Toward the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is an open question as to whether religion is losing or gaining influence in America. One fact is undeniable: Most mainline Protestant denominations have been slowly but steadily losing members for the past half century. For the past several years, even the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination, has been slightly shrinking each year. Though the nation’s population has doubled since 1950, there are fewer people on the membership rolls of many denominations now than there were back then.

Whatever else the notion of hell may be, it is ultimately based on the concept of everlasting punishment. It is that fatally flawed idea which cannot truly be affirmed by anyone seeking a reasonable and reasoned belief-system. There are no sins or crimes that could possibly justify hellfire forever. Juries convict people of terrible crimes, and judges consign those convicted criminals to judicial sentences of varying lengths, including life in prison without the opportunity of parole. But surely no fair-minded judge, if they had it within their power, would ever consign anyone to everlasting torture in everlasting flames, no matter how terrible the crime may have been. Such a punishment does not fit any crime.

The purpose of this sermon is to suggest that as imperfect as we may be, humanity nonetheless is a marvelous species by countless measures. To ignore our terrible shortcomings is fruitless and willful. But nothing is to be gained by continuously disparaging humanity, either.

In America, Mothers Day is usually a sentimental event, and with good reason. Most of us feel a great deal of emotion and sentiment for our mothers. The mothers in China Witness are very strong women. But, like the best mothers everywhere, they are dedicated to their children, and to paving the way in life for them as best they can against severe obstacles. No one exhibited that more than Mrs. Xie, the Shoe-Mender Mother. She had nothing, but she gave her children everything she could.

The cross does not save us. God saves us. God alone can and does save us. The cross was historically, but absolutely not theologically, inevitable. That is the essential message of this sermon. The ironic circuitous result of the cross is that it demonstrates God’s love for us, although not in an immediately apparent manner.

Roughly half a century ago, I read a definition of the providence of God. I don’t know who wrote it, or exactly when I read it, but the definition has stuck with me ever since. It is what I believe the doctrine of providence means. Providence means that ultimately God can use whatever happens and whatever choices human beings make for His own purposes. God doesn’t cause any of these things to occur, because since the dawn of creation or the Big Bang or however you want to describe it, God causes NOTHING. We certainly are not on our own, but we’re not under God’s thumb, either, not by any definition or description.

When Jesus went off by himself to pray, what was the purpose of his prayer? The Fourth Gospel does not tell us that Jesus prayed at all, only that he went to Gethsemane with the disciples. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke all say Jesus said essentially the same thing, and they all give us almost verbatim the prayer that is our sermon text for today. According to Mark, Jesus began his prayer with the word Abba.

What is the truth here? Is Jesus a king, or isn’t he? All four of the Evangelists want to force us to answer that question for ourselves, to discover its truth for ourselves. But in John, after acknowledging that Pilate said Jesus was a king (which Jesus really didn’t say, at least not technically), Jesus says, “For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (18:37-8). Pilate, by now even more positively disposed toward Jesus, but feeling the great weight of the office he holds, with its necessity of maintaining law and order, plaintively asks Jesus, “What is truth?”

There are many tragic stories in the Bible. In reading the context, we might have guessed some of these sad stories were coming, but others sweep over us without warning. The story of Tamar, Absalom, and Amnon is one of the latter types of tales.

The First Amendment was a way for the Founding Fathers clearly and unambiguously to insist that the USA would never be subject to the mistakes Europe, especially England, had made in adopting state-sponsored versions of Christianity. An officially-recognized religion of any sort anywhere is guaranteed to satisfy only a minority of the people of that state or nation, and they are the people who are actively engaged in that religion. Other believers who don’t approve of that brand of religion are always unhappy, as are all the people who refuse to identify with any form of religion, and they may constitute the majority of people in almost every modern nation. Civil religion, in which a civil government and a whole society supposedly endorse a particular kind of religion for their own political purposes, is and has always been a very bad idea.

