Never Alone
Text: Romans 8:26-39
It is by all accounts one of the single most comforting passages in the New Testament. Sure, the 23rd Psalm is more familiar, but fewer passages have both the theological depth and comfort than this chapter from Paul’s letter to the Romans. It is often read at funerals as an encouragement to those who grieve. Even so, I am not necessarily sure if Paul originally intended it that way.
Unlike his other letters, Paul’s exhaustive missive to the church in Rome seemed to be less about individual crises, and more about the big picture. We get more of a sense of what Paul knew and understood about his faith, because he was addressing a church that he did not found. If anything, this largest of all the letters is both a resume and a position paper on Paul’s understanding of the fledgling Christian faith. He was introducing himself to the church in Rome, because he wanted to use it as a launching point for the next stage of his life in ministry.
After having founded churches across Asia Minor and Greece, Paul saw new opportunities to the west. Perhaps he had enough with some of the conflicts in Corinth or in the other churches, or perhaps he was confident in having straightened them out that he could set his sights westward.
Yet Paul was not coming to Rome to found a new church. There was already a growing, thriving church at the heart of the Roman Empire… founded quite apart from Paul. He was trying to establish a connection with this community, so that he could use it as a home base for going even further west… to bring the story of Christ beyond the Greco-Roman Empire to the tribes of Western Europe… people that others had dismissed as Barbarians. Yet in order to do that, Paul needed to establish a relationship with the Romans, and to explain his understanding of his faith… and why he specifically felt called to go to a people that everyone else considered to be outsiders. He does this by writing a letter of introduction, rather then simply showing up on their doorstep and saying “Hi! You don’t know me, but support my work.” By building this foundation and this relationship, he would be able to ensure that he had a safe place to come back to.
Yet before I bore everybody to death with the historical details… so what?
Well, Paul also had a reputation of having a deep sense of Spirituality. He was able to put into words some of the most profound expressions of our relationship with God. The church in Rome was facing its own crises, with its own profound theological questions. Paul was laying out his theology, his own understanding of God, and how that might help address some of the broader questions that we have when faced with the harsh realities of life. Particularly when it comes to the issue of suffering and the presence of God, Paul was not someone who had lived in an ivory tower, removed from the realities of life. By the time he started making plans to go and work with the Roman church, he had already been imprisoned on more than one occasion. He had dealt with some pretty awful stuff, including direct personal attacks from members of churches that he himself had founded.
So when we find Paul writing this rather lengthy letter, it is from both wisdom and a deep connection of how he has experienced God through much of his life… and how that now shapes what he hopes to do once he is in Rome. Particularly on the issue of suffering, Paul develops some of the most profound observations of God’s presence. His words are so powerful that they still have deep resonance almost twenty centuries later.
Just prior to the passage that Max read this morning. Paul writes “for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” It’s an opinion, rather than theological reality, and it’s a personal reflection that he starts out with… but then he goes on to describe that God is in process of redeeming all of creation akin to the pains of labour and giving birth to something new. It’s a rather revolutionary image that we are moving towards something profoundly good, in a new relationship with God, in spite of the difficulties we genuinely face.
“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He 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?”
Paul is building a case against the idea that the hardship that we experience in life is somehow God punishing us for some unknown reason. Instead, he’s trying to frame it in a different light… Paul reminds us that in the midst of whatever suffering we might experience in life, we need to be reminded of what God gave up for us: his own Son…
Paul then goes into the legal-sounding arguments:
“Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?” he asks.
Answer: “It is God, who justifies.” In other words: God is the only one who is capable of doing so.
Next question: “Who is to condemn?” Who is the one who actually pronounces judgment? Or more appropriately, in the ancient understanding of this, “who is the one who makes things right?”
Answer: “Christ Jesus.” –But then Paul goes on with this reminder:
“This is the same Jesus Christ, who died, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” That’s the person who is in any position to condemn us… and get this… it’s the very person who comes to our defense! The judge is first and foremost our defense council!
Then to drive it all home, he asks one more question:
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
At the core of all this is where Paul pulls it all together. The conclusion that he shares is a personal opinion, but one that has such a profound impact that is continues to have such a deep resonance so many centuries later:
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced 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.”
Paul covers the bases… it’s his core theology. If you ever want to know Paul’s foundation of faith, this is it: nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Everything else he did and taught was based on this central theme: that because of what God did and does in Jesus Christ, we are never alone… no matter what we experience in life. Cancer, heart attack, war, famine, Alzheimer’s, divorce, broken relationships… even death itself cannot break the bond of love for us that God has for us in Jesus Christ.
As John sang earlier in the service, “You’ll never walk alone.”
The challenge for us is when we are in the midst of those circumstances… When all we can see are those moments of pain and sorrow, where we are overcome with grief for someone we’ve lost, or that the way forward seems so completely dark that we’re afraid we’re lost. In the midst of those situations it may be of some comfort to know that we’re not alone… not in some sort of warm-fuzzy kind of feeling sort of way... because nobody can feel warm or fuzzy in the midst of cold, hard reality. This understanding that we’re not alone stems out of God’s own experience: that in the life that Jesus lived, God knows what it is to be human, what it is to be powerless, what it is to feel abandoned and all alone. We can identify with God, because God experienced the darkest moments of human existence. God identifies with us, and understands us in a way that is far more profound than we will ever know… and for that reason, we are never truly alone.
