Luminescence, Volume 2. C. K. Barrett
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ten times from 12/26/87 at St. John’s College, Nottingham to 6/12/05 at Langley Park]
I allow myself to give you that text as a convenient summary of the paragraph that was read as the lesson, a paragraph which indeed many commentaries reckon as running not from vs. 19 but from vs. 14 to vs. 29.
Life isn’t fair, is it? We all say it from time to time, and I have been thinking about it a good deal for about a week. I came up from the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground, came up Escalator No. 4, and passed through the booking hall. If I had done this just four weeks later about to the hour, than I did, the escalator would have burned under me, the fireball would have burst through the booking hall, and you would have had to find a different lecturer and preacher for today. As it was, I passed through easily, carried on to the British Rail Station, and caught the train home to Durham. This was a piece of unfairness that was very nice for me. My leg was right in front of the wicket, but at the crucial moment the umpire sneezed, couldn’t see, and gave me the benefit of the doubt. Not out. But there are other people, people whose loved ones are dead, people who lie in hospital with horrible burns, who see the unfairness a different way. Why did it happen to them?
Life, is unfair. Some of you heard me refer to students of theology who know nothing of educational opportunities and privileges that we can take for granted. Is that fair? And now it seems that God is going to join in; he too is not playing fair. It is not perhaps surprising that the man that has been described as the greatest New Testament scholar of this century should write of this passage with which we are dealing, dealing with the image of the pots and the potter says: “It is a well-worn illustration. But the trouble is that a human being is not a pot; he will ask, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ and he will not be bludgeoned with silence. It is the weakest point in the whole epistle.”
All this you may, if you like, take as a complaint against the extreme unfairness of the lectionary in setting before me this most difficult of paragraphs. Of course if you do take it in that way, you will be wrong. It all adds up to the preliminary point, which we need to remember and to state explicitly before we can really get down to business, the point that we are not living in a perfect world in which we can expect everything to be worked out for our convenience and care. It is a long time since our ancestors were driven out of the Garden of Eden into an unfriendly world of thorns and thistles, sweat and pain. And as we proceed, the next thing to discuss is what Paul does not say.
WHAT PAUL DOES NOT SAY
He does not say that willing and running, decision and effort have no place in the Christian life. We know he cannot mean that for if he did, he would be contradicting what he says elsewhere. God himself encourages willing and doing (Phil 2.13). And running is one of his favorite images. In a race, everyone runs, but only one can win the prize; run so that you may get it (1 Cor 9.24). You were running well—who got in your way (Gal 5.7)? It is right that a Christian should will what is good; it is right that he should put into the achieving of it all the energy that an athlete uses as he strains every muscle to get to the tape. There is nothing wrong with willing with iron determination, nothing wrong with straining every nerve as we press towards the mark. Anyone who uses this text as an excuse for a slack effort has certainly gotten Paul wrong.
What Paul is saying is that if we so will, and if we so strive, we owe it not to our own strength of mind and character, but to the mercy of God, which lies behind all our willing and striving. The point is that we do not begin the operation. We do not will and strive in order to deserve and so to win God’s mercy, God’s favor. His goodness comes first, and our effort is a response to it. A response which he not merely elicits but makes possible.
IS GOD UNFAIR?
Granted that he starts the process that leads to salvation, does he arbitrarily start the process for some and not for others? At this point we have to remember the whole context in which our verse is set, the whole, that is, of Romans 9–11. To do this properly is out of the question; not to do it at all would mean to give up the attempt to understand what Paul is about and to give up the attempt to hear what Scripture has to say to us.
The first thing to say is that the story Paul has to tell is a long one. It is probably even longer than Paul thought it was, for I doubt whether he thought it would still be going on in 1987. It goes back to the promises God made to the patriarchs; and it will not end until all can join in Paul’s final paean of praise. “O the depths of the riches of both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! . . . Of him, and through him, and unto him are all things. To him be the glory forever.” Paul glimpses the whole process; that is what we call revelation, or inspiration or some such word.
Apart from that, if you slice through the process of some intermediate point, you will not understand it. Elijah did not understand it; “Lord they have killed the prophets, they have torn down the altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” In other words, “it’s all up; God you have failed.” But even Elijah was wrong (until he was taught better). It is not merely that he got the statistics wrong (not 1 but 7,000, a mere error of 700,000 percent). He had not grasped the fact that God was working through a remnant, and if the remnant had consisted not of 7,000 but of only 1, God would still have worked through it.
The story is a long one, and though at any given point, such as perhaps today, it may seem that wrath is doing a great deal better than mercy, that does not mean that mercy will not win in the end. A special feature of this (which comes out in our lesson for today) is that God can and does use Pharaoh, who will serve the purpose of God in a more distinguished way than the great many of anonymous Israelites when God in his mercy delivered them from bondage in Egypt. Because Pharaoh is what God makes him, God’s power is manifested and his name is published abroad. Pharaoh becomes an instrument of the Gospel. God’s purpose runs through mysterious channels.
The high point of this is that in the story of God’s dealing with his human creation, disobedience plays a positive role; without it, mercy could not be mercy. It could only be approval. In no other way could God prove his love. “Scarcely for a righteous person will anyone dare to die. . . . God commends his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” It is Augustine’s felix culpa. In no other context can the full extent of God’s love be recognized.
And as we see fully in chapter 11, God’s mercy is for all who will have it as mercy; who will accept it, as Wesley said, on God’s terms. As long as I am viewing my willing and running as ground on which I deserve God’s favor, so long I do not get it. When I recognize that I deserve nothing from him, the fullness of his mercy is poured out. Paul works this out on a huge canvas, in the story of Jew and Gentile; it is just as true in the miniature of a single human life. In fact, this apparently forbidding verse, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” is in fact the Gospel.
THE GOSPEL
“It is not of him that runs, or the one who wills, but of God who has mercy.” The trouble is I am not very good at willing, at reaching a decision, and sticking to it through thick and thin, nor very good at running. It is as if one said to me (Paul can use the image, so can I), “Would you like an Olympic Gold Medal? You can have one. All you need to do is go out on the track there, and run a race faster than all these other fellows.” The process is indeed a simple one, the only problem is, I can’t run fast enough.
I do not need to explain my meaning. I am not good enough to win God’s medal, and if my standing with God depends on my virtue, my religiousness, shaky is hardly the word for it. It does not. It depends on the mercy of a merciful God, the God who is known in Christ as the friend of tax collectors and sinners. So there is hope, good news for me. Not only that, but I am set free, free to run in my own way. If my only hope is to go out and beat three long-legged fellows in the Olympic stadium, or even to get up into their class, I shall stay at home; it isn’t worth trying. But now I know that, as I am, I have God’s mercy, I can and I will go out and run. I cannot serve him as his great ones do, certainly I cannot serve him well enough to deserve a prize. But I will go out and use for him the one talent which he entrusted to me.
There is one thing more to say. It is an unfair world, isn’t it? Someone here is saying