Romans 8: 26-39
9/8/19, Rooke Chapel, Bucknell University
At first blush,
the answer to today’s question might seem obvious:
If god is for us, who is against us?
No one.
or nothing of consequence anyway.
If the source and summit of the universe,
the fount of love and understanding is for us –
and I believe deeply that God is for us –
What could possibly be against us?
Of course there are those who see resistance
as evidence that we are being truly faithful in a fallen world.
but more prevalent, in my experience is a certain kind of belief that says
everything will be alright in the end.
We’re just passin’ through this life anyway.
God is for us,
and nothing else matters.
But,
suffering exists,
and evil is real,
and bad things happen to good people.
These seem self-evidently true.
Not so many years ago,
I might have needed to defend those statements in certain audiences,
but I rarely do these days.
And the more we try to deny suffering and sin and evil, I think,
the worse it gets for us.
Another week, we’ll take up the problem of evil,
the question, “why do we suffer?”
for which I most assuredly do not have an easy answer.
But for me,
the question, “If god is for us?”
leads in a straight line to the question,
What gives us hope?
How do we maintain hope?
In the midst of opioid epidemics,
and changing climates,
and crises of leadership?
How do we maintain hope amidst,
the loss of loved ones,
or cancer diagnosis,
or the failing of exams,
or the discovery that our long-expected career path,
is simply not going to work?
In hope, says, the Apostle Paul,
just before our reading from today,
we are saved.
Paul believes deeply,
as we see even in our short reading from Romans today,
that God has been at work since the beginning of time,
and that Christ came into the world to save it.
He argues that all things are working together for good for a purpose,
and believes that glory is coming.
God has been at work,
is at work,
and will be at work,
bringing all things toward the good.
And Paul takes suffering and weakness as a given.
Weakness is the reality,
which he names and owns,
it is the backdrop of his life and writing:
it’s hard out there.
Perhaps, acknowledging this,
some of you have had a therapist or advisor,
who’s asked you,
on the cusp of a daunting decision,
or in the throes of anxiety,
to make a list.
A list of the things that could go wrong.
A list of the worst that could happen.
A list what you’re afraid of.
It’s often a useful exercise, right?
What’s the worst that could happen,
we say as parents,
if you try to ride your bike?
falls, skinned knees, getting up, trying again.
Etc.
But deep down,
there’s a bigger fear,
right?
A fear we might know by the name, despair.
I could hit my head, Dad.
and go into a coma.
I could ride off a cliff,
I could ride into traffic.
One of my favorite segments,
on one of my favorite all time episodes of This American Life,
is a list of fears from a 54 year old man
named Michael Benard Loggins,
who lives with a developmental disability.
He was told by one of his teachers,
to make a list of his worries,
and he comes up with 138,
which he makes into a Zine called “The Fears of Your Life”
And soon after he makes, “The Fears of Your Life: A Whole Brand New One”
with 45 more.
Fear – says Michael Benard Loggins – of hospitals and needles. Fear of school and dentists. Fear of noises and bumps in the middle of the night. Fear of toys that come on by itself without anyone touching it.
Fear of some birds. Fear of being different.
Fear that, if I go into the library and I happens to get like seven or eight books and I happens to find a place in the library that I would get a lot of comfortable and begin reading in those seven or eight books, but one book at a time, and I start to read and somehow, my voice and mind start to get from low to high and, thinking that there weren’t anyone elses reading theirs, and I look over and the people in the library, and I get fearful and I’ll say, “Oops, sorry.”
I think Romans 8,
which is Paul’s magnum opus as he nears the end of his life and career,
and which is amongst the most lovely and hope-filled texts ever written,
is also a list of Paul’s worries.
What could be against us? wonders Paul.
Well…famine, nakedness, peril and sword.
All of which he’s presumably experienced on his travels.
He’s been beaten and imprisoned,
exiled, shouted at,
argued against, undermined.
