Ultimate Intervention: Romans 3-4: Feb 25, 2007
The Ultimate Intervention Romans 3-4 February 25, 2007
Key text: Romans 3 and 4
Leif Enger has written a beautiful novel called Peace Like a River.
In the story Davy Land at 16 year old from the Midwest is accused of murder and has runaway on foot and then on horse back goes into hiding. His dad, his 11 year old younger brother Reuben, and his 9 year old sister Swede begin a country-wide search for him…
Peace Like a River is a moving story about Davy’s exile and how his family seeks to reunite with him…
Though Davy is a tough, rugged, independent teenager, he feels the anguish of being separated from his family.
Whenever we experience separation from people’s whose lives we were meant inter-weave with, we experience some kind of loss…
When a married couple fights and one of then up sleeping on the couch… that disconnected creates a whole in both hearts…
When a teenager makes it clear that she wants to have absolutely nothing to do with her parents, whether she knows it or not, she, of course, and her parents experience loss…
When we are disconnected from the one for whom we made, our maker, whether we aware are of it or not we suffer great loss, whether we know or not we are incomplete...
The Danish philosopher and theologian, Kierkegaard in his book Sickness Unto Death says that a person is "in despair" if they do not align themselves with God--and that they lose themselves--if they do not align themselves with God
In Romans 1 Paul argues that the human race has turned away from the God for whom they were made and therefore are losing themselves. Like a fish out of water, like a cactus out of the dessert, like a polar bear out of the cold, as we human live out of the environment for which we were made begin to experience breakdown in our spirit, in our relationships, breakdown in the societies we inhabit…
In Romans 2… Paul says to his fellow Jews if you when think I’m talk about human beings being separated from God that I am only talking about the gentiles think again… because we Jews also sin, just like the Gentiles, so we like the Gentiles are separated from God.
Our great need as a human race is to place God at the center of our solar system, in the words of Kierkegaard we need to connect the finite with the infinite… but we cannot do that on our own…
We’re in a “Catch 22” situation… in order to center or lives on God, we need first need God in our lives to that, but because we are separated from God we can’t make that move on our own!
When you’re looking for your first job in a particular you field you may also experience a Catch-22 where one cannot get a job in your field without work experience but you cannot gain experience without a job…
Paul in the first 3 chapters of Romans is explaining that we are in a kind of Catch 22. We are in despair we are separated from God, but in order to reunite with we need God… but because we’re separated we don’t have God and therefore can’t bridge the gap on our own…
We’re in a Catch-22… on the most important issue in our lives…
When you’re in a Catch-22 in a job search situation—where in order to get a job you need experience, but in order to get experience you need a job… what you need is an intervention… You need someone with power, who will say, you don’t have experience, but I’ll take a risk and I’ll hire you even though you don’t have experience…
In the most important Catch 22 of a person’s life--our separation God--we need a intervention… and Paul in Romans 3 describes this intervention and this morning we’re going to focus on Romans 3 and part of Romans 4.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 3 vs. 3
To give you the context Paul in Romans 3:
Paul in the first chapters has described how both, Gentiles and Jews have turned from God and Paul in light our humanity’s sinfulness has God been unfaithful? Has God said to humanity? You made your mess, you live in it forever… screw you! Has God said that! Let’s look at verse 3…
3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar…
Paul says in spite of our unfaithfulness God has been faithful to deal with problem of sin, that spiritual toxin that separates from the God for whom we were made…
Paul in Romans 3:9 explains that whether we are Jew or Gentile we are trapped under the power of sin… this toxin the separates us from God…
Then Paul in Romans 3:10 quotes a Psalm, probably not our favorite verse in Bible, As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one (Psalm 14:3). Paul is not saying that human beings are completely incapable of doing right things, but he is saying that no one consistently keeps the law of God… and that our sins separate from God.
In Romans 3:20 no one will be able to bridge the gap between them and God by trying to observe the law. The Bible no one can fully observe both the letter and spirit of the law without God…
In Romans 3:23, in a famous verse Paul says: …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Please look, if you will, to Romans, Chapter 3, verse 21-26
Here’s Paul presents the heart of the greatest news ever, the Gospel:
In the opinion of Australian Bible scholar, Leon Morris, these are the most important verses of all the Scripture:
Paul writes: 21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in [h] (of if as the footnote indicates, the “faithfulness of”) Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, [i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
In verse 22, in the text that we read “this righteous is given through faith to all who believe.” Stay with me as I step through a bit of Greek grammar: vs. 22 as the footnote in the TNIV translation notes can be translated from the Greek “through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, this righteousness is given to all who believe”(in stead of faith in Jesus Christ). From the Greek, a common, more literal way to translate this word which is in genitive case from the Greek is “the faithfulness” of Jesus Christ. Young Literal translation renders the verse this way, as do a growing number of highly respected New Testament scholars like N.T. Wright and Richard Hays.
