Sunday 20th September

I wonder if you've ever had the experience of walking into a new situation or into a new context and wondering to yourself just quietly, Do I belong here? I don't know if you've ever had that experience.

Maybe, and it can happen when you start a new job.

You walk into that place, right, and you get a sense that most people know each other, most people understand what's going on, where things are, and you can sometimes quietly think to yourself, do I belong here? I remember for me, when I...

stepped out of my training and I stepped into my first day of being a qualified counsellor and walking into those rooms and having that little moment of going...

Do I belong here? And you trust the process.

You trust what you've learned.

You trust all the practice.

But this is like fully fledged right now.

Do I belong here? And in the mix of that, of course, is a little bit of imposter syndrome that we all experience in some way.

But I do think, as I've journeyed a little bit of life, I do think that question is a much deeper question actually in our hearts than just when we walk into a new place or into a new unfamiliar room.

That actually that question sits deeply below us because I think we find ourselves regularly spending our life trying to do things or find ways to affirm the question and answer the question, do I belong? Do I belong here? in this community? Do I belong in this family? Do I belong in this friendship? Do I belong in this church? Do I belong? And underneath that question is actually another question that often we're asking, which is, am I enough? Am I interesting enough? Am I good enough? Have I done enough? Am I qualified enough? Am I skilled enough? And we live in a world that is regularly trying to tell us the many different ways we could potentially get that answer, get that question answered.

And now today we come to Romans 9, 10, and 11, and I'm very grateful that I have three chapters to preach in 30 minutes and probably some of the least, at least the most complex chapters.

But here's the thing.

When we come to these chapters, Paul is talking about many theological themes.

He's following threads about Israel.

He's following threads about the covenant, about the law, about Jews and Gentiles, about salvation and faith.

But underneath it all is this one profoundly human question.

Do I belong? And more specifically, is there a place for me in God's family? Do I belong? This was an important question, in fact, for the church in Rome that Paul's writing to in the mid-50 ADs.

Here Paul is writing to a church that actually in Rome before Christianity came, there was a large Jewish cohort.

Christianity comes, but about eight years before Paul writes this letter, just a little history lesson, in AD 49, the emperor actually removed or expelled all Jews from Rome.

So in that moment, what was left of the churches in Rome was very much a Gentile dominant church.

Five years later, that emperor passes.

The Jews are welcomed back.

And into that context, they come back to a church that is not necessarily the same expectations, the same cultural influences, the same look as they maybe would have expected.

And so into the context comes these tensions for them the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.