Sermon for Sunday 31 July 2011 - Anne

Romans 9: 1-5
All roads lead to Rome! The masterpieces of civil engineering, like spokes of a wheel, connecting the outer cities of the Empire to the hub at the centre, to where it’s all happening in 55AD - the information super-highway of the first century, global networking before the terms ‘global’ or ‘networking’ were ever invented. And Paul used them to spread the gospel throughout Greece and Asia Minor and to send letters to the scattered congregations of new believers, including the one in Rome. And let’s face it, Paul knew a thing or two about roads – after all, he’d had an amazing life-changing encounter with Jesus on the one to Damascus.

In America, near Boston Massachusetts, in the village of Lexington, the road divides into two at the village green. At the fork in the road, 236 years ago the British took the wrong fork to come unexpectedly face-to-face with the American patriots. In the panic, the first shots of the American Revolution rang out across the green and the rest, so to speak, is history. Incredible consequences – all because of a fork in the road. Perhaps satellite navigation or a road map would have helped.

The Israelites had all the navigational aids; they had the road map to heaven. They had the adoption – God’s children, part of his family; they had the covenant promises given to Moses, to Abraham, and to David; they had the law – God’s own words to guide and instruct them; they had the Temple – God’s house, a place to speak to Him and to worship and praise Him, and they had the glory and the blessings. They received all the privileges of being chosen, of being close to God – of being a people intertwined with the life of God.

So why is Paul full of sorrow, of inconsolable grief? How did he get from the exaltations he expressed of nothing being able to separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus, to this? From the dizzy heights of the expression of love to the depths of sorrow and unceasing grief? A grief expressed even more vividly when he says he would wish to be separated from the very thing he said he could never be separated from; he would be cut off from Christ for the sake of his own people. This is a man who loves the family he is part of; a man who would sacrifice his own salvation for the salvation of his kin.

But they had the road map – didn’t they?

Satellite navigation systems have a habit of guiding drivers up the most unsuitable roads. Newspapers often report stories of lorry drivers being directed up impossibly narrow tracks or people blindly following the instructions bringing them perilously close to the edge of a precipice. Satellite navigation seems to send us into a state of ‘suspended reasoning’ where all commonsense, all rational thought seems to disappear. We say to ourselves ‘follow the instructions, keep on track’ and in following we seem to lose our sense of focus, our overall sense of direction, the big picture. We miss the obvious and then things don’t quite go according to plan.

The Israelites might’ve had the road map, but at the fork in the road they took the road away from faith in Christ. In the detail of keeping the faith given to them in the promises and the covenants and the law, they had lost the big picture and Paul was sad. His brothers and sisters, his contemporaries, his people, rejected the gospel message; they didn’t have faith in the Son of God. They didn’t recognise Christ, the Messiah, even though his flesh was their flesh and his human nature came from them. Paul says the people of God are like an olive tree, but some of the natural branches, the Israelites, have been broken off because of unbelief. God’s self-giving love is expressed completely in Jesus and faith in him marks out the true people of God … therefore the Israelites blessings were incomplete.

Does this mean that God’s promises have fallen short? How can we trust God if he has broken his promises to his chosen people? If the ‘chosen people’ have chosen the wrong road, then it’s gone seriously wrong, hasn’t it? Has God changed his mind?

Or maybe, he’d just planned it that way. The Israelites knew all about the love and mercy of God. They’d taken the wrong fork in the road before, but God worked His plan, even through their disobedience. In the desert they’d worshipped idols and complained about the state of their diet and God had shown mercy and some did reach the Promised Land. The Old Testament is full of stories about how God saves and redeems His chosen people; He doesn’t let them down, even when they disobey, even when they go they’re own way. But the law was intended to be temporary – to guide the people of Israel until Christ came and when the promises made to Abraham, Moses and David came to fruition in Christ. In Christ, God revealed His once and for all, saving plan. Later in the letter to the believers in Rome, Paul’s anguish is played out and all is not lost. This was God’s plan all along. The rejection of the gospel message meant the gentiles got to hear the good news, God’s saving plan was open for all, and those Roman roads became the conduit to all nations. And Paul’s own conversion is testimony that Israelites also came to faith. This was part of the bigger picture; this was the part the Israelites didn't see.

In our lives we like to be in control, to know the plan. At the moment, lots of us are busy preparing for a holiday and that’s stressful at the best of times. We have to think ahead and sort out a destination, then make sure the travel arrangements are ok and the dog or cat’s booked into their holiday home, and then in the few weeks running up to the holiday, make sure all the washing’s done, and we have enough of that crucial medication to last a fortnight, and then finish the packing. And then, finally, we relax because it’s all sorted and under control – phew, breathe a sigh of relief. But … then… a volcano in Iceland erupts. And suddenly all the planning in the world, all the decisions, all the stress, counts for nothing. That feeling of ‘it’s not fair I’ve been looking forward to this all year’ or ‘it never goes right for me’ all those ‘I had it all under control and now I haven’t’ sort of emotions come to the surface. We try to put it right by complaining … loudly, trying different airlines, different airports or we look at the wind forecasts to predict when we can get away (have we ever looked at the wind forecasts before?). Oh yes, and then.. if we remember or when we are really desperate ... we might pray to God – God please sort this out! We hate to lose control because we lose our sense of direction and we cannot predict what the outcome might be. But we only have part of the story – the bit that is our microcosm of the bigger picture, the bit maybe where Cinderella’s still in the kitchen doing all the work – we can’t see the part where she goes to the ball or tries on the glass slipper.

But God knows the whole story – he sees all the parts of the picture. It’s His plan – it may not look ‘right’ to us but He loves us and through His mercy we can trust in Him, despite how it looks.
Maps are intricate things. Opening a neatly folded Ordinance Survey map reveals the landscape, bit-by-bit; each new segment reveals something about the rest. As each piece is unveiled we get a different perspective on what we’ve already seen and on what’s to come. Looking at a single segment, we can never know each meander, each tiny track or lane, the intricate detail and interconnectedness, or know where each fork in the road goes.

In the village of Lexington, the road divides into two at the village green but the triangular-shaped green is actually bordered by three roads. Coming down Massachusetts Avenue, to pass the green, the road builders ensured that whichever fork you take, you might end up at a different point but on the same road.