Reflection on Romans 5:1-8

 

Romans 5:1-8 (NRSVue)

¹ Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
  ⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Reflection

“Look at that house over there.  It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  I helped build that house.  I also almost ruined the entire thing!”  My childhood pastor was pointing to a house out my window as he drove me to church camp. 

“That second floor of that house was almost more like a ramp,” he continued.  “I spent the entire day building the walls on the far side of the house on the ground.  When we went to stand the wall up in place I noticed something right away.  The wall was too short.  Somehow, I had measured wrong.  The wall height was way wrong!”

He glanced over at me.

“You know what this means?  Either the second floor would be like a ramp, and people would literally be able to slide out of bed in the morning, or I would have to put in a step somewhere in the middle of the house.  It was ridiculous!

Luckily, my boss was preoccupied and didn’t see the problem.  He walked away.  I had some time to fix the problem.  But I couldn’t spend another entire day tearing down the wall and starting from scratch.  If I put in the step, the boss would notice.  And the ramped floor just…people used to put ramped floors in church social halls to keep people from dancing.  You notice that!  Can you see my problem?  I panicked.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was going to be fired!

I was so scared and frustrated at my mistake that I took my hammer and slammed it down on the floor, ruining a perfectly good piece of plywood right under my feet.  Great!  Now I would have to fix that!  I picked up the hammer and threw it as far as I could get it from the house.  It soared somewhere over the trees. 

‘That was stupid,’ I raged.  ‘Now I need to spend time searching for my hammer!  That’s time that I don’t have.  I’m so stupid sometimes.’

I needed to cool down.  I needed time to think.  I needed to just sit in my truck and cool down for a bit. 

Well, I have to tell you that at least one thing did go right for me.  When I opened the door of my truck, right there in circle of sparkly sunlight, like a gift from God, sat my hammer, right there on the front seat.  What a glorious sight.

And that sunlight?  It was sparkly because it was reflecting off the thousands of little pieces of glass from what used to be my windshield.  Complete nuclear meltdown does not even begin to describe my reaction.  My boss heard me.  The neighbors heard me.  My parents in Hawaii heard me. 

In just seconds my boss came running.  Great!  Here goes the job!

‘You just go home and rest for the night’ my boss said.  ‘We will talk more about this in the morning.’  I knew how that conversation was going to go.  I needed to start getting my resume ready.

The next day when I got to the job site, I saw that the wall was no longer too short.

‘I fixed it for you, you can relax,’ my boss said.  ‘All you had to do was put in a header on top of the wall to correct the height.  You can always justify the height.  No biggie.  You learn something new every day.’  And that was that.”

After wiping the tears of laughter from my face, I listened to the lessons that he learned that day.  He learned that “justify” means making something straight and acceptable.  He learned that bosses can and sometimes do forgive.  He learned that they usually want you to learn and be better.   He learned that you do not need to fix problems all on your own.  It was the boss who made things right again.  He also learned that you should measure at least three times before you make a cut. 

You only gain that sort of wisdom and character from making mistakes, being rescued from your mistakes, and then learning how to do it better. 

My pastor also learned another thing: his truck’s liability insurance was not going to rescue him from this self-inflicted damage.  How knew?

In other words, my childhood pastor’s story was the lesson Paul is trying to teach us in Romans:

“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:1-5).

“Jira, just remember two things:  First, you are not perfect and you cannot become perfect.  Just try to build a house and you will learn that pretty quickly.  Second, remember that you can trust Jesus to forgive you and make things right again, just like my boss forgave and made things right for me.  Remember those two things: you are not perfect and Jesus is the one who forgives and makes things right, and you will always understand what faith is about.”

It was a catechetical lesson on God’s grace that a fourth grader could understand.  I honestly do not remember anything that I learned from the following week at Bible camp, except how to put Vaseline on the outhouse toilet seats so that the next person would sink fearfully into the hole.  We couldn’t wait to hear the midnight screams.

But I do remember that car ride.  I also remember what Paul meant when he said that because, “we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  I just think about cutting the wood wrong and when we are at our wits’ end, we can trust the boss to fix it.  That is faith.

That little faith lesson in the car mattered a lot to me. 

It has mattered each time someone has come up to me and said something like, “Why did my loved one die?  I must have done something wrong to deserve them to be taken away.  God must be punishing me!” 

Each time, I simply tell the truth as it was taught to me.  The truth is that we all build the house wrong.  You do not deserve to suffer any more than anyone else.  We all build the house wrong. 

But have hope because God is good, all the time.  God can salvage and rebuild something new and good even after the worst of tragedies.  Look at the cross.  God lost his Son, his loved one, as well.  Look how he raised him on the third day.  If God can salvage that, God can salvage even your tragedy.  And when your grief subsides, after the tears clear from your eyes, you may finally be able to see just how God has rebuilt your life.

That little faith lesson in the car matters each time someone comes up to me and tells me that, “This time the fighting went too far and the relationship is over.  What I’m going to do now?”

We all build the house wrong.  We are all weak.  We all say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing.  It is God who can salvage something from our mistakes, our weaknesses, and our tragedies in life.  Remember what the Apostle Paul taught:

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).

So yes, when you have ruined the relationship, you can expect that the next number of months are going to be some of the worst that you have ever gone through.  It will be a time of suffering, period. 

But you can also remember that God is good, all the time.  God died for mess ups and sinners like us.  Have hope because God rebuilds lives and rebuilds relationships of mess ups and sinners.  God’s goodness will forever stay with you.  Have hope. 

After-all, hope “does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:5).  Hope remembers.  It remembers that God’s love is poured out abundantly, even when we build our lives in crooked ways.  Jesus can rebuild our lives for us.  He does this out of love.  Trust in that love.