Sunday: 11th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Romans 8:26-39
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

Here is the good news: You can't mess it up. You might be messed up, but you can't mess it up. For "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." You can't mess it up. The love of God wins. Just try to get away from it! You'll fail.

It's Paul who tells us this. Yep, that Paul. The Paul who my fellow Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer once described as "a misogynistic zealot" who "has a lot to answer for." [1] The same Paul whose 1st chapter of Romans causes such headaches for supporters of gay ordination. The same Paul who lends his name to Ephesians chapter 5, that famous wedding reading that has clashed with those committed to equality between the sexes. The same Paul who returns a slave to his owner in Philemon. But also the Paul who is our patron here at St. Paul and the Redeemer, whose likeness with a sword guards our front door, the same Paul who was the first to write about this guy Jesus, the revelation of God. Let me do something radical here at SPR-let me preach on St. Paul. After all, we are in the midst of a 16 week stretch of readings from his famed book of Romans. I'll begin by summarizing what Paul has said in the weeks leading up to now and then we'll get into our reading which is smack dab in the middle of Romans' 16 chapters.

In the year 58, some 25 year after Jesus' death and resurrection, Paul decided the work he was doing in and around modern Turkey and Greece was coming to an end. He had been teaching and preaching and writing letters for almost two decades. He had already written to the Thessalonian, Philippian, Corinthian, and Galatian churches-some of your favorite books of the bible, no? So, Paul began planning a trip to Jerusalem to deliver the money he had raised for the church. Before sailing from Corinth, he dictated this letter, telling the church in Rome that he would stop there after going to Jerusalem. In his letter to the Church in Rome he makes the most sustained theological argument of any of his letters. [2] Generally speaking, Paul was fending off critiques from both the right and the left. (Not unlike a 21st century bishop.) On one side he had to defend a largely Gentile Christianity that did not observe the Jewish law from its critics. On the other side he had to defend the continuing importance of Israel and the law in God's purposes to the gentile converts. Having to defend attacks from both sides he made the claim that there is one gospel for all. In Romans, Paul's central claim about that gospel is that justification is by faith-a theme famously carried through history by Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and, perhaps with the most eloquence, knack, and above all humility, me!

Justification by faith. It means we don't work for God's love, we just own it. We can't mess it up. Now that doesn't mean that owning it is easy. See, Paul believed very strongly in sin. He spills a lot of ink in Romans describing a past age where sin ruled. Let me read you a passage read here a few weeks ago that communicates part of Paul's understanding of sin-the failure of the will. Paul says, "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... For I know that nothing good dwells within me, ... Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15-20) That is not a real optimistic view of humanity. Paul appreciated humanities depravity. Wasn't it Reinhold Niebuhr who said that the doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith? Paul would not put up an argument. Paul really believed that humanities goodness had been corrupted by sin. And Paul believed that the law just didn't work. We all know that right? We just can't stick to our laws. They don't allow us to overcome. How many failed New Year's resolutions are needed to prove that? But the sinfulness of humanity, the failure of our wills was not Paul's final word. He certainly begins with pessimism, but he does not end there. Sin is not victorious. Paul did believe-he knew-that there was something that allowed humanity to overcome its depravity-the grace of God. "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?"

We might be messed up, but we can't mess things up. Sin might be objectively verifiable, but sin does not define us. That is what our passage is all about. The evidence Paul gives is that God so loved the world that he gave his only son. The proof given that we can't mess it up, that sin doesn't define, is God's loving action in Jesus Christ. When Jesus, the very revelation of God, was killed for living in the most Godlike way, God responded by raising him from the dead. That gives Paul the confidence to say, "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?" Our destiny is tied up in Jesus' destiny. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has shown that there are no limits to divine love and faithfulness toward us. [3]

We find Jesus in those places where the world reaches its lowest point, where things are messed up-on the killing fields of Darfur, in the indigenous cultures of Alaska destroyed by alcohol and economic forces, on the hardwood of the cross. We find Jesus in those places in the world that seem to be defined by sin-those places where it seems that we have messed it up. That is where we find Jesus. Karl Barth, who wrote perhaps the most famous commentary on this book of Romans, says, "For those who see with eyes of faith, suffering is not the place where God is most absent, but the place where God is most miraculously present in divine love and solidarity." [4] God is in the messed-up-ness of life and therefore we can't mess it up.

We need to be reminded to own God's love. Because I think Paul is correct that we have a failure of the will, that we are messed up. Who among us hasn't had opportunity in their life to say, "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." But Paul is also adamant that sin doesn't define us, that we can't mess it up? "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" Will marital discord, or a failing economy, or deep doubts, or nakedness, peril or the sword?" No.

Let me conclude with a few sentences of application. Paul, this guy that hammered away at sin, gives this incredible defense of God's love. It is because God's love defines humanity and so we can find a creative and saving possibility in every situation. Hopelessness? Not in God's world. For I am convinced that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[1] Chloe Breyer The Close (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
[2] Adapted from the summary by Leander Keck in the Harper Collins Study Bible.
[3] Lenora Tubbs Tisdale, "Romans 8:31-39" Interpretation 42 no 1 Ja 1988, p 68-72.
[4]As quoted in Tisdale.