Every Journey Begins Somewhere

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, February 21, 2010. The text for this week's message is Romans 10:8-13.

Today is the first Sunday of the season of Lent. Lent is the time of year when we look forward to and prepare for Easter. Officially, Lent starts with Ash Wednesday, which we celebrated just this past week. It began in the early church and eventually became a 40-day period that serves as a spiritual preparation for Easter Sunday. Essentially, it is a journey. It is a spiritual journey that we take as the people of God.

Maybe it’s just me, but I love a good travel story. And I’m not talking about the kind of story that involves hundreds of slides and long descriptions of the events that took place on a cruise. I’m talking about epic journeys that we watch on the big screen, or we read about in the comfort of our favorite chair. Stories of adventure and danger; stories that make you want to stay up late just to see what happens next. Stories that just suck you in.

One of my absolute favorite movie series is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I didn’t know much about them when they first came out, but for some reason, we ended up watching the first one, Fellowship of the Ring, with some friends who had joined us for dinner one night. And from that point on, I was hooked. Not long after we saw the first one, The Two Towers came out. We kept meaning to go see it, but when you’re a newlywed just trying to pay the bills, you don’t get out to see a lot of movies, and we never made it out to see it in the theater.

When Return of the King finally came out, we did go see it in the theater, and I can remember vividly how my heart was pounding as we watched the battle scene outside of Minas Tirith. It was exciting. I hadn’t read the books, so I had no idea what was going to happen next. I was thrilled. And to top it all off, there are some great illustrations and talking-points in all three of these movies.

But what got me so interested in the first place was that it was a story about a journey. Four little hobbits taken out of their comfortable world, and thrust onto a scene of events with global, long-reaching ramifications. The thought that someone who was often overlooked and deemed insignificant could do something that would have such long-reaching effects stuck with me. It intrigues me. And it is a solid metaphor for who we are as Christians.

Have you ever thought about your faith as a journey? There is an ultimate destination – heaven. Along the way, we encounter all sorts of things. Now, perhaps our journey is not nearly as dangerous as Frodo’s. As far as I know, there are no goblins or orcs trying to get to us. But for millions of people all around the world, it is a dangerous journey. There are places in this world where it is dangerous to live out the Christian faith and illegal to share the gospel. And like all journeys, there is a beginning to our Christian walk. And today’s Scripture gives us a glimpse into the beginning of our journey.

We kind of jump in to the middle of a conversation that Paul is having with his readers when we start with verse 8, so I want to take a brief look at what is going on in Romans 10 prior to today’s reading. Paul is laying out an argument that focuses on righteousness based on the law verses righteousness based on faith. Righteousness that is based on the law is a fleeting type of righteousness. For those who haven’t given up on reading through the Bible this year, you’ve recently walked through one of the toughest parts of Scripture. The laws that are laid out in Leviticus are very dry reading, and those are a lot of the laws that the people tried to keep in order to maintain righteousness.

As we’ll find out from reading the rest of the Old Testament, the Israelites didn’t do such a good job of keeping those laws. In fact, they were terrible at it. They were constantly turning to false idols, and trying more and more to become like the world that surrounded them. The righteousness based on the law was inadequate. Paul writes earlier in this letter, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

There is not one who has accomplished righteous living according to the law because if a person is guilty of breaking one part of the law, then he/she is guilty of breaking all of the law. It is impossible to be righteous from “doing the right things.” So, it is clear that our journey doesn’t begin with “doing the right things,” or “by being a good person.” Those aren’t the ways to begin your journey in the Christian faith. In fact, there is nothing outside of us that we can do to earn the righteousness of God.

Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 30:12-14 in Romans 10:5-8, and gives us a bit of commentary on that passage. And the last part of that Deuteronomy passage is what Paul quotes in verse 8. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” And what Paul is saying here is that the word of faith, the gospel that they have been proclaiming, is what they need in order to receive salvation. And he goes on to say that by confessing with one’s mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in one’s heart that God raised him from the dead, one can be saved.

