Psalm 47, Romans 16:25-27 "How We See Things" Scott Hoezee

Carol Burnett used to tug on her earlobe as she sang her "good-bye" at the end of each show. Walter Cronkite closed out each broadcast with his signature, "And that's the way it was." Prior to his time, television's first newscast, the Huntley-Brinkley Report, concluded each night with, "Good night, Chet," "Good night, David." All things must end and so all of us are faced with figuring out how to say good-bye. After nearly twelve years, about 875 sermons, and some two-and-a-quarter million words later, I must this day bid you good-bye as well. The question that has occupied my mind is how to do so.

Being a preacher, I naturally checked on how biblical writers, particularly the apostle Paul, said good-bye. Paul wrote half of what we call the New Testament, chipping in thirteen of the New Testament's twenty-seven books. But in looking at the conclusions to all those letters, I discovered that a good many of them could not be my role model for a farewell sermon. For instance, I wouldn't want my last word to be similar to one of Paul's final statements at the end of First Corinthians when he wrote, "If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him!" (Oh yes, and have a nice day, too!) I doubt you'd judge that to be an upbeat last word.

Other letters close with pleas to remember Paul's own afflictions, as when near the end of Colossians he wrote, "Remember my chains." Still others closed with mundane housekeeping details as when Paul concluded Second Timothy with, "The next time you visit me, be sure to bring the coat I left behind." Not a lot of inspiration there. But perhaps the closing comment I would least want to imitate comes near the end of Second Corinthians when Paul wrote, "I have become a fool, but you drove me to it!"

Thankfully, there are other letters that end on warm notes of encouragement, and Romans 16 is one of them. Romans comes close to being the longest single letter Paul ever wrote and is generally hailed as his magnum opus, his signature work where he lays out his theology in stunningly fresh and systematic ways. Here in this grand letter Paul wrestled titanically with sin and the law, with works versus grace, with complex questions regarding the status of Israel, and with long discourses on how to live the Christian life. So after all this sometimes-complex theology, how does one end? With doxology! Yet even Paul's doxologies were studded with wonderful spiritual and theological reminders.

This morning we read just the last few verses but really all of chapter 16 is an extended farewell. In these verses Paul did what he so often did when signing off on a letter: he got very personal. Most of the time Paul's letters seem impersonal--in fact, they don't even seem like letters most of the time. But the conclusions are good reminders that this is correspondence addressed to specific individuals the same as all our letters and emails are today. In Romans 16 Paul names not less than thirty-three people in Rome to whom he wanted a special personal greeting to be extended.

If ever you needed a reminder that Paul had a pastor's heart, his ability to name so many specific people ought to provide it. So when in Romans 3 he wrote, "Righteousness comes from God through faith to all who believe," he was thinking of real people whom he loved. When he famously wrote in chapter 8, "There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ," he was rejoicing over the salvation of not a faceless, anonymous mass of humanity but over the salvation of Priscilla and Aquilla, of Mary and Julia, of Rufus and Urbanus, of dearly loved people Paul could call by name.

Sometimes when reading Paul's letters it's easy to see this as dry theology. But the personal way by which Paul concluded his letters reminds us that this was not the case--even as he wrote, Paul was visualizing the faces of real people whom he loved. That may also be why Paul apparently concluded some of his letters in his own handwriting. Scholars believe Paul had a problem with his vision and so it is very obvious in almost every letter that he utilized the services of an "amanuensis" or secretary who took dictation from Paul. In Romans 16:22 Paul's scribe for this particular letter--someone named Tertius--inserted his own greeting to the Christians at Rome. But at times Paul took the quill himself. "See," he sometimes wrote, "this is in my own hand now as a sign that this all comes from also my own heart."

Even the diciest and most complicated of Paul's thoughts were always in the service of pastoral care for real people whom he loved. That's also why he frequently concluded with encouragement that the people of God be united, as in Romans 16:16 when he urges them to share "a holy kiss" with one another as a sign of mutual love. But always, always he came back to grace, to a reminder of why these people had an never-ending reason to give God the praise in the best doxology they could muster.

