The Victory is in Jesus

July 30, 2017 Romans 8:26-39 Year A The Victory is in Jesus 8th Sunday after Pentecost Romans 8:26-39Common English Bible (CEB) 26 In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit himself pleads our case with unexpressed groans. 27 The one who searches hearts knows how the Spirit thinks, because he pleads for the saints, consistent with God’s will.28 We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 We know this because God knew them in advance, and he decided in advance that they would be conformed to the image of his Son. That way his Son would be the first of many brothers and sisters. 30 Those who God decided in advance would be conformed to his Son, he also called. Those whom he called, he also made righteous. Those whom he made righteous, he also glorified. 31 So what are we going to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. Won’t he also freely give us all things with him? 33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect people? It is God who acquits them. 34 Who is going to convict them? It is Christ Jesus who died, even more, who was raised, and who also is at God’s right side. It is Christ Jesus who also pleads our case for us. 35 Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, We are being put to death all day long for your sake. We are treated like sheep for slaughter.[a] 37 But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. 38 I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers 39 or height or depth, or any other thing that is created. Sermon Opener - Super-Size Your Faith - Romans 8:26-39 “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…in a most delightful way” How many of you can hear Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) singing that? How many of you have no idea who Mary Poppins is? There’s the generational divide right in front of us…although Broadway introduced a new “Mary Poppins” musical to catch those of you who only know the more postmodern Nannie McPhee version of the story. Nanny Mary Poppins sang this song in the 1964 movie to get her employers’ closed-mouth children to open up and swallow down their daily dose of nasty-tasting stuff. Could any nanny get away with that today? Given the skyrocketing rate of childhood obesity, I suspect that any child-care worker caught shoveling spoonfuls of sugar down their charge’s throats would be instantly sacked. Still, we “sugarcoat” everything. “It smells like money” is how we sugarcoat the sickening stench of a slaughterhouse or the cloud of sulphur dioxide that spews out of paper-mill smoke stacks. Ironically, in the case of pulp mills, we are sugar-coating the release of sugars (and sulphur) in the wood. “Sugar-coating” is our attempt to disguise that which is truly awful with an artificial top-coat of sticky sweetness. We do this with everything from chocolate-dipped grasshoppers to 5 mpg SUV’s that run on Big Diesel. We love to take our sourest lemons and turn them into lemonade. But this attempt to “sugar-coat” the negative is not a part of biblical faith. A faith that is founded on the crucifixion of its founder as a blasphemous criminal cannot be good at cutesy coverups. Jesus never sugarcoated. He spoke openly to his admittedly uncomprehending, sugar-jonesing disciples about his impending arrest, conviction, and execution. Jesus baldly declared that “the poor will always be with you” and advised the rich, young man that the cost of discipleship was to “sell everything” if he wished to follow Jesus. Discipleship was never advertised as anything but a big-ticket item by Jesus, a commitment that, as its reward, demanded that followers “take up their cross,” embrace the real probability of suffering and death. Paul had first-hand, hard-core, hard-time experiences of the “hardship” that discipleship could bring to one’s life…. I think that we have gotten used to wanting our life to be sugar coated. We want everything to be good news. And that is not what Paul is talking about when he tells us to have hope. Christ did not come to the world for everything to be wonderful in our lives, Christ came to tell us that what is bad does not last forever. And that when things go wrong, we have a means for dealing with it, without needing the sugar coating. This is the last part of Romans 8 – this is a pivotal chapter for all of us. Paul originally wrote this for Christians who were being persecuted, and trying to make meaning out of what was happening to them. Paul answer to them, not to dwell on the meaning of the bad, but to look not necessarily for the good, but to look for the God in the event, and to always be clear that God is on your side if you are on God’s side. This whole conversation is called theodicy. Theo means god, dicy means justice. But the word theodicy means a question that we all seem to have – if God is so good, then why is life so lousy? Why do bad things happen to good people. We have been asking that question for centuries. The bible is full of stories of people asking that question. We all ask the question, but let me give you some advice – the question has its own word – because there is no answer. No matter how strong your faith is, the question will come up in your life. And there are people out