Salvation is not that complicated. We have made it complicated by attaching all of these rules to it. But it’s really not. The Christian faith is not about a list of do’s and don’t’s. It’s not about what you should watch and what you shouldn’t watch. Or what you should listen to or not listen to. Those things come into play on the peripheries, but aren’t the focus of the Christian faith. In the season of Lent, we hone in on what the faith is all about. It’s about Jesus.

It’s not about what color the sanctuary is painted, or the type of carpet that we have, or where people sit, or what people are wearing. It’s not about saying the right things or about doing the right things. It’s about confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing that God has raised him from the dead. Let’s take a few minutes and look at those two statements.

First, confessing that Jesus is Lord. Think about the context for just a minute here. Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome. The Roman church was a gathering of Jews and Gentiles. In the Roman Empire, the emperor, also known as the Caesar, lived in Rome. And in the Roman Empire, Caesar was Lord. To confess that anyone besides Caesar was Lord was to commit treason against the Roman Empire. And treason was an offense punishable by death. Suddenly, confessing that Jesus is Lord just became a whole lot more dangerous. But this confession is so much more than simply a statement that somebody makes. It is something that has to come from a deep conviction.

Saying, “Jesus is Lord” is not a magical formula. It’s not like “open sesame” or “abracadabra.” It’s not like somebody can just make this confession and move on with their lives as they had before, assuming that now they are saved and can do whatever they want because now that eternity is taken care of and they can move to more pressing matters. Unfortunately, that is how some people treat their salvation these days. They treat it as if it is something to be checked off a to-do list, and not as a central focus in life. But when we understand what Paul is saying here, we see that there is no way we can possible approach our faith like this.

Paul is saying that our confession must come out of a deeply rooted belief that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Paul says that we must “believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead.” And the heart here doesn’t simply signify an emotional belief, but the heart was understood as the very core of a person. He is saying that we have to belief with all of our being in the resurrection of Jesus. And when you believe in something with all of your being, you can’t help but confess it.

Confessing that Jesus is Lord and receiving salvation from that confession begins with the heart, with the core of your being. Our sin is atoned for through our belief in the resurrection of Jesus. That’s what this season of Lent is all about. It is about a spiritual journey that we take to prepare our hearts for what it is that has been done for us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a journey in which we remember the story of the Christian faith. We remember why we do what we do. The message of salvation is the single most important message that you will hear and that you can share in your entire life. And it is a message that should be shared with everyone.

Paul goes on to say that the message of salvation is for everyone who believes. All who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Who are we to discriminate who gets to hear this message? As a Jewish listener to this letter, one might get offended. We talked about it a couple weeks ago when we looked at Jesus’ message to the people of Nazareth. The idea was that this message of salvation was only for the Jewish people, God’s chosen people. Jesus was very clear that salvation is for all people. Paul is simply following along those same lines. And yet, whether we realize it or not, we discriminate when it comes to sharing the gospel with others.

Everyone has that mental list of the people who they try to avoid. The name pops up on the caller ID, and you say, “Oh, I’ll call them back later” and never do. You get an email from them and your eyes immediately roll back. Or maybe it’s not somebody that you know. Maybe it’s those “loud neighbors” who are always outside making a ruckus. Maybe it’s those people down the street that you wish would just move already. There’s somebody like that in your life. And let me ask you – how willing are you to share the gospel with them? How willing are you to let them know that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead so that they could have salvation and enter into relationship with the God who created everything?

It’s tough, but that’s the logical end to what Paul is writing here. Paul and his companions went through all kinds of things to share the gospel with people that they didn’t even know. They faced persecutions, trials, beatings, execution, all so that they could spread gospel all over the known world. And yet, we have a hard time talking about Jesus to somebody that we see at work every day in a country where it is all right to talk about Jesus without any kind of legal consequences.

As we go through the season of Lent over the next month and a half, I want you to think seriously about your faith. Lent isn’t just a time when we give up soda or chocolate. It is a time when we remember the message of salvation. It’s a time when we remember what Jesus has done for us by giving his very life on our behalf. It’s a time when people all around us need to hear the good news that Jesus Christ died so that they could be reconciled with God. As we go through this season of Lent, don’t worry about what you are going to give up. Be thinking about what God gave for you and for those around you. Look at them with eyes that are colored by God’s love.