Vicar’s sermon Romans 6.12-23 28.6.26

Daniel Craig’s first James Bond movie was released in 2006. It was, of course, a remake of Casino Royale. Near the top of the film the ‘bad guy’ (Le Chiffre) is shown, being driven in a fleet of black Range Rovers into a camp run by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Le Chiffre is a banker, and he is there to receive a huge sum of money which he will invest and use to further the aims of the terrorist organisations that call upon him. Our man, Bond…James Bond, will find himself across the card table from Le Chiffre at the Casino Royals and attempt to bankrupt him. The goal? – to leave Le Chiffre to feel the wrath of his investors when he can’t repay the money they have entrusted to him.
The camp that Le Chiffre visits is full of menace. Young men line the route to the heart of the camp. Many of these are really just boys, children, carrying AK47s. It is a scene that you may have come across in other movies – The Last King of Scotland (which is also about Uganda) or Blood Diamond (set in The Congo). These also show these armed groups – wholly different societies based on brutality and violence with their own hierarchies and rules.
Older members of the congregation may recognise the name ‘The Lord’s Resistance Army’. It’s not a made-up name. It was (and is) a real thing. There was a time when young combatants were sent into battle with the Ugandan Armed Forces by leaders who promised them that bullets would not touch them if…they were anointed with a particular oil…or if they wore a particular garment. Their leaders lied.
But why would you belong? Why wouldn’t you ‘get out’ or run away? Easier said than done! Too frightened perhaps? Uncertain of how you might be treated by former enemies? The possible rewards of being part of the group – even if it demanded that you kill, maim and rape – outweighed the uncertainty of a return to normal society. Or perhaps some of the children in the group simply knew no other way of living was possible.
You might shift the example out of Africa into the Middle East: to the many militias in Iraq, or in Syria and Lebanon, perhaps even to members of the Iranian Republican Guard. Once in it’s difficult to get out. Come closer to home and the County Lines drug gangs that entrap youngsters for their own purposes. Or come right up close to the abused woman in a relationship who wants to be free but dares not. Escape might not seem possible.
The examples I have given are extreme and yet they speak into our verses from the book of Romans this morning. Paul is continuing his appeal for his hearers to be free: to live up to the calling of God’s people (which he calls ‘sanctification’) rather than to sink down in a death spiral to receive the ‘wages of sin’ which is death. Sin is presented again in these verses almost as an external force that does not have our well being in mind. It traps and ensnares us, it binds us, it ‘exercises dominion over us’ and ‘makes us obey the passions of our bodies.’
The way Paul speaks of the power of Sin (which we might again give a capital ‘S’) is that ‘Sin’ removes from us our freedom to choose. We are not free to make our own decisions, not able to be ‘responsible’ for our actions and therefore we are subject to things that don’t serve our best interest.
There are centuries worth of thinking about what ‘we are’ as human beings, where our sense of ‘self’ lies or what it might mean to have a soul (which cannot be seen or measured). Psychoanalysts like Freud have rightly discovered that much of what we do is not driven or controlled by our ‘rational selves’ but the result of upbringing or trauma. Geneticists will add that at a physical level some people are more prone to this or that response in any situation. ‘Freedom’ is a difficult concept. Sociologists might say that some people are more free than others because of the circumstances into which they were born: we don’t live on a level playing field -indeed that playing field is tilting at an ever-steeper angle. Medics might add that the freedom of a person born with a chronic illness or disability will be severely constrained unless society can ameliorate their difficulties. Geographers and human scientists will point to a map and the conditions in which people live as factors in how ‘free’ they might be.
Yet, within the human heart Paul still presents the possibility of choice because we have been set free from Sin by Jesus Christ. Externally we may be bound, restricted in what we might do or achieve but part of the image of God within each and every person is that we can still choose: ‘this way of living over that way.’ This is what we have seen in the lives of those who live under some of the most extreme conditions: Christians in the Gulags of Stalinist Russia, Alexei Navalny in his memoir before he was murdered by Putin and his determination to live out the Beatitudes; Palestinian Christians who live under extreme restrictions but who ‘refuse to hate’; the deep faith tradition of African slaves in the USA or of the church in any number of oppressed nations. We can choose. Sin may well have us in a bind but we can choose to be free.
So, (says Saint Paul) if this way, this old way leads to Death and offers you nothing, why on earth would you not choose the new way that will bring you to the free gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus?
Each of us will have to answer that ‘why not?’ question for ourselves. As we learned last week, we have been baptised into Christ Jesus. He has died for us to set us free but we have died with Him. The old is gone, it has been put aside at the baptismal font…and yet, like with an old pair of slippers, the temptation is to slip into the old again, to climb out of the water of baptism that has washed us clean only to put on our old and dirty clothes rather than the new that have been laid out ready for us. Habit is difficult to break without the will power to do so. We have to practice being Christian.
Our next-door neighbours enjoy golf. Their teenage son enjoys golf. He has a net set up in the back garden to practice his swing and his drive. On these summer evenings we hear him hitting ball after ball into the nets: we assume he is getting better as he does so. It is practice that will make what seems hard at first come more easily. When the temptation to fall short of what God would want of us comes, we can choose to present ourselves to God to react with grace and generosity of heart – not to let or allow Sin to have the final word. It may be a little cheesy but ‘what would Jesus do’ is not a bad question to ask.
But we need more than will power: verse 17 speaks of us being ‘obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted’. The obedience that God seeks from us is not blind obedience. He has already shown us how we should live…how we can live. We have the scriptures: do we read them and allow them to shape us? We have the example of Christ set before us: dare we live as He did? We know more than enough of the Christian way – more, perhaps, than the Roman church that first received this letter of Paul’s – so what is standing in our way? I think the answer to that question lies in our hearts. Who or what has captured our heart? Are our hearts hard…or soft?
Yesterday I conducted a wedding at St John’s church in Ingleton. As with all weddings the couple made their vows to each other. They gave themselves freely to one another, making huge promises that will guide their life together. How can people do this? They do this because someone has captured their heart and they will do anything for them. Their greatest desire is to serve and please the one whose love has set them free and that will take many different shapes down the years, but it is Love that makes it possible: love that is faithful and true and which enables our hearts to grow. This is the love God has for us, the love which (as the ancient prayer says) makes ‘His service perfect freedom’.
So the prayer for today is for the gift of love, the offering of our hearts that we might better serve the One who sets us free.