I.

In the world of politics they say that access is nearly everything. If you have a lot of money and are willing to donate it to politicians, you can have a lot of influence. Some would even cynically say that politicians can be bought and policies are often determined by whomever is contributing the most money to them. But the people who are involved in that business like to phrase it differently. They insist that you can’t buy a lawmaker or a vote; but what you can buy is access.

I hear that for, say, $250,000 you can have a private dinner with the President. For considerably less you can be invited along on your Senator’s fact-finding trip to China. A donation can get you lunch with your Representative, or maybe horseback-riding with the Governor, or tickets to a Nets-Knicks game with your Assemblyman, or any number of other opportunities. But they are supposed to be opportunities to establish relationships and to have your concerns heard. There is not supposed to be a quid pro quo, as in: if you do this, I will do that.

My point is about access. It’s about making contact and establishing relationships. It’s about who you know, getting the people in power to listen to you and take your views into account. Taken to some extremes it is definitely corrupt; but on another level access is what democracy is all about. Democracy, as I learned in a college course in Political Science, is about having a voice in the decisions that affect your life.

But the thing about access is that it costs. Very few of us are born with access. Very few of us have relatives high up in government. Not too many of us have personal friends who are governors or senators. And even in these cases I’m sure there are different kinds of costs.

Access to power is expensive, in this world. You have to buy it, or someone has to buy it for you. It doesn’t necessarily cost money. But it often does involve some kind of sacrifice. In terms of politics, you may have to get involved in organizing your neighbors and people who feel like you do about a certain issue. You make have to make a lot of phone calls or lick a lot of envelopes. You may have to make contributions out of your own pocket. And then if you do manage to get a piece of access, everyone else might start to want some of it from you!

II.

The main concern of the Apostle Paul here in Romans 5 is access as well. But he is interested in the ultimate access: access to the living God who made heaven and earth. He wants access to eternal life and the Kingdom of God. Paul wants it all. And he is well aware that access has its costs. He has in fact spent much of his life trying to buy access to God, not with money of course, but through faithful and zealous obedience to God’s law.

It didn’t work. And if you have ever tried to ingratiate yourself into someone’s favor by slavishly doing exactly what you think the other wants you know that it doesn’t work. People lose respect for you. They think you are only doing something because you have to. They think you don’t have any personality or character or opinions of your own. They think you’re not worth bothering with, that you’ll just say and do whatever you have to in order to get the access you want.

Perhaps it is similar with God. God desires cheerful and willing disciples. How happy can God be with people who obey and follow grudgingly, sourly, with resentment, as if it were a painful and annoying task. As if it were a bothersome matter of dues-paying. As if it were their unavoidable duty.

I get the feeling that in Paul’s former incarnation as a Pharisee he was diligent, obedient, disciplined, rigid, and zealous. But I don’t get the impression there was much joy or love there. It seems like he was forcing himself to be what he thought God wanted him to be, but he was doing it almost bitterly against his own will.

There is a problem with wanting access to God purely for what we expect to get out of it. Do we want contact with God for the sake of the supposed power it might give us, the self-importance, the trappings, the gain and the glory of it? Is it to acquire things, as many who believe in the so-called "prosperity gospel" say? Do we think that access to God will add more to our personal pile of possessions? Will it aid our own success in this life? Do we measure it in terms of what we get, what we take away, or what we gain? Even if what we gain is eternal life?

When Paul meets the risen Christ on the Damascus Road, the voice says to him, using his Hebrew name, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? But get up and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do." And later we hear that Paul is God’s instrument to bring Christ’s name to the Gentiles. God says, "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my Name."

No longer is Paul to obey God out of fear or for what he hopes to get out of it. Access to God can only be based on what you give. It is as if God says to Paul, "Okay, you wanted access? You’ve got access. Now here’s what you’re going to do for me. Up till now you’ve been working for yourself, no matter how well you convinced yourself otherwise. Now, however, you’re working for me."

III.

Too often we are involved in the church because of what we expect to get out of it. Maybe this is a peculiar thing with Americans, always trying to find a better deal, I don’t know. But we shop for a church like we shop for a bank or a dry-cleaner, asking what am I going to get out of this? What level of service can I expect? And there is a certain legitimacy in that, I suppose.

The church needs people who come to church because of what they expect to give to it. The church is about access to God through Jesus Christ, and that access is a function of what we give up what we sacrifice, what we lose.

See what Paul says in this passage? He starts out with a wonderful little summary of the access to God we attain in Christ: peace with God, justification by faith, hope of sharing in God’s glory. But then he moves on to the other aspect of this access: "we also boast in our sufferings," he says, and goes on to talk about how suffering leads to endurance, character, and hope. And that hope is founded on the love of God "which has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit."

Access to God means nothing less than coming to participate in God’s Presence and God’s saving work in the world. And, as revealed in Christ, God’s work is nearly always about giving. God’s work is sacrificial love; God’s work is creativity; God’s work is bearing the sins and violence of others; it is supporting and affirming life. It is never static and dead, but it is always dynamic and changing. God’s work has to do with dying and being reborn all the time. Access to God means sharing in that life.

Our access to God is not an entitlement. It is a responsibility. Access is not something we earn, or acquire, or buy, or deserve. It is an opportunity to give, to lose, to contribute, to renounce, and, ultimately, to die... in order truly to live.

The way we have access to God is by following Christ and finding ways to give, to contribute, and to sacrifice for the common life. Because in Christ we know that ultimately power, even secular power, is service.

All power ultimately comes from God and will reflect God’s will, revealed in the love we see in Jesus Christ. Power that is not based on Christ’s love easily becomes evil, violent, coercive, and destructive. Power which is not service is false power; it is part of the evil doomed and defeated by Christ’s victory on the cross.

It is especially the case in the church, that all power is service. As Jesus taught, "Whoever wants to be the greatest must be the servant of all." May we become this servant people Christ calls us to be, and in so doing attain deeper and fuller access to God’s saving love in Jesus Christ by the Spirit he has poured into our hearts.

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