Hilton Head Island, SC – February 19, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 8:18-39
A Sermon by John M. Miller
A Sermon by John M. Miller
The Great Texts Series – Text – We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28 (RSV)
The apostle Paul believed in the doctrine of predestination. According to John Calvin, predestination means this, and only this: Before anyone is born, God decides whether that person will go to heaven or hell, and there is nothing anyone can do to alter that outcome. Technically that is double predestination, meaning that each of us is predestined either one way or the other. What predestination doesn’t mean is that God preordains everything that happens in our lives. Many people think that’s what predestination is, but it isn’t. And if you have never heard that before, you have now heard it here first.
Paul and Calvin weren’t the only ones historically who subscribed to predestination. So presumably did Moses, the prophets, Jesus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and numerous other less famous luminaries. In this sermon I shall again address this idea, but only briefly, and in a way I am certain Paul would disapprove.
In the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he was talking about what happens to the people God has chosen to be His own for both time and eternity. They come to live “in the Spirit,” as he says, which means in the Holy Spirit. This presumably means these people have an intimate knowledge of what the Church came to call the Third Person of the Trinity, though Paul knew nothing of the Trinity. That doctrine would not be solidified until three centuries later.
Anyway, said Paul, when believers are “in the Spirit,” (or, as I would prefer to describe it, “in God,” or perhaps more descriptively that God is “in them”), they can withstand anything that comes their way. Already in Paul’s time Christians were starting to feel some persecution, first from the Romans, and secondly from the Jews. Most of the New Testament Christians perceived themselves as Jews, but soon the Jews considered them apostates, much as many Sunni Muslims think Shiites are apostate, and vice versa.
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us,” Paul wrote (8:18). Things were going to get infinitely better, he said. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (8:26). That verse is strongly reminiscent of the last four lines in Wordsworth’s great ode called Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. “Thanks to the human heart by which we live/ Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears/ To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” In other words, some things are simply inexpressibly profound.
When God is in us, and we are in some mysterious sense “in God,” nothing can ultimately defeat us. That was what Paul declared, and I hope that is what all of us believe. To live with that conviction is to withstand every impediment thrown into our life’s path.
Then Paul makes one of the most astonishing claims to be found anywhere in scripture, or anywhere else, for that matter. “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” You may be more familiar with that verse in the King James Version: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” In everything God works for good? All things work together for good? Bubonic plague? Tornados? AIDS? Tsunamis?
In the February National Geographic there was a story about tsunamis. The most lethal tsunami in history, on Dec. 26, 2004, killed 170,000 people in Indonesia, and 60,000 in Sri Lanka, India, and Africa. By comparison, the tsunami and earthquake in Japan last March killed 16,000. One of the things that has resulted from these and other tidal waves is that better warning systems are being installed in areas subject to these massive geologic disturbances. That no doubt is good. Without question, however, that will not prevent all future deaths from major natural disasters. So how can Paul or anyone else glibly declare that in everything God works for good?
Over thirty years ago a flood ordinance was enacted for the South Carolina coast. It said that houses or other buildings within so many yards of the high tide line on the beach had to have their first floor from twelve to fourteen feet above the high tide mark. In the event of a flood from a hurricane, the water would not inundate the structure, but flow under or around it. There is more to it than that, but the point I am trying to make is that good came out of previous devastating floods from hurricanes. Thus we are forced to try to lessen our own folly by living so close to the ocean in the first place. We don’t see millions of people flocking to the South or North Carolina Midlands as a result of these measures, but at least many of us won’t find our homes washed away in a hurricane, but merely blown away. All things work together for good, don’t you see.
There are two conditional clauses in today’s sermon text. “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” Paul apparently intended to say that everything works for good only for those who love God and who feel called according to His purpose. This statement applies to those predestined by God for salvation, but seemingly not to others. Or at least that’s the way I read these words.
Let’s agree to set aside the notion that only the predestined to salvation will discover good in everything. Predestination has always proven to be a divisive doctrine anyway. But might we agree that everything does work together for good for those who love God? If we truly believe in God, and if we believe that His will for us is solely for good, then might we conclude even the worst of events can work out to our benefit if we continue to trust that God loves us, and that we love Him?
A US Army sergeant was recently sentenced to eight and a half years in a military prison for an episode in which he was involved in Iraq. You may recall the incident. Five soldiers were accused of killing several unarmed civilians in a province west of Baghdad in 2010 for no discernible reason at all. The sergeant was shown leniency because the court martial panel was convinced he had been under great stress. But what good could ever come out of a situation like that? Is that brief a sentence justified in light of the heinous nature of the crime? The Iraqis are unlikely to see anything good coming out of the massacre, unless they know God loves them and they love God, and that they are called according to His purpose. But might the convicted soldier learn something from it? Can good emerge from so horrible a situation?
