Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Will you pray with me?
Dear heavenly Father, we come to you, broken, sinful and repentant.
Help us to remember your love and your grace. As we review from the very beginning the contract you made with us in the garden of Eden.
We ask these things in the name of your son, whom you were as a man, our master, Jesus Christ. Amen.
From Genesis, the creation of us, of people, and Paul's commentary from Romans later. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth in the heavens, where no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
The Lord God took this man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you may freely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.
And then Paul's comments on this therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all, because all have sinned. For sin was indeed in the world before the law. But sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God. And the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounded for the many.
And the gift is not like the effect of one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the gift following many trespasses brings justification. If because of the one man's trespass, death range through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: In his book tattoos on the heart, Greg Boyle, a jesuit priest and famous minister to gang members in Los Angeles, tells a story of worship with a powerful scent.
During Boyle's ministry at Dolores Mission, they began housing the homeless right in the sanctuary of the church at the mission. And as a result, each week when people gathered for Sunday mass, there was Boyle and others would sprinkle love my carpet on the rugs. They would vacuum like crazy before worship. They would strategically place potpourri and erewick around the church to combat that lingering reminder that nearly 50 men had spent the night there. They would even burn incense before 07:30 a.m.. Mass. And it wasn't the custom in that church to burn incense. But they began doing it. Even that couldn't fully obfuscate, alleviate, or obliterate that faint but lingering smell.
Congregants began complaining and saying if something wasn't done about the smell, they would leave and go to church elsewhere. So Boyle took an old adage from the Jesuits, which is that if you can't fix something, feature it.
And so he decided to talk about this. Boyle would often ask questions to the congregation in the midst of his sermons and invite them to respond. And so this particular Sunday, he asked the congregation, what's the church smell like?
Everyone looked uncomfortable. Many eyes looked away from him. People, women, scanned their purses for something, and he decided to ask again. Come on, what's the church smell like? He asked that bilingual congregation.
Wele apatas. An older member named Don Raphael boomed out. That means smells like feet.
Excellent, Boyle said. But why does it smell like feet? Because many homeless men slept here last night, a woman said. Well, why do we let that happen? Boyle asked.
Es nuestro compromiso.
It is our commitment. It's what we've committed to do. Well, why would anyone commit to do that? Boyle asked. Porqueus loque aria. Jesus. It's what Jesus would do.
Well, then, Boyle says, what's the church smell like now? A man stood up and bellowed, it smells like commitment.
Another woman stood up, waved her arms wildly. Wele arrosas. It smells like roses.
Smells like commitment. Smells like roses. That could be said of so many ties in the sanctuary at that particular moment. That group had committed to one another in worship, and they committed to mission, to trying to love their neighbors. They'd committed to Greg as their priest, and Greg had committed to care for them as a congregation. There was the broader church's commitment to them and to that sanctuary. There was the commitment of those who had gone before them to build that sanctuary and to continue to care for it and steward it so it could be used in worship and mission. So many stinking commitments in that place that day when I try to imagine the polar opposite. If that smells like commitment, what's the opposite? There's an image that comes to my mind. And maybe it has come to your mind, too. I think of a scene from the 2013 film gravity, a movie that has both haunted and inspired me since seeing it. Near the beginning of that movie, a group of astronauts head out to space to work on a space station. And then debris that's hurling through space strikes the station and sends one particular arm of the station spinning. And there is an astronaut who is tied and tethered to that arm. She has to unbuckle herself so that she can free herself from this spinning arm. But when she does that, she goes careening out into space alone. Out in that abyss, out in space, you don't smell anything, you don't hear anything. And out in that blackness, alone, she looked out and could see the earth. And what surely came to her mind is all the relationships, the connection, the grounding that it represented as she was off in space.
I've often thought of that scene from gravity. As a kind of terrifying modern portrait of hyper individualism. Taken to the extreme, it sometimes in our sometimes single minded quest for personal freedom and autonomy. And seeking to be as unbound as possible to people and to place, the modern individual can risk hurtling through the darkness of space alone and untethered to others, untethered to the earth. And that, as the movie gravity reminds us, is a terrifying condition for our survival and our thriving hinges on other people and on this earth.
The movie goes on to tell of the astronauts quest to once again feel, see, and even smell the stuff of earth and all the relationships that had given her life meaning before she was sent careening into space alone.
Well, for this sermon series that I'm beginning today, I want to look with you at the ties that not only bind, but that, in fact, free us to live and flourish floating alone in space. That's not, finally, freedom. Rather, freedom is being grounded on earth, grounded in a web of relationships, like what Boyle observed in that congregation, committed together in worship and mission. We need relationships in order to truly be who we were meant to be, individually and collectively. It's by being bound to others that we can know experiences like those gathered at Dolores Mission. We can know to cheers that smell of commitment.
