“Who Will Rescue Me from This Body of Death?”

Romans 7:15-25; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Communion Sunday

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Jesus said, ¹⁶ “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ¹⁷ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ ¹⁸ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; ¹⁹ the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

²⁵ “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶ …for such was your gracious will. ²⁷ All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

²⁸ “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Romans 7:15-25

¹⁵ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The Sermon

I realize that if something is written on a T-shirt, that means it comes from the heights of philosophical reasoning.

But a couple weeks ago I saw a T-shirt in Black Mountain that made me laugh out loud. It was five simple words—no picture, no design, just five words that appeared to be typed in extra large print across the chest: “Your kids aren’t that great.”

Kind of cynical I suppose, and I wouldn’t wear that one around here, because I know your kids, and they really are pretty great.

But generally we come into church—this church, or any church—sending, receiving and believing mixed signals about how great or how “good” we are, whatever that means philosophically, theologically, socially, personally.

We know we’re not really as good, or certainly as great, as we would like others to think we are. But most of us don’t want anyone to think we think we’re all that great.

And a lot of us come into worship, and for that matter come into any aspect of church life, knowing we have a long way to go and a lot of ways we need to let God take over and help us be more faithful, more giving, more loving, more focused, more centered than we are.

It’s nothing new. Two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul was saying,

I don’t understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Like Paul, we come to this table with all our weaknesses, our failures, our contradictions.

And we meet, at this table, a God who wants us to know that we are better than we believe we can be, and we can be better than we are and do better than we do, and receive God’s presence more fully than we have realized.

Last Sunday I worshipped in a church that’s in such a remote part of rural Indiana that you couldn’t possibly “happen” to go past it—you have to go way back in the deep countryside, where the farm roads don’t have names; they’re just called 1500 North and 500 East. That’s where you’ll find Emmanuel United Methodist Church.

Since the 1840s, my family has had a home three of those mile-long blocks away from the little intersection where that church sits. The church has been there at least 100 years. But none of us knew about it until one of my Dad’s third-grade friends—who at 70-something appears to be in the prime of her life—happened to see us at breakfast on Friday, and invited us to come and join them.

On the Sunday morning, there were 11 people there from my extended family, which was slightly more than the rest of the congregation combined. It was a gorgeous little church, and a great service, and I might add for the record that of the ten or so congregants, four were teenagers—so much for the supposed death of the small, rural church.

What the people in that church are looking for when they go there, only they could say. But I daresay it’s probably no different from where I had been the Sunday before, in one of the larger churches in our denomination and one of the largest churches in Indianapolis.

I accompanied my lifelong best friend who, once a month, leads the singing for a chapel service in a smaller room that can seat a group of up to about two-thirds of what our sanctuary could hold.

It’s an engaging, welcoming service. They start off with singing, and then an associate pastor offers some prayers, and then there’s more singing, followed by more singing, and more singing, until the video screen comes on with the live feed of the sermon which is going on in the main sanctuary.

The music leaders don’t always know exactly how long it’s going to be before the sermon starts, so they have a little monitor hooked up to the sanctuary so the worship leaders in the chapel can see when the pastor is moving into the pulpit. So sometimes you just have to kind of vamp a song until you see the sermon is about to start. Which is what my friend and I did on Sunday. I’d had this brilliant idea to use all the verses of “Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated.” Let me tell you something: by the twelfth verse of “Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated,” you know that melody better than you ever wanted to.

But the yuppies and community leaders and ex-hippies and soccer moms flocking to Zionsville Presbyterian Church aren’t looking for anything much different from what the farmers and their families are looking for up in Miami County.

We all carry the burden of the sin that dwells within us, and we all—all of us, everywhere—carry the ability to reach beyond what we are, and grab ahold of God’s outstretched arms, to be pulled up into a more faithful spirit, a more trusting heart, a more dedicated mind, a still more excellent way.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

July 6, 2008