Nothing!

Nothing!

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 30, 2017

Scripture: Romans 8:35, 38-39

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

If you were here last week you heard me say it. If you have read the text of last week’s sermon on line you’ve seen me say it. Romans 8:38-39 are my favorite verses in the Bible. If I could keep only one sentence out of the Bible Romans 8:38-39 would be it. You’ve just heard them, but let me give them to you again: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I mean, just think about what Paul is saying here. We live and move in the love of God that we know in and through Jesus Christ, and nothing in all creation can separate us from that love. Think about it. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And if nothing can separate us from that love, then God’s love is with us always and everywhere. Every second of the day and the night. When we are home and when we are away from home. When we are young and when we are old. When we are well and when we are sick. When we are good and when we sin. As we live and as we die. In this life and beyond this life. Absolutely nothing can or ever does separate us from the love of God.

Now, when I saw that these verses were in the lectionary selections for today I knew that I would preach on them, but my first thought about how to preach on them was: Read the verses, say thanks be to God, and sit down. And yes, I can see that some of you would like it very much if I did precisely that, but I’m not going to. I’m going to because I realized as I continued to contemplate these verses that there actually are a few more things that need to be said about them, or at least that I want to say about them.

To begin with: Many Christians are strongly convinced that these verses just don’t and can’t say what they appear to say. Paul says nothing can separate us from the love of God, but a great many Christians are convinced that there are a great many people who are separated from the love of God, whom God does not love. Some of them read the “us” in Paul’s statement to mean only us Christians, or even only us certain type of Christians. They’re quite happy to read everyone else out of Paul’s “us” and to believe that everyone not like them is permanently and irretrievably separated from the love of God. I don’t think that’s what Paul meant by these verses, and it sure isn’t what I mean by them. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that God would create a world with as many different faith traditions as the world has, then provide that only one of those traditions—and quite conveniently the one that is ours—is the only way to stand in God’s love. No, if Paul’s great affirmation that nothing can separate us from the love of God is to speak to many of us today it has to mean that nothing can separate anyone from the love of God.

Next, sadly there are a lot of people who just can’t and don’t believe that they are not separated from the love of God. Some of those people are among those I just mentioned, among those who the Christian tradition has told they are separated from the love of God. Tragically, many people take those false words to be trued, and they believe them. Here’s one example. Many LGBT people are filled with self-hatred because the church has told them they are sinners damned to spend eternity in hell. They know deep inside that their orientation or gender identity is just who they are, just how God created them, but people claiming to speak with the authority of scripture and even of God have told them they are sinners and God doesn’t love them. Other people can’t believe God loves them because they have done some wrong in their lives. Maybe they committed a crime. Maybe they got divorced, and the church told them divorce was a sin. Maybe they think their sexual desire is sinful and God doesn’t love them because they feel it. Maybe they were just unkind to someone, perhaps even someone they love. They can’t forgive themselves, so they can’t believe that God has forgiven them and loves them. The Christian tradition has done far too good a job of convincing all sorts of people that God doesn’t love them, or that God won’t love them unless they do something the church tells them to do. Sadly, these folks can’t hear the truth in Paul’s words that nothing can separate them from the love of God.

You know, there are powers at work in the world that seek all the time to separate us from the love of God. These are powers of culture, the powers of wealth, prestige, power, and worldly success. These idols call to us constantly saying worship us and not that God of yours. Saying ignore that God and follow us. Saying we will make your life complete. We will grant you satisfaction. You’ll find the good live with us. The love of God, they say? Phooey on that. That’s not what you need. You need a bigger house and a bigger car. If you’re a lawyer you need the corner office. If you’re a doctor you need to be chief of staff for a big hospital or to work in the most prestigious clinic in some big city rather than in some rural clinic where people really need you. You need designer clothes and vacations on the Riviera. You need money. You need to be respected or at least envied by all the people who want the same things you want. The love of God? Forget about it, they say.

These things and many others try to pry us away from the love of God all the time. Paul says they can’t, and I am convinced that at least as far as God is concerned he’s right. If we think we’re separated from the love of God it is a separation of our own making not of God’s. It is actually an illusion of our own making, for the love of God is always still there. God never takes it away. We may think we’re separated from it, but we’re really not; and we can always come back to the truth that we’re not and make the love of God real in our lives once more.

And there’s one more objection that people raise to the idea that nothing can separate us from the love of God. People have said it to me any number of times, so often that frankly I just expect to hear it when I preach the message I’m preaching today. They say you’re taking away people’s incentive to behave properly. You’re taking away their incentive to avoid sin. To do good. To be kind. To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God. This objection to the notion that God’s love is universal is grounded in the idea that the only reason people behave themselves is fear. It says people behave themselves only if they fear God’s judgment if they don’t behave themselves. This belief is, frankly, grounded in a misunderstanding of God, but it also makes good behavior perfectly selfish. If I care for someone in need it’s not because that person has need but because I’m really looking out for myself not that person. I care for that person because I’m afraid God will damn me if I don’t. The idea that people act properly only out of fear actually makes moral behavior immoral. It becomes immoral because it becomes selfish. Now, it’s better to do good things for selfish reasons than not to do them at all, but isn’t it even better to do them because they’re good? Isn’t it better to care for and about others because it is good to are for an about others than to do it to benefit myself? I think it is.

But here’s the thing. Saying that nothing can separate us from the love of God actually doesn’t remove our motivation for being good, it just changes what that motivation is. God does indeed want and expect a great deal from us. God wants and expects us to be people of the kingdom not people of the world. God wants us to care for people in need. God wants us to be witnesses for peace and justice in a world where those things are in such short supply. God wants to love God, neighbor, and self. God wants us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. But God doesn’t want us to do those things so that God will love us. God wants us to do those things because God loves us. God calls us to a proper way of living not to earn God’s love but in response to God’s love. Paul says somewhere in effect “how can you who have died to sin go on sinning?” His answer: You can’t, but not because it is your works that will save you. Rather it’s because you know that you are already saved. You know the love of God, and when you truly know the love of God you can’t help but respond. Respond by rejecting sin. Respond by living a life of love, a life of caring, a life of justice.

We can’t earn God’s love, and the great good news is that we don’t have to. Nothing ever separates us from that love, and our call is to realize that great truth and live into it. Live into it and live out of it. Live into it, and make it real in God’s world. No, believing that God’s love is unconditional and universal doesn’t remove all motivation to be good. Rather, it liberates us from fear and frees us to live the lives God calls us to live out of love not terror. To accept God’s grace as a gift not a payment. To love not in order to be loved but because we already are.

Folks, it’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a nutshell: “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. And now, after all that, I’ll say what I was tempted to say at the beginning and just sit down: Thanks be to God! Amen.