Blog Posts

Eric D. Barreto 9/19/23 Eric D. Barreto 9/19/23

The Source and End of Unity and Belonging

When reading Paul’s letters, the exegetical and theological mistakes we might make are numerous and often tragic, as we all know. The list of insights is significant, of course, but so too are the distracting detours and the deadly interpretations.

***Photo by*** ***Marc Pell*** on ***Unsplash***

Editor’s note: This sermon on Romans 12, preached by the Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto of Princeton Seminary at the beginning of the new academic year, is an invitation for all of us to live into and experience God’s call to community wherever we may be.

Making your way through the beginning of Romans, you will find a haunting story about the downfall of all humans and the divine intervention it took to deliver us all, everyone. The letter reaches a beautiful crescendo at the end of chapter 8 in a long litany of dangers that cannot separate us from the love of God. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God, and what a necessary word that is for me. ln chapter 9, Paul turns to a problem: what about Israel? What about God’s promises to a people? Here, again, Paul turns to a haunting story of human failure and divine persistence. Paul closes in chapter 11 with worship and wonder when pondering God’s extraordinary goodness, God’s unbroken promises, God’s inexhaustible grace.

And if you’ve made it this far in Romans, you are exhausted! So many ideas, so many twists and turns, so many questions to pose, but at least the letter is almost done, or so we think!

Because we are not nearly done. Not even close. We still have five more chapters to go! And here we run into a significant problem in coming to understand the heartbeat of Paul’s letters into the confession about God’s unrelenting righteousness that Paul places before us.

Of course, when reading Paul’s letters, the exegetical and theological mistakes we might make are numerous and often tragic, as we all know. The list of insights is significant, of course, but so too are the distracting detours and the deadly interpretations. I want to draw our attention to one such potential mistake today as we begin this fall semester, as some of you join the community for the first time and as some of us return to the rhythms of the academic year once again.

Here’s the mistake:

When we arrive at these closing chapters of Romans exhausted and full of questions, we might miss the centrality of community. We might not notice the importance of belonging. We might neglect the possibilities of human relationships in a world dominated by empire’s drive to make us enemies, contestants over scare resources, neighbors so suspicious of one another that we build ever greater walls between us. You see, these closing chapters of practical advice, hard-won hopes, and personal greetings are not mere appendices for Paul’s letter but critical to the larger arguments he is weaving about God and, yes, about us.

I would be deeply mistaken if I were to listen to the litany of wisdom Paul enumerates in chapter 12 and hear only digestible bits of advice best captured in a greeting card, a cross-stitch, or a bumper sticker. These are not mere quotes but the hard-won conclusions of a pastor and missionary who has risked so much. I would be deeply mistaken if I assume that these closing chapters are the afterthoughts of Pauline theology, the specific stuff I can jettison for the universal, or merely the practical implications of much more important theological truths.

Instead, for Paul, how we gather is a reflection of whom we confess God to be, the ways we find and create belonging are practices of faithfulness more than just politeness, how we treat one another carries the weight of God’s presence in our midst because how we care for one another is a matter of life and death, for in community we experience a taste of the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

I wonder what it would mean for us all to take much more seriously the value of not just the products of our intellectual efforts but also the everyday care and attention we might share with one another, whether in a dorm or a park, whether in a classroom or at the cafeteria, whether at the quad or here in this chapel. What if we imagined that how we relate one to another was not just a way to be nice or polite but a reflection of our deepest commitments to God and one another? And what if we believe, truly believe, that the “we” I’m talking about includes not just students and faculty but also the staff and groundskeepers, those who tend to and clean the buildings, our neighbors here in Mercer Hill and the Witherspoon neighborhood alike?

After all, we rejoice and weep because of the ways God’s joy courses through our communities and the ways God’s grief has drawn near to us even when, at times, all has seemed lost. Living in harmony here should not be a form of control; harmony should reflect the grace that makes us kin one to another. Living fully into community reflects God’s intentional attention to the oppressed and Jesus’ own practices of eating with the sinner. We feed our hungry enemies and give water to our rivals because of God’s bounteous feeding of all creation. We overcome evil with good as we reflect God’s own intervention into a fallen world with love, not violence; sacrifice, not a quest for earthly power; hope and grace, not resentment and vindictiveness.

