Hello again, dear reader! Thank you for being here. Today we’re still in Romans, Chapter One.
Romans 1:18-32 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters,[a] insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
This is a difficult passage, and I don’t want to sidestep the hard stuff. I believe our God contains both judgment and mercy, commandment and forgiveness. It would be easy to get hung up here on our guilt: for giving up our bodies to “degrading passions,” and for doing things we ought not do. It is also compelling to focus on God’s wrath, and to give up on his love by seeing him as a fundamentally angry God. Paul says we “know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die.” Maybe we deserve death, but as Paul says later in Romans: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (6:23).
In any case, context is crucially important to Biblical interpretation, so I’m going to leave that to scholars, like Sarah Ruden: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/158729/paul-among-the-people-by-sarah-ruden/
My intuition has always been that people who are shunned by their families and the churches they grew up in is a radical excommunication that doesn’t feel like “loving your neighbor.” I believe God adores all his children: he knows every hair on our heads, knows us even as we are knit together in our mothers’ wombs, and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. He knows all this because He made each of us.
So what I want to focus on today is this simple idea: 19 For what can be known about God is plain to [us], because God has shown it to [us]. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.
To begin to know God is as simple and mysterious as turning our attention to the “things He has made.” Especially when we are feeling hopeless, confused, or overwhelmed, it is vastly comforting to know that the nature of our God is right here, everywhere, to be beheld. What a glorious favor of our own bodily existence that we are able to experience God’s goodness and essence all around us, in his bounty and beauty, and in each other. We must go out and eat the peaches of this life! And we must strive to avoid being given over to the “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” in the things we choose to do.
Thanks to my yoga teacher for playing this song the other night. It’s by Ben and Ellen Harper: so beautiful how could we not believe. If you have a few minutes, please give it a listen. I hear it as praise.
https://www.benharper.com/songs-lyrics/originals/how-could-we-not-believe
So beautiful! How could we not believe? What are the ways in which you are acknowledging, honoring, thanking, and worshiping the Creator and not the creaturely?