An Invitation, not a Formula

Lent I; February 25, 2007

Romans 10:8b-13

Since the sentence reads as a logical “if/then” statement, it is tempting to turn it into a mathematical formula: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” In the context of his letter to the Romans, Paul is teaching that salvation is equally available to Jews and Gentiles. In the context of modern American religion, it sounds like a formula to make sure you go the right direction after you die with as little effort as possible. First I will show that to confess with your lips and believe in your heart is not without effort and then conclude with an invitation.

The confession is, indeed, simple, a lot simpler than the Westminster Confession of Faith, simpler even than the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are the confessions of faith that we know best and the Westminster Confession is the foundational statement for Presbyterianism. The confession of faith that Paul promotes is the simple, “Jesus is Lord.” It is easy to memorize and the words are easy to form. They are not easy to say, however.

Certainly not in the days when saying them could get you arrested. A good, patriotic subject of the Roman Empire would say, “Caesar is Lord.” After all, the Emperor was sovereign over the land where you lived, controlled the army, kept his eye on the economy: he had power. Public expectation was that you would demonstrate your patriotism by saying, along with everyone else, “Caesar is Lord.” The Christian confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord,” was considered unpatriotic and, at various times, was even illegal.

Of course, thank God and the First Amendment, here you can say “Jesus is Lord” up and down the street all you want and not be considered unpatriotic – strange, but not unpatriotic. But though it is easy to form the words, it is not easy to say them, not truthfully, anyway, because there are other lords competing for the honor. Just as in the days of the Roman Empire, the nation has pretensions of being lord, and if you truthfully say that “Jesus is Lord” then Uncle Sam might be offended. Or perhaps your company is lord, or your favorite television show, or alcohol, or video games. Actually, the dominant faith in our society may be “me-ism:” it’s all for “me,” to make “me” happy. If you are your own lord, then you can’t really say, “Jesus is Lord.”

To confess that Jesus is Lord is not something for you to fit into your spare time, around the kids’ activities and your favorite sports or artistic events. It is your life.

Although to believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead is not effortless, on the other hand it is not as difficult as you may think. When the Bible uses the word “heart,” the authors are generally referring to the innermost self, the deepest places of one’s being. So don’t think Valentine’s Day and trying to make yourself feel a certain way. You and I have no control over our feelings, so if Paul meant that to be saved you and I have to feel something in particular, then we’re doomed. We can’t make ourselves feel something.

But we can decide we want something. We can decide that we want something to be true, we want to believe something, that although we cannot control our doubts or our feelings, we can control what we want to commit to. Miguel de Unamuno used a wonderful pun as he wrote about faith, a pun that works only in Spanish but also has deep meaning in English: Creer es querer creer. To believe is to want to believe. The belief in my heart begins with my decision that I want something to be true, and I commit myself to that desire for a truth.

Of course, the Presbyterian purists among us can show me, and rightly, that it doesn’t begin there so much as with the activity of God. I know that. But I’m speaking to you not from the point of view of the invisible work of God, but from how things appear to us.

If you want it to be so that God raised Christ from the dead, if you decide that you desire the victory of God over death to be realized in Jesus Christ, if you are willing to admit your doubts, your intellectual uncertainties, and your skepticism, and yet say, “I would rather live in a world in which God has power over the grave, a world in which Jesus Christ is a risen and living Lord, than in the world where none of that is true,” then you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You do.

So Paul’s words are an invitation, an invitation to confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. It is not effortless, because it means surrendering your will, your selfishness, your me-ism to the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is also salvation, it is the power of the God who raised Christ from the dead to make you whole, to invite you into the eternal life of divine presence with you, and into the fellowship of all those who confess with their lips and believe in their hearts.

Let me take the celebration of the Holy Supper as an example. This Table is not set for those who are perfectly, serenely confident in their righteousness. It is not for those whose absolute conviction that they know the truths of God is unshakeable. Well, if any of them present themselves, the Lord will not turn them away. If you listen to the Lord’s stories, though, then you know who Christ has in mind when making the invitation to the Table. The Table is set for those who confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord, and are committed to living for him all the time, and are also willing to accept God’s forgiveness for messing up rather than thinking they have to get it right all the time. The Table is set for those who confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord, not certain they always know what that means, but willing to keep trying to find out. The Table is set for those who confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord and who believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead, because they want it to be true, come doubt, come skepticism, come the ridicule of those who say, “Do you really believe that stuff?” “Well, I’m not sure,” you can say, “but I want to believe it.”

That is, the Table is set for you.

We confess you, Jesus Christ, as our Lord, and we believe in our hearts that God raised you from the dead. Help our unbelief and give us grace to live our confession. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa