Prayer: Eternal and loving God, help us to know you as you are - one who loves each of us without condition or condemnation. Guide us as we do all we can to respond to your love by in turn loving you, loving others, and loving ourselves. We do love you and long more than anything to be faithful to you. Stay with us and bless us, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

You may recall that these words from Romans were the text for the sermon on September 16. Then the message was one of assurance. Despite the difficult day and fear filled moments, when much was uncertain, we needed to hear that nothing, no-thing could separate us from the love of God. These words were part of the lectionary and these months later, we hear them again. We need to hear them, because today we are at war, the economy is uncertain, our lives find their meaning through our relationship with God, and because it is the love of God that helps us get through each day. All I really want to say this morning is that we are loved by God.

God loves us enough to give us the Holy Spirit to help us pray. It is not quite clear what Paul means when he says we do not always pray as we ought. There is really no right way to talk to God, as long as we pray from our hearts, and with integrity. Maybe Paul wanted us to understand that prayer is not magic. It is not a matter of abracadabra, presto chango, my life is good now. Instead, our lives are good because prayer is about deepening our understanding of the presence of God in all things. It is not a matter of the right words, or the right posture, but a matter of openness to God.

Still because of our own spirits’ weakness, there may be days when we can’t pray as we wish. If we are too depressed, too tired, too angry, too caught up in what is not right in our own lives, our prayer life can be affected. We might feel weak in spirit and on our way to despair, but we are not left alone or abandoned. We have a promise from God. The Spirit of God will intercede for us. We may feel weak, but by the power of God, we do not have to stay that way.

There will be times when we want to talk to God, but the words don’t come, the Holy Spirit of God will speak to God for us. When all we can do is sigh and moan, when there is nothing else we can do, the Spirit will be our interpreter. God will understand. “The good news about this is that God, the living, transcendent God, is in intimate touch with the Spirit, so that these inarticulate but Spirit-assisted groanings come before God as true prayer.” (New Interpreter’s Bible volume, 10, Abingdon Press, p. 599)

Not only does God love us enough to help us to pray, God loves us enough to want good things for us. Romans 8.28 says, “all things work together for good for those who love God.” We want to love God, we do love God, but we know that there is some stuff in our lives that is just not good. We have bad health, bad finances, bad relationships, and bad habits. What good can come of any of that? But hear this alternate translation of this verse: “In all things God works for good.” That’s different. Understand that, in these verses, “the longing of creation, the activity of the Spirit, even humanity’s inarticulate cries do not exist apart from God’s will. God is able to use even those things which reflect the depth of human weakness and turn them for the good.” (Texts for Preaching Louisville, WJKP, 1995, p.421)

If God is working for good in our lives, if the Holy Spirit can translate our sighs into prayers, if we give it all to God and trust God to bless us and redeem us, if we can look to God for direction and salvation, then there is reason for hope.

We can hope because we know that the way it is now is not the way it has to be. It just may be that our bad health can be improved, or at least managed. Our bad finances can become the opportunity for us to reorder our priorities. This may be the time to really examine the role money plays in our lives and ask ourselves if it is a resource for doing what we need to do and want to do, or if it is what our lives are all about. It may be that bad relationships can be replaced with better ones and bad habits can be dropped. In all things, God works for good.

God loves us enough to help us pray, God loves us enough to want good things for us and God loves us so much that God has chosen us. The words are, foreknew, predestined, in the image of Jesus, called, justified (made right), and glorified (we are important to family of God). What that means is that God has a place for us when we return God’s love with our own love. God has made a place for me and for you. We have a place in the world that God created. All because God loves us.