there called hope hustlers – who will be happy to give you an answer, but the answer that they give will never satisfy you. The best advice that I can give you is – don’t get stuck on asking the question. Because you can stay there for the rest of your life. What you have to do is just move on and leave the question unanswered. Whatever it is, you have to just accept it, deal with it and find the strength to move on and live with the question. Romans 8 give us the tools to be able to do that – that is why the lectionary takes so much time with Romans 8. We dealt with this one verse for three weeks. In the first week we were told to live in the spirit and not the flesh, the second week was to have hope, and this week the message is that nothing separates us from the love of God – not even despair and suffering. I have been looking for a sign to put in my house it says bidden or unbidden God is there. In other words, no matter whether we intentionally pray for God or not God is in the process. We just have to look for the God in everyday and in every situation. There is a spiritual practice where every night you ask yourself, where did I meet God today. There is a less well-known behavioral syndrome that has been dubbed the “Stockdale Paradox.” Admiral Jim Stockdale was a prisoner of war at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” during the Vietnam War. He remained a prisoner there from 1965-1973, eight endless years. He was the highest ranking US military officer imprisoned during the Vietnam War. He is perhaps better known as the running mate for H. Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. During his imprisonment he was repeatedly beaten and tortured, but he refused to be “broken” by his captors. He devised mental exercises to keep his mind resilient and created ingenious tapping codes that allowed all the American prisoners held captive with him to secretly communicate with each other. The “paradox” Stockdale is famous for is his unflinching attitude of utter faith and absolute realism. When asked how he managed to continue day after day for eight years Stockdale explained, “I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said . . . “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.” When asked by the reporters if he could describe those who failed to survive under the same torture and mind-breaking abuse, Stockdale’s reply was quick: “Oh, that’s easy, he said. The optimists.” “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.” Then who were the ones who survived? What was his key to survival. Stockdale said it was one word: “Faith.” Stockdale’s final reflection, his key more-than-survival skill for not just surviving, but truly LIVING in and through those grueling ordeals, was precise. “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, faith which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Did you hear it? Did you hear the echoes of our Scripture lesson reverberating in these words? Faith is not optimism. Faith is not foolish naïveté. Faith is not pretending bad times or genuine suffering are not real. Faith does not insist that everything’s coming up roses, or that stinking circumstances smell like strawberry shortcake. Faith is best expressed in the words our 17-year-old son is fond of saying: “Deal with it, get over it, or get help.” The Stockdale realists faced the facts “We’re not getting out by Christmas! Deal with it, Get over it, and Get help!”— but they faced the facts with faith, faith in the ultimate “end of the story,” which enabled them to survive in some of the works circumstances the mind can imagine. In today’s epistle text, Paul is speaking to Christians who have experienced real suffering, Christians being persecuted by a power no less than Rome, the greatest empire ever seen. And in these oft-memorized verses, Paul is giving the message that a Stockholm Syndrome culture needs to hear: the Stockdale Paradox of “Deal With it, Get Over It…and Get Help!” We find the answer in Christ, or we do not find it. Emily Dickinson says: "No person can be truly happy until they can say: ‘I love Christ.’ " Scripture does not teach us that Christians will escape tragedy and turmoil. In fact, in our scripture lesson for today, Paul uses words like suffering tribulation, persecution, peril, the sword. Suffering in the Greek means “pressure.” Persecution in the Greek means “To be squeezed.” All of us can relate to those things. The Bible is not a book that whistles in the dark and denies pain. Quite the contrary, the Bible is a book that was born out of pain. Every night since I moved here to Wilmington I have noticed that it has been so much easier for me to go to sleep. I have rested so much better here, for a number of different reasons. But every night when things get dark and quiet, my mind starts to talk to me. It reminds me of all of the bills that I have to pay, and all of the loose ends that I still have to deal with, of all of the people who are “patiently” waiting for me to take care of something for the, of all of the bags that I still have to unpack. And every night I wake up and sit with my thoughts, and I am convinced that they are right – we are not going to survive this, my problems are just too big to deal