Doing It Right

It’s a pleasure to read Romans 7:15-24. Hey, someone out there gets it! And the only solution is to toss everything into the air, sit awhile, tear up the tiny particles of one’s brain and put them back together again, maybe in a new order or form. And yet, the truth is, old age is right on so many of our door steps - it’s going to be on yours and your neighbors - and we can also scour to find those funky times in history when folks couldn’t remember or re-do or identify anything  but a huge laugh, which is about all one can do when being tested for what’s left in the brain to use to keep on keeping on. My routine helper to stir up spirit is a Starbucks Frappuccino or instant coffee in two packets in a hot cup from Uruguay. Those things I know and can do and maybe they wake up my brain a bit, so I don’t lose focus or fun or the order of my day.

It’s ironic that the reading in Romans is so exactly like I feel today. And the confusion twirls around in wherever Matthew was trying to focus on some Jesus teaching, trying to get a response from the crowd, an unruly one at that. It seems to me Jesus was getting a bit irritated by the behaviors of minds and souls in the marketplaces, which probably were packed that day, maybe a day of bargain shopping. And I can feel it roll out. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Wow. I know that feeling. I’ll eat two ice cream cones before I go to bed, and that is a disaster.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good and I obey it like a normal instinct day in and day out, unless I sneak a snack I should have avoided or I drove too fast getting to a meeting. But in fact, it is no longer I that do it but that sin thing that dwells within me. (How does one wipe out that sin?)

It says in Romans, I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the do I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Remember the devil made me do it.) So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil or some detraction lies close at hand. For I really delight in the law of God in my inmost self (although Apple store can be sinfully enticing). But I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Whew. Wretched man or in this case woman that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of death? A doctor, a policeman, a nurse, a husband, a friend, or Jesus himself? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ we get in and out of that predicament. Our Lord is out there or in here or up there for me and you and all of us who squinch and twitch and excuse and confuse our thoughts, but still dare to go on doing the good I can do, and you can do.

Jesus was trying to get the attention of a crowd, or at least get on the same page as He was addressing children sitting in the marketplace, calling to one another, claiming that they had entertained them with a flute to stir up a dance, but no one danced; then they wailed and cried thinking that might call up attention, but they didn’t even mourn, maybe because they knew there was no one who was dying. And it was sort of a conglomerate of people judging each other, maybe out of boredom with nothing else to do on a morning in the market. People were bored, it seemed.

Take the example of John. He wasn’t eating or drinking, yet the crowds had heard or created the possibility that he had a demon in him. Why did they think that? Did they just create it out of boredom? Then they said that the Son of Man (Jesus) was eating and drinking (as if that was a sin?) Everyone must eat something sometime, maybe not in public places, but that was a good place to be able to have a conversation in the sun. The gossipers declared that Jesus came eating and drinking and they were shocked because He looked like a glutton and a drunkard, and then sort of cursed that He was a friend of tax collectors and sinners, I guess, something no one might do in a marketplace.

Jesus wasted no time and called out to His Father - thanking Him, pointing out He was from the Lord of heaven and earth, and the things He was saying now had to be hidden from the wise and intelligent, so it would be better to turn them over to infants (who wouldn’t understand a single nip of it.) Then Jesus makes a powerful and confusing statement:

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants! Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal to him.” In fact, Jesus must have taken a deep breath before He exhaled: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. …for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. I would not have coveted.

It’s hard to wake up every day, depending on whether one tossed and turned in the night - listening to sirens on the streets, or the loud screeches of the long trains passing across the street in the night, they toot their horns just in case some drunkard of the neighborhood had fallen or lain down too close to the tracks. It does happen.

The best of people fights to obey God, but since sin is within us, we stumble and fall and say something which one doesn’t really mean to say and wish they could withdraw it again. I guess a good place to study this would be at a Grizzlies ball game in a packed stadium. Everyone seems to be telling players and coach how to play, when really that’s their problem and not that of the screaming fans who think they know so much.

Thanks be to God is one of my favorite phases. It’s a cry of victory from Paul trying to keep up with the demands of Moses. But remember the Spirit is within us and the Spirit gives us the power to please God in this life. We must push on down the road of old age, as it creeps up, but also, we need to reduce our vocabulary and thoughts and turn to constant praise and a thanksgiving that God keeps us alive and healthy. With some sort of confidence and imagination we can do the good we want to do and throw in the garbage the evil that too often gives us excuses to do things we don’t want to do but might be the thing easier and closer to get over the humps and the hills.

~ Rev

---------------------------------

audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com