“[It’s not about] who belongs within the circle of the justified and who does not. The case is not that some people are predestined to be among God’s family and others are not. Instead, Paul insists that God is the one who designs, desires, and brings about the good. Everything that God has put in place has been for the salvation of humankind. No human act can secure this salvation, and no human act can jeopardize this salvation. It belongs to God alone.” (Texts for Preaching p.421)

Why would God do such a thing? Because God wants our lives to have good outcomes. God loves us enough to desire for us a quality of peace and happiness, of excellence and excitement in our lives. God wants our lives to be good because God loves us and nothing will separate us from that love. Our response to God’s love and goodness is to love God in return. And if we love God, surely we can offer love to our neighbors and to ourselves.

But there is a problem. For some, even some in the church, God seems altogether too remote and uninvolved to love us, or for us to love. God seems too far away for us to even acknowledge as having much of anything to do with our lives. The state of the world seems to testify to the absence of the love of God, and perhaps even of God. What Paul calls hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, and peril, we see today. In too many places in the world, in nations big and small, there are wars and rumors of wars. There is terror and counter-terror. Too many times in recent days we have awakened to the news of a child kidnapped and with the exception of a brave little girl in Philadelphia, too often found murdered. AIDS continues to devastate lives and in some parts of the world, it is robbing nations of their future as generations are lost to the disease. Poverty grips too many lives, dooming them to poor housing, poor education, and poor health.

What kind of God allows such things? But look closely, and see that all those issues, heartbreaking as they are, have nothing to do with God’s love for the world and everything to do with human choices and human judgment.

We and the institutions we are part of decide daily whether to wage war or peace. We decide whether to value human life or to violate it. We make the judgment to look for and make affordable and available medicines and treatments for diseases, or to let nature take its course. And we decide whether we will do what is necessary to help lift people out of poverty or to blame them for being poor.

That’s one problem. The other problem comes when we convince ourselves that our lives have left us outside the love of God. We have managed to convince ourselves that we simply do not deserve to be loved by God. When we believe God does not love us, there is no hope, no reason to do good, no reason to care about ourselves, or anyone else. But God does love us, and while it is not all easy, it is all good.

It’s all good because nothing can separate us from the love of God through Jesus Christ. How do we know? Paul makes the point as if he is arguing a case in a court of law before opposing council, a judge, and jury. Like a good attorney, he asks a series of “if” questions, and he knows the answers to the questions he is asking. The “if’s” are not conditional. It’s not, “if this, then this.” Paul is not speaking conditionally. He is speaking emphatically. Who can get in the way of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ? Nobody. Really? Yes, really. It is like this.

“If God is for us, who is against us? Nobody, because God, having not spared his own Son, will now give us all things.”

“Who will bring a charge against us? Nobody, because it is God who justifies us and puts us in right relation with God.”

“Who shall condemn us? Nobody, because Christ died, was raised, and now intercedes for us.”

“Who shall separate us from God’s love? Not one thing. None of the possible candidates, because as God's faithful people we are victorious through the one who loved us.” (New Interpreter’s Bible p.610)

People will come against us, they will say we are too nice to people and too easily taken advantage of by people who abuse the church. We are too inclusive or too giving. Why are you doing what you do here? Why do you give bread away? Why are you having a discernment group on the role of gays and lesbians in the church? Why Trinity House and why the BREAD organization? People will come against the church every time it takes a stand for what is just and right. They will condemn us and claim that God cannot love us. What then shall we say about that? Just that it is all good, because it is all about God loving us and our responding to God’s love.

God has given us all we need to overcome every obstacle people would put in our way. Like Paul I am convinced that nothing separates us from the love of God and nothing will prevent us from loving those whom God loves, including ourselves. Nothing will separate us from the love of God through Jesus Christ, not the things in Paul’s list, nor on mine. I am persuaded that neither age, nor race, nor income, nor education, nor sexual orientation, nor neighborhood, nor health, nor anything we can think of will cause God to say, I do not love you anymore.

I believe that our own life’s experience will remind us that God’s love holds us tightly and will not let us go. Eugene Peterson puts it this way.

“So what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us - who was raised to life for us! Is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, …

This is the good news of God, and as you do, say thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor