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Kaltxi.  Nga-ru lu fpm srak?  Zola’u ne fi’u swotu, ne fi’u zongtseng.  Fpom tok hu aynga.   

No, I’m not speaking in tongues as some might consider it.  I am, however, speaking in a different language.  Anyone know which one it is?  It’s Na’vi.  Never heard of it before?  You may not have unless you’re familiar with the new movie Avatar.  If you haven’t seen it, you’ve probably heard on the news about how much money the movie has made.  It took a whole two weeks for the movie to raise $1 billion dollars.  That’s impressive. What’s most impressive to me about the movie, though, is that someone invented a whole new language for it. 

A professor out in a California invented over 1000 new words.  Nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, tense, voice, mood, and conjugations all for this new movie.  In fact, there is a 35-page guide online that will teach you how to speak the language and learn the vocabulary.  It sounds a little over-the-top, but I suppose something like this was necessary.  After all, the movie is about a new creation out in space.  There is a new people who live one this creation.  They have their own culture and their own way of life.  If they only spoke English it may seem that they were just like everyone else.  A new vocabulary is one way to communicate that this is supposed to be a new people. 

That’s something helpful to remember about this exercise we’ve been undergoing for the past few months.  Every Sunday, we’ve been reading a portion of the Bible called Romans.  We think of it as a book of the Bible, but it’s really a letter.  It’s a letter, written by Paul, to a church or group of churches in Rome.  In that church there have gathered Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slave and free, rich and poor.  They all come with their different backgrounds and different cultures and different perspectives and even their different religions.  All of them have been attracted by this message about Jesus Christ.  Paul wants them all to know that they are a new creation. 

One of the things Paul would like to accomplish with this letter is take all of these different people and help them live together as one.  Rather than think of themselves as a mixture of different cultures or, rather than have them argue about which culture is best, Paul would have them think of themselves as the beginning of a new culture, a new creation.  The people who have been attracted by the message of Jesus Christ are to be a new people.  Throughout his letter, then, Paul is giving the people a new vocabulary.  He has been taking some familiar words and giving them a new meaning for everyone.  Through this new vocabulary, Paul has been re-telling God’s story.   

He would use words like:

Gospel – Righteousness – Atonement – Faith – Justification – Grace – Baptism – Covenant/Supper – Sanctification – Holy Spirit – Suffering – Glorification – Election 

Let’s pause there for a moment, to remember again that this is a letter.  This letter would be read to a church.  In this church would be Jews and Gentiles.  If you were sitting in that church in Rome and hearing about the election of those in the church, you might notice some people shifting in their seats and uneasy expressions on some faces.  This language about election, about choosing would sound very familiar to those who came from a Jewish background.  As they heard Paul’s words being read they might have to wonder if their people had been abandoned.  What about the promises that God made to their ancestors and to them?  They were, after all, told that they would be God’s treasured possession.  Had God given up on them? 

Paul takes three chapters of this book to answer that question.  Clearly, it’s important to him.  In fact, it’s caused him great sorrow and unceasing anguish to see his Jewish brothers and sisters cut off from Jesus Christ.  They have such a rich history from God that it pains him to see them lost now.  Some might be saying that Israel no longer has a place with God.  Some might say that God has given up and chosen a new group of people to work with.  Paul would say that that’s not true.  Israel still has a place with God.  God is still working with Israel.  God has remained faithful to the promises that he has made; starting with the promises to Abraham. 

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  There are two promises in there.  One promise is to make Abraham’s name great, to make Abraham a great nation.  The other is to bless all the families of the earth through him.  One promise is for him and the other is for others.  It comes late and it comes unexpectedly, but Abraham begins to see God’s promise unfold with the birth of Ishmael and Isaac.  However, God chooses Isaac to carry on the promise.  Isaac has twin sons: Esau, the older, and Jacob.  Unexpectedly, God chooses the younger brother to carry on the promise.  God names him Israel. 

Israel would have many sons and they would become a great nation.  God would free them from slavery in Egypt, take them through the Red Sea, and guide them through the wilderness.  They stood there as a multitude.  Abraham’s descendents were as many as the stars of heaven, as many as the grains of sand on the sea shore, just as God had promised.  God would speak to that nation of Abraham with a similar message.  We heard it this morning: 

Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.  Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.  Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. 

