One Thing Leads to Another

One Thing Leads to Another

 

Romans 5:1-5

God's love poured into our hearts 

 

5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

 

5:2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

 

5:3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance,

 

5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

 

5:5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

 

 

You should know I am a Seinfeld freak. I know that there are those of you who are of a younger generation who have looked in on this relic of television sitcoms and have judged it as “disturbing,” due to its having fun with all kinds of human fits, foibles, and fetishes. Maybe it’s one of those “I guess you had to be there” kinds of things, but for many of my generation, it is still one of the most entertaining things on television. Like we can with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” many of us can almost quote the entire script of our favorite Seinfeld episodes, and those quirky characters have bored their way into our hearts, if not our brains. The only one who plays himself in the program is Jerry Seinfeld, who was already a quite successful standup comic before he and writer Larry David launched this TV series, which, after almost being cancelled several times early on, became a major hit and now a “cult” favorite. Flipping through the channels, I may come across a Seinfeld episode, and can instantly recognize, “Oh, this is the YADA-YADA,” or “THIS is the SOUP NAZI episode!” The channel surfing stops and I dig in, laughing at the same stuff I’ve laughed at since the 1990s with this thing. Doesn’t matter—the “show about nothing” IS something. George, Elaine, Kramer, Newman, the Costanzas and the Seinfelds, a revolving cast of major stars who happen by, including former Met star Keith Hernandez, and of course Jerry, have my attention.

 

So how did this passage from Romans remind me of Seinfeld, you may ask? It was an episode called “The Betrayal,” the 164^th show of the series that did the trick. In this bizarre episode, everything moves backwards in time. It begins with the “ending,” and each scene is “the day before,” or “several hours earlier.” Kramer is pictured at first gnawing on the stick of what was obviously once one of those giant lollypops you used to get at a county fair. As the show “progresses,” more and more of the lollypop is evident, until in the final scene, it is new and huge. The novel approach to time-keeping and storytelling is a bit confusing, until you realize what they are doing with it, but for sure, it is clear that, as we would say, “one thing leads to another” in a profound way. One of Kramer’s large cache of bizarre friends—“FDR,” Franklin Delano Romanoski—is featured, as is Elaine’s nemesis, Sue Ellen Mishki, the braless heir of the “Oh, Henry” candy bar fortune. Doesn’t exactly sound like any kind of parallel to one of Paul’s writings, does it? Well…maybe the Corinth letters?

 

But the Epistle to the Romans? (No, not ROMANOWSKI.) But Paul does a lot of “one thing leads to another” in his writing—a unique kind of parallelism, and in this particular passage, he “begins” with the ending, kind of like “The Betrayal” episode of Seinfeld: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ… And then Paul kind of “backs up” to rehearse some of the Christian faith journey, and how we must navigate the temporal and often challenging affairs of that journey. One thing leads to another.

 

In “The Betrayal” episode, the cascade of things begins with Kramer nailing FDR with an ice ball he had been saving in the freezer since Winter. For Paul, after comforting his audience with the “happy ending” about us being justified by faith in Christ, he then moves to the “curse” of our difficulties, but with a twist—he suggests that, thanks to the grace of God operating in the Christian, we can “boast” about our afflictions. While that sounds a bit goofy, we know that Paul often boasts about his own, and uses them as a testimony to either God’s ability to get us through them, or the strength of his human will to accomplish his mission, and most often, he refers to both “working” in him, simultaneously. But let’s look at the “process” of how navigating the trail of our troubles builds us up, rather than tearing us down.

 