That is, in every case, in every single case, the source and end of these forms of unity and belonging, these founts of freedom are not our achievements but God’s free gift to us.

So, my friends, remember that each person you meet on this campus is a beloved child of God. And know this, (not in the way you know 2+2 is 4 or the forms of the aorist or the dates of the creeds), but in the way you have tasted and known the joy of God’s presence, in the way you feel when you first meet a friend it feels you have always known. Expect to see God when you exegete and when you eat, when you read and when you pray with a neighbor, when you are writing the best essay you have ever produced and when you comfort a classmate in grief.

After all, the God who incarnated in Christ, who dwelled and dwells among us, who suffered and died, who lives in victory over death, that God is always near. That God is always here with us. That God is always stirring in this community. That God is always inviting us home, inviting us to belong, inviting us to make room for all these strangers who have now become our friends.

Rev. Eric Bareto

Eric D. Barreto is the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary. He holds a BA in religion from Oklahoma Baptist University, an MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and a PhD in New Testament from Emory University. Prior to coming to Princeton Seminary, he served as associate professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, and also taught as an adjunct professor at the Candler School of Theology and McAfee School of Theology.

Learn more

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Joe Davis 9/23/20 Joe Davis 9/23/20

Deepen Humility and Compassion with the IDI

As Christian public leaders we are often learning new ways to navigate conversations and relationships with people of diverse cultures across churches and communities. Every interaction is an intercultural interaction, whether we realize it or not. Even if it seems like there are many shared cultural expressions (such as food, music, or dress), beneath the surface there are always deeper cultural dynamics and how we respond could make all the difference in someone understanding a sermon or feeling authentically welcomed into a congregation.

How to Lead More Effectively

One tool that can help us gain deeper insight about how to effectively engage culture is the Intercultural Development Inventory, a research-based assessment of intercultural competence. As a qualified administrator, consultant, and coach of the IDI, I’ve had the joy of working alongside church leaders as they discover a new cultural self-awareness and understanding of others. This work is developmental, meaning it involves an ongoing process of learning and is “about the journey, not the destination.” None of us knows everything about our own culture, let alone others, so the journey requires humility and compassion.

We can offer an authentic welcome and genuinely meet people where they’re at with practices that respond to the multiple dimensions of our cultures—honoring the ways we are alike just as much as the ways we are different. The research suggests that if we overemphasize our cultural differences it can result in fragmentation, but if we overemphasize our commonalities it can result in conformity. The sweet spot is finding a balance in how we approach cultural sameness and difference, developing behaviors that are cross-culturally responsive.

One Body, Many Parts

We can respond in ways that are culturally specific only when we learn the specifics of other cultures. As faith leaders, our context may include people who are more diverse than we even realize. Beyond the easily observable differences of race, gender, and age (which can each be complex in their own ways), a closer look may reveal there are also differences such as:

Family background
Education
Work experience
Socio-economic status
Sexual orientation
Abilities/ disabilities
Many others

Increasing our awareness of these differences and learning how to respond in ways that are affirming and accommodating can help deepen a sense of safety and belonging within any community.

The apostle Paul paints a vivid image of what this culturally-response community can look like in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. He wrote this letter during a time not unlike today, when faith leaders were asking how to respond to the differences they found in the church.

Should they deny and dismiss differences?

Uphold one way of being as better than the other?

Treat them all as the same?

Or is it possible to embrace the unique particularity of each and over time, learn how to adapt for their sake?

While all of the ways may have worked for them in various spaces, Paul’s invitation was to practice living as “many members of one body.” He emphasized that each member’s individual differences didn’t make them any less valuable as part of the body. In fact, he further asserts, the diversity of each member is vital for the body to function properly. And if one part is in need, it serves the well-being of the whole body if that part is given specific attention and care.

This is also the developmental journey we are invited to take through the work of interculturality. It becomes an ongoing process and practice of learning how to more intentionally respond to culturally specific differences with compassion and humility. In many ways, it is learning how to love more deeply.

Beloved Community

Intercultural development can be one tool that helps us live more fully into the vision given to us in scripture. What Dr. King and others called the Beloved Community, a culture and society of equity and justice, becomes more possible when we lovingly tend to both the ways we are alike and the ways we are different—appreciating commonalities while adapting to differences.

