Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 28, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

This is the last of the sermon series I’ve been doing this summer on my favorite Bible verses, Romans 8:38-39. In those verses Paul tells us that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have examined various parts of that claim in the four previous sermons in this series. They’re on our church’s web site if you missed them, or don’t remember them, and want to look them up. Now, as we close this series, we need to examine Paul’s radical claim that truly nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.

And, despite my lengthy protestations of my love for this passage, I have to begin by admitting that I have a pretty serious problem with Paul’s claim that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God. Here’s the problem: If it is true as Paul claims that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God, why do so many of us, why do I, live so much of the time as though we were in fact separated from God and God’s love ? And let’s admit it. We do live much, maybe most, of the time as though we were separated from God and God’s love. But I’ll just speak for myself. In God’s love, I have nothing to fear, yet much of the time I am fearful. In that fear I live as though separated from God’s love. In God’s love life is filled with wonder and joy, yet most of the time my life is emotionally and spiritually flat. I rarely feel true joy. Rarely am I filled with wonder at the marvels of creation, and even less often am I filled with wonder at the miraculous gift of God that is at least potentially present in every person I meet. In that emotional and spiritual numbness I live as though separated from the love of God. In God’s love the Realm of God with its demand for justice for all people and for peaceful, nonviolent resistance to evil is something to be proclaimed loudly and courageously at every opportunity. Yet most of the time I keep silent out of concern for my own safety and livelihood and out of my concern with how I will look to other people. In that timidity bordering on cowardice I live as though separated from the love of God. I could go on and on in this vein, but I think you get the point. Most of the time I do not live as though I truly knew the love of God in my life.

So what am I to say? Is Paul wrong? Am I a living refutation of the passage that I claim to love so much? Well, no. I’m not. Paul’s still right; but the apparent contradiction of his words that is evident in the way I and I suspect most other people live requires us to sharpen up our understanding of just what it is that Paul is telling us in these verses.

We begin by making a crucial distinction. We have to distinguish between what the relationship between God and humans looks like from our human perspective, from our side of the relationship, and what it must certainly look like from God’s perspective, from God’s side of the relationship. I began by talking about how from my perspective I can look pretty separated from the love of God. The point we need to grasp, I think, is that that’s not the perspective, the side of the relationship, that Paul’s talking about. He’s talking about how the divine/human relationship looks from God’s perspective, from God’s side of the relationship. Paul’s point is this: As far as God is concerned, nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love. God loves us always. Period. End of discussion. In life and in death God loves us. There really is nothing more to it than that. God has determined to love us, all of us, all the time, no matter what. There’s nothing you nor I nor anyone nor anything else can do to stop that love, to separate us from that extravagant, wasteful love of God. From God’s perspective, God’s love is universal and indestructible. It is the ultimate reality of existence. From God’s perspective, truly nothing can separate us from God’s love.

And yet from our perspective, from our side of the relationship, that matter I’m afraid looks quite different. All of those ways I talked about in which I live as though separated from God’s love, and a whole lot more, are very real. The reality of our human perception of separation from God was driven home to me most powerfully just the other day. I have been doing pastoral visits with a woman with cancer. She’s not a member of our congregation, but the Lord seems to have brought her to me for a reason, and not just so that I might be of some help to her. She has not led an exemplary life. Her addiction to alcohol has so compromised her health that the doctors can’t do what is required to treat her cancer at this time. She’s scared. She feels guilt and, I suspect, not a little shame.

The first time I saw her I said a prayer that asked God to help her know that she is held always safe in God’s arms of love and grace. The next time I saw her she asked me a question. She asked: How do I get and hold onto that feeling that I can trust God no matter what happens? It is the most profound spiritual question anyone has ever asked me. It was so profound because it was not an academic question for her, nor even a matter of passing curiosity. Her question came from the depths of her soul. Although she was outwardly rather calm when she asked it, her question was a cry from her heart, a cry of despair and deep need. She was asking: You say God loves me, but how do I break down all the barriers that my life has created that keep me from knowing, from feeling, that love? I felt totally inadequate to answer her question, which shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. I’ve lived most of my life feeling separate from God. How could I tell this brave, frightened, searching woman how to overcome that feeling of separation? I did the best I could. I talked about prayer, meditation, Scripture reading, of simply practicing opening her heart and feeling God’s love pour in; but it wasn’t enough. Not for me anyway. And so this week I’ve been thinking a lot about how we separate ourselves from the love of God. You see, from our perspective, from our side of the relationship, there is one thing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That one thing is-us. I’ve thought about that a lot, but more importantly I’ve thought about this woman’s question. How do we end our separation from God?

I have no easy answer to that question, but I do have some ideas. The first thing is simply to realize what I’ve been saying in this sermon. Any separation that we feel from the love of God is entirely our own doing. It isn’t because we actually are separated from the love of God. As far as God is concerned, we aren’t. And since God is the ultimate reality, our ultimate reality is that we live in the love of God. Our problem is that we don’t know that we do. So the first step in solving the problem is simply to be aware, to become enlightened about our ultimate reality, which is the love of God.

The next step is to realize that living in the love of God means living in relationship with God, and our experience with human relationships tells us that relationships need tending. They flourish when we cultivate them, and they wither when we ignore them. It’s the same with our relationship with God. That relationship grows when we cultivate it, when we spend time on it; and it dies when we take it for granted.

How do we cultivate it? Fortunately our Christian tradition, like all the great religious traditions, has developed practices that help us to do that. The basic one is prayer. The best definition of prayer, I believe, is simply spending time with God. You can talk to God, tell God how you’re doing, pray for awareness of God’s presence in your life, pray for yourself and others in time of need. Pray for the whole world. Or you can just sit quietly with God, not talking at all. In silence we can open our hearts to God much better than we can when we’re monopolizing the conversation. There are other disciplines too that cultivate our relationship with God. For us Christians reading the Bible is a key discipline. So is regular worship in church. Our entire life together in the church is, or at least can and should be, a way to cultivate our relationship with God. One part of that life in the church is particularly important, and I don’t mean giving money (although that too can and should be a spiritual discipline). I mean the sacraments and particularly the Eucharist, Holy Communion. Communion is all about God’s presence in our lives. It is a primary way in which we symbolize, open ourselves to, and live into that presence. Regular church attendance when that is possible, including regular participation in the Eucharist, is a powerful spiritual discipline that helps us set aside our self-imposed separation from God.

So. Paul says that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Is he right? Can nothing separate us from the love of God? Ultimately, yes, he’s right. God’s love is always there, surrounding us, holding us, saving us. Nothing can change that ultimate reality. Nothing. And yet we delude ourselves that we are separated from God and God’s love. The Psalms say: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Psalm 14:1, 53:1 KJV They could equally as well say: The fool hath said in his heart, We live apart from God’s love. We aren’t separated from the love of God, we just think we are. And so we need to end our delusion. Paul says that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul’s right. Believe him. Trust his truth, for it is God’s truth. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the best news there ever was or ever could be, so let’s get on with living into that love. Amen.