The greatest news ever is that through the faithful work of Jesus Christ on the cross, absorbing our sins and shame in his body, we are redeemed, we bought back for God.
In verse 24, we are told that through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
As Paul’s Jewish hearers heard the word “redemption,” they would likely have thought back to the exodus. As you may recall, if you have read the book of Exodus, the Hebrew people had been slaves under Pharaoh, but God freed his people from that place of slavery. God had warned the Pharaoh that if he did not let Gods’ people go, that God would bring judgment against Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. And because Pharaoh stubbornly refused to surrender to God, God exacted a number of judgments upon him and his people.
In a particularly harsh judgment, God had said that an angel would strike down the first-born sons in the land in Egypt. God told the Hebrew people that the way they could avert this judgment was by painting their door frames with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. And all those who painted their door frames with the blood of a lamb were passed over in the judgment… and the Hebrew were protected and then set free… The Hebrew people would have been conscious that literally through the blood of a lamb they had been redeemed from slavery…
Paul’s Gentile listeners would have heard the word “redeemed” and they would likely have been thinking of the language of the market place. A slave in Paul’s day could be bought on the market and redeemed and set free.
Regent College Professor Gordon Fee tells the story about Abraham Lincoln. As a young man Lincoln crossing the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. He stopped to watch the slave auction where a 16-year-old girl of mixed race was being auctioned off as a slave. She looked completely Caucasian, but apparently she had 1/64th Negro blood, and because her blood was considered tainted, she was a slave up for sale.
The auctioneer was asking how much and the price wasn’t going high enough, so he went over, grabbed her clothing by the back of her neck, and stripped her naked to the waist. With a sneer the auctioneer asked, “How much will you bid?”
The bidding shot up to $1000, which in 1852 represented a huge amount of money—1100, 1200.1300.By now there were only 2 people bidding, a wealthy plantation owner and a Methodist preacher. At $1400 the wealthy plantation owner bowed out. The Methodist preacher had won his prize, and when he came down to collect the girl, the auctioneer sneered, “You got her mighty cheap, mister, whatcha gonna do with her now?”
Without breaking stride, the Methodist minister went over to her and said, “I am going to set her free.”
And when we were enslaved under the power of sin, when we were spiritually naked and degraded and alienated from our true father, Jesus Christ offers to redeem us back at nothing less than the price of his life.
In a free market economy, we deem on the value of an object by what we are willing to pay. If for example said, I’m going to put a price tag on my watch for $25,000. It doesn’t necessarily mean its worth. It would only be worth it if people were willing to pay that. No one is willing to pay that (as far I know)…
The market sets the value on something. You list your house at $750,000, but then there is abiding war on the sale of your home and that bidding takes the price up to $1,000,000 and that is considered the value of the home. What people are wiling to pay determines the value.
If you ever wonder how much you are worth to the one person whose opinion matters in the universe, then remember God he offered to redeem you, to buy you back at cost of life of his son. You, in effect, are worth the life of his son. You, in effect, are worth that which is most precious to God, because he emptied heaven of his greatest treasure to buy you back…
In verse 25, we read that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of blood to be received by faith. The word that is translated “sacrifice of atonement” has a slightly different nuance than the word “redemption.” Redemption was really a market place term, whereas the phrase “sacrifice of atonement” (the Greek word hilasterion) comes from the religious world of the Greeks. The more literal way to translate the Greek word hilasterions) is “propitiation” And the word “propitiation” literally means to absorb the wrath of the gods.
Some scholars are turned off by the word “propitiation” because it suggest God has this capricious, “off the handle” anger that needs to be appeased like the ancient Greek gods.
But, we must remember that when Paul uses words like “redemption,” “atonement” or “propitiation” is using the words metaphorically and he is injecting new meaning into them.
We know from the Hebrew Scriptures, in particular, that God gets angry at sin because God is the God of perfect holiness and justice. We also know in reading the Hebrew Scriptures and particularly the of Leviticus (which some of us have been reading if we’re using the ONE YEAR BIBLE) the that God instructs his people to make various offerings for sins.