Of course, this takes patience and grace. More than anyone else, Jesus showed us how to embody this way of being. He moved across cultures with a profound self awareness and a transformational empathy, always able to illuminate the particularity of his experiences to speak to a universal truths. When we deepen our work of engaging culture, we not only deepen the impact of our ministry, we also follow Christ in bringing us closer to the Beloved Community God has called and created us to be.

Connecting With Others

We don’t do this work alone. There are a number of extremely helpful tools and resources in the field of interculturality. When engaging with the Intercultural Development Inventory it is important to do so with a Qualified Administrator who has the training to accurately interpret the results given by the assessment. They can serve as consultants and coaches providing learning opportunities and sharing best practices to support you on your developmental journey.

Both QA’s ourselves, my friend David Scherer and I are offering a second round of our sold-out course on interculturality and anti-racism online this October. There are two tracks: Faith Leaders Course and Standard Course.

This article originally appeared on The Faith+Leader and is republished with permission.

Joe Davis

Joe Davis is a nationally-touring artist, educator, and speaker based in Minneapolis, MN. His work employs poetry, music, theater, and dance to shape culture. He is the Founder and Director of multimedia production company, The New Renaissance, the frontman of emerging soul funk band, The Poetic Diaspora, and qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory. He has keynoted, facilitated conversation, and served as teaching artist at hundreds of high schools and universities including in New York, Boston, and most recently as the Artist-in-Residence at Luther Seminary where he earned a Masters in Theology of the Arts.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Greg Carey 9/21/20 Greg Carey 9/21/20

Resist Nihilism

“It’s all a matter of opinion, right?”

Try this line in a biblical studies classroom if you’ve never witnessed spontaneous combustion. It will set the professor’s hair on fire. This is a repeatable experiment. I hope my students aren’t reading.

I hope Dr. Eric Barreto’s are.

When someone says, “It’s all a matter of opinion,” conversation stops. If it’s all a matter of opinion, evidence doesn’t matter. Reason doesn’t matter. There’s no point in listening to one another. We might as well give up.

We resort to “It’s all a matter of opinion” when facts make us uncomfortable.

Students use it when course content stretches their faith. In the Covid-19 age, people use it when the demands of safety threaten our businesses and when we want social interaction. We trot out “It’s all a matter of opinion” to wiggle out of tight spaces.

Danger alert: “It’s all a matter of opinion” is nihilism in action. And nihilism is deadly.

Discernment is healthy. We have strong theological reasons to be skeptical of our values, our assumptions, and our capacity to know the truth. Jesus warned the Sadducees, “You know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matthew 12:24). We’re in the same boat. Our perceptions are limited. Moreover, our perceptions are clouded by sin. It’s like we’re looking into a distorted mirror, dimly lit (I Corinthians 13:9).

We must also confess, most important things do involve opinion. This is true for theology, ethics, biblical interpretation, and even history. Experts disagree. One reason we can’t find common ground on the Covid-19 pandemic is that science involves opinion: the experts’ opinions have changed as research expands. That’s confusing for all of us.

But cynical people, many of them extremely well paid, are at work to promote nihilism in our society. They want us to give up on the distinctions between true and false, between right and wrong.

“Some people say.”
“Many people do that.”
”The experts have been wrong before.”
“The science is unclear.”

These are wolves in wolves’ clothing. Wolves wear fine dresses and suits.

The wolves want us to give up on truth: What can we really know, anyway? They would have us set aside ethics: It’s all relative, isn’t it? They deny the possibility of dignity: Look at those sorry dogs over there. Even beauty means nothing to them: smells like money.

The wolves sure don’t want us looking out for one another, fostering the common good: It’s survival of the fittest, baby. Dog eats dog.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, guards us from the wolves. And he demands that we too protect the vulnerable: “Guard my sheep” (John 21:16). Wise as serpents and harmless as doves, we do not abandon integrity.

Now, biblical authors love tricksters. Jacob wears animal fur to trick his father into mistaking him for Esau. Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute, then holds to Judah’s ring and staff as security. Jael allows Sisera into her tent, gives him milk and a blankie.

But another thread runs through scripture. Integrity. Proverbs instructs, “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.” (12:19,). Jesus expects his disciples to speak a direct yes or no, no frills (Matthew 5:37). Paul insists on the integrity of his communication (I Corinthians 4:2). Revelation acknowledges disciples who bear the testimony of Jesus, no matter what the cost (12:11).

