St. Mary's Church Elizabeth, IL

8/2

Paul Grapples with Faith and Sin (1)

Was he the Jedi warrior of his generation?

The scene in the movie Star Wars was defining moment for my generation.  We sat on the edge of our seats as Luke Skywalker and the rest of the Jedi rebels closed in on the Death Star.  Luke is piloting his fighter jet in search of the most vulverable point on the Death Star's armor using all of the state of the art technology available to him when he hears the voice of his mentor.  'Use the Force, Luke," he says Relying on faith in his master's words and in the Force itself, the young Jedi pilot then throws aside the complex technology he has been using and, accompanied by cheers from the audience, finds the exact spot that will cause Death Star to explode.  As that embodiment of tyranny and oppression disappears, Luke's nemesis and personification of evil-Darth Vader-flees the scene to wreak havoc on another day.

Faith trumps sin

This dramtic climax of Star Wars serves as a good analogy for Paul's proclamation of the gospel in his letter to the Romans.  Woven into the very fabric of human experience are two dramatically oppposed and enormously powerful forces-faith and sin.  Those individual and collective decisions to do other than God's Will (sin) are rooted in our fundamental dis-ease with our own human nature (Romans 7:14, 24).  Like the ominous Death Star, sin always causes oppression and alienation- from God, from on another, and from ourselves.  Inevitably ushers us into the kingdom of Death, the death of our hopes and dreams, of love and of life.

     Faith, on the other hand, is grounded in the unconditional love of God who literally loved the universe into being and who sustains it through the passionate embrace of Creation.  We experience this in the movement of the Holy Spirit- the nearest Christian equivalent of "the Force"-at the core of our being.  Faith revelas that we are "children of God" and heirs of God's Kingdom-the kingdom of Life into eternity (Romans 8:14,17).  It confirms wihtin us the joyous truth first expressed in Genesis 1:27: Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God!  Through union with the risen Christ, Paul proclaims, we destroy death's oppressive hold and embrace the destiny that faith has revealed we were always meant to possess.  Always, and everywhere, faith trumps sin

                                        Faith is gounded in the unconditional love of a God

                                            who literally loved the universe in being...

To be continued.

Fr. Joachim