Tough Times
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
July 27, 2008

Text: Romans 8:26-39

Before I left for my vacation, I created today’s bulletin and sermon topic.  Since the nation was undergoing a difficult time economically, Paul’s reassuring words about God’s abiding and protective love seemed like a perfect passage.  Little did I know that in the subsequent six weeks, things would get worse; in some areas, much, much worse.

The near collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, continuing billion dollar write-downs by large brokerage firms and banks, several major banks being seized by the FDIC just before they went bust, inflation rearing its ugly head, the stock market going below 11,000 briefly, gas prices rising and home values declining, record foreclosure rates.  It has been a very challenging, even depressing six weeks.

Mexicans have an old, tried and true saying: When the U.S. catches a cold, Mexico catches pneumonia.  The current crisis is a case in point.  For the Mexicans, the immediate problems are rising prices.  Inflation has been tame there for years.  No longer.  Business plans being put on hold; there are fewer tourists; crime is rising.  At our second home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, new homes built for retiring U.S. baby boomers stand unsold with no buyers even looking at them.  If people can’t sell their houses in the U.S., they can’t buy a house for retirement in a place like San Miguel. 

Of course, we face more than economic problems.  While things appear a bit more stable in Iraq (if you’re not in a market when a suicide bomber blows herself up, that is), things are most definitely getting worse in Afghanistan.  Health care costs continue to rise exponentially.  Unemployment in California is just shy of 7%.  The rising costs of day care and education stress family values.

So it is a tough time in which we live.  For some of us, this isn’t the first tough time through which we have been.  When I was in seminary in the mid-1970’s, interest rates edged up toward 20%.  An oil/gas crisis meant that, for a while, I had to use my breaks between classes to wait for more than an hour to fill up a tank of gas.  We seminarians wondered whether churches would be able to employ us since the nation’s economic problems negatively impacted church budgets.

However, for many people, this is their first truly scary national economic crisis.  Surely the younger generations have personal economic challenges that my generation didn’t face—large student loan debt, high housing costs, expensive child care.  But for most of the past twenty years, these challenging personal economic issues have been framed by an overall positive economic environment. 

The growing economy created the illusion, illusion, that everything would work out.  Indeed, that was the logic behind sub-prime mortgages.  “Don’t worry,” borrowers were told, “Your house will continue to rise in value and, after a few years, your mortgage won’t seem so bad.”

But more than the real estate bubble has popped.  The illusion that good times will extend forever has evaporated under the harsh sun of economic realities.  Basic economic laws can be violated for only so long.  Eventually, punishment is exacted. 

As a result of reality setting in, what produced anxiety before, produces foreclosures today.  What produced a sense of being overextended before, produces concerns about bankruptcy today.  What gave pause before, produces dramatically changed lifestyles now.

So the personal financial challenges faced by younger generations are now framed and made more difficult by very challenging global economic realities.  And the personal finances of the boomers no longer look quite so good as we rush toward retirement.  Our current situation as a nation and global community is enough to shake even the most confident, to get the attention of even the most optimistic among us. 

To such an anxious and worried generation come the words of Paul.  They are words so crucial to my own personal faith that I have them more or less memorized.  “If God is for us, who is against us?...Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through the One who loved us.  For I am sure than 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 God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Over the past two thousand years, these words have become a mantra for Christians, helping us to survive persecution by the Roman Empire, plagues and pestilence in the Middle Ages, wars and depressions in the modern era.  They have helped believers get through breast cancer and mental depressions, deaths of precious family and friends, career setbacks and financial catastrophes.  If we can recite no other verses of Scripture, know these.

But how we can we assert the audacious claim Paul makes?  If nothing can separate us from the love of God, what about the Christians who were devoured by lions in the Roman coliseums?  What about the people who live stellar lives yet die young such as professor Randy Prausch who died this week, after inspiring everyone with his courage in the face of death?  What about the innocents who are crushed by despots such as Robert Mugabe? 

First, let us remember what Paul says and doesn’t say.  He doesn’t say we will avoid tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, peril or sword, does he?  No, he says none of those things will separate us from the love of God. 

In our days on earth, the goal of a pain-free, trouble-free life is one of the greatest delusions which tempts us.  We chase after it like thirsty people running toward mirages of water in a desert.  We exhaust and frustrate ourselves pursuing an idyllic life that doesn’t exist.