Educational psychologists have identified a common pattern among college students. College introduces them to diverse and conflicting points of view and to problems that haven’t been resolved. A natural reaction is to embrace relativism: “It’s all a matter of opinion.” Hopefully, students remember the lessons of relativism. There really are diverse perspectives, and they do have value. But then they learn to embrace commitment in the face of complexity. Some answers are better than others. Some are just wrong. Evidence counts. And the truth does matter.

For those of us in the United States, the next few weeks will bring a blizzard of bull. Followers of Jesus will not be deterred. Our calling is to foster truth, grace, dignity, and beauty in the midst of confusion. In so doing, we can contribute to the healing of a broken culture.

Greg Carey

Greg Carey is Professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary and an active layperson in the United Church of Christ. His books include studies of apocalyptic literature, the parables, the Gospel of Luke, and the ethics of biblical interpretation. His most recent books are *Stories Jesus Told: How to Read a Parable* and *Using Our Outside Voice: Public Biblical Interpretation.* In addition to serving on multiple editorial boards, Greg chairs the Professional Conduct Committee of the Society of Biblical Literature and serves on the Leadership Team of the Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ.
Facebook | @gregc666
Twitter | @Greg_Carey
Facebook | @LancasterTheologicalSeminary
Twitter | @LancSem

Greg Carey 8/18/20 Greg Carey 8/18/20

Liberty! (Gospel, That Is)

Calls for religious liberty have amplified over the past few years. The conversation took place, as everything seems to these days, around the topics of sex and sexuality. Two Supreme Court cases framed it. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) a corporation defended its religious conviction that it should not be required to include certain kinds of birth control in their health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) that asserted that providing a wedding cake for a gay couple would violate their religious convictions. In both cases the Supreme Court upheld the religious liberty of Christian-owned businesses who qualify under specific conditions.

Nobody wants to hear my opinions on Constitutional matters. As Paul would say, may it not be! Instead of pursuing the constitutional question, let’s examine what freedom means in a Christian context. Let’s think about gospel freedom.

Best I can tell from the New Testament, gospel freedom means a very particular range of things. According to Luke, Jesus inaugurates his ministry by proclaiming emancipation to those who are held captive and releasing those who are oppressed (4:18). Gospel freedom entails liberation from various kinds of suffering, including physical ailments (13:12, 16).

Gospel freedom also entails the power to overcome sin. Jesus promises that sort of freedom to those who abide in his word and thereby know the truth (John 8:31-37). And Paul proclaims that the power of the Holy Spirit frees people from the power of sin, making us free to live righteously (Rom 6:15-23).

There’s lots more to say about gospel freedom than we can discuss in this forum. But I want to foreground a different dimension of gospel freedom, one that runs counter to the language many Christians use today. Paul considers it freedom that Gentile men who follow Jesus need not submit to circumcision. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he writes (Gal 5:1). But in the same context Paul adds a warning:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (5:13-14)

Gospel freedom and civic freedom are related, but they are not the same thing. Gospel freedom is the capacity to live for God and for our neighbors.

Gospel freedom is not the privilege to do whatever we may want, even when we think we’re right. Gospel freedom is liberation to do good.

We see this pattern elsewhere in Paul’s letters. Paul could marry and expect the Corinthians to support him and a wife. He has that freedom, but he does not exercise it (1 Cor 9:1-8). Believers may “know” there’s no harm in eating food that’s been offered to one of the gods—but they must never use their liberty in a way that hurts someone else. Even if they think they’re correct (1 Cor 8:9). In all things, Paul appeals to the example of Jesus, who yielded his heavenly identity to live and suffer for others (Phil 2:1-11).

Gospel freedom, then, looks outward, not to one’s own privilege but to the benefit of others.

In contrast, many Christians today understand religious freedom as the absolute ability to live out their convictions. During this coronavirus pandemic, quite a few state governments have banned large indoor gatherings, including religious services. But some Christians have protested that their religious liberty had been curtailed. Nor is it rare to find Christians who refuse to wear masks, claiming they are exercising their freedom—both civil and religious. These Christians do not understand freedom as an opportunity to protect their neighbors.

