Romans 6:12-23 - Greater things

Romans 6:12-23
A little more than a year before I was born my mother woke up to a song on the radio, which asked the question, “Is this all there is to life?” It was ultimately this song which cause my mother to be intrigued by a sign she saw in a church yard and decide to attend a revival service at a small Kentucky Nazarene Church, where she discovered what more there was to life. As I was working on my sermon this week, my mother’s story kept coming to mind so I tried to find the song, which my mother believed to have been sung by Marianne Faithful, but with the very little information my mother’s memory provides, the song seems to be un-google-able. This is so not because it is such an obscure song that the Internet has not yet managed to catch that particular fish. No, the spider who spins the web has captured so many songs with this theme, which I gave up looking to find the one particular song, to which mother was referring.

Everyone seems to ask this question in one form or another. The author, the poet and the songwriter all ask this singular question on our behalf. There has got to be more than this? It is our souls’ cry. The songs I read this week in my search all spoke of the same thing, looking around at the world and finding it lacking, finding our movement through this world meaningless, no matter how much you gain, no matter how long your search, not matter what you do to infuse your life with something more than the mindless monotony which all too often fills the moments of our lives, our lives always seem to come up short and be less than what we know deep in side they could be. Song after song speaks of being fed up with always looking for the next thing that will make us feel fulfilled, always searching and never finding, always reaching but always coming up empty handed. As we sit at our desk doing the same thing we did yesterday, as we serve another meal to our children, as we run another errand, as we do the same thing we did yesterday, last week, last year, yet one more time, we often find ourselves looking down at the work of our hands and wondering if any of it has any meaning. We wonder if we are going anywhere, if our lives matter, if what we are doing will have any lasting impact. We long for meaning, we long for notoriety, for our moment of fame, but the thing is that those who have it are also searching for something more, something better, something else. We long for what they have but their testimony is that once they have what they have, they find that it is not what they were looking for; they find that they are still searching, still longing for more.

We all feel that there has to be more to life than the small little lives we live. So we long for people to know us, to name us and know our name, to have done something that will be remembered by people whom we don’t know and will probably never meet, but most of us know we won’t be remembered by anyone other than those closer to us and the memory of our lives will live on for not much beyond the lives of our grandchildren. Most of us know that we won’t do anything that will give our name, our lives, the things we did here on earth staying power, we won’t be written in the history books, find the cure to cancer, end world hunger, invent the next thing that will still be used a century from now. Our last names will not be household words like Edison, Ford, Franklin, Rockefeller or Kennedy and even if it were we would still be searching for something and find that our lives are lacking. Every Monday morning, when the alarm goes off and we see yet another week, doing the same old things stretching out before us, something in the core of our beings screams, “This can not be all there is!!” Yet we find our selves move ourselves moving through yet another day, in yet another week, in yet another year.
The thing is that not only is there more to life than this, the fact of the matter is that we were created for more than just this. Paul reminds us that we wake up every Monday, slaves, with a week of slavery stretching out before us, but we are not slaves because we were created to be slaves. We are not slaves because we are designed to be slaves, we are slaves because, we wake up every morning and we choose to be slaves.

I was once told a story about a man who kept birds in his garden in a beautiful large cage. The birds were fed every morning and every evening. They were protected from the rain and from the weather. They lacked for nothing. The man would often walk in his garden and sit down next to the birdcage and talk kindly to the birds and give them special little treats from his hands. One day the man came and sat by the birds and began to wonder to himself. Every morning I come, I open the cage and feed the birds, every evening I do the same, and often times during the day when I am here in the garden for one reason or anther I open the cage and although I am careful and try to not allow the birds any opportunity to escape, they never even try. He looked in at his birds they were pretty and well contented and on a whim he reached out his hands and open wide the cage and sat back down and watched the birds. Although they seemed to notice that the cage door was open and one or two even came to the gate’s edge, or poke their head out, to alighted just outside the cage, on the cage door itself even, but none of them made an attempt to fly away, not one of them given the opportunity would choose to the leave the safety and security of the cage. The birds choose to continue to be caged.

Paul tells us that we are slaves to whom we choose to obey. We can choose to obey one master or another but we are always choosing to obey something or somebody. If we choose to continue to obey sin then we are slaves to sin. If we choose to obey righteousness then we become slaves to God.

Choosing to live a life in slavery to sin, is choosing to live the life you have been living; choosing to live a life in slavery to sin means continuing to live a discontented life, a life that always seems to be lacking, that always seems to end at the end of yourself. Choosing to live a life in obedience to sin is a choosing to live a life limited by your own wants and desires. It is as small as you are, it begins and end with you, who you are, what makes you happy, what makes you feel fulfilled, and living that kind of life, no matter how rich, or famous the things you do and who you are that makes you you, you will continually find that your life feels as if it comes up short, falls flat, is not what you wanted it to be. It will always be less than, because it will always begin and end with you.

