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August 26, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

God Works All Things Together for Good.
Really?

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Romans 8:28–39

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Four more shootings last night in Chicago. News of killings almost every weekend, right here in our city. A murder earlier this week at the Empire State Building, along with several injured. The events in Syria. The death toll for our troops in Afghanistan. Innocent moviegoers in Colorado. Faithful Sikhs worshiping in Wisconsin. So much violence we can scarcely take it in.

And Paul says, “All things work together for good for those who love God.”

Really?

You’ve just found out your mother has cancer, or your friend, or you. You’re still grieving the death of a loved one. You can’t find a job. You’ve become increasingly frail. A grandchild is struggling.

And Paul says, “All things work together for good for those who love God.”

Really?

Our sermon series over the last several weeks has been a focus on familiar biblical stories or often-used biblical phrases. John’s and Adam’s and my intent was to give fresh perspective to stories or statements in the Bible that have lost their impact for us because they have become too familiar or have often been misinterpreted. Paul’s statement in Romans 8—“God works all things together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”—is one of those verses.

We hear the first part of the verse a lot. Said to us at the wrong time, it can be dismissive of the despair we might be experiencing. “Oh my, I’m sorry at your loss, but God works everything together for good.” And we turn away and mutter under our breath, “Really?”

And yet I think of a friend of mine whose husband was killed in a plane crash well over ten years ago. Her email address is line828. She chose the email address because it references this verse—Romans 8:28. Line828: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” Those many years ago, I went to her home on the evening her husband died, only six hours after she received the news of the crash. Neighbors and friends had gathered. At the time I hardly knew this woman. I was there because I was one of her pastors. I walked in, and her first words spoken to me were, “We’ve been so blessed.” I was shocked by those words. I’d been struggling to figure out what on earth I was going to say to her when I walked into her home, and she said to me, “We’ve been so blessed.” Even in the middle of that horrific loss in her life, she was proclaiming her sense of this verse, her reliance on the God Paul points to in these verses. Not all of us could do that in the same situation. I don’t know that I could. But I walked into her home and her statement “We’ve been so blessed” was as if she was simply pointing to God’s sovereignty, providence, blessing. She wasn’t being artificial, though it could have appeared so. She went through plenty of grief in the months to follow. And she despaired at times. You could have heard her words “We’ve been so blessed” and thought “How foolish.”

Let me tell you what this verse is not. “We know all things work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes” is not a verse that is meant to be understood as a litmus test of faith. It does not mean, “If you love God well enough or with enough focus or if you do the right things in God’s eye, all of your life’s events will work together for good.” It is not meant as an if-then statement: “If you love God, then all things in your life will work together for good.” It does not mean that God’s goodness and grace is preserved for the people who believe and is withheld from those who don’t.

Paul’s focus in these several verses in Romans 8 is the sovereign God. Paul’s intent is to help us understand and believe that God is sovereign over all, even when God’s sovereignty doesn’t seem to be apparent. While we like to read verses and ask “What does this mean for me?” Paul is not focused there, not focused on helping us understand our human condition. Paul is focused on his desire that the early believers in Rome understand God better. Understand that God is sovereign. These verses aren’t meant for us to parse out who is in and who is out. Who is loved by God and who is not. Who loves God better and who loves God less. These verses are meant to proclaim to the Roman church, and us, that God is sovereign over this world, that nothing can escape God’s involvement, that no matter how bad things look, God’s providential involvement is at work.

And still, we wonder at times, Has God abandoned this world? Has God abandoned me? Because you and I both are well aware that at times this world we live in looks really chaotic.

Paul Tillich, a theologian of the last century, writes,

Long before the Christian era people spoke of the divine providence at work behind the driving forces of life and history. In Christianity the words of Jesus about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and his command not to be anxious about tomorrow, have strengthened the faith in providence. It became the most common belief of Christian people. It gave them courage in danger, consolation in sorrow, hope among ruins. But more and more this faith lost its depth. It became a matter-of-course and was deprived of the overwhelming, surprising, and triumphant character it has in the words of Paul.

Tillich continues, in words written more than forty years ago,

When the German soldiers went into the First World War, most of them shared the popular belief in a nice God who would make everything work out for the best. Actually, everything worked out for the worst, for the nation and for almost everyone in it. In the trenches of the war, the popular belief in personal providence was gradually broken, and in the fifth year of war nothing was left of it. During and after the Second World War similar developments took place in this country. In the political tensions and fears of the last decade the belief in historical providence broke down. The confidence, shared by large groups in this country, that in history everything will eventually turn out for the best, has almost disappeared. Today not much of it is left. (Paul Tillich, The New Being)

In this whole section from the eighth chapter of Romans, Paul is proclaiming a belief that God is still at work in history, that in the end, the world is moving toward a conclusion ordained by God, a good conclusion in which everything works out for the best, a history in which everything works out for the best in God’s view. Paul is not proclaiming wishful thinking. Paul is encouraging us to have the courage to say yes to life in general, in spite of the driving forces of fate, in spite of the insecurities of daily existence, in spite of the catastrophes and the breakdown of meaning.

Then Paul asks a series of rhetorical questions in the rest of the passage. If God is for us, who is against us? And he answers the question. If God was willing to give Jesus to the world for our sakes, then how could God be against us? And then he asks, Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? Who will judge us? And the answer is no one has that power except Christ. We hear the same promise in one of our traditional assurances of pardon. Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us. Christ even prays for us. And finally Paul asks, Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will it be hardship? Or distress? Or persecution? Can those things separate us from God’s love? Paul answers, Absolutely not! “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nothing at all, anywhere, can separate us from the love of God.”

These verses are ones I’ve used countless times in funerals. A loved one has died. But God still lives. My friend’s husband was killed in a plane crash. But she proclaimed that evening, “We’ve been so blessed.” God still lives.

One of the scholars who wrote about these verses in Romans likened them to a hymn of praise. God works all things together for good. God is for us, not against us. God is the only judge. And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When I talked about the statement my friend made hours after her husband’s death, I mentioned that some could have heard that statement and said, “How foolish.” In one way, all of these verses in Romans 8 sound foolish when you look around the world us today. “The disciple of Jesus will be made to look and feel like a fool.” That’s what Brennan Manning says in his book The Signature of Jesus (p. 63). Yet, he goes on, “fools for Christ formed the early church. And as that tiny band of believers grew, the world witnessed the power in such foolishness. . . . We join the church whose purpose is to make visible this new reality in the world.” May we all become foolish believers. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church