Nobody knows for certain exactly when or where the Apostles Creed was first adopted by the Early Church. Whenever it was, it came into wide usage by no later than the fifth century. That almost certainly suggests it was not actually composed by any of the twelve apostles. In its last declaratory sentence, the Apostle Creed says this: “I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” It is only on the four words in the center of that creedal statement, “the communion of saints,” that we shall be concentrating this morning.

Cable news networks have changed America. Indeed, they have changed the world. Some of the American networks are shown worldwide 24/7, with news from other nations liberally spread between the American news stories. Hundreds of millions of people in western democracies, and many other millions of people in autocracies, have become addicted to televised news.

The man of whom I speak is, of course, Abraham Lincoln. In my opinion, our two greatest Presidents were both born in February, and both deserve to have Presidents Day named in their honor. Lincoln was born on the 12th of February and Washington on the 22nd. If I were forced to choose which of the two was the greater President, without hesitation I would say Lincoln. Washington was an amazing leader too, and as a nation we were especially blessed to have him as our first President. He led us through some very uncertain times, and he established the important precedent of no more than two four-year terms. That policy was followed until FDR came along. Historians have argued whether it was wise for Roosevelt to have run for the nation’s highest office four times. Because he did, however, the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution was passed, which now limits a President to two terms.

At least fifty years ago there was a popular song by Elvis Presley. I didn’t know it was Elvis until I Googled it to make sure I had remembered the lyrics correctly. He sang, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls/ A flower grows/ I believe that even in the darkest night/ A candle glows.” Those are nice, sentimental thoughts. And anyone who believes them is also a hopeless sentimentalist. I am convinced there are far more drops of rain than there are flowers, and there is not a candle glowing for everyone in the darkest night. Would that it were so, but it isn’t.

Let me begin this sermon with an important admission. The older I get, the more concerned I get about death. It isn’t my own death I’m concerned about, however. It is the nature and the prolonged difficulty of the deaths of increasing numbers of people I have known personally. The end of life for a growing number and percentage of people becomes a long, slow slide into mental or physical oblivion which continues for months or years. If people want that to happen, or if they allow it to happen, that is their choice, and it is a valid one. But if they don’t want that to be the nature of their last days and years on this earth, there are ways to prevent it.

The title of this sermon is a partial quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. But before I give you the whole quote, I want briefly to fill in the background out of which the statement was made. The line is from Steel Magnolias, starring, among others, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Fields, Julia Roberts, and Daryl Hannah. The story was first a play, and later it was made into a movie. I saw the play a few years ago at the Arts Center of the Lowcountry. The play and movie are both excellent, but they are not exactly alike.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that Jesus encountered a man then known as a “demoniac.” He lived on the eastern shore of the lake. That was not Jewish territory; it was Gentile country. From this we may deduce that Jesus did not spend all of his time among Jews. He also went among the Gentiles from time to time. Luke tells us that the man didn’t have a home but that he lived “among the tombs.” Mark corroborates that. If we didn’t know this man was a Gentile otherwise, we know it now, because no Jews would never live among tombs, not even crazy ones. Jews buried their dead in cemeteries, but other than those rare occasions, they avoided graves like death itself. They regarded graves to be ritually unclean.

There are no scripture passages which refer directly to the issue which shall be addressed in this sermon. I shall be talking about a growing problem throughout the world, namely, that there are increasing hundreds of millions of young people, from age 18 through 30 or 35 years of age, who are unemployed or grossly underemployed, many of whom have excellent educations. Some of them are people with bachelors or masters or doctoral degrees who are driving taxis (until Uber and Lyft take their jobs from them) or are flipping hamburgers at McDonalds or are employed in offices or factories at minimum wages. In many countries, a minimum wage means a dollar or two per hour, if it even means that.

Our text for this morning may be familiar to you. “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.” Those sentiments do not echo most of the other parts of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms. Again and again we hear that those who follow God’s laws will be particularly blessed. And because they do what they should do, they shall win the race, and the battle, and more than enough bread, and riches, and the favor of both God and humanity. “Uh-uh,” says the Preacher, “time and chance happen to them all.”