Who Will We Be Now?
Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
“When the cheese slips off the cracker” is an informal way to say someone has lost their grip on reality, might be acting a bit out of character. Like when my great aunt Dorothy Mae sent us a wedding gift. It was a big box wrapped with a bow. It could have been a place setting. So I unwrapped it with joyful interest as a bride-to-be. However, instead I found a collection of items that might have been gathered from her hall closet… a figurine of an angel, a bottle of lavender room spray, some batteries, a bottle of tylenol, some chamomile tea, and then there it was… Also included in the wedding gift – an enema. (only one! Not even a set - his & hers in our case). Allan looked at me and said, Who sent this? I was 24 yrs old and mortified. My sweet, great aunt Dorothy Mae?! My mother died laughing when she heard about it and said, she is a character. Maybe it’s a joke? Or maybe Aunt Dorothy Mae’s cheese is slipping off her cracker!
Today’s text is for all of us who at one time or another experience something that feels like:
The cheese has slipped off the cracker!
Or the wheels have come off the truck;
Or the train has come off the track.
Pick your idiom.
When life comes at you/us hard? And it often does. How will we respond?
In his letter to the Romans, Paul is on fire to preach the good news of the grace-filled Lordship of Jesus. A letter to Rome was a letter to the political, economic, and military capital of Paul’s world. He is addressing the needs of the early church who lives under a government with whom they may not always agree. That’s why readers will hear Paul addressing societal problems as contemporary as today’s headlines and as intimate as personal heartache. He could no more avoid such problems than a thoughtful writer today if he was going to say anything relevant. Our reading today is only the first five verses of chapter 5 which kicks off a theologically dense and rich section through Romans chapter 8. The problem named here is affliction and disappointment… No one is exempt from these two realities. Certainly not followers of Jesus.[1]
Like them, we are afflicted about many things, I suspect. Things close to us and things out there in the wider world. There is the pain and suffering of everyday life, in our closest circles of family, friends or colleagues… personal hardship, health issues, stress of all varieties...
Then there’s the bigger stuff – this weekend’s headlines are full of senseless violence – elected officials gunned down; grand-scale conflict - politically motivated on our homeland’s soil; but let’s not be so myopic that we fail to remember the global atrocities that are always occurring.
The afflictions we might feel are overwhelming. The disciples often felt overwhelmed, afraid of what the established government, or religious leaders, would do to them, or to Jesus; as he was preaching such subversive messages about putting the poor first, and loving the outcasts, and building a “kingdom” of God VERRRRY different from established rule of law. At one point, in John 6, amidst grumbling from a broad bunch of disciples Jesus asks, “Does this offend you?” And it's reported that many of his followers turned away and left. So, Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Peter responds confessionally “Lord, to whom can we go?” His response is laced with a bit of despair and truth. And I wonder if some of you are clinging to your faith that way these days. Unsure and uncertain about what difference a little church of rebellious Baptists and subversive Christians is going to make in this culture, but trusting and believing that our hope is built on something bigger than us!
Like the church at Rome, we could use some encouragement. Take Paul’s reminders to heart: Even when you are hemmed in with problems, God is always working to set things right, to set us right with him.
Affliction produces endurance
and endurance forges unwavering character;
and character builds hope.
It’s not cross your fingers, roll the dice kind of hope. This is “alert expectancy.”[2] Hope that doesn’t “put us to shame.”[3] Hope that will never leave you feeling short-changed.[4]
WE have reason to be hopeful - because the love of God has come to be poured out in our hearts, it says in vs 5.
LOVE here makes an entrance in Romans, but in fact, Love is the narrative arc leading to the triumphal declaration in Ch 8 that nothing can separate us from the Love of God (8:28-39). That is good news for all people.
Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood/love and righteousness. For Paul, Love is defined by that self-giving act of Jesus on the cross. The love of God demonstrated for all the world in that act! That love remains in our hearts as a present reality is because of the Holy Spirit.[5]
Spirit keeps pouring up cups of love, like a barista pours coffee, never letting the love run out.
One writer said, We have become the storehouse of God’s love for humanity because the Spirit resides in us.[6]
Now, “Storehouse” might make you think: storing up for later, holding, hoarding. But that is not the nature of God’s love. That’s certainly not the nature of the Spirit as you might recall - The wind of the Spirit is always blowing OUT, not merely circulating within.
That’s why I love Paul’s word choice of pouring… pouring makes you think of something that overflows when the vessel tries to hold too much. In order to receive more, you’ve got to pour it out! That sounds like the overflowing love of God.
So, even when it seems like everything is going wrong, “We rejoice,” Paul says, in our sufferings—not because we enjoy affliction, but because we are loved and we are being made more like Christ through God’s grace and love. Our love is being shaped by God’s love that is poured into us.[7]
When a denomination wants to shape our love to be more narrow, it’s wrong.
If our ideology is limiting God’s love from flowing to all people through us, it’s not of the Spirit.
If our politics strangles the love out of us so that we only spew vitriol at those we disagree with,... time to get a refill of that Love from the Holy Ghost.
Oh, God’s going to take care of saving this world with us or without us. But I sure would like to be part of it. Wouldn’t you?
Nothing can separate us from God’s love. This good news is for you, but not only for you. Turn to your neighbor and say, Nothing can separate you from God’s love. Imagine somebody you have an awful time loving. Nothing can separate even them from God’s love.
In Brennan Manning’s introduction to The Ragamuffin Gospel, he described the people he had in mind when he wrote his little book of radical grace. It’s a description of folks I hope find their way into our fellowship because they’ll find friends here, and fellow strugglers. And so many need to know they can belong somewhere that God’s people will love them. He wrote:
This gospel is for the bedraggled, beat up, and burnt out.
-for the afflicted and disappointed.
-for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together;
-for the poor, weak, and sinful folks with hereditary faults.
-for the too proud who can’t accept the handout of amazing grace.
-for the earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay.
-This gospel is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker
-for the road-weary, for the new-parent-kind of-tired,
-for the bent and bruised who worry their lives are a disappointment to God.[8]
Who will we be now?
We are above all things loved - that is the good news of the gospel - and loved not just the way we turn up on Sundays in our best clothes and on our best behavior and with our best feet forward, but loved as we alone know ourselves to be, the weakest and shabbiest of what we are along with the strongest and gladdest.[9] Amen.
[1] Achtemeier, Paul J. Interpretation Series, Romans
[2] Peterson, Eugene The Message Romans 5:1-5
[3] Common English Bible Romans 5:5
[4] Peterson
[5] Wan, Sze-kar Working Preaching commentary Romans 5:1-5, June 2025
[6] ibid.
[7]https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/all-access/trinity-sunday-year-c-lectionary-planning-notes/trinity-sunday-year-c-preaching-notes
[8] Manning, Brennan The Ragamuffin Gospel ©1990