As with Abraham, there are two promises in that call.  You shall be my treasured possession and you shall for me a priestly kingdom.  One promise is for them and the other is for others.  God would treasure them.  God would care for them.  God would protect them.  God would bless them.  Through all of that, they would become a nation unlike the others.  The laws that God gave them would make them a different kind of nation, a holy nation.  This holy nation would make sacrifices on behalf of the other nations.  They would say prayers on behalf of the other nations.  This holy nation would make the other nations clean.  God’s commandments and ordinances would make them a kind of city on a hill, a light to the nations calling every family on earth to come to the God of all the earth.  God promises to Abraham would continue to be fulfilled through God’s promises to Israel. 

This is where the story runs into a problem.  Unfortunately, Israel is the problem.  They would remember their promise to be a treasured possession.  They would savor God’s blessings and God’s protection and God’s care.  They would cherish the promise that first promise that God had made to Abraham and to them.  But that other promise to bless all the families of the earth, to be a priestly kingdom, was left to gather dust.  There would be times in Israel’s history when they wanted to be like the other nations and worship their gods.  There would be other times when Israel would think they were better than all the other nations and misrepresent their God.  Because they were God’s treasured possession, God would try to get their attention through invasion or through exile.  It would work for a while, but then Israel would be right back to square one and ignore that promise that God had made for others.  God would have to do something different. 

God would send his beloved Son to his beloved people.  But God would not send him to the usual suspects.  God would send him to the last, the lost, and the least.  God’s Son would live among them and walk with them.  He would teach them to fulfill God’s commandments and ordinances.  He would teach them to be a city on a hill and a light to the nations.  God’s Son would take what was considered unclean in Israel and send them to the unclean families of the earth.  As you know, this didn’t go over very well with the authorities in Israel.  Their reading of the Scriptures didn’t make room for other nations in that way.  They thought that letting the other nations in would make God’s people more unholy, not more holy.  They sent God’s Son away to be killed.  But God would raise his Son and seat him at his right hand in heaven.  Those who had come to follow him would go and people from every nation under heaven would come to him and bow to him. 

Paul tries to explain this whole thing using a metaphor.  He talks about Israel as if they were a lump of clay.  God chose them and tried to mold them and make them into a holy nation that would bless the world.  It’s just that the clay was not always willing to be molded in the way the potter desired.  At this point, some would say that God through the whole thing out and decided to start over.  But Paul says that God broke the one piece of clay into two.  God made, out of the same lump of clay, one object for special use and another for ordinary use.  In other words, God took some of Israel to do what God had wanted all of Israel to do all along.  That is, to bless the nation.  The special use of the one piece of clay was to join Jesus in blessing all the families of the earth. 

So, where some would say that God had given up on his promises to Israel and others would say that God had abandoned Israel, Paul would say that God had done just the opposite.  By sending his Son to Israel and making him the Messiah, by calling a group out of Israel and blessing the nations through them, God specifically kept the promises that he made to Abraham and to Israel.  God chose the people of Israel who would hear and trust and obey and, through them, continued to pass on the promises of long ago.  Because God kept those promises we are sitting here today listening to the story again.   

I know what you may be thinking, “I don’t really care.”  There was just a devastating earthquake in Israel.  People all around us have lost their jobs.  Many others have lost their homes.  We’re just trying to raise our children in a healthy way.  Why should I care about the place of Israel in God’s plan?  I considered all of that as I considered this sermon.  I almost skipped over these chapters of Romans because they seem so irrelevant to our present situation.  But then I thought, if Paul felt the need to spend 3 chapters on the topic, then maybe there is something important about it.  Maybe Israel should be part of our vocabulary as we gather together in the church. 

The reason that Israel should be important to us today is that we find ourselves right at the heart of God.  The place of Israel highlights God’s faithfulness.  After all, God has made promises to us.  God has promised to forgive our sins, to adopt us into the church, to send the Holy Spirit to us, and to resurrect us to eternal life.  If God has somehow abandoned Israel, If God has somehow forgotten the promises he made to Israel, then the promises that God has made to us are in serious question.  We’re left to wonder if God will abandon us.  We have to ask if God will forget us.  The answer through Israel is that God will not. 

God will not abandon this world.  God will not forget the families of the earth.  God’s plans will not be defeated.  God’s promises to us are sure.  God is still living and active in the world.  The good news is that God is still faithful even when his people are faithless.  God is still electing and calling a new people.  They are a people from every family on earth, called to be blessed and to be a blessing.  So, even though the earth quakes, even though jobs are cut, even though homes are lost, even though children stray, there is a new creation of life and peace that is being born in this world.  Nothing can stop it and we are a part of it.  Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, called out of darkness into a marvelous light.  Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people.  Once we had not received mercy, but now we have received mercy.  The saying is sure: if we have died with Christ, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.  Amen.