And still he walks from community to community,
sharing stories of hope,
exhorting, encouraging,
bullying, comforting,
making a few mistakes,
and a lot of enemies,
but still pushing, walking, and most of all, writing.
What could be against us?
well, hardship, distress, persecution.
rulers, things present, things from the past,
things to come,
powers, death, life, angels.
Stricken on the road to Damascus,
and overcome,
God called Paul by a new name,
and filled him with a hope beyond hope,
and send him out,
and out he went to Corinth, and Thessolonika,
Athens, Crete, Cyprus.
He walked with a limp,
and he was shipwrecked three times,
and on he went,
this converted Pharisee,
this one-time persecutor of Jesus followers,
now filled with the grace and zeal of God,
at-times depressed,
and getting old,
a self-described “fool”
and not much to look at.
He writes texts that have been used to terrorize women (1 Cor. 14),
and enslaved people (Eph. 6),
and queer folk (1 Cor. 6) for millennia.
But there’s an honesty to his searching,
and a depth to his hope,
and a poignancy to his texts.
I can’t help but love him,
though I don’t know that I’d want to get a beer with him.
you can feel the pencil pushing so hard,
against the paper that he must have shattered many a tip.
Will hardship, distress, cancer, or a failed exam separate us from the love of God?
No. No.
The promise is not that the road will be easy or smooth,
the promise is that we will be accompanied along the way.
The Gospel is not an avoidance mechanism,
a way to paper over the manifold problems of our life, our world,
our faith.
But rather pushes us right in there,
like Paul in the midst and muck of it.
Perhaps this is illustrated best,
by the difference between the words hope
and optimism.
Optimism assumes success.
whereas hope presumes, indeed necessitates,
that something is not right.
“Hope – says Desomond Tutu – is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart’s full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I’m not optimistic, I’m always very hopeful.”
Or Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird):
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
And why does it matter?
Why does hope matter so much to Paul?
because God is making a body.
Broken and bruised.
black and blue, and brown and white,
and far from perfectly abled.
But a body which will move in the world,
and share the good news,
not that there’s no real suffering.
not that every ounce of suffering happens “for a reason”
but that in the suffering,
we are loved.
In the suffering,
we are never alone.
and in the suffering,
in time,
we can find meaning.
Because Jesus suffered with us and for us,
And that suffering will not,
cannot, and will not be the last word.
We are part of that body.
God’s body,
stretching back to our parents and ancestors,
and all the saints that proceed us,
including Paul: bruised and limping,
but still walking along in hope.
For I am convinced, he concludes,
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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.
These are real fears,
and thus, this is real hope.
In time, I think,
the dots of hope,
start to form a constellation.
start to form a story.
What gives us hope?
That we are part of God’s story,
past present and future,
still ever being written.
Time for prayer.
Paul has some specific advice for us.
He says we meet God weakness.
And that even when we don’t know what to pray,
The spirit intercedes with “sighs too deep for words.”
isn’t that a lovely and tragic idea.
And one of the gifts we’re given,
one of the practices that leads to hope,
is prayer.
Prayer gets, I thinks,
a bad rap these days.
Especially as “thoughts and prayers”
are tweeted out by politicians in the wake of tragedy.
But in real life,
prayer is an intimate and deeply important act.
A time of sharing hope and despair,
and even those prayers, says Romans,
that we do not yet know them ourselves.
Greta Thunberg – the 16 year old climate activist reminds us
that “Hope comes with action.”
and while she is surely talking about policy change,
and collective will,
I think we might also bring into that space, earnest prayer,
and sincere thought.
As the Bahamas rebuild,
as we face the manifold challenges of our world,
we do so in earnest prayer,
and hopefully come away a little more ready to act.
A little more mindful, more connected, more willing to act,
And a little more hopeful.
[we invited members of the community to bring forward post-it notes during our prayers, with items of hope and items of despair, and began our prayer with Thomas Merton:]
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following
your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.