Pentecost 8A
July 30, 2017
Romans 8:26-39
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Some years
ago my mom and I traveled from California to Portland. At the time, my parents
were taking care of my grandmother, visiting her every day in a nursing home as
she fell deeper into the grips of Alzheimer’s. My grandpa had died a few years
before, but my mom had been unable really to grieve his death, because she
immediately threw herself into loving and caring for her mom. As my parents
started dealing with my grandparents’ estate, one collection of items that they
went through was my grandma’s jewelry. Among many beautiful pieces was my
great-grandma Nita’s diamond ring. It fit my mom perfectly, and as she wore it,
she felt close not only to her grandmother, but also to her own mom, even as
her mom – her brilliance, her compassion, her eloquence – was slipping rapidly
away.
On our way
home from our trip north, my mom packed all her valuables in her carry-on, not
wanting to lose them should something happen to the checked luggage. This
included her jewelry – and Grandma Nita’s diamond ring. Everything went
smoothly as we picked up baggage and loaded it in the car… but when we arrived
home from the airport, my mom realized she was missing her carry-on. She knew
she had taken it off the plane. Did anyone remember putting it in the car? No
one did. We called the airport, and nothing had been turned in. My mom’s carry-on
– including that diamond ring that tied her to her grandmother and her mother
in a time when she daily watched her slip further away – was gone for good.
It wasn’t so
much the loss of the diamond that was devastating. We all know that things can
be replaced. No, the real loss was felt in all that the ring represented. Her
grandma was gone. Her dad was gone. Her mom was slipping away. If you have lost
someone or something important to you, you know – when you endure a loss, it is
not long before you start to feel a little lost yourself. You feel lost, and
you may even start to feel alone and disconnected.
And genuine connection is what we social,
emotional beings crave, perhaps more than anything else – connection with
friends, with a partner, with family, with God. That is why this last line we
heard today from Paul’s letter to the Romans is so meaningful to us: “I am
convinced,” he says, 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.” It’s a passage often read at funerals, during a time
when we are feeling an acute loss, but it is good news for us any
Perhaps you
have a story from your past, or even from your present, in which you needed to
hear that promise of enduring connection. There are plenty of causes for it.
Paul even lists a few: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks.
“Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril,
or sword?” These words no doubt meant everything to the audience for which he
was writing – for the first century Romans reading his letter, these all hit
remarkably close to home. For us, they may not carry the same impact. So, what
if we substituted some more modern situations to make Paul’s sentiment come
alive for us today, in 2017? How about this: “What can separate us from the
love of Christ? Will divorce, or unemployment, or secularism, or mental
illness, or sexuality, or ISIS, or hate crimes, or cancer, or miscarriage, or
infertility, or guns, or bullying?”
Suddenly,
Paul’s next statement hits with a much harder punch: “No! In all these things,
we are more than conquerors!” In all of these everyday realities that threaten
us, that threaten our safety and our views and our self-image and our dreams
and our way of being in the world – in
all these things, we are more than conquerors. The Greek there is the same
word from which we get the English “hyper” – so, we are hyper-winners! The
winningest of winners! Notice, he does not say we are conquerors over these things, but rather,
conquerors in these things. Paul is
not saying, “If we are faithful enough, or pray hard enough, we will not have
to endure these things.” He isn’t promising that challenges will not come our
way, but rather, that when they do, we still have victory in Jesus Christ,
because we still have the love and grace of Jesus Christ. In all these things,
we are more than conquerors.
Still, we
may not always feel much like conquerors. As Paul notes, we may feel more like
sheep lined up to be slaughtered – standing up for counter-cultural ideals,
living in a way different from how the world would have us live, loving our
neighbors of all stripes, standing up for the poor and marginalized and
disenfranchised, like Jesus did and like he commanded. This is not an easy job.
It was not easy in the first century, and it isn’t easy now. It would be much
easier to be socially acceptable, to watch out for number one, to seek our own
good instead of the good of the poor or the other. We do sometimes feel as if
we are sheep to be slaughtered by this harsh world.
Yet Paul
responds to each sheep as he or she asks his or her most pained question,
fearful of the backlash, and instead receives a grace-full, pastoral response.
A man riddled with tumors asks, “Does my cancer separate me from the love of
Christ?” No! A recently widowed woman who is so overcome by grief she can
barely leave the house asks, “Does my grief separate me from the love of
Christ?” No! A man who is unable to be as kind and loving to his family as he
should be, because he struggles with depression and anxiety, asks, “Does my
mental illness separate me from the love of Christ?” No! A woman who has
endured a sexual assault comes, broken and ashamed, and asks, “Does my
brokenness separate me from the love of Christ?” No! A person who was born
male, but has always identified more as a woman, asks, “Does my gender
confusion separate me from the love of Christ?” No! A man who cannot shake his
dependence on alcohol to get through each day asks, “Does my addiction separate
me from the love of Christ?” No!
Finally Paul
stops them all and says, “Listen up, everyone! There is nothing in all creation that can separate you
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing! That covers
everyone, everything, every conceivable situation you could ask me about.”
Whatever our brokenness, whatever our pain, whatever our sordid pasts – we are
never, ever separate from the love of God.
And so we
are more than conquerors. No matter the failures and struggles we face, we have
this love, and we have the assurance that the Spirit intercedes on our behalf
to pray when we don’t know how, and we have the enduring promise that, because
Christ died for us, and rose again, and brought us with him into eternal life,
we need not fear the grave. Let us cling to that promise, brothers and sisters.
Let us rejoice in our victory, knowing that it does not save us from having to
face hardship, but that it promises that in all we face, we are never alone,
and never without the life-changing love of God.
Let us pray…
God of love, when we face hardship,
distress, persecution, hunger, vulnerability, danger, or violence, and when we
feel so very alone in our struggles, remind us that we can trust that your love
is always with us. Help us to see others, too, as people who also possess the
assurance that they are your beloved children. In the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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