Sermon: Nothing can separate us from God's love (July 30, 2023)

 Pentecost 9A  July 30, 2023  Romans 8:26-39 

 

INTRODUCTION 

           This is the last week we’ll be hearing from Matthew’s parable discourse, and, like the finale of a 4th of July fireworks show, Jesus will give us one parable after another – bam, bam, bam! In this series of short parables, Jesus will use several everyday images to help us understand what the kingdom of God is like. Yet when he asks his disciples if they’ve understood these things, and they say, “Yes” – I call their bluff! Each short parable is so dense and complex to unpack, they couldn’t possibly have understood it all! That said, perhaps they can best be summarized in this way: God’s kingdom shows up even in small, ordinary, and often unexpected ways. 

         Perhaps that is why this Gospel is paired with Solomon’s prayer for wisdom. King Solomon is best known for his surpassing wisdom, and today’s reading shows us when and why he was given this gift. A prayer for wisdom is one I think we all could stand to offer; with so many unknowns in life, it seems near impossible at times to make wise choices! Thankfully, we will also hear today this beautiful portion of Romans 8, in which we are assured that whatever hardship comes our way, nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that the Spirit is praying with us and for us through it all, with “sighs too deep for words.” 

         There’s a lot of good news in our texts today. So whatever burden or trouble you may be carrying today, I pray that these texts can bring some relief to it. Let’s listen. 

[READ] 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

We had a wonderful trip to England and Ireland earlier this month, but I’ll tell you what, it has been a rough go since we got back! First, as you may remember from last week, I tested positive for Covid - and all the fatigue that goes with it. Then last Sunday morning at 8am, my computer wouldn’t turn on. Michael had accidentally spilled soda on it the night before, and it is now presumed dead. Finally, Monday, I woke up feeling normal, healthy, and energized for the first time since our return… except that I had some persistent pain in my lower abdomen that was getting worse instead of better. My doctor urged me to go to the ER, where I spent the whole day getting tests, and at 10pm I was wheeled into surgery to have my appendix as well as a ruptured cyst removed.  

As I sat on ER overflow bed #14 for 10 hours on Monday, I just kept thinking, “No use freaking out about things you don’t yet know. This is inconvenient, yes, but it’s going to be okay.” To distract myself, I figured I might as well try to get some work done. So I pulled out my phone (since my computer was kaput) and started reading the assigned texts for this week, so I could begin mulling them over. And when I got to this beautiful text from Romans, I could feel tears brimming in my eyes. Here in these few verses are some of the most comforting and encouraging words in all of Scripture.

   “The Spirit helps us in our weakness… interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.” Boy, I felt that. As I listened to the moans and groans of my fellow ER patients, I took a deep breath on the spot, trusting that the Spirit would take those sighs and groans and turn them into the prayers I (and we) needed.  

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” Well. I admit that was difficult to see from bed #14 in the ER. And yet, with a bit of hindsight, I could see how much good there really was: I went in when my only symptom was localized pain, before anything became infected. The best laparoscopic surgeon they’ve got was on call that night. This happened this week and not when we were in Europe, and not when the nurses are scheduled to be on strike this week! If it had to happen, the timing was pretty good. And, we have plenty of excellent hospitals to choose from here, and the insurance to cover the cost. All in all, pretty good.

          “If God is for us, who can be against us?” As I proceeded reading through Paul’s powerful testimony, I could feel my heart being bolstered and strengthened. That’s right, I thought! God IS for us, for me. With God on my side, I’ve totally got this. It is scary, and lonely, but I can do it. We’ve got this, God and I. 