As is evident the religions of the world, people around the world have believed that some kind of sacrifice is necessary for sin. This is not just a Christian idea, but one you find in almost all cultures in almost all places through out history.
If you’re offended by the idea that God would avert have his wrath through the sacrifice of another, then consider the fact that in the biblical drama it is God himself who steps forward and becomes a human being in Jesus Christ and offers himself as a sacrifice for sins. Paul says in 2 Cor 5:19 that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
This is a deep mystery and one that we will never fully comprehend. When God acts to to absorb his wrath for our sins, he volunteers himself, he becomes a person in Jesus Christ, and dies on a Roman cross, absorbing in himself our sin and our shame so that we can be set free…so that we can be forgiven….so that we can be restored to God and made his children.
Scholars like Joel Green et al. have pointed out that the ancient world of the Bible is in many ways more culturally similar to Asia than to individualistic North America.
Let now me now turn to the culture of my origin, the Japanese culture, to illustrate the nature of Christ’s atoning work.
We North Americans tend to be very individualistic, and when we North Americans think of sins and crimes, we tend to thinking of people breaking certain laws and therefore being guilty of violating a law or principle.
In the Japanese and other Asian cultures the focus is more on shame than guilt.
In these cultures the emphasis is not so much on whether a person has broken some kind abstract law or principle, but whether a person has failed to meet his or her expectations and the expectations of their society… This is why there is so much emphasis on “saving face” in Asian cultures.
In a guilt based culture, if a person breaks a law or principle, they are blamed and held responsible. In a shame-based culture, if a person commits some kind of shameful act, they are excluded in some way from the society.
To use a somewhat extreme example, when a person in Japan commits a serious crime, they are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society…
In Japan or in an Asian country, if a person commits fails to meet their own expectations or the expectations of society… they bring shame upon not just upon themselves and their family or group.
I discovered this when as teenager I was caught shoplifting and later discovered by my parents’ response that what I had done had not just shamed me, but shamed them and our family…
When a person does not live up to their own expectations or the expectations of their society they exclude themselves and their family.
How can this shamed be atoned for?
In Japan, suicide can be considered a kind of act of atonement. In North America we see suicide to be a sad act of escapism. But in the Japanese culture as is hinted at in the movies The Last Samurai and Letters from Iwo Jima committing suicide can be seen an act of honour…
If I commit some kind of horribly shameful act as a Japanese person and bring shame on my family, then if I commit suicide it is considered some kind of atonement for my sin so that my family will not be ashamed and excluded…
By my allowing myself to be excluded in the ultimate way, I can work to ensure my family is not excluded.
If a son or a daughter commits a shameful act in Japan, the father may commit suicide. By the father committing suicide, in a sense he is absorbing the sin of his son or daughter by allowing himself to be excluded permanently from society so that the rest of his family does not need to be excluded from society…
Japanese newspapers carried a story about a Japanese man involved in a crime in Holland. His father responded to the shameful situation by committing suicide so his family would be excluded from society.
Whether we are Asian or we have experienced shame vis-à-vis God, ourselves and one another…
If you look deep inside you, you know that you haven’t met your own expectations.
You and I haven’t embodied our own ideals
There’s a part of you that yearns for perfection… and you know you haven’t reached it…
We have experienced shame because of something we’ve done or not done… or because we’re not who we long to be… (some of that shame is illegitimate, some legitimate).
Jesus Christ hung on that Roman cross and he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He experienced the ultimate act of exclusion from God and by his being excluded, he was opening the way for us to be included, for us to be embraced by the one person in the universe who matters.
And when we are received by him, we are healed of our shame.
You see the gospel involves more than our sins being forgiven. It also involves reconciliation with our true Father, the one whom for whom we made to know. Paul uses the word “reconciliation” to describe the Gospel in Romans. In the book of Ephesians he talks about “those of us who have been far away have now been brought close to God, reconciled through the blood of Jesus Christ.”
We suffer, we experience breakdown and despair in our lives and in our society because we are alienated our true father… the one true source of life in the universe…
But, because of the willingness of God in Jesus Christ to be separated from his family and to experience ultimate exclusion on the cross, we can experience the cleansing of our sins, we can come home and walk the living room of our Father’s house and be embraced and be received.
The way to our Father’s living room is not through the law, not through some religious rite like circumcision as Paul points out using Abraham as example in Romans 4, but by trusting in the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of God who on the cross was in Christ reconciling us to Himself.
