August 3, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Isaiah 55: 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8: 28-39 + Matthew 14: 13-21
If God is for us who can be against us?
If God is for us…… who can be against us?
If God is for us…….who can be against us?
In an anxious age and to an anxious people, the message of Paul is welcome, but before its comfort can settle in, its challenge must be accepted.
We are an anxious people living in an anxious age. The politics fear used so skillfully on us these days to tamper with precious human rights and mock our age old respect for refugees and immigrants are only two obvious signs. A drug culture that lies at the root of immense human suffering is yet another sign of human anguish and anxiety dulled by alcohol abuse and every other chemical combination imaginable. This is an anxious age. Homes which ought to be sanctuaries where God dwells and lives in peace with people bound in love hold secrets of abuse and violence. Alarms and security systems are big business not just to protect human life, but to protect our stuff because we most often set them when we are gone, not when we’re home. We spent precious dollars protecting our children and examining the background of everyone who comes near them, and well we should, says recent history. Because? This is an anxious age. Recorded airport announcements warn us to be on the outlook for people who are different from us or “act suspicious. What does that mean? It means, we’re anxious and afraid. It means that we live in an anxious age, and Paul addresses that in these verses from Romans 8.
First he invites us to look back and remember. He reminds us of the gift of Christ – the gift that God has given us. What God did NOT require of Abraham in the sacrifice of his own son, God DID offer his own for us. Nowhere else in all his writings does Paul expose the vulnerability of God so tenderly. Paul constantly and consistently sees the complete interaction of humans in the divine plan and God’s involvement in our lives. God’s plan cannot be fulfilled without our cooperation, and we can never be fully human without God’s incarnation into human life.
The secret to survival in the midst of anxiety, the source of courage in times of fear, and the reason for hope in times of tragedy and disappointment is to REMEMBER what God has done for us.
Those who falter, those who give up, those who are overwhelmed in the face of tragedy and trial have lost their memory, have forgotten all that has been revealed while those who bear all things in faith do so because “they know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.”
All of this is revealed to us in Christ Jesus. The story of Jesus is our story. The victory of Jesus is our victory. The power of Jesus is our power. There is no evidence that Jesus lived his faithful life without anxiety, worry, fear, or sadness. In fact if you listen to the Gospel story you can hear it. He wept at the grave of Lazarus. He experienced temptation. He knew betrayal by his dearest most trusted friend. He was misunderstood by his family. He was hated, distrusted, used, and not even thanked by some he cured. At the end, he knew a loneliness none of us should ever experience. But the story does not end there does it, because God was for him.
We are a people that Paul describes as “In” Christ. We are not about Christ or for Christ. We are in Christ. To be in Christ puts us within the sphere of divine love. The result is that nothing can cut us off from the love of Christ. There is no denying that there is evil, that there is sin, that there is sadness and tragedy everywhere, but there is also no denying that these things are not catastrophic. In this there is always then reason for hope, reason to rejoice, reason to be grateful and for that we are here in this holy place to sustain that hope, to remind ourselves of what God has done for us, and to place ourselves again in this Holy Communion of a Church deeply and finally and forever in Christ Jesus.
If God is for us……..who can be against us?