        But perhaps what struck me deepest in my heart’s need was this bit at the end, in which we are promised that we share with God an enduring connection that will never fail us: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul asks. “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” I thought of the list of things that had been floated that could be wrong with me, or that I knew were wrong, and subbed them into Paul’s litany: What will separate me from the love of Christ? Will infection, or kidney stones, or appendicitis, or surgery? Will loneliness or inconvenience or pain or broken computers or financial burdens? Or thinking beyond my specific predicament to what is going on in the world around me, will divorce, or unemployment, or secularism, or mental illness, or sexuality, 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!” he cries. “In all these things, we are more than conquerors!” In all of these acute problems and 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.” No, 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. I sure didn’t feel like a conqueror this week when I was in so much pain I couldn’t get myself up and to the bathroom on my own! And I sure don’t feel like a conqueror when I think of all the other problems that plague this world. 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 they ask their most pained question, fearful of the backlash, and instead receive 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 whose mental illness is tearing his family apart and destroying his relationships, 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 trauma and brokenness separate me from the love of Christ?” No! A person who was born male, but has always identified as a woman, asks, “Does my gender dysphoria 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, my friends. 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. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen 

Watch the full service HERE.

Sermon: Let God be the judge (July 23, 2023)

 Pentecost 8A

July 23, 2023

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

INTRODUCTION

One characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel is that is very intentionally organized, like obsessively so. For instance, it is set up in five discourses. The first is the Sermon on the Mount (instructions for faith), the second is the missionary discourse (instructions for the apostles proclaiming the kingdom of God), and now we are into the parable discourse, which will teach us some truths about God. Today’s story is the parable of the wheat and the weeds, in which an enemy sows weeds among the good seed, and the farmer tells the workers not to pull the weeds, but to wait until the harvest, when all will be sorted out. This powerful parable, along with the other readings today, bring up some tough questions about evil – where it comes from and why it is among us. Each reading offers a directive that brings us both comfort and discomfort: wait. God’s got this under control. Evil and suffering will, finally, come to an end. “Hope for what you do not see,” Paul urges in our reading from Romans, “and wait for it with patience.”

        Wait and see. It’s not a message I particularly like! It’s a difficult one to hear, in the midst of so many unknowns in our world. But friends, do hear it today. And try to find in it some comfort and solace for the uncertainty before us, as we wait with patience “for the glory about to be revealed to us.” Let’s listen.

[READ]

Part of my overgrown garden.
(It actually looks works than this right now!)

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I will be the first to tell you that, while I have many gifts, gardening is not one of them. I wish it was. But friends, I have killed mint. Mint! Multiple times! I have lots of gardening deficiencies, but among them is that I simply don’t know what things are supposed to look like. When we moved into the house 10 ago, when springtime came around, all kinds of things started growing that I didn’t even know were there. Did someone plant those? Are they supposed to be there? Will that turn into a beautiful flower, or will it turn into something that will take over my garden and won’t be tamed? Because of my ignorance, I just didn’t touch anything, and so soon enough it was a lush, green, overgrown mess.

            Until I began studying this parable this week, I had counted my gardening ignorance as a fault, but now I’m starting to see my inability to discern weeds from flowers more as a boon (at least theologically, if not as a homeowner!). Let me explain by first asking you a question. When you first hear or read this parable about the wheat and the weeds, without thinking too much about it, what would you say it is about? [judgment, heaven/hell…] It is considered one of the judgment parables, isn’t it, and with good reason, I suppose. It seems pretty clear that Jesus is saying some people are good seeds (wheat), some are bad seeds (weeds), and at the end of time, at what the parable calls the harvest, the good seeds will go to heaven and the bad seeds will burn in eternity. (It’s one of those happy, feel-good parables, you know.)

            But there is a danger in interpreting this parable this way. If some people are wheat and some are weeds, then the next logical step we humans want to take is to decide who is what. That’s what the workers wanted to do in the parable, after all. “Do you want us to go and gather [the weeds]?” they ask. Do you want us to go decide what is good and what is bad, and what belongs and what doesn’t, and take care to only leave what is good in the land? It’s a natural tendency, one that taps into a question that has consumed Christians for generations: who is going to heaven, and who is not? Are you? Am I? Should I feel sorry for you if you’re not? Should I be depressed if I am not? Should I act any differently to ensure I will go to heaven?

