“Made To Need God”

August 7, 2011

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

The Hebrew Testament, the only part of our Bible that would have existed in Jesus’ day and for years after his resurrection, is a library of books, or scrolls really – each one a chronicle of God’s people and their struggles. It was these stories, first shared in the oral tradition and then recorded and passed down to each generation, that formed the identity of the Hebrew or Israelite people as ‘God’s people.’ It was the ‘genealogy’ of the Jewish people, of whom Jesus, his disciples, and early followers were all a part.

In Hebrew Scripture can be found the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Ruth, Esther, the prophets, and others. Sometimes in these stories the people were very close to God, often times, for whatever reason, they were not. Yet, always in these stories, God was faithful. God never forgot the promise made to Abraham. Always, God kept the covenant – even when Abraham’s descendants did not. Always, God was merciful and received his people back. And always the people, who believed themselves chosen, were welcomed back and forgiven. No matter what they had done, they remained in the Father’s eyes his children, the ‘chosen ones,’ God’s people.

But the Gospel accounts of the role these ‘favorites’ of God played in the events leading up to Jesus’ death on the cross would change all that, right? What they did had changed every-thing. Anyway that’s what those new followers of Christ who were Gentiles must have been thinking. For these early Christians, it was the very people God wanted to save who turned against God’s Son, who rejected his teaching and called for his death on a cross. It was God’s ‘chosen ones’ who turned their backs on Jesus and shouted, “Crucify him!” It was the Jews who were clearly the bad guys in the gospel story. They had shown their true color. Their fall from grace was deserved. It was the last straw. No way should God forgive them for this. How could they still be considered ‘his people’ after what they have done to Jesus?

They plotted against him; they demanded his crucifixion even though a few days earlier they had welcomed him and received him as the messiah; they betrayed and denied him; and by some accounts, they were responsible for his death. When all was said and done, they rejected God revealed in Jesus Christ.

But why, why did they reject him? Was it because of their preconceived ideas of who Jesus should have been? Was it their closed minds? Was it their not understanding what he was trying to teach them? Were his ways too hard? Was he asking too much? Or was it their refusal to give up their set ways and ideas of how things should be? Was it their wanting to be safe at all cost, their not wanting their boat to be rocked? Was it their not wanting to give up control? Or put others first, and giving up their status? Was it their not wanting to change what they were doing? Or replace ‘their’ rules with God’s way? Or change traditions and the way things were always done? Or step outside their comfort zones? Or be transformed? Or was it a combination all these things and more that caused them to reject Jesus and what God was calling them to become through him?

So, the apostle Paul asks in today’s reading from Romans, a question we may have asked at one time or another, yet maybe differently. If his people have rejected him, Paul says, “I ask then, has God rejected his people?” In light of all that seems to be going on, and with all that is happening, has the Father turned his back on those who were once favored?

You’ve been favored, haven’t you, (special or set apart from everyone else) or at least felt you were, at one time or another? I have. I can remember as a kid thinking of my family and I as being somehow special – because things then always seemed to work out, and for God’s people things work out. It seemed to make sense at the time. Yet, it’s funny how a big head can so easily be deflated with a good dose of reality. Because there were times, later on, when things didn’t work out and it seemed like God had ‘left the house,’ the future was not so bright, and I very much felt alone. I don’t like that feeling. But even then, there is hope. As Paul has pointed out these last several weeks, “God uses all things for good.” The point of today’s text follows that same theme.

“Has God rejected his people?” Paul quickly, and without hesitation, answers his own question, by saying quite matter-of-factly, (No)… “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” He then cites Hebrew scripture that tells about Elijah pleading with God to do something terrible to the Israelites because they have “killed his prophets.” And what does God say? Essentially God says, “They’re not all bad. I have kept a remnant – a few – who will carry on by my grace.” 

Paul speaks of the Jews poor judgment, and their action of rejecting Jesus, as stumbling but not falling. In fact, God uses their stumbling, Paul says, to bring salvation – and the Good News – to the Gentiles. That is a good thing. And according to Paul then, after all the Gentiles have been brought in, then the Jews will receive the salvation they have been promised. That’s a good thing as well.

‘Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.’
‘And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’

God has not and will not reject his people. Paul says that’s not what God is all about.

In verse thirty-two, Paul writes, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Stumbling is part of who we are as human beings, its how we were made, it’s what we do – Paul lays it out there for all to see. Yet he says, in our disobedience, there is hope for all of us because God is merciful to all. We are made to need God.

A person might think, “That really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why didn’t God create us to be obedient, after all isn’t that what God wants us to be?” Paul must have asked that same question of himself because he came to the conclusion that he would never, in this world, understand God’s ways. It was beyond his understanding or ours. So he wrote:

‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’
‘Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?’

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory for ever. Amen.

Are we any different from Paul? Do we know more than Paul? I don’t think so. We don’t know the mind of God either. But Paul knew people – and he came to the conclusion that ‘being favored’ was never the point but rather that all of us, every one of us, ‘were made to need God.’ And that I think is the point in our reading from Romans today. We were made to need God. We all stumble, but we do not fall. God’s grace covers everyone. It is for all of us – for the chosen, as for the outsiders alike. ‘‘We were made to need God.’

So in everything we do as a church and as the people of God may we place our trust in God’s grace that we too will be used for good.