On Sunday, August 9, the New York Times featured a story, “Christianity Will Have Power,” that examined the loyalty White evangelicals have shown for Donald Trump. No other demographic group supports Trump to the same degree. It’s important to specify White evangelicals because relatively few non-white evangelicals support Trump. The reporter, Elizabeth Dias, attributes the phenomenon to the fear that America is growing increasingly hostile to evangelical Christianity and to White evangelicals’ hope that Donald Trump will stand up for them.

Other experts have identified the same concern. Evangelical historian John Fea likewise attributes a good measure of White evangelical support for Trump to cultural fear. And four years ago the pollster Robert P. Jones penned The End of White Christian America, documenting demographic trends will soon reduce White Christians to less than half the population.

Dias’s story is long, but I noted that the words “free” or “freedom” appear a dozen times in the story. Dias writes on the basis of her travel to small-town Iowa this past spring. The story’s first appeal to freedom comes from a wife and mother whose Christianity is important to her:

The religious part is huge for us, as we see religious freedoms being taken away…. If you don’t believe in homosexuality or something, you lose your business because of it. And that’s a core part of your faith. Whereas I see Trump as defending that. He’s actually made that executive order to put the Bibles back in the public schools. That is something very worrisome and dear to us, our religious freedom.

Another Iowa mom expressed similar concerns. Dias reports:

She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.

I have opinions about freedom for LGBTQ persons and freedom for racial minorities.
I have opinions about the freedom of Christians.
Most of all, I aspire to live the freedom that pleases God and benefits my neighbors.

Eric D. Barreto 6/29/20 Eric D. Barreto 6/29/20

The Death of Death (Romans 6:1-11)

“So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)

Dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus? There are days when that confession seems easier to voice than others.

When death is not stalking our communities in the twin forms of pandemic and racism, police violence and anti-black prejudice, it may be possible to confess confidently with Paul that I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. But when sin entangles every aspect of our everyday lives, when racism and sexism and homophobia worm their way into every corner of this world, it may prove that much more difficult to proclaim along with Paul that I am, that we are dead to sin.

Is Paul right? Are we dead to sin? Really, are we? How can we say that?

Perhaps we have to move carefully here so that we can connect this ancient confession and the realities of the world today. I wonder if Paul is describing not the world as it was, the world he saw with his own eyes. After all, he lived in a world where empires reigned and spilled blood, a world of hunger and want, a world of disease and plague. I don’t think that Paul was simply being naive or optimistic here.

Even more, I wonder if Paul is describing not even the world as it could be, some placid dream, some intoxicating promise that lets us float on the high of a heavenly destiny while we suffer in the moment.

No, I wonder if Paul is describing the world as God is making it, the world God is crafting right here and right now and forever.

I wonder if Paul’s declaration that we are dead to sin is a way to collapse the future of God’s promises and the present of our realities, a way to know and feel and be the resurrection people Jesus has already made us to be.

But Paul does not start here. He starts earlier. And we should too.

With Paul, we have to start at the beginning. Not just the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Romans but to the beginning of the story he weaves in this letter, the narrative into which he invites us, the divine tale Paul hopes we see as our own story.

You see, I worry that too many Christians see the letters of Paul as a pile of confessions, a litany of doctrine, a list of things we believe on a check-list. In the church where I grew up, Paul was often a favorite source for all our deepest convictions. Paul’s letters leapt out from a distant culture and time and place with the freshness of the moment because they were letters written directly to us, to address every question of doctrine, every inquiry about dogma. The letters were distillations of what we believed. The letters were carriers of Paul’s thinking, injected directly into my mind so that I too might know the mind of Christ.

But what if we realized that Paul’s letters were not the careful, organized thoughts of the theologian as much as the anguished, desperate story-telling of a preacher at the cusp of a world being turned upside down? What if Paul was writing theology not for the calm of everyday life? What if Paul was telling a story for the end of days, a story to make sense of a world seeming to be crumbling that much more with every unjust day that passed?

When the world seems to be falling apart, when communities are frayed, when nations shake, that is when we most need Paul’s letters, not as an escape into some ethereal imagination about doctrine and thinking the right things, but as a pathway into the soil of everyday life, the cries of the harmed, the lament of the dying.

Why? Because Paul’s letters invite us into a story, a story whose beginning Paul narrates right before our passage.