            But you see, while this is the step we humans want to take, I think the parable is saying the opposite – because you see the sower’s response about gathering the weeds? “No, don’t go and try to determine that for yourself, because it will do more harm than good. Just leave it be, and in the end, God will take care of sorting everything out. Meanwhile, you just live your life and do your job the best you can under the circumstances.”

            To me, this is great news. Because whatever assumptions I may want to make about certain kinds of people, or whatever feelings I may have about how someone has treated me, it is not my job to judge. Furthermore, try though I might to make accurate judgments of people, in the end I cannot tell the difference between weed and wheat, any more than I can tell the difference between weeds and flowers in my own garden. None of us are equipped to judge other people, because none of us know the whole story.

Several years ago, Michael and I watched the hit TV show, Breaking Bad. It is about a high school chemistry teacher named Walt who is, on the surface, a well-loved, upstanding, pretty decent guy. But in his secret life, circumstances drive him to become a murderer and a drug kingpin. No one, not even his own wife, has any idea that this quiet family man, this “wheat,” is capable of such heinous acts. On the other hand, his partner, Jesse, seems in every way to be a “weed”: a punk and a druggie who is up to no good and will never amount to anything. But while he does struggle and make poor choices, we also learn that he cared for his aunt as she died of cancer; that he has limitless compassion for those close to him, especially children; that he has integrity and is loyal and caring even to people who have hurt him. At the start of season one of Breaking Bad, it is easy to feel sympathy for Walt, who has just been diagnosed with cancer, and to hate Jesse. Wheat and weed, clearly. As their stories unfold, however, Jesse quickly becomes admirable and easy to love, while Walt becomes one of the most loathsome characters on television.

            Of course, Breaking Bad is dramatized, but is the basic character development really so far off? Everyone has a story, a struggle, that we don’t know anything about. Everybody has a reason for why they act or talk or look the way they do. Who are we to be the judge?

            We all have people in our lives whom we would like to label as weeds, don’t we. We may label as “weeds” those people who live a lifestyle we don’t approve of, or, those people who won’t let personal lives be personal. They are those people who are undermining women’s ability to care for their own reproductive health, or, those people who are allowing abortions to occur. They are those people who think they can just sneak into America and take our valuable jobs, or, they are those people who would refuse help to vulnerable children in need of refuge from drugs, poverty and violence. They are those people who are a drain on our national budget by taking advantage of welfare programs, or, they are those people who hoard all the world’s wealth for themselves.

            This world – it is a garden full of weeds. No matter what you do or what you believe, you are a weed to someone. But thanks be to God, we are also a garden full of wheat. Each one of us, and every beloved child of God: we are all weeds to someone, but we are also, each one of us, claimed and loved by God. Christ died for every last one of us weeds, so that, like grains of wheat scattered on the hill that have come together to become one bread, we might all come together to serve God and feed the world. In the end, that is all we really can to do: love God with mind, heart, body, and soul, and our neighbors as ourselves. And the judgment piece? We will have to leave it up to God to sort that out.

            As a closing prayer today, I’d like to invite each of you to take a moment to think about who you might consider a weed. It could be a person or group of people I already mentioned, or someone else in your life whom you find it difficult not to judge because of their beliefs, their behavior, or the way they treat other people. All these weeds in our lives – we will pray for them, and we will pray for ourselves. I will leave some silence, during which you can offer your own silent prayer.

            Let us pray… Gracious and merciful God, we try to live the best lives we can, but sometimes it is hard for us not to judge others because they look, act, or believe differently from us. We sometimes think of these people as weeds that get in the way of the good work we try to do. We pray for these people today, Lord, and for their well-being…. We also pray for ourselves, that we might see all your beloved children not as weeds, but as wheat, and as your beloved children. Help us to have compassion for those who are different from us, remembering that they, too, have a story we know nothing about. Grant us the courage to hear their stories, and to love them as you have loved us…. This we pray in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Full service can be viewed HERE.