Pray…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca)
Key text: Romans 3 and 4
Leif Enger has written a beautiful novel called Peace Like a River.
In the story Davy Land at 16 year old from the Midwest is accused of murder and has runaway on foot and then on horse back goes into hiding. His dad, his 11 year old younger brother Reuben, and his 9 year old sister Swede begin a country-wide search for him…
Peace Like a River is a moving story about Davy’s exile and how his family seeks to reunite with him…
Though Davy is a tough, rugged, independent teenager, he feels the anguish of being separated from his family.
Whenever we experience separation from people’s whose lives we were meant inter-weave with, we experience some kind of loss…
When a married couple fights and one of then up sleeping on the couch… that disconnected creates a whole in both hearts…
When a teenager makes it clear that she wants to have absolutely nothing to do with her parents, whether she knows it or not, she, of course, and her parents experience loss…
When we are disconnected from the one for whom we made, our maker, whether we aware are of it or not we suffer great loss, whether we know or not we are incomplete...
The Danish philosopher and theologian, Kierkegaard in his book Sickness Unto Death says that a person is "in despair" if they do not align themselves with God--and that they lose themselves--if they do not align themselves with God
In Romans 1 Paul argues that the human race has turned away from the God for whom they were made and therefore are losing themselves. Like a fish out of water, like a cactus out of the dessert, like a polar bear out of the cold, as we human live out of the environment for which we were made begin to experience breakdown in our spirit, in our relationships, breakdown in the societies we inhabit…
In Romans 2… Paul says to his fellow Jews if you when think I’m talk about human beings being separated from God that I am only talking about the gentiles think again… because we Jews also sin, just like the Gentiles, so we like the Gentiles are separated from God.
Our great need as a human race is to place God at the center of our solar system, in the words of Kierkegaard we need to connect the finite with the infinite… but we cannot do that on our own…
We’re in a “Catch 22” situation… in order to center or lives on God, we need first need God in our lives to that, but because we are separated from God we can’t make that move on our own!
When you’re looking for your first job in a particular you field you may also experience a Catch-22 where one cannot get a job in your field without work experience but you cannot gain experience without a job…
Paul in the first 3 chapters of Romans is explaining that we are in a kind of Catch 22. We are in despair we are separated from God, but in order to reunite with we need God… but because we’re separated we don’t have God and therefore can’t bridge the gap on our own…
We’re in a Catch-22… on the most important issue in our lives…
When you’re in a Catch-22 in a job search situation—where in order to get a job you need experience, but in order to get experience you need a job… what you need is an intervention… You need someone with power, who will say, you don’t have experience, but I’ll take a risk and I’ll hire you even though you don’t have experience…
In the most important Catch 22 of a person’s life--our separation God--we need a intervention… and Paul in Romans 3 describes this intervention and this morning we’re going to focus on Romans 3 and part of Romans 4.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 3 vs. 3
To give you the context Paul in Romans 3:
Paul in the first chapters has described how both, Gentiles and Jews have turned from God and Paul in light our humanity’s sinfulness has God been unfaithful? Has God said to humanity? You made your mess, you live in it forever… screw you! Has God said that! Let’s look at verse 3…
3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar…
Paul says in spite of our unfaithfulness God has been faithful to deal with problem of sin, that spiritual toxin that separates from the God for whom we were made…
Paul in Romans 3:9 explains that whether we are Jew or Gentile we are trapped under the power of sin… this toxin the separates us from God…
Then Paul in Romans 3:10 quotes a Psalm, probably not our favorite verse in Bible, As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one (Psalm 14:3). Paul is not saying that human beings are completely incapable of doing right things, but he is saying that no one consistently keeps the law of God… and that our sins separate from God.
In Romans 3:20 no one will be able to bridge the gap between them and God by trying to observe the law. The Bible no one can fully observe both the letter and spirit of the law without God…
In Romans 3:23, in a famous verse Paul says: …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Please look, if you will, to Romans, Chapter 3, verse 21-26
Here’s Paul presents the heart of the greatest news ever, the Gospel:
In the opinion of Australian Bible scholar, Leon Morris, these are the most important verses of all the Scripture:
Paul writes: 21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in [h] (of if as the footnote indicates, the “faithfulness of”) Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, [i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
In verse 22, in the text that we read “this righteous is given through faith to all who believe.” Stay with me as I step through a bit of Greek grammar: vs. 22 as the footnote in the TNIV translation notes can be translated from the Greek “through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, this righteousness is given to all who believe”(in stead of faith in Jesus Christ). From the Greek, a common, more literal way to translate this word which is in genitive case from the Greek is “the faithfulness” of Jesus Christ. Young Literal translation renders the verse this way, as do a growing number of highly respected New Testament scholars like N.T. Wright and Richard Hays.