Amen.
It is by all accounts one of the single most comforting passages in the New Testament. Sure, the 23rd Psalm is more familiar, but fewer passages have both the theological depth and comfort than this chapter from Paul’s letter to the Romans. It is often read at funerals as an encouragement to those who grieve. Even so, I am not necessarily sure if Paul originally intended it that way.
Unlike his other letters, Paul’s exhaustive missive to the church in Rome seemed to be less about individual crises, and more about the big picture. We get more of a sense of what Paul knew and understood about his faith, because he was addressing a church that he did not found. If anything, this largest of all the letters is both a resume and a position paper on Paul’s understanding of the fledgling Christian faith. He was introducing himself to the church in Rome, because he wanted to use it as a launching point for the next stage of his life in ministry.
After having founded churches across Asia Minor and Greece, Paul saw new opportunities to the west. Perhaps he had enough with some of the conflicts in Corinth or in the other churches, or perhaps he was confident in having straightened them out that he could set his sights westward.
Yet Paul was not coming to Rome to found a new church. There was already a growing, thriving church at the heart of the Roman Empire… founded quite apart from Paul. He was trying to establish a connection with this community, so that he could use it as a home base for going even further west… to bring the story of Christ beyond the Greco-Roman Empire to the tribes of Western Europe… people that others had dismissed as Barbarians. Yet in order to do that, Paul needed to establish a relationship with the Romans, and to explain his understanding of his faith… and why he specifically felt called to go to a people that everyone else considered to be outsiders. He does this by writing a letter of introduction, rather then simply showing up on their doorstep and saying “Hi! You don’t know me, but support my work.” By building this foundation and this relationship, he would be able to ensure that he had a safe place to come back to.
Yet before I bore everybody to death with the historical details… so what?
Well, Paul also had a reputation of having a deep sense of Spirituality. He was able to put into words some of the most profound expressions of our relationship with God. The church in Rome was facing its own crises, with its own profound theological questions. Paul was laying out his theology, his own understanding of God, and how that might help address some of the broader questions that we have when faced with the harsh realities of life. Particularly when it comes to the issue of suffering and the presence of God, Paul was not someone who had lived in an ivory tower, removed from the realities of life. By the time he started making plans to go and work with the Roman church, he had already been imprisoned on more than one occasion. He had dealt with some pretty awful stuff, including direct personal attacks from members of churches that he himself had founded.
So when we find Paul writing this rather lengthy letter, it is from both wisdom and a deep connection of how he has experienced God through much of his life… and how that now shapes what he hopes to do once he is in Rome. Particularly on the issue of suffering, Paul develops some of the most profound observations of God’s presence. His words are so powerful that they still have deep resonance almost twenty centuries later.
Just prior to the passage that Max read this morning. Paul writes “for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” It’s an opinion, rather than theological reality, and it’s a personal reflection that he starts out with… but then he goes on to describe that God is in process of redeeming all of creation akin to the pains of labour and giving birth to something new. It’s a rather revolutionary image that we are moving towards something profoundly good, in a new relationship with God, in spite of the difficulties we genuinely face.
“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He 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?”
Paul is building a case against the idea that the hardship that we experience in life is somehow God punishing us for some unknown reason. Instead, he’s trying to frame it in a different light… Paul reminds us that in the midst of whatever suffering we might experience in life, we need to be reminded of what God gave up for us: his own Son…
Paul then goes into the legal-sounding arguments:
“Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?” he asks.
Answer: “It is God, who justifies.” In other words: God is the only one who is capable of doing so.
Next question: “Who is to condemn?” Who is the one who actually pronounces judgment? Or more appropriately, in the ancient understanding of this, “who is the one who makes things right?”
Answer: “Christ Jesus.” –But then Paul goes on with this reminder:
“This is the same Jesus Christ, who died, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” That’s the person who is in any position to condemn us… and get this… it’s the very person who comes to our defense! The judge is first and foremost our defense council!
Then to drive it all home, he asks one more question:
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
At the core of all this is where Paul pulls it all together. The conclusion that he shares is a personal opinion, but one that has such a profound impact that is continues to have such a deep resonance so many centuries later:
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced 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.”
Paul covers the bases… it’s his core theology. If you ever want to know Paul’s foundation of faith, this is it: nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Everything else he did and taught was based on this central theme: that because of what God did and does in Jesus Christ, we are never alone… no matter what we experience in life. Cancer, heart attack, war, famine, Alzheimer’s, divorce, broken relationships… even death itself cannot break the bond of love for us that God has for us in Jesus Christ.
As John sang earlier in the service, “You’ll never walk alone.”
The challenge for us is when we are in the midst of those circumstances… When all we can see are those moments of pain and sorrow, where we are overcome with grief for someone we’ve lost, or that the way forward seems so completely dark that we’re afraid we’re lost. In the midst of those situations it may be of some comfort to know that we’re not alone… not in some sort of warm-fuzzy kind of feeling sort of way... because nobody can feel warm or fuzzy in the midst of cold, hard reality. This understanding that we’re not alone stems out of God’s own experience: that in the life that Jesus lived, God knows what it is to be human, what it is to be powerless, what it is to feel abandoned and all alone. We can identify with God, because God experienced the darkest moments of human existence. God identifies with us, and understands us in a way that is far more profound than we will ever know… and for that reason, we are never truly alone.
Amen.
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