Today's Sermon

 

"The Great Promise: The Gifts of Paul"

 

Romans 8:18-39
           18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

           26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

           28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

           31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written,

‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
   we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’

           ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Great Promise:  The Gifts of Paul 5

            I may have told you the story before about going to be at my grandmother’s bedside as she was dying.  She had moved to a care facility near my parents and I had moved home for a stint in my early-mid 20s.  Each day I visited her, I brought along my Bible to read to her, only 7 visits in all.  It was before I decided to go into ministry, so this was as much a statement about her faith as my own.  She was a believer through and through and I could think of nothing more comforting to her than the Bible. 

            Many Christians they find comfort, moral guidance, a sense of closeness to God, and hope in the Bible.  My experience in Main line churches is that peoples’ relationship with the Bible is somewhat more complicated.  The Bible is not only something they turn to, but are sometimes turned off by and consequently they turn away from.  Increasingly, people have less and less familiarity with the Bible. This series we’re doing on the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans has surfaced all of the above.

            Do you turn to Paul for comfort, assurance, a sense of connection to God, guidance, or hope?  Do you even know what books in the Bible he wrote, or purported to write?  (Those two lists are different by the way).  That’s not a test, but an earnest query.  Where we turn to make sense of and find direction in this world is not an academic question.  Take stock of what’s happening right now in your world.  Where do you look, on a deep spiritual level, to get some sense of where this is going and therefore how you should move forward?    

            Since we’re trying to recover the hidden gifts of Paul, let’s watch how he makes sense of his world.  Remember, Paul’s a mystic.  He’s studied the teachings and the tradition.  He knows it all, but his real knowing comes from a place of direct connection to the divine, connection that is no less available to you and me. This is the conclusion that he draws as his world seems to be falling apart:  “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).  He’s received some wisdom from beyond the veil, one that has lifted him above his present circumstances, something that is so hard to do, and placed him in the bosom of a promise about which he can only speak to vaguely.  He can’t see it fully, but he’s seen enough to know it’s going to be okay.  We will not be abandoned into oblivion.  He says if we could all see it fully, it wouldn’t be called hope, but it’s enough (v. 24). 

            Remind me how Paul is objectionable or irrelevant. Who would have believed just a few weeks ago that one of our major presidential candidates may be inching closer to dropping out of the race and the other may have been an inch of losing his life?  These are scary times, surreal.  I was away when the assassination attempt on former president Trump was made, and when I first saw the picture, I assumed the blood coming from his ear was from secret service agents tackling him at the sound of a false alarm.  I have to say I am beginning to think that God doesn’t trust me very much because after every major national or global event in my 11 years here, I have not been the scheduled preacher the following Sunday. Thank God for a little time to sink into a sense of what the Spirit wants me to say.  It’s hard to know what to say.

            Paul offers us a good model for when we are lost or at a loss for words.  “The Spirit …intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (v. 26).  When we’re are at a loss, God doesn’t talk over us or down to us, the Spirit just “intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  Part of the reason we practiced silence earlier in the service is because there are places too deep for words, and the wordless place is often where we find God. 

            Out of the silence, Paul tells us “all things work together for good for those who love God” (v. 28).  Notice, however, he does not say, “all things work out” at least in any immediate way, for those who love God, only that they work toward the good.  It’s another way of saying your faithfulness is not in vain if it contributes to the good, whether you see it or not, whether it is on your timeline or not. 

            We live in a time in which some have called into question the appropriateness of hope, given the enormity of the problems facing us.  Hope has been called naïve, critiqued for how it fosters inaction.  I believe the contrary to be true, when hope is rightly conceived.  Rebecca Solnit wrote a piece for The Guardianabout how we can’t afford to be climate doomers, arguing, among other things, that the narrative nobody is covering the environment and nobody cares is neither helpful nor true.[1] The pushback was significant event though others included Oxford scientist Hannah Ritchie offer conclusions similar to Solnit’s. 

            It comes down to who we want to be in the world, a world we did not altogether choose.  Floyd Thompkins, the pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian in Marin City, also works with students at Stanford.  He described how despondent they sometimes are, seemingly having concluded there’s nothing they can do about the problems facing them.  He says to them, somewhat prophetically, “Don’t you want to at least try?”  He calls them to rise up out of their paralysis, much like Jesus did to the paralytic.  We are here because we are the ancestors of peoples who long ago survived, yes through some luck, grace perhaps, but also some grit and determination, creativity, resilience, fire, and hope.

            I talking with colleague Kimberly Elliott at the Fairfax Community church about the anti-hope sentiment I observed sweeping across some corners.  She stepped in without hesitation.  Hope is not just appropriate; it is essential.  If we want people to engage, to work to improve things, “to try” as Thompkins put it, we must give them hope.  Hope isn’t denial of what’s happening, it’s believing something can be done.  Eliott pointed me to Jane Goodall, the great primatologist.  This is a woman who would have so much reason for despair given what she has seen in terms of environmental degradation and yet, Elliott said to me, look how many of her books have hope in the title:

• 1999 Reason For Hope
• 2005 Harvest for Hope
• 2009 Hope for Animals and Their World
• 2013 Seeds of Hope
• 2021 The Book of Hope

           Is Goodall’s head in the sand or can she see into the heart of the human spirit? 

           What if we’re wrong?  What’s the worst that could happen?  We could die trying.  Dramatic, but true.  We could. Actually, we will, die that is.  I heard an interview with actor Ted Danson recently where he talked about how he returns to the reality of his mortality when he gets anxious precisely because it frees him from fear.  It allows him to hold things more lightly and therefore more fully engage.  His refrain is, “and then I’ll die.”[2] 

           That reminder doesn’t have to be so scary, particularly if you are a person of faith.  Here Paul makes his grandest claim, that even death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ (v. 39).  God’s reach is limitless.  Theologian James Alison says this is the point of the resurrection.  It’s God showing God’s hand, that even death is no barrier, holds no final power.  That’s the great promise.  The contemplative James Finley says we believe that in death the vale will be lifted between God and us totally unmediated.  To live in faith is to live as if that has already happened, wholly assured.  We have not been left for dead; we’re being called to rise to new life.

           I didn’t tell you, though I may have told you before, that the book in the Bible I was reading to my grandmother was Romans.  God only knows why I chose that as a young twenty-something.  I read to her seven times, seven chapters.  (Holy number).  Had I gone one more time or had she lived one more day, the chapter I would have read to her is this one, the one that contains the great promise.  What a tragedy I didn’t to read those words to her, but you know what?  As I probably told you before, she didn’t need to hear them. She surely knew them by heart.  The great promise isn’t just for the dying. It’s for the living, so that we can go on living into the promise of a love and a power that knows no bounds. We are overcomers through the one who overcomes everything in total and unassailable love. 

           Amen.

 

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers

[2]Interview on “South Beach Sessions” with Dan Lebatard podcast, June 28, 2024.