with, they are going to get the best of me. But every morning I wake up, its time to open the house up to the sun, start my daily routine, to pray, to plan, and to do what I can to move forward. My problems don’t get any better, but all there is to do is to deal with them, and to trust God, and live according to my faith. Faith is when I look up to God, Grace is when God looks down on me. William Barclay says that the faith that helps us to face the struggles of life is only available to those who believe in God. Who know that God prevails in every situation, and if we are with God, then we will prevail also. Another pastor says that prayer is the divine in us, appealing to the God above us. Our victory is in God, and in Christ as our intecessor. This is one of my favorite stories to tell… Dr. Robert Ozment tells a touching story. A man is looking in a window at an art display including the crucifixion. He becomes conscious of another person. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that it was a little street urchin. He asked the lad, "Do you know who that is?" "Yes, sir, that’s our Savior." The boy looked at the man, surprised that he didn’t know. Then the child went on to explain, "Them’s the soldiers, the Roman soldiers, around the cross." The boy paused and then continued: "That woman crying over there is his mother." He paused again and said, "They killed him, Mister. They killed him." "Where did you learn all this?" asked the man. "At the mission school, sir." The man walked away. But before he had gone far, the voice of the little boy caught up with him: "Mister, Mister! I forgot to tell you. He rose again!" Paul says that our victory is in Christ. Paul says that we are being killed every day. We all have problems, we are all asking why is this happening to us, we are all asking where is God. But our ability wont save us, our hard work wont save us, as a matter of fact our faith wont save us. We are saved by the grace of God through Christ. Christ saves us. That is the real truth, no need for sugar coating. Let us pray….. Additional illustrations……. Dr. Robert Ozment tells a touching story. A man is looking in a window at an art display including the crucifixion. He becomes conscious of another person. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that it was a little street urchin. He asked the lad, "Do you know who that is?" "Yes, sir, that’s our Savior." The boy looked at the man, surprised that he didn’t know. Then the child went on to explain, "Them’s the soldiers, the Roman soldiers, around the cross." The boy paused and then continued: "That woman crying over there is his mother." He paused again and said, "They killed him, Mister. They killed him." "Where did you learn all this?" asked the man. "At the mission school, sir." The man walked away. But before he had gone far, the voice of the little boy caught up with him: "Mister, Mister! I forgot to tell you. He rose again!" It is in this description of the movement of the Spirit of God in our struggles that Paul's language is most powerful. He speaks of the Spirit interceding in our prayers, in our longings, in our fears, in our hopes, and in our inability to pray. In those places that are so overwhelming and scary that we can hardly articulate them — in those places, Paul emphasizes God's movement, the Spirit moving in us "with sighs too deep for words." I remember one such moment in my ministry, although there have been many similar moments. One of our elders in his forties was near death in the hospital, dying from a rare blood disease that would not allow his blood to clot. This disease had thinned his blood so much that it was coming out of his body in many places. On this particular day, as the nurses and doctors worked frantically to save him, his wife came and pleaded with me to go to the hospital chapel and pray with her. We went, and she fervently prayed for God to spare her husband's life. We held hands, and I did not know what to pray. I groaned inwardly — her husband's death was imminent, yet his wife and I both wanted him to live. So, I prayed, too, for his life to be spared, though I felt inwardly that this prayer would not be answered in this way. At that moment, I felt the sting of death in his wife's despair, and I felt my own weakness that Paul describes in these verses — I did not know how or what to pray at that moment. I hoped that God's Spirit would intercede — the situation was clearly beyond my control; indeed it was beyond my power to comprehend enough to even know what to pray. Our elder died a few minutes later. I discerned the intercession of God's Spirit in his room after his death. His mother came in to view his body and to say, "Good-bye." I sought to console her by saying that her son was a good man and that we would all miss him. She thanked me, and then the Spirit spoke through her to me and to his wife and to many others. She prayed with the power of the Spirit, thanking God for this son, thanking God for all the gifts that she had received from God through her son's life, and asking now for God to give her son safe passage into the arms of Jesus. As the tears flowed down my cheeks, I thanked God, too, for this reminder that death is not the final word, that loving