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Here are a few initial thoughts for my sermon on Sunday. This week we will look at Romans chapter 8 where St. Paul sums up the theological argument he has been presenting through the first half of the letter. We will focus our reflection on Romans 8:31-39:

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, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
 we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than victorious 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.

In 21st Century American Christianity there are two divergent, but equally dangerous theological takes on this Scripture profoundly departing from St. Paul's intention. The first sees the promises of God as being owned by the 'right kind" of people. Those trumpeting this belief make a loud and brittle proclamation of self assuredly accepting those promises for themselves while excluding everyone else. We can see this in the rising tide of white nationalism. The second is quite different but also dangerous for a person's spiritual welfare. It assumes an almost secular vision of God's promises -- a breezy pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for nice people. I think we Episcopalians are more tempted to this second vision.

St Paul is not talking about the stingy withholding of God's compassion, nor about an optimistic Christianity asking nothing of anyone promising only sunny days. What he is talking about is assurance. Paul knew the experience of powerful suffering. He teaches us that hardship is not God's turning away from us, but a sign of God's presence with us in life's difficulties. All of God's covenant promises with us are made incarnate in his gift of Jesus' redemptive suffering on the cross. God stands in solidarity with all those who experience anguish, pain and grief. This is the gift of our blessed assurance that God is with us. and this is the place where we find our hope.

Blessings,
Fr. Dan