This morning I begin a sermon series that, with some exceptions no doubt, will carry us through the fall and into the Advent season.  I am always a bit loathe to start something so long but, in this case, I feel as though it is warranted given the subject matter.  I’ll be preaching my way through Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Romans is a lengthy letter, well over 22 pages and 7,100 words long and it was written by Paul to a church he’d yet to meet.  Paul writes this letter as the means to solicit support for his upcoming missionary journey to Spain, he says so in 15:24 writing, “I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.”  Why dedicate this much time to one letter, you may be asking.  Well, Romans is a bit of a canon within the canon, for lack of better words.  Romans occupies a unique space in the New Testament.  Coming right after Acts, it’s the first work of Paul’s recorded in the New Testament.  In it, Paul gives a thorough accounting of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for his yet-to-be-met brothers and sisters in Christ.  Paul is thorough and detailed in his work through of the Gospel.  And it’s for that reason that I’ve chosen to dedicate so much time to this particular letter.  By way of a mission statement, Paul tells us the purpose and power of this particular letter in Romans 1:16– “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  Paul looks at the Gospel message and sees not just a collection of words, a series of truth, Paul instead sees power.  The power of God unto salvation to be specific and it propels him through 16 chapters of this letter.  It is so thorough and complete accounting of the Gospel, that many have remarked on its fulsomeness and ability to convey Jesus to people.  Samuel Coleridge, speaking for many, said, “I think that the Epistle to the Romans is the most profound work in existence.”  And John Knox said that it is “unquestionably the most important theological work ever written.”

  I have a personal history with this letter.  I can remember getting into seminary and thinking, I’ve just got to understand Romans before I head off to Duke.  So, I sat down with a commentary and a Bible and began a journey that continues to this day every time I open up the letter and read it, either for sermon preparation of personal spiritual devotion.  I will tell you that my thoughts on Romans have changed and deepened through the years.  Those initial readings were very limited in their understandings.  Romans is a book that requires multiple, ongoing readings, I believe, and that’s one of the reasons I’ll be preaching it, with the hopeful expectation that many of you will join me on this study and read the book for yourself again and again.   

  I was fortunate enough to take an entire class on the letter in seminary, a class that drove me nuts, to be honest about it.  In that particular class, the professor had some pretty radical beliefs about Romans’ meaning and, as such, he discounted many of the traditional interpretations.  Long story short, it wasn’t a very good class, more confusing than anything, oftentimes the hallmark of quote-unquote scholars’ classes.  Sometimes scholars are too busy trying to make their own points instead of focusing on what’s really important or what’s actually being said.  We have a way of doing that more than ever before, I’m afraid – making things all about us.  One of the words I’m hearing a lot these days with respect to people, is “Brand.”  You’ve got to protect the brand.  Meaning that you yourself are so special that you’ve got to make it about you so that others can appreciate your brilliance.  Your brand.  For goodness sakes. 

  Which is precisely what Paul is trying to prevent, I’m convinced, in these first early verses of Romans.  Even though in letter writing convention, the first part of a letter at the period was all about the author of the letter, somehow Paul manages to make it more about what God is doing in and through him than he makes it merely about identifying himself as the letter’s author.  Paul in Romans desperately wants to introduce you to the God who Paul knows has very plainly operated in and throughout the course of his life.  Paul looks at the entirety of his life and sees the handiwork of God’s plans and purposes.  But first, he must introduce himself.  You see, to the Roman church, Paul was a stranger.  He even points that out that he’s yet to make it to Rome.  But that Paul has plans to journey to Rome on his way to Spain is quite the occurrence for this once-faithful Jew.  In fact, Paul wasn’t just a faithful Jew, he was a bit of a super-Jew by circumstance and training.  Paul writes this about himself in Philippians 3, writing “though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also.  If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”  Prior to his conversion, Paul was a member of the Pharisees and was a persecutor of the church.  How do we know that, he tells us and we read in Acts that Paul was there, present at the stoning of Stephen, the very first deacon.