We are birds, we have been fed and nurtured and cared for, but we are slaves to the lives we know, to the lives we have been living, even as the cage door stands open we continue to remain where we are captured, enslaved because, although we long to be free, we are slaves to the food, the water, the apparent safety and security we have here in the cage. But the door has been opened and we can fly free. We can choose to no longer be slaves to the man who sits by the cage but if we fly free we would be slaves to forces of nature, slaves to finding our own food, slaves to a new way of life, more vibrant, more like the life that we, as birds were created to live, but different and difficult all the same. But in choosing this new slavery our lives would be so much bigger and grander than they could ever be living here in the cave.

Choosing God is choosing freedom; choosing God is choosing to live a life bigger than the one you are now living; choosing God is choosing to obey something bigger than you, something bigger than you and I, and all of us combined, choosing God is allowing your life to be joined with that of the creator of the universe, so that you may live the life you were created to live, live the live you were meant to live, live a life that has purpose and meaning beyond yourself. Choosing righteousness is not just about being good (you may or may not remember from our previous journeys in the book of Romans that you can’t be good in and of yourself anyway), doing all the right things and living the right way, it is about joining your life with the life of God, giving up all that you want, all that you desire, and allowing your wants and desires to be shaped and formed by the creator of the universe, it is about joining your life’s purpose with the purpose of the creator. It is about becoming a part of all that God is doing now, has done in the past and will do in the future.

When we allow ourselves to give up our slavery to sin and instead choose to be slaves to the love of God, slaves to the purpose and work of God in this world, we are allowing ourselves to be fulfilled in ways we could never be fulfilled when we were serving ourselves, being slaves to our own sin, our own whims and desires. Slavery to righteousness allows us to be apart of the working of the universe, allows us to be apart of the giving, receiving, and spreading of love in this world. Slavery to righteousness is slavery to love, it is a slavery that begins by loving God with the very fabric of our beings, allowing God’s love to fill us and recreate us into creators of love and then living that love and giving that love to the world around us. Slavery to righteous is loving God and neighbor. It is being the love of God to all those whom we encounter each and every day. It is being kind and gentle in the face of harsh rudeness; it is speaking softly when all the world around us is yelling; it is stopping and allowing the other to go first; it is loving those who hate; being honest in the face of lies, it is being true when those around us would be false. It is choosing the right and the good, over and above the false and the bad. It is being the face of a loving God to a world who can not help but see an angry, unjust god in the reflective images seen all around that so easily pass for god.

It is not easy to be slaves to righteousness. It is not easy to live love in this world. It is not easy to leave the cage and fly free as a bird was meant to be. Saying, “live the life you were created to live,” sounds easy. It sounds like something we would want to do, but it is not easy, it is hard, it is difficult and it is fraught with its own hardships. But is it a freer life, it is a meaningful life and it is a life that fills in the deep, dark empty places in the center of your being.

We all long to find meaning. We all long to be more than we are. We all long for something greater, more powerful, more. .. from ourselves, from our lives. Why not find it by joining your life with that of the one who spoke and the stars began to shine, who breathed and we were given life? Why not live a life joining your heart with the heart of God? Why not live a life bigger than yourself, bigger than this world, bigger than all time? Fly away from the cage! Take the risk and learn to live a life of righteousness, a life of love. When you do, greater things will come.
The fact of the matter is as Christians when we feel small. When we feel useless, when we feel as if there is no meaning, no worth in our small existences, we can rest in the hope that Christ himself gave us when we told us that greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done. Who we are does not end with our lives, who we are does not end with the smallness of our lives. God is doing great things through the Church; God will continue to do great things though us. Life is greater than this. Life is bigger than us. There is no one like our God. There is no work like the work our God is doing, and will do.

When we choose to join our lives with the life and purpose of God; when we choose righteousness we are choosing to live and breathe the love of God into this world and God will do great things through us and in us. The love we live will not die. The love we live will reach out and touch people. The love we live will change and transform lives. Our lives are anything but small, they are not meaningless, they are conduits through which the love of God is pumped into this world. But they can only be that if we choose that love, choose that righteousness. God can not flow through us or in us unless we open ourselves up to God, turn from being slaves to ourselves and to our sin, and becomes slaves of love and righteousness and when we do we ARE the love of God in this world, we ARE the workings of God here in this place. God wants to be in us. God wants to work through us. God wants to reach out to the people whom we encounter in our day to day lives, but the only way God can do any of these things, is if we are living the love of God, choosing the righteousness of God and allowing that love and righteousness to be the guiding force in all that we do, all that we say and what moves us and motivates us as we walk the paths that we walk everyday.