resources. I thought about how many times I’ve seen the police or fire department called to such a scene. I thought about the large number of homeless people who frequent Queen Anne Avenue, let alone other places in Seattle.

I tried to read my Eugene Peterson book that deals with the parables of Luke. I had a hard time reading. I watched as every person walked down the sidewalk did a double take, looking at the man on the ground, then looked away and kept walking. I watched as people brought their coffee and newspaper and sat in chairs within two feet of the man, never giving him another look.

I thought about Jesus’ parable in Luke about the man who was injured and the religious people who walked by, following their laws, but it was the despised Samaritan who stopped to help.

I finally got up and asked the people nearest the man if they knew anything about him, and they seemed surprised anyone was asking about him. I went into the shop and asked the employees if they knew anything about the man on the ground in front of their store. They rolled their eyes and said “Is he still there? We told him he had to leave.” When I got back outside the Fire Dept was pulling up. I felt pretty hollow.

There’s no law that says we need to bind up someone’s wounds. No law that says we have to be inconvenienced or have compassion on someone. It’s perfectly legal to walk by people or let our hearts get hard. But you know, merely being legal is no way to live.

So what is the good way to live, and where does it come from? Paul has already told us a number of times that life, real life, really living- comes through grace.

Several times I’ve mentioned to you my obsession with the book by Victor Hugo, and also the musical version of Les Miserables. But I have to mention it again because it gives such a great picture of the tension we seem to live in, and that Paul is wrestling with. One main character, Jean Valjean, is an ex-convict who breaks his parole, but who along the way experiences grace in his life. One human being reaches out to him, trusting him, giving him what he has not earned…and it changes everything. Valjean sings:

Why did I allow that man
to touch my soul and teach me love
he treated me like any other
he gave me his trust
he called me brother
my life he claims for God above
Can such things be?
He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?

Shaped by grace he begins to live his life differently, owning up to his mistakes and reaching out to a woman in difficult circumstances and raising her daughter when she dies. Grace changed everything.

The other main character is a police detective named Javert, who is obsessed with recapturing Jean Valjean. Javert also is from a difficult background, but sees the world as orderly and good when people live correctly by the dictates of the law, receiving reward or punishment as need be. His song says this:

Those who follow the path of the righteous
shall have their reward-
and if they fall like Lucifer fell- the flame, the sword.
For so it is written on the doorway to paradise
that those who falter and fall must pay the price.

The conflict peaks when Valjean (grace) voluntarily shows mercy to Javert (the legalist), even saves his life. But Javert never gets it. He is so intent, so insistent that you earn what you get, and get what you earn by living righteously within the law, that he neither understands nor can even allow himself to receive mercy. It is his ultimate undoing. Merely being legal is no way to live.

This book, all 1200 pages, has been read widely since 1862. In fact, there’s a great little story that says that the correspondence between Richard Hugo and his publisher is the shortest on record. Hugo was on vacation when the book was published in 1862. He telegraphed just one character- a question mark- to his publisher, who replied with just one character- an exclamation point. The book was selling!

The musical from 1980 is one of the most popular shows ever performed. 50 million people have watched, across 34 countries and 20 languages. Why this huge following on a wrestling match of law and grace? I think it’s because it is so real. Because it is our story, whether we think we are religious or not. Paul says that the law, overcome by the sin inside us, cannot get us to righteousness: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Scholars on the book of Romans have made careers for centuries now, trying to figure out exactly who Paul is referring to here in our passage for today. Who is this “I” this passage refers to? (I don’t do the things I want…)

Is it Paul referring to himself and his struggles before he met Jesus, now behind him? Is it Paul sharing the struggle that still exists in his life, even though he has become a Christian? (Martin Luther’s famous saying was “simultaneously justified and yet a sinner) Or is Paul representing in a much larger sense all the people of Israel, mired in a doomed legalism? I think it’s difficult to know for sure, and I think living in the tension might actually be good.

And what about us? Is the agony that Paul describes over once we meet Christ? Or are we destined to live in chains even though grace has been said to set us free? Or, as I most strongly suspect it works, have we indeed been set free to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, yet are always free to slide back into depending on our own strength? Or a set of rules?

Where does this leave us? Much of the time, in tension. Transformed, yet vulnerable. Often suspended between the cross and the resurrection. Free, but not totally yet. John Stott says we can be like Old Testament Christians- he compares us to Lazarus stepping out of the tomb, alive but still bound hands and feet.

Where does that leave us? In need. Paul is begging for Israel, begging for his readers in the 1 st century church in Rome, begging for US to realize in the 21 st century…that we are people in need.

So.

-For T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men, what gets rid of the shadow between the idea and the reality?

-What is the difference between Valjean and Javert?

-How does one live by grace instead of law?

-What will turn us into Good Samaritans and not just religious people?

Merely being legal is no way to live.

We need God to do something. We need the Holy Spirit of God to live inside of us. This is where chapter 8 will move us…move us from the Law to the Spirit. Listen once more for Paul’s heart:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

And the answer: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Let’s pray.