When Romans opened, Paul declared, "I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God that saves all who believe." Now he bookends this letter by returning to that precious gospel, which is the proclamation of a great mystery revealed in Christ. And what is that mystery? It is the mystery of grace. It is the gospel truth that when it is all said and done, God saves people not according to their merits, not because of their background, piety, skin color, ethnicity, or high moral standards but just by grace alone and against all odds.

This was a mystery so great that God had to literally knock Paul flat on his back one bright afternoon to get it through his thick skull. He had been known as Saul in those days and was the most-feared persecutor of the early church. No one had broken up as many churches as had Saul. No one had ever dragged as many women away by their hair as had Saul. No one had arrested more Christians than had Saul and he had even been a consenting participant in the dreadful murder of the church's first deacon, Stepehen. What was behind all that vitriol and violence? A firm belief that Saul knew exactly who was who in God's grand scheme of things. Pious, observant, highly moral Jews like the Pharisees (and Saul was a chief Pharisee) were the good guys going straight to heaven. Everyone else (starting with that shabby and morally sloppy rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth) were the bad guys who needed to be rooted out like a cancer.

That's how Saul thought until one day God crashed into his life with a truth so profound as to qualify as a kind of mystery: it's all by grace, Saul. And just to prove it--and to show that God has a sense of humor--Saul was renamed Paul and was then given the life-long commission of proclaiming the utterly free nature of salvation to Gentiles, to non-Jews, to the very people Saul had once deemed to be the unsaveable scum of the earth. As Frederick Buechner so deftly put it, "Paul set out as a hatchet man for the Pharisees and returned a fool for Christ!" Paul had to eat crow the rest of his days, proclaiming that everything he had believed once upon a time was bogus, a lie, the opposite of what he now knew to be the truth of grace.

Saul had always pictured the kingdom of God as a highly exclusive "Members Only" club with a restricted membership. Paul concluded Romans by hoping that nothing less than "all nations" on the earth would believe God's gospel. Saul saw salvation as a simple, straightforward formula, as sensible as 2+2=4. Add up your merit points, subtract your demerits, and if you came out ahead, you were in. Paul saw salvation as so sublime he could only fall back in wonder at what he ended up calling the "mystery" of it all.

Saul saw God as kind of the senior partner in a firm in which Saul was himself a key player whom God needed to keep everything tidy and in order. God as senior partner surely garnered Saul's respect but their relationship was pretty much all business. Paul saw God as the font of such a supreme grace that he knew he would never be finished in singing doxologies to him. When you see your senior partner, you greet him with due decorum. When you see the God of all grace, you fall down to your knees and begin to sputter glad thoughts that are finally too exuberant for rational speech!

At the end of the day, as at the end of Paul's Letter to the Romans, that's what it all comes down to. Over the years of my preaching here, we have pondered so many parts of the Bible and so many sub-sections of the church's larger theological tradition. We've looked at the Canons of Dort and wondered about this whole matter of election and predestination. We've probed into the glorious mystery of the Trinity. We've looked at tragedies--at the deaths of dear members of this church, at worldwide tragedies like 9/11--and the pain of it all has made us wonder why bad things happen and how we can reconcile that with our belief in a good and providential God.

Like Paul in Romans, so here at Calvin CRC we've talked about so many things. But when it is all said and done, as for me it this morning must be, if the only thing I've ultimately helped you to do is see grace more clearly, then it's enough. If my preaching has given you more reason to sing a doxology to God because of his grace, then it's enough. Paul got personal when he ended his letters, and I want to do that, too. Maybe it hasn't always been real obvious in my sermons, but you have been in my heart when I wrote them. I can see you sitting out there when I write. When I talk about the pain of losing a child or the difficulty of infertility, I know who of you have suffered such hardships. When I have talked about the wonder of grace and its power to lift the burden of shame and guilt, it is you I have pictured because it is you whom I have loved.

When Paul wrote about the gospel, he did so with the eagerness of a parent who couldn't wait to give a gift to his child. Have you ever experienced that? You buy a present for someone and you become so eager to see his or her reaction that you regret that the birthday or Christmas Day is still a while off. But when the day comes when the wrapping paper comes off, you discover that it is your heart that is racing in your chest. You just can't wait to give the gift. That's how Paul wrote and that's what I've wanted to do all along--eagerly to give and re-give and then give yet again the gift of grace as it comes through the proclamation of the gospel.