You see, Paul recalls, there was once a person whose transgressions, whose trespass caused us all to fall under the shadow of condemnation. All this hurt. All this brokenness. All this death. It had a start. It started when one person’s disobedience created a crack between us and God, a crack through which Sin and Death found a way to make of that crack a wedge of separation. A wedge that separates you and me and God from one another.

But this one person was not the end of the story for there was another, another who would not precipitate our imprisonment but our deliverance, one who would deliver us into the bounties of resurrection through obedience to God, even obedience that led to a cross. With Jesus, we are no longer bound to Sin and Death, no longer captured by these destructive forces. We are free. We are alive in Christ.

To understand this story fully, however, we have to understand that when Paul writes about Sin and Death in Romans, he is not just referring to lower-case s sin, the things I do wrong in my everyday life, the missteps and mistakes that haunt me and not just to lower-case d death, the moment when my lungs will cease and my heart will stop beating and my thoughts will draw to a close. As Katherine Grieb has explained, Paul refers here to capital-S Sin and capital-D Death, to forces that invade, to personified realities in our lives that wreak havoc wherever they tread. Capital-S Sin is not just that which I do wrong but the forces of destruction that separate us from our neighbors and our God. Capital-D Death is a usurper who takes lives that do not belong to capital-D Death.

Sin and Death once ruled over us, but no more, Paul declares, for when we are baptized in Christ, we die and the dead can no longer die to capital-D Death. Sin and Death lose their hold on us through Christ.

Death is dead. Sin is dead. This what Paul urges us to confess not because Paul is naive, not because Paul is closing his eyes and stopping his ears to the pain of his neighbors, to the realities of his own life in an empire that would take his life.

Death is dead. Sin is dead. This, my friends, is a radical proposition in this moment in history. We declare that Death is dead not because we will pretend that all lives matters. Not because we will refuse to face squarely an upside-down world. Not because we will neglect the nearly 120,000 of our neighbors who died, too many of them alone. And let me just say that I’ve updated that last sentence several times in the last weeks. Each time was more devastating than the last.

No, we will confess that Death is dead and Sin is dead when we live “Black Lives Matter.” We will confess that Death is dead and Sin is dead when we confess that the systemic, sinful tentacles of racism and colonialism and homophobia are coursing through our veins, but that those logics have died at the cross of Christ, those ways of structuring have no power over us because Death is dead and so is Sin.

But notice that the death of Death comes at a high cost. It’s not some easy and magical exchange. That “in Christ” at the end of v. 11 carries a great deal of weight. That “in Christ” is the sacrificial love of Christ. It is Jesus’ death that makes Death die. It is Jesus’ death at the hands of the empire that crumbles the throne room of Caesar. Jesus dies as we roar approvingly at the foot of the cross that empire is keeping us safe by terrorizing someone else. It is Jesus’ death that liberates us from the false promise of prosperity on the backs of those who suffer.

The death of Jesus clarifies who we are but also whom God has made us to be.

Death it turns out is clarifying.

When we see into the eyes of those dying under the weight of empire and fear, when we hear someone breathing their last. When we are witnesses as someone calls out to their mother, we run directly into the clarifying power of death, the way death exposes our frailty and brokenness and injustice.

My friends, hear the good news of Jesus. You are dead to Sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You have been baptized with Christ. Sin no longer holds you captive. Death is no longer your enemy, for Death has been defeated.

But there’s more. Verse 10: “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” Death had one shot and missed. Death came for the king, and Death missed. But Jesus’ life is so much more than the empire’s failed attempt to kill him. His life is abundant and free, full of grace and love and transformation and, yes, the judgement that sets the world right.

And his life is now ours. Verse 5: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” My friends, that is our life now. A life liberated from the sting of Death, the shackles of Sin.

But it’s one thing to say it aloud; it’s a whole other matter to live as if what we confess is actually true.

If Death is dead, then a pandemic that deals death in ways that show us how deeply imbedded racist structures are in every aspect of life is a call to action towards life. If Death is dead, then the death of people of color whether because of pandemic or racism is not just an accident of history but a call to a different world. If Death is dead, then the cries of our Black neighbors are not just another protest, but a holy demand that Death stay dead. If Death is dead, then protest is not just a way to signal our holiness but a way to align our hopes and our lives with those who cannot breathe.

“So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”