First rung of the “steps”: Affliction produces endurance. Someone has said, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you strong.” I’m guessing maybe it came from Paul here in Romans 5? Some translations use “suffering” in place of “afflictions.” The root of the Greek word thus translated is thlibo, which literally means “to crush.” Sounds like stress to me! No matter how you cut it—or translate it—Paul is saying, basically, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you strong,” isn’t he? As much as I hate to admit it, I know I did some of my best ministry during those weeks when things “piled on,” created monumental stress, and forced me to rely on my “better angels,” my professional training, and most especially, God. I know some of you have heard my story about one particular week in seminary. Dara was out of town on business, so I had charge of the children, relying on a neighboring clergy spouse to help with the day to day. Finals were coming up in school, I had a “knockdown-drag-out” battle with one of the younger church leaders, had two funerals on the docket, and then Evan, who was just a tiny toddler, got very sick, sending me to the emergency room of Forbes Regional Hospital, late one night, having spiked a fever of 105. The part of the story I often relate is one of true grace. As that term in seminary was winding down, with its obvious “crushing” stress, our Pastoral Care professor walked into a room of students for the second half of that week’s class, which was a “seminar” time. At seminars, the larger class was divided into smaller groups for discussion of the week’s lecture and readings. As Dr. Andrew Purves entered the room, I think he could immediately sense the tension in the room (believe me, I was not the only student under great stress that week!). This Church of Scotland Presbyterian scholar sat down, kept his seminar notebook closed, folded his hands across the table, looked around the room into each of our eyes, and asked JOHN WESLEY’S famous question: “How is it with your soul, today?” We all broke into tears, a few sobbed out loud. The rest of that seminar was the good doctor just listening to our stories, our grief, our stress, and offered the sweetest dose of grace I have probably ever received, during that hour, then closed us in a compassionate prayer and let us go. That got me through the week. Not only did one thing lead to another, but the application of grace to my afflictions gave me the endurance to, well, endure! 

 

Step two: Endurance produces Character. The Greek word translated “character” literally means “to prove.” Paul is saying that when we endure our afflictions it builds strength in us. As a budding cook and baker (a retirement “bucket list” thing), I might like to think not of “proving,” but “proofing.” In baking bread, one must let the bread rise or “proof,” which lets the natural gluten in it create bonds and elasticity. Then when kneaded, it stretches these gluten “chains” and creates a wonderfully resilient and “chewy” bread. Enduring our hardships “proofs” us, letting our natural psychological and spiritual “gluten” become bendable, flexible, and resilient. Believe me, when under great duress, the last thing you want to be is stiff and inflexible. You can really hurt yourself that way!

 

We’re not done with the “one thing leads to another” scenario yet, though! Next, Paul writes that CHARACTER produces HOPE. Has there ever been a time for you lately when you couldn’t use a major shot of HOPE? We are living in times that are not at all hopeful, so HOPE may be the most powerful witness of the grace and love of God we can muster! When we are properly “proofed” by enduring our headships, the resulting resilient “character” oozes HOPE. It’s like the old story of a guy who falls into a deep hole and begins crying out for help. Eventually, a man comes along who jumps down into the hole with him, which leaves him shocked and incredulous: “WHAT are you doing? How is that helpful?” to which the friend responds, “Because I’ve been here before, and I know the way out!” One thing leads to another, and in this case, the “another” is hope, when hope is hard to come by. The dictionary defines “hope” as: a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” So, hope is both a feeling AND an expectation, and it may often be tied to a specific desired outcome. I like that. And so will others, when we share the source of OUR hope. Remember the “large lollypop” at the beginning of this passage! Jesus is more than just the “reason for the season,” friends.

 

Now we can see the wonderful ending of the story: God’s love being “poured into our hearts” by the Holy Spirt. Life will always take us on many “one thing leads to another” experiences, and while our tendency is to fear this as a “bad to worse” description, Paul backs it up and shows us that with God’s available grace, it CAN progress from worse to BETTER, or even to “healed,” if we set our eyes on Jesus, especially in the worst of days. There is one thing in this text that I don’t want to miss, though, and its something I touched on in a recent sermon: shame.

 

Paul says that hope does not “put us to shame.” There are enough things out there that will do their best to put us to shame. Remember that, unlike guilt, that says, “You have done a bad thing,” leading to confession and forgiveness, SHAME tries to tell us instead, “You’re a bad PERSON,” leading only to self-condemnation and mental and spiritual paralysis. Hope, according to Paul, puts SHAME to shame! Hope is both the salve and the ultimate remedy for the haunting shame, and its key ingredient is grace. The “rest of the story,” as the late Paul Harvey might have said, is that this “process” of one thing leading to another here in Romans 5 is a divine “cheat sheet” for getting through our “afflictions” not only less scathed, but strengthened, enlightened, and hopeful. Amen!