Twelve years ago my first sermon to you was from Psalm 47. The title was "How We See Things" and the point of the message was that I wanted my preaching among you to be part of that lifelong process of grinding a theological lens of faith through which to view the wider world. Psalm 47 praises Mount Zion as the highest of all mountains, as the grandest and most glorious place on earth. Of course, it wasn't true. "Mount" Zion was little more than a hill, dwarfed by many higher, more impressive peaks in the surrounding area. But the people of Israel believed that the holy God of the galaxies lived on Zion and so, theologically speaking, they saw it as the center of the earth. Their faith shaped their vision. Faith is how we see things.

Over the years together we've been trying to see the world the right way, through the lens of our faith, which is finally the lens of grace and so ultimately the lens of hope. In good, Reformed fashion, we don't pretend the world is prettier than it really is, that life is easier than it really is. Instead we see life's jagged edges and acknowledge full well how those sharp contours sometimes slice into also our lives. Yet we remember that this is why Jesus died, that this is exactly why grace is the only way because left on our own, we tend only to make matters worse. The problems of this world are too big for us. Without Christ in the picture, reality induces despair and cynicism.

But when we know who the Savior is, when we worship and every day seek to serve the God of all grace, then like Paul at the end of Romans and like the Israelites in Psalm 47, we can do no more than fall back in wave after wave of doxology. As it was in the beginning when all the morning stars sang for joy at creation's dawn, so it is in the end and forever will be: we lead doxological lives despite the darkness around us, despite the death we often face. Despite it all, we see more. We see Jesus and his grace.

As I leave you now as your preaching pastor, the task of seeing the world this way goes on and on. When I arrived here, I was continuing the work of those who went before. Soon someone else will come here to further that work into also the future. In a way, even Paul's tagline in Romans 16 conveys this. Verses 25-27 are just one long Greek sentence. Grammatically speaking, however, it is technically a sentence fragment: "God" is the subject but there is no verb to go with it. It's the equivalent of saying something like, "The mailman, whom we all know . . ." It's not a complete thought.

Of course, Romans 16:25-27 does make sense but I like that it's technically incomplete. The very incompleteness of the sentence is like an indication that the work of praising God in lives of doxology never ends--it goes on and on and on. The proclamation of the mystery that is the gospel of grace must continue. Calvin Church must move forward with joy, with exuberance, with a heart for mission and outreach.

Together these last dozen years we have seen Calvin CRC transform into an up-to-date, bright, attractive kind of ministry center. Solid programs like Neighbors Night and Tutoring have been expanded. We've added new programs like IHN and MOPS, getting the community into this building and the love of this congregation out into the community. And there is so much more than can and must be done into the future.

All of it is doxology. All of it constitutes praise. All of it flows from the one grace of God in which each of us has been established in Christ. My time here is ending and that makes for a difficult parting of ways. I have loved you and do love you. That is why I have so gladly preached the Word to you all along. But in the grander scheme of things it has all been just a small portion of that larger work that you, my dear congregation, must and will continue to the glory of God in Christ!

In recent years I have often felt compelled to say in my sermons something to the effect, "As we have looked at together before . . ." or "As I mentioned in another sermon some time back . . ." After so many sermons here, I know I cannot help but repeat certain points and illustrations. One thing I am sure I have likewise mentioned before is Frederick Buechner's observation that our modern word "good-bye" is an elided, smashed-together version of the traditional words of parting, "God Be with Ye."

And, Buechner says, whether we know it or not, each time we say "good-bye" even today, we mean no less than "God Be with You." Christians never really say good-bye but instead we wish one another the abiding presence of God so that we may continue in the gospel's ongoing work of doxological living. Faith determines how we see things in this world. We start with grace and end with it as we peer out into a world starving for just such grace and the hope it proffers. And so, my friends at Calvin Church, we press on. Good-bye for now, good-bye, God be with you. In all that you do, may the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Amen.