The greatest news ever is that through the faithful work of Jesus Christ on the cross, absorbing our sins and shame in his body, we are redeemed, we bought back for God.
In verse 24, we are told that through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
As Paul’s Jewish hearers heard the word “redemption,” they would likely have thought back to the exodus. As you may recall, if you have read the book of Exodus, the Hebrew people had been slaves under Pharaoh, but God freed his people from that place of slavery. God had warned the Pharaoh that if he did not let Gods’ people go, that God would bring judgment against Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. And because Pharaoh stubbornly refused to surrender to God, God exacted a number of judgments upon him and his people.
In a particularly harsh judgment, God had said that an angel would strike down the first-born sons in the land in Egypt. God told the Hebrew people that the way they could avert this judgment was by painting their door frames with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. And all those who painted their door frames with the blood of a lamb were passed over in the judgment… and the Hebrew were protected and then set free… The Hebrew people would have been conscious that literally through the blood of a lamb they had been redeemed from slavery…
Paul’s Gentile listeners would have heard the word “redeemed” and they would likely have been thinking of the language of the market place. A slave in Paul’s day could be bought on the market and redeemed and set free.
Regent College Professor Gordon Fee tells the story about Abraham Lincoln. As a young man Lincoln crossing the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. He stopped to watch the slave auction where a 16-year-old girl of mixed race was being auctioned off as a slave. She looked completely Caucasian, but apparently she had 1/64th Negro blood, and because her blood was considered tainted, she was a slave up for sale.
The auctioneer was asking how much and the price wasn’t going high enough, so he went over, grabbed her clothing by the back of her neck, and stripped her naked to the waist. With a sneer the auctioneer asked, “How much will you bid?”
The bidding shot up to $1000, which in 1852 represented a huge amount of money—1100, 1200.1300.By now there were only 2 people bidding, a wealthy plantation owner and a Methodist preacher. At $1400 the wealthy plantation owner bowed out. The Methodist preacher had won his prize, and when he came down to collect the girl, the auctioneer sneered, “You got her mighty cheap, mister, whatcha gonna do with her now?”
Without breaking stride, the Methodist minister went over to her and said, “I am going to set her free.”
And when we were enslaved under the power of sin, when we were spiritually naked and degraded and alienated from our true father, Jesus Christ offers to redeem us back at nothing less than the price of his life.
In a free market economy, we deem on the value of an object by what we are willing to pay. If for example said, I’m going to put a price tag on my watch for $25,000. It doesn’t necessarily mean its worth. It would only be worth it if people were willing to pay that. No one is willing to pay that (as far I know)…
The market sets the value on something. You list your house at $750,000, but then there is abiding war on the sale of your home and that bidding takes the price up to $1,000,000 and that is considered the value of the home. What people are wiling to pay determines the value.
If you ever wonder how much you are worth to the one person whose opinion matters in the universe, then remember God he offered to redeem you, to buy you back at cost of life of his son. You, in effect, are worth the life of his son. You, in effect, are worth that which is most precious to God, because he emptied heaven of his greatest treasure to buy you back…
In verse 25, we read that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of blood to be received by faith. The word that is translated “sacrifice of atonement” has a slightly different nuance than the word “redemption.” Redemption was really a market place term, whereas the phrase “sacrifice of atonement” (the Greek word hilasterion) comes from the religious world of the Greeks. The more literal way to translate the Greek word hilasterions) is “propitiation” And the word “propitiation” literally means to absorb the wrath of the gods.
Some scholars are turned off by the word “propitiation” because it suggest God has this capricious, “off the handle” anger that needs to be appeased like the ancient Greek gods.
But, we must remember that when Paul uses words like “redemption,” “atonement” or “propitiation” is using the words metaphorically and he is injecting new meaning into them.
We know from the Hebrew Scriptures, in particular, that God gets angry at sin because God is the God of perfect holiness and justice. We also know in reading the Hebrew Scriptures and particularly the of Leviticus (which some of us have been reading if we’re using the ONE YEAR BIBLE) the that God instructs his people to make various offerings for sins.
