Trusting the Grip [Proper 12A]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Romans 8:26-39
Trusting the Grip
I just stared at the picture. Looking at the faces. They were my brothers and my sisters in
Christ, they were even fellow members of the Anglican Communion, but they did
not really like me; they were browner than I am – which, of course, is not
difficult. The men mostly had
beards. The women, they wore coverings
on their heads. They sat there in the
church, looking at the one standing in the pulpit, holding a camera. And they smiled, with their lips and their
eyes, they smiled. The church, it was
full. And I just stared.
Mostly it was just a picture of
people in a church – an Anglican Church.
There was nothing extraordinary about the quality of the picture. In almost every way it was common, normal. But for one thing: the picture was taken in
the heart of Baghdad, at St. George's Church.
There they sat, people of all ages, smiling at the camera, ready to
worship Jesus in a building that has been damaged by five bombs in the past
three years. Most of those pictured were
picked up by the parish van that morning to avoid kidnappers. Once a would-be suicide bomber evaded
security and entered their church; thankfully he was removed before he could
detonate the explosives. The people come
to worship not knowing if they will leave alive. They bring their children. They risk their lives to worship Jesus. They are, of course, imperfect and flawed
like the rest of us, but I am in awe of them.
And that is why I just stared.
I wanted those faces to help me
understand the packed pews and the peaceful smiles and the vibrant
ministries. I wanted my Iraqi brothers
and sisters to teach me to trust God with my life. I think they know something about today's
Romans reading that I just can't understand.
Paul understood. He knew life lived in the shadow of death. In his second letter to the church in Corinth
he chronicles his troubles: lashings and beatings, shipwrecks and stonings,
hunger and thirst, prison and, eventually, death at the hands of the Roman
authorities. All for the cause of
Christ. When the cost of following Jesus
is so great, ya gotta be all in.
For Paul, the first century
churches for which he cared, and still for Christians today in places like
Baghdad, the questions were not rhetorical.
They mattered. They were life and
death questions. Who will separate us
from the love of Christ? Will hardship,
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Will they? Paul asks the question because the answer was
important. Because those things were a
constant threat. And so, he asks the
question: Will they? Will those things
separate us from the love Christ?
The question was not whether or not
they would face challenges. Paul, and
many of those to whom he wrote this letter, had already faced some or all of
those threats he listed. First century
Christians did not have the luxury of bad “health and wealth” theology like
privileged Christians in the US do. The
question was not whether or not they would face challenges. The answer to that question was yes. The question was: is Christ's love really
strong enough to carry them through – through the pain, through the struggle,
through life and through death?
CS Lewis once wrote, “You never
know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes
a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be
strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose
you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover
how much you really trusted it?”[1] Trusting God is not easy. It is a risk.
That's probably why we're not great at it. It is easy to proclaim trust in God; but it is
hard to trust God with our stuff, our money, our time. And that stuff is the small stuff, at some
point it becomes a matter of life and death and we are faced with the ultimate
question: do we trust God with our loved ones – with our children, with our
spouses? And then, finally, do we trust
God with our lives?
We don't risk our lives to come
here and worship God. We do not put at
risk the lives of our children or our friends when we bring them to this
building. We might never know what it
feels like to be those Christians in Baghdad, facing the constant threat of
persecution. But no one makes it out of
this life alive. And at some point our
trust in God will become a matter of life and death. At some point each of us will need the answer
to the question: Is Christ's love really strong enough to carry me through?
It was never cheap for Paul. His life was not easy. His decision to follow Jesus, in the end,
cost him everything. He emerged from the
pain and the beatings and threats and prison time with nothing but this: I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
It's that strong. And we are held in its grip. The love of Christ does not let go. No bomb can loosen that grip. No authority or power can loosen that
grip. Pain and suffering cannot loosen
that grip. Death cannot loosen that
grip. Not even you, with your imperfect
love and lack of trust, can loosen that grip.
Because God loves you. And there
is nothing in all creation that can ever change that.
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