[During the Children’s Time, read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.]

Have you ever had a day like Alexander’s--terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad? If you are like me, sometimes that “day” feels as if it has stretched into your whole lifetime. It is always someone not experiencing your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day who blithely says to you, “Jesus can help.” They may be right, but this remark can come across as an inexpensive solution—at least to them. Lest you think the “Jesus can help” solution is cheap Pollyanna talk, though, I need to tell you the theology is there in today’s Romans text. And it is most definitely not a “cheap trick.”

Immediately before today’s passage, Paul tells us his life is like Alexander’s day. He is agonizing over the terrible reality of his life—he does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he wants to do. Then, Paul reevaluates his life in light of what happened with the Jesus Thing. He is so convinced of the reality of his new life, the down-right transformation he experiences because of his conversion to Jesus’ way of living, that he speaks in absolutes—“no condemnation,” “you are not in the flesh,” “the Spirit dwells in you.” Now he makes his life sound as if the happily-ever-after-ending is an accomplished fact. I just want to go to the happy ending. I want to skip the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days that come in between.

Scholars debate whether Paul is agonizing over literally his own life, or whether he is speaking theologically about the problem of post-conversion sin by Christians. To me, it’s a fine point. Even if Paul isn’t agonizing over his inability to be the kind of Christian he wants to be, that anyone in the Bible cared enough to articulate my own conflict means a lot to me. Do you ever experience this? “That is the last cookie I’m going to eat. I’ll put the rest in the freezer, then I can’t eat more.” Which works until you learn how good chocolate chip cookies are frozen. Or how about this--“I never drink before 4:00. I can control daytime drinking, so drinking at night doesn’t count.” Or “I’d quit smoking, but it makes me nervous, and the way things are going right now, I need something to quiet my nerves. I’ll quit as soon as this crisis is over.”

We swing back and forth. On the one hand we feel like we’re stuck. “Things will never be different, I will never get away from this destructive pattern.” On the other hand, we think managing our problem works. “I can quit anytime. If I follow my rules I’m in control”—never mind that we change the rules to fit the situation. We swing between despairing of ever being rescued, stuck in the fundamental assumption that we aren’t worth saving—and devising an elaborate management system to make sure we don’t eat any more cookies before supper or drink more than what makes us socially acceptable.

And can you believe it? The apostle Paul knows what this is like. How does he get out of this trap? It hardly seems credible. If this were a novel, we’d feel cheated by the solution. Paul says the answer to his struggle is just one word: “Jesus.” Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of the law for us.

One of the advantages to being an English lit major is that you learn how to sneer in contempt at implausible solutions to the messy problems of the novel’s characters. God inexplicably swoops down out of nowhere and gives the dragon a sinus infection on the very day that the handsome prince arrives, and fortunately the dam bursts upstream from the moat washing out part of the impenetrable hedge right by the back door, so all the prince has to do is reach under the mat and get the key to unlock the door and carry off the maiden imprisoned by the wicked witch, who happens to be out at the pharmacy just then getting a prescription for the dragon. Cheap trick!

Paul’s solution isn’t quite as complicated, but it’s no “cheap” trick. Paul says for all of us what we’ve suspected for some time: we are having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad life. And that’s the good news.

It is good news because we have already been rescued. More precisely, rescued to be renewed--“transformed” in theology-speak. Remember what I said before reading the text? Paul contrasts two ways of life. One way is stuck on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way of living—the stuck way that gets us nowhere, not even to Australia. The way that centers on ourselves and our problems and our ability to either manage the problems or delight in our victimhood. The other way is the way of life and peace. I have no zippy children’s books with illustrations to read about this. This way is down-and-dirty, gutty work. It is about renewal—making something new that has gotten old.

Go back to the definitions I gave you to understand Paul. When Paul says “flesh,” he means that way of living where the person is the center of everything. This is idolatry and rebellion toward God. When he says, “Spirit,” Paul means the way of living that is about freedom from bondage to self and sin. But it’s a new bondage—this time to God. It may be bondage, but it is bondage that serves the purpose of redemption. When our life is dominated by God’s Spirit—when we ask God’s opinion before taking a course of action, instead of asking for help when things don’t work out—when how God views us is more important than how we look to humans (even ourselves)—that is “dominated” by God’s Spirit. And when that is true, our relations with our world will be transformed. Not just individuals are transformed, but the world in which these individuals live is transformed—churches, governments, schools, tax systems, families, our relation to ecosystem. Because God is transforming us, God is also at work through us to change each other, our culture, creation. This is the justification for a statement you have heard me say before: “God is always, always working for redemption.”

So what? This is so important! so freeing!—we no longer have to fuss over our past. No need to brood over whether “God can forgive such a sinful person.” Is that egocentric, or what? “I am so bad that not even God can forgive me.” That is ridiculously uppity. What makes you think your failings are bigger and more powerful than your Creator? God made you. God’s at work in a cosmic war of good versus evil. And you think God can’t forgive a puny, one-person collection of sins and misdeeds? Who are you trying to kid?

Give it up!

I like the word “brood” here. Some of us cling to the badness of our pasts. It’s almost as if we need to hang onto our sense of guilt. We hug our sins and bad lifestyle patterns to ourselves, tucking them into our warmest, most softly feathered parts, because they are so much a part of who we are. It is more comfortable (and definitely easier) to hang onto the sins of our past than to have to re-think God’s role in our lives. It may be Labor Day weekend, but the “labor” we celebrate this morning is not human. It is God’s—that of God’s redeeming work in us. OK, and then our work, too. We are neither beyond forgiveness nor are we stuck in acting the way we’ve always acted. In fact, you’ve already been forgiven. You can’t change that. God has already forgiven you. What you are now resisting is God’s work of transformation. And when you resist that in yourself, according to Paul’s theology, your resistance is on behalf of “flesh”—that self-idolatry that keeps us from God.

What this means is that, when you are having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day—or life—you don’t need to keep open the option of moving to Australia. You are already in the process of being transformed, and this here-and-now transformation anticipates the final transformation that we already know is the end of the story. God wins. The proof that God wins is that we ourselves have new lives, we can claim lives of peace and freedom and hope here-and-now. Good news: you are neither stuck in nor in charge of managing your sins. You have been forgiven, and because you are forgiven, you get to change. Thanks be to God.

God, we are dying to change. We are dying to be the people you want us to be. It’s just that we are so afraid of pain, afraid of seeming foolish to others, afraid of failing. Creator God, laugh with us about how silly this is. Help us to let go of the treasures of our sinful past. Help us to grow into your future. Amen.