First Sunday in Lent Cycle C

February 25, 2007

Romans 10:8b-13

Pastor Gayle M. Pope

Jesus Is Lord

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

There’s a new TV ad for Microsoft’s latest computer operating system. It’s called the “Wow” ad. Have you seen it? The ad runs through several scenes of different people all over the world, each experiencing something that causes him or her to stop and say, “Wow.”

A man walks out of his house preparing to go for a run and sees a six-point buck standing perfectly still right in the middle of the street. “Wow!” A young boy looks through a window to see a world covered with freshly fallen snow. “Wow!” A woman takes a break from running to look back at the slope she’s just climbed. “Wow!”

There is great variety in these scenes, but it’s easy to relate to the common thread in all of them – the experience of being so moved by something we see or feel or experience that it just takes hold of us and we can’t help but say something, like “Wow” or “Oh, my gosh” or “That’s amazing!”

In moments like that, there is a consistency that runs through our whole being -- what we grasp with our senses, what we feel in our hearts and what we speak with our lips are all in alignment.

That’s not always the case with us human beings. We can think about things without feeling and we can feel things without thinking. We can know something in our heads and deny it in our hearts or know it in our hearts and deny it in our heads.

We can know something but be afraid to talk about it, or we can talk about something without knowing about it, or we can know about it and speak what isn’t true so that our mouths don’t match our heads and hearts.

This kind of insincerity or hypocrisy or duplicity can be especially prevalent in matters of faith. It’s always been that way – especially for those of us who have been raised in a culture of belief.

For people like us, it’s possible to learn the language of faith and the doctrines and rituals of organized religion, but never really get to know Jesus in our hearts. It’s possible to say we believe in Jesus without truly experiencing God’s grace. It’s possible to believe that Jesus died for our sins and saved us from eternal death without really trusting him with our lives.

It’s possible to speak words of faith without living a life of faith and it’s possible to live a life of faith without speaking words of faith.

It’s always been that way for us human beings. God understands this, but God calls us to something better. God calls us to faith that captures our minds and fills our hearts and spills out from our lips – a faith that sees Jesus and says, “Wow! Jesus is Lord!” And not only, “Jesus is THE Lord,” but also “Jesus is MY Lord.”

This is the faith that Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans, from which we read this morning. The text of today’s lesson is part of a section in Romans where Paul is addressing the question of whether Jews who reject Jesus as Savior are still saved through God’s covenant with Israel, and whether Gentiles who accept Jesus as Savior can really be saved even though they were NOT included in God’s covenant with Israel.

As to the first part, Paul does make accommodation in his theology of salvation for ALL Jews, as we find in the next chapter of Romans. But the important thing here is his affirmation that salvation is not ONLY for Jews – “for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

And by this, Paul means, especially, that we are NOT saved by the works we do to keep the law, which many Jews of his day had come to believe, but we are saved simply by grace through faith in Jesus.

And this salvation is not complicated or far off or inaccessible, though it may be difficult for us to accept. No, this word of faith is near us, on our lips and in our hearts. It is simply a matter of confessing – of saying, “Yes, Jesus is Lord” with your lips and believing that, “Yes – God raised Jesus from the dead” in your heart. “For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”

Confessing and believing in verse 9, believing and confessing in verse 10: the two aspects are stated interchangeably because they reflect a faith that grasps the WHOLE person and cannot help but spill out in word AND in deed.

This is the faith that the Apostle Thomas expressed when he saw the wounds in the hands and side of the Risen Christ and his mouth immediately formed the words, “My Lord and my God!”

To claim Jesus as Lord with heart and mouth is to recognize that there can be no greater allegiance in your life than to Christ, the Son of God. It is a recognition that nothing in this world of ours is any more central or important than the knowledge that I am a poor sinner so beloved by God that he came in person to die for me that I might live.

And with that recognition to just stand back and say, “Wow.”

How can I turn my back on love like that?” How can I keep it to myself and not share that good news with everyone?

Yet we DO turn our backs on God time and again. And we DO fail to proclaim the good news of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Paul talked about this reality earlier in the seventh chapter of Romans where he said:

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. … For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

Paul understands the struggle. But his confession of sin leads him right BACK to his confession of faith. His very next words are: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Is Jesus Lord of your life? If you have never confessed him as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit invites you to do so now. If you have fallen away from such a confession, the Spirit beckons you to return. If the Word of faith is in your heart and on your lips the Spirit rejoices in hearing it.

“Jesus is Lord.” Wow.”

If you believe that, I invite you now to sing with your lips and with your hearts the words in the medley of song printed in your bulletin.