Now, not all connections and ties are liberating. There are plenty that are suffocating or oppressive. And yet there are ties that are crucial for our life and our flourishing. And I want to look with you at those ties as they're presented to us in scripture. They often come in the form of covenants, contracts, commitments, agreements that bind God and us or bind us with one another. And in those binds, we find freedom.
So let's start at the very beginning, right? Let's go back to the book of Genesis, and let's look at that passage that Darlene read from the second chapter of Genesis, a story that's often called the second account of creation.
It's often called the Adamic or the covenant. With Adam, the adamic covenant. We read of how Adam is formed out of adamah. Adamah is the hebrew word for ground or earth or place. And we imagine there's word play here, and that Adam's very name implies a creature who is of the earth, of Adamah. And as the book of Romans reminds us, Adam is not simply meant to represent a single person, but he is, as Paul describes him in Romans, a type. A type. Adam, or formed of earth, is in many ways a symbol of humanity. More broadly.
In Genesis two, in a story often called the second account of creation, we read of how God gives to Adam or humanity a number of extraordinary gifts. God gives Adam the breath of life. God plants a garden for Adam to enjoy. The garden includes every tree that is planted, pleasant to the sight, and good for food. It's an image that calls to our mind an invitation to think of all creation as a garden of delights, to nourish, a feast for the senses.
There's a river to water this garden, and among the trees are a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And if we were reading on in Genesis two, we would read of yet another lavish gift God presents to Adam, to humanity.
And we read, of course, God saying, it's not good that Adam should be alone. It's not good that the human should be careening alone through the black abyss of space. Let me present to the human not only the goodness of the earth. Let me make for Adam a partner, a helper, an ally, as the word Ezer in Hebrew has been variously translated. And then in this beautifully evocative story, God makes us sleep, fall over. Adam takes a rib from him, and from that rib makes this partner called Isha, a word that's often translated woman.
This is created as an antidote to the isolation God observes in the human condition. And as the chapter goes on, we read of how this partner is both different from Adam but also similar.
Bone of Adam's bone, and yet distinct, too, in a sense of commonality. And difference in that we see human community.
We were created, as Genesis two tells us, to flourish not in isolation, but in community, with trees and flowing rivers and other creatures, and finally with those creatures who look like us and are like us in so many ways, and yet they are distinct and different. And that is the stuff of relationship and community. It's in that web that we know life.
It's a lavish series of gifts God presents to humanity. And then, appropriately, God gives an instruction manual. Simple at first, the kind you get with a new computer or microwave or electronic device. And one of the instructions you often see with a new electronic device basically says something like this, drop it while it's plugged in. In the bath. While you and others are in the bath.
That would be bad. And some instruction manuals even have a yellow warning sign with a person getting electrocuted in a bath. Just so you know, this is bad. This is not good.
There's a power linked to that device when it's plugged in. That is simply more than your body and those of others can process, can absorb effectively.
And yet you know how the story goes, right? Humanity drops the device in the bathwater while it's plugged in.
Sin and death are introduced into the picture not as an inherent part of God's created order, but by the action and volition of humanity. And this has been, as scripture portrays it, the human story.
We want to make our own rules.
We want to rule creation and to rule others, rather than honoring the relationships God has given us with them and with others, rather than honoring the one who truly can rule over all. With love and justice, we pollute and harm the garden entrusted to our care.
That's the story of Adam, the story of Adam and Eve, that is human community, individually and collectively. It's a story not just of the lavish gifts and instruction given to us by God, but the story of how sin and the shadow of death hung over the life we knew and the life we know today.
Now, some have called this first agreement, or covenant, God makes with Adam a covenant of works. And there's value in describing it that way. It reminds us that before the time of Christ, it was the actions or works of Adam, of humanity, of us on our own, without a savior that determined our condition, whether we knew life or death. And that covenant of works is often contrasted with a covenant of grace that we now know with Christ.
And certainly we see in the New Testament how Christ's life, death, and resurrection radically changes things. It injects new life, resurrection life, into the world that had been under the shroud of death before, into those relationships that got all messed up by sin, relationships with each other, with creation, with our creator God. There's now a new power at work in that network, the power of resurrected life given to us in Christ.
But a shortcoming of that framework of covenant of works versus covenant of grace, at least when it's applied to Adam, is that it can lead us to forget there's a whole lot of grace shown to Adam right at the start, before Adam does anything. If by grace we mean, more broadly, God's unmerited favor and goodness to us and to all creation, that's something that's given to Adam before he even acts. There's grace at the start with God not only giving Adam or humanity the lavish gifts of creation and community, but there's grace in God instructing Adam how not to wreck it all. And then in the New Testament, while it's by grace that we are saved by faith, we read in ephesians, still good works emerge from the life of christian faith. Works are part of the picture. Jesus says to his disciples, let your light shine, that people might see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven. And so that distinction, covenant of works versus covenant of grace, tends to be less emphasized today than it was, say, back in Westminster in 1646, when the great Westminster confession of faith was written.
