Separation [Proper 12A - Romans 8:26-39]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Romans 8:26-39
Separation
“Faith, hope, and love,” claims N.T. Wright, “are not
deductions from our day-to-day experience; they are rooted in God’s
faithfulness, God’s purposes, and above all in God’s own love, seen and known
in Jesus and in the strange presence of the Holy Spirit.”[1]
As I exited the building through the flag pole doors, I felt
the weight of the moment. The sound of
the door closing was more symbolic than it had ever been before. The previous week had been a dizzying mix of
closure announcements and uncertainty; the ground was shifting beneath our
feet; the typical was being toppled – and there was nothing we could do about
it. The news was moving fast,
information and facts fluid in the face of a novel virus. I left the church knowing that the pews would
sit empty for the next couple of weeks. I
left the church knowing that the next day, a Monday, would be the last day
McWilliams’ House would bustle with people and energy for a while. We needed
that one day together, as a staff, to launch a new expression of church – a church
for the coming pandemic days.
It was March 15 and I was mourning the loss of the last few
weeks of Lent. That was more than four
months ago. Holy Week came and went, as
did Easter Sunday and Pentecost. And
while we are now, appropriately I think, spending the green season on our green
grass, the pews behind this stone wall sit empty still. So many weeks later, the virus continues to
spread. We wash our hands of these
insidious germs. We wear masks to keep
the air around us clear of danger. And
we live with separation. We discovered
quite early in this pandemic, that human contact and closeness puts us at
risk. And so we gave each other space –
and found a kind of bodily salvation in physical separation.
But, for most of us, that separation is not easy. It is a hefty price to pay – necessary but
painful. The sacrifice required for our
health and wellness, and for the health and wellness of our neighbors, is also
a source of soul-deep suffering. We were
made to be together. And yet we are
forced to be apart. And even more
painful still, the physical distance has also revealed, and accentuated, the
deep divisions in our families, our community, and our nation. “Faith, hope, and love are not deductions
from our day-to-day experience.” We are
living in an age in which separation is the day-to-day experience.
It is in this age of separation that we hear, today, Paul’s
boldest Gospel claim: that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing. Remember, Paul is a
theologian; he works in a speculative field; he deals in mysteries; he speaks
of the unknowable. But Paul doesn’t say
he thinks the love of God is strong enough; he does not say that he is pretty
sure; he is convinced. He is convinced
that nothing in all of creation can separate us from this love.
It is an extraordinary claim by a man all too familiar with
the forces of separation and destruction.
Paul experienced, in his life and ministry, ridicule and torture; he
spent time in prison; he suffered through hardship and peril; he knew loneliness
and frustration; he was killed by the powerful political forces of the Empire. He knew the violence and pain and despair this
life can muster. But more than any of those things, he knew the love of God – a
love so strong that nothing, not even death, could pry him from its grip.
The good news of the Gospel is that we have a God who will
never let us go. Nothing in all of
creation can separate us from God’s love.
It is a love that will hold us in our despair, in our anxiety, in our
sadness. It is a love that will envelop
us as we sing our broken Alleluias at the grave. It is love that will cradle us in the moment
of death and carry us into eternity.
When the ground is shaking and the foundations crumbling, it is the love
of God that still holds us tight.
The love of God is as intimate as a sweet song in the
stillness of one’s heart, but it also is so big and so powerful that it holds
all things together, with a bond that no one and nothing can ever break. This love, a love that beats at the very
heart of the Trinity, is the source of our unity. It is the force that transcends time and space. It is the very thing that connects us to the
living and the dead. It is the thread
that binds my heart to yours and yours to mine. And no physical distance can ever break that
thread. We are never alone because the
love of God holds us together.
I know this world is rich with the evidence of pain, despair,
suffering, and death. I know it can
appear that goodness and truth and justice and mercy and peace are a distant
dream. But my Gospel tells me that it is
love has the final word, that there is an Easter Sunday after the pain of every Good
Friday. Separation seems to have the
upper hand in this divided world, but separation is only an illusion. The Love of God is the unassailable reality
that holds all things, and all of us, together.
I am convinced that each one of us is wrapped up in that love like a
baby in a swaddle blanket. We can toss
and turn but we cannot break free. We
are loved, loved with a love that will last forever, loved with a love from
which nothing in all of creation can ever separate us.
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