is the final word. Here in this most painful moment of the death of her son, this momma had reminded us all that the point and the meaning of life is loving, is engaging, is the connection. In that very engaging comes pain because of the power of death, but the promise of the Spirit is that it is in the loving and the engaging that we find our lives and that we find our meaning as the adopted daughters and sons of God. It is in loving that we are found by God. In those places where we groan in travail, in those places where our inward groaning causes us to begin to lose hope and not know what or how to pray, may we, too, find the intercession of the Spirit who moves with sighs too deep for words. Amen. We don’t live life very long before many of our illusions are shattered. I recall a cartoon that appeared in The Atlanta Constitution after a man named Mark Barton walked into an Atlanta business office and shot and killed several people. In the cartoon, a small boy is sitting next to his mother, and a newspaper is lying on the table. The headline reads, “Atlanta Murderer: Mark Barton.” Confused, the boy is looking up at his mother saying, “You said monsters don’t exist.” We are all like that boy, and we ask about this monster in many ways: “Why do the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper?” “Why does God allow evil and suffering?” “If God is great and good, why is there suffering?” Another way it is put is: “If God can’t stop suffering, then he is not great. If he can, then he is not good.” In the study of theology this wonder is called the theodicy question, and it is at the foundation of our question today – “Why is Faith so Hard?” Unfortunately, there are some Christians who are so desperate to have this question answered that they are seduced by hope hustlers. These hope hustlers churn out cotton candy theology that teaches that if you really have faith in God you will never experience tragedy in life. And then when pain and tragedy comes they blame their suffering on a lack of faith. Some may even give up on God all together. As a result, they are left with no inner resources with which to battle the trials of life. Were These Not Warnings? There was once a man who was always afraid of death. He was afraid that death would suddenly overtake him and find him unprepared, so he made a bargain with the Grim Reaper that death would give him clear, repeated notices before he would come. One day, however, unannounced and altogether unexpectedly, the Destroyer appeared to demand his life. "How could you break your pledge?" the man protested bitterly. "You sent me no warnings." Slowly the skeletal figure replied, "But how about your failing eyesight, your dimmed sense of hearing, your gray and thinning hair, your lost teeth, your furrowed face, your bent body, your dwindling powers, and your weakened memory? Were these not unmistakable warnings?" James D. Kegel, God's Surprises Children’s Lesson…. Lesson: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life. nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Object: A life-size cut-out of a person Good morning, boys and girls. I'll bet you can't guess who this is! (Hold up cut-out of person. Let them guess.) Those are good guesses but they are wrong. I'll just have to tell you. This is my shadow! Isn't he a nice fellow? (Let them answer.) What kind of a person is a shadow, boys and girls? (Let them answer.) Right. A shadow belongs only to you. It goes wherever you go, regardless of where that might be. If I go home, my shadow is right there with me. If I have to go to the hospital, my shadow will go along, too. If I am in danger, so is my shadow, and if nice things happen to me, my shadow is there to be happy right along with me. What if I wanted to get rid of my shadow, boys and girls? Would I be able to? (Let them answer.) Not really. My shadow is always with me and if I get tired of having it around, that's just too bad for me. My shadow and I are never going to be separated. Today, in our scripture reading, Paul tells us that the love of God in Jesus is very much like my shadow here. It is always with us. If we are having a bad day, the love of God is right there having a bad day with us. If we don't feel well, or have to go to the doctor, the love of God goes right along with us. If we are happy because it is our birthday, God's love is happy with us, and if we are sad, God is there to help us feel better. The love of God is just like my shadow here. It will never leave us. I could probably tell God to go away if I decided I didn't want him around anymore, but God's love would remain. I could become a really nasty person and do all sorts of bad things -- like rob banks, cheat people, tell lies -- but God would not leave me. God wouldn't be very happy with me, though, would he, boys and girls? (Let them answer.) No -- God would rather have us live lives that are filled with good things -- good words and good deeds. God's love is with us all the time to help us live those kinds of lives. Boys and girls, the next time you see your shadow following you around (Hold up cut-out of shadow.) remember that there is someone else who is also always with you -- the love of God in Jesus our Lord. God bless you all. Amen.