Still, there's an important reminder with that distinction, covenant of works versus covenant of grace, that I don't want us to lose.
And it's a distinction highlighted in today's passage from Romans. There's a kind of grace that comes with Christ that we simply did not know before.
That grace is God giving us not only the goodness of creation and not just the gift of human community and instruction of how to thrive and be a blessing to others. Instructions given first to Adam in creation and then given in the form of ten commandments and the law to guide a people. In Christ, God provided a new gift, which was not simply a law that leads to life, a law that we were unable to, on our own, to uphold. In Christ, God gave us the means to faithfully live out God's call in Christ.
Our story as a human race before Christ, the story of Adam is one of knowing the good, of knowing what it took to be in right relationship with God, one another, and all creation, but of failing and failing, floundering when it came to fulfilling that call. In Christ, we read in Romans, just as sin and death came in one grand representative of humanity, Adam, so a new humanity was made possible by a new representative of humanity, a new type in Christ and by faith in him, a faith marked in our baptism. By claiming Christ's life as our life and faith, we have that new creation, that new life in Christ, eternal life, as John's gospel describes it, it's now at work in us by faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that life brings about restoration and renewal and peacemaking to all of those broken relationships we know with each other, in creation and with God. Life in Christ.
It points to how sin and death are not finally the end, but a condition ultimately overcome by that new creation God ushered in with Christ. God provided in Christ what we did not have before Christ, not just the gifts of creation and of one another, and not just the gift of divine instruction, but the means to fulfill it by that life given to us in our savior that we claim by faith.
As today's passage from Romans proclaims, our hope as christians lies not in our commitments, not our commitment to God, not our commitment to one another, or even to God's gift of creation. Our hope and the very power to fulfill those commitments lies in God's commitment to us, to you and me. And we see that commitment made before human action even enters the picture. Back with Adam. And we see that commitment. We receive it, we hear it, see it, taste it, smell it in a new way in Christ.
Love and care and commitment, whether referring to God or to one another. It has a sight, a sound, a smell to it. It speaks of intimacy, of being near enough, of having someone who loves you dear enough that you are met and they are met by sight, sound, and smell. That's how you know commitment. That's how you know God's commitment to us. When it's strong enough, you can smell it, smell it in creation, smell it in one another, smell it even in a savior who came near to us, that we could share life with him and he with us.
Well, one last story about that scent of commitment.
I remember well, sharing life for a time with a college classmate of mine named Sam. He and I ran on the cross country team together our freshman year at college, and we lived in the same dorm called Morgan Midwest. So when sophomore year, when we were preparing for that, we agreed with another member of that area, a fellow named Andy, to live together in a new dorm, a dorm that only sophomores could live in. And we had rooms on the same hallway. Unfortunately, in that new building, as I came to discover, laundry facilities were not quite as near and convenient as they had been in our freshman dorms. And the way Sam in particular dealt with this is by simply not washing his clothes.
And not only did he not wash his clothes, but he left the them in piles. And so, as sophomore year started, there began to develop this sense that would come out of his room. And eventually waft down our hallway. If Don Raphael from Dolores mission had been there and had been living in our suite, I feel confident he would have said, wele apatas smells like feet or worse.
And if Sam had the door open, man, Lord have mercy.
I have to confess, I ended up moving to a different dorm in large part. In large part because I had some friends who were becoming near and dear to me who told me, hey, Matt, a great new room has opened up in their dorm. And so I ended up moving there in large part because of those friendships and connections. But I confess, in small part, it was to get away from that smell.
One day after that, I had made the move. I happened to be having lunch with Sam's girlfriend Carolyn. In one of the dining halls. And I asked her, Carolyn, how do you do it? I've seen you go into his room a number of times. I've seen you go down the hallway. You know, he doesn't wash his clothes. She said, well, Matt, I've kind of gotten used to the smell. And she also said, matt, this may sound strange, but it. It smells like Sam.
And I love Sam.
And I thought to myself, man, that smells like commitments.
So we come together this and every Sunday to celebrate who God, who was not driven away. Scripture proclaims time and again, by the stink of sin and death.
We share the good news of the gospel that God drew near to us in love.
That move binds us to God. By God's grace and from that commitment, from God's commitment to us in Christ. We, in turn commit to others, to the earth, to our neighbor in need. And to specific places and sanctuaries like this one smells. And all in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