As is evident the religions of the world, people around the world have believed that some kind of sacrifice is necessary for sin. This is not just a Christian idea, but one you find in almost all cultures in almost all places through out history.
If you’re offended by the idea that God would avert have his wrath through the sacrifice of another, then consider the fact that in the biblical drama it is God himself who steps forward and becomes a human being in Jesus Christ and offers himself as a sacrifice for sins. Paul says in 2 Cor 5:19 that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
This is a deep mystery and one that we will never fully comprehend. When God acts to to absorb his wrath for our sins, he volunteers himself, he becomes a person in Jesus Christ, and dies on a Roman cross, absorbing in himself our sin and our shame so that we can be set free…so that we can be forgiven….so that we can be restored to God and made his children.
Scholars like Joel Green et al. have pointed out that the ancient world of the Bible is in many ways more culturally similar to Asia than to individualistic North America.
Let now me now turn to the culture of my origin, the Japanese culture, to illustrate the nature of Christ’s atoning work.
We North Americans tend to be very individualistic, and when we North Americans think of sins and crimes, we tend to thinking of people breaking certain laws and therefore being guilty of violating a law or principle.
In the Japanese and other Asian cultures the focus is more on shame than guilt.
In these cultures the emphasis is not so much on whether a person has broken some kind abstract law or principle, but whether a person has failed to meet his or her expectations and the expectations of their society… This is why there is so much emphasis on “saving face” in Asian cultures.
In a guilt based culture, if a person breaks a law or principle, they are blamed and held responsible. In a shame-based culture, if a person commits some kind of shameful act, they are excluded in some way from the society.
To use a somewhat extreme example, when a person in Japan commits a serious crime, they are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society…
In Japan or in an Asian country, if a person commits fails to meet their own expectations or the expectations of society… they bring shame upon not just upon themselves and their family or group.
I discovered this when as teenager I was caught shoplifting and later discovered by my parents’ response that what I had done had not just shamed me, but shamed them and our family…
When a person does not live up to their own expectations or the expectations of their society they exclude themselves and their family.
How can this shamed be atoned for?
In Japan, suicide can be considered a kind of act of atonement. In North America we see suicide to be a sad act of escapism. But in the Japanese culture as is hinted at in the movies The Last Samurai and Letters from Iwo Jima committing suicide can be seen an act of honour…
If I commit some kind of horribly shameful act as a Japanese person and bring shame on my family, then if I commit suicide it is considered some kind of atonement for my sin so that my family will not be ashamed and excluded…
By my allowing myself to be excluded in the ultimate way, I can work to ensure my family is not excluded.
If a son or a daughter commits a shameful act in Japan, the father may commit suicide. By the father committing suicide, in a sense he is absorbing the sin of his son or daughter by allowing himself to be excluded permanently from society so that the rest of his family does not need to be excluded from society…
Japanese newspapers carried a story about a Japanese man involved in a crime in Holland. His father responded to the shameful situation by committing suicide so his family would be excluded from society.
Whether we are Asian or we have experienced shame vis-à-vis God, ourselves and one another…
If you look deep inside you, you know that you haven’t met your own expectations.
You and I haven’t embodied our own ideals
There’s a part of you that yearns for perfection… and you know you haven’t reached it…
We have experienced shame because of something we’ve done or not done… or because we’re not who we long to be… (some of that shame is illegitimate, some legitimate).
Jesus Christ hung on that Roman cross and he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He experienced the ultimate act of exclusion from God and by his being excluded, he was opening the way for us to be included, for us to be embraced by the one person in the universe who matters.
And when we are received by him, we are healed of our shame.
You see the gospel involves more than our sins being forgiven. It also involves reconciliation with our true Father, the one whom for whom we made to know. Paul uses the word “reconciliation” to describe the Gospel in Romans. In the book of Ephesians he talks about “those of us who have been far away have now been brought close to God, reconciled through the blood of Jesus Christ.”
We suffer, we experience breakdown and despair in our lives and in our society because we are alienated our true father… the one true source of life in the universe…
But, because of the willingness of God in Jesus Christ to be separated from his family and to experience ultimate exclusion on the cross, we can experience the cleansing of our sins, we can come home and walk the living room of our Father’s house and be embraced and be received.
The way to our Father’s living room is not through the law, not through some religious rite like circumcision as Paul points out using Abraham as example in Romans 4, but by trusting in the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of God who on the cross was in Christ reconciling us to Himself.
Pray…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca)
posted by Shigematsu at 3:32 PM
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