Lois and I are members of the Low Country Civil War Roundtable. Once a month a lecturer comes and speaks about some feature of the Civil War to the three or four hundred people who attend. This month Jack Davis spoke. He is a history professor at Virginia Tech University, and he spoke about John C. Breckinridge. Breckinridge was from Kentucky, and he was Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan at the time the Civil War had become virtually inevitable. In 1860 Breckinridge resigned, and he accepted a commission in the Confederate Army as a general. For the entire duration of the war he fought against the Union.
Jack Davis said that when he was an undergraduate in the history department of a state university in California, he happened to write an article for a Civil War magazine about Breckinridge, and then he wrote another. As a result, the Breckinridge family of Kentucky asked the young historian to write a book-length biography of their ancestor, which he did. From that Jack Davis evolved into a professor of Civil War history at Virginia Tech. Even though he said he has never been thrilled with John C. Breckinridge, the cantankerous Kentuckian launched Prof. Davis’s career. All things work together for good.
Each year I sign up for several six-week courses in the Lifelong Learning program here on the island, and I also have taught several of these courses through the years. This winter I signed up for a Beethoven class, the second such class on the great German composer taught by Jane Sine over the past two years. When discussing Ludwig van Beethoven, inevitably the subject of his deafness arises. For the last fifteen or twenty years of his life Beethoven was completely deaf; he couldn’t hear even the loudest of sounds. Nevertheless he continued composing up until the time he died.
How could anyone, even Beethoven, do that? For one thing, Jane Sine said, he had perfect pitch. For those of you who aren’t musical, that means he could hear in his mind any note he or anyone else had ever written, whether it was an A-sharp or an E-flat or anything else. And further, he could hear it in its proper octave. One of the class members made the thoughtful observation that perhaps Beethoven was a better composer than he might otherwise have been because of his deafness. Not being able to hear anything at all, perhaps he was able to concentrate completely on his compositions, with no external distractions. Deafness to a musician would be more of a challenge than to anyone else, but could it be that it was a factor in Beethoven becoming even more outstanding? Could it be true that in everything God does work for good with those who love Him? Certainly Beethoven loved God; that is evident in his religious compositions. And what could surpass the godly triumph of the last movement of his last symphony, the incomparable Ninth Symphony? The choral movement is based on Schiller’s poem Ode to Joy. We sing a hymn taken from the fourth movement, called Hymn to Joy, with the famous text, “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee.” In everything God works for good. But it is those who consciously love God who know that truth to the fullest.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul was writing to people he assumed had been called by God and who thus loved God. Paul also assumed that meant those people were predestined to salvation. You may or may not agree with his premise, at least the part about their being predestined to salvation.
Nevertheless, I hope you can affirm the idea that people who truly love God and feel loved by God are capable of seeing good in everything that happens to them, no matter how painful or totally disruptive it may seem to them at the time. But we must understand it is an interpretation of events to say that everything works together for good. Only people of faith are equipped to perceive that truth. Otherwise awful things seem only to be awful things.
Recently we went to see The Descendants. The reviews of this movie said that it had many moments of humor, which it did, yet it is anything but a comedy. The plot revolves around the fact that the wife of the main character has suffered a head injury in a water-skiing accident, from which she cannot recover. The husband, played by George Clooney, tries his best to break the news to their two daughters, aged 17 and 10. I will say nothing more about what happens, so as not to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it.
As a theological or religious or even spiritual exercise, I urge you to see The Descendants. I warn you, however, that the language is atrocious. But at least no naughtily exposed human flesh is displayed, which, these days, is at least something. But when you watch the movie, as the story unfolds, ask yourself if any of the characters, any of them, loves God, and feels called according to His purpose. Only that type of person described by Paul in Romans 8 could possibly see good in nearly everything that happens in the plot of this thoughtfully-created but painfully-executed film. Otherwise it all seems like an unmitigated tragedy.
In the final three verses of the incomparable 8th chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul makes one of the most glorious declarations to be found anywhere in scripture. Despite the hardships and detours faced by all of God’s people, there is boundless hope for us in the end and for the end. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us,” said Paul. “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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 Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:37-39).
If we don’t feel called by God, and if we don’t believe that God loves us, and if we don’t love God, then it is not possible to live with such an invincible statement of faith. But if we do feel called by God, and we do know that He loves us and that we love Him, then we will be empowered, forever, to declare that in everything God works for good. However, that will occur only when all those conditions are permanently operative.
How, then, are we going to interpret the events of our lives?