Through the realistic lens of Paul’s worldview, we understand that the goal of our lives isn’t reaching nirvana.  It is reaching God.  Once in touch with God, once having established a firm relationship with God, we know that none of life’s variables can destroy that constant.

And who better to guide us to such a relationship than Jesus of Nazareth?  He experienced many of the problems we face.  At various times, his family misunderstood him, friends betrayed him, and vocational plans went off track.  He suffered mentally, emotionally and physically.  His life reveals that the Way is not painless but neither is it godforsaken.  On the contrary, we are accompanied by a God who refuses to abandon us even if it feels as though we have been abandoned on our own personal crosses.

I have always maintained that the Way isn’t so much about faith in Jesus as it is about the God who sustained his journey.  As a result, many are the Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others who have discovered the unshakeable nature of God’s love for us; who have come to the same realization to which Paul came.  As Christians, we come to that revelation through Jesus.  Others come to it by different means.

When someone asks, “How can we assert that God loves us when we see so much disease, devastation and oppression in the world?”, we need not hesitate or equivocate in answering.  I start my answer to the question with an analogy.  If my child is gravely ill, does that mean I love my child any less?  Of course not.  Illness is a part of life.  Broken relationships, careers and violence are a part of life.  I can’t change that and neither can God.  But by loving and being present for my child as she goes through a crisis, I can help her cope with and maybe even overcome the crisis. 

Continuing the analogy, death has no ability separate a parent from a child or a child from a parent.  Any of us who have lost a parent or child know this truth.  Death surely creates a physical barrier between us and deceased loves ones.  But it cannot separate us.  My parents are as spiritually alive to me today as they were before they died 32 years ago.  I know the same is true for many, many of you.

Paul was a realist.  He never asserted life will be rosy for Christians or anyone else.  Instead, he proclaimed our lives to be secure, grounded in God’s love for us.  By so doing, he removed the fear of abandonment, replacing it with confidence that we are and always will be accompanied by our Divine Parent. 

Paul eliminated the fear that we will be obliterated by life, replacing it with an unshakeable belief that life cannot annihilate that which God wills to be.  I cannot over-stress the importance of this core belief of our faith.  In times of terrible trial and tribulation, we seemingly face extinction.  Extinction has many forms to us.  It can be physical, relational, financial, vocational, to name a few.

In these moments of crisis, our own personal history feels apocalyptic.  We feel like our lives are coming to an end: our marriage is coming to an end, career is crashing into oblivion, finances are sinking into the abyss.  It is very scary stuff because it feels like we are on the edge of annihilation.

But no matter whatever catastrophe we face, it is not and will not be our End.  Because nothing can separate us from the love of God.  This is Paul’s message.  It is why we are still reading and embracing his words two thousand years after he wrote them to a small, struggling band of Christians in Rome. 

Early on today, I mentioned the illusion of a totally happy, problem-free life.  The other great illusion is the notion that everything is doomed.  These two opposites are, in some ways, a philosophical or theological form of bipolar disorder.

Rejecting this bipolar view, Paul offers us a much more humble path.  Life is neither as good as it seems when everything is going great nor as bad as it seems when everything is going wrong.  Instead, Paul describes life as a journey.  And on our journey, filled with both sunny days and stormy nights, nothing can separate us from the One who created the journey, the One who loves and guides us on our journey. 

Twenty four years ago, one morning in the basement of the old church, I was doing my weekly job of managing Miriam’s Kitchen.  In those days, we had no staff.  Just volunteers.  So five us volunteered to manage the kitchen one morning a week.  I did it every Wednesday morning. 

A fellow came up to me and started screaming at me about something wrong with the food.  I tried to calm him down but, as one thing led to the next, I ended up screaming back at him.  As this escalated, I suddenly thought to myself, “Why am I screaming at a schizophrenic homeless man?  What is wrong with me?”

I lowered my voice and told Jim, “You know Jim, I love you.  Everyone involved with Miriam’s Kitchen loves you.  God loves you.  Why are we screaming at each other?” Jim said, “I don’t know.” Thus began a friendship that lasts to this day.  Such is the power of knowing that someone loves us.

When times get tough, we need to remember who loves us.  First and foremost, we need to remember that God loves us.  God will allow nothing but nothing to separate us from God.  We also need to remember who else loves us.  Make a list—family, friends, colleagues—of those reliable, trustworthy individuals who will stand with us through whatever it is we must withstand.

I am willing to bet that if we go through that simple drill, remembering who loves us, our anxiety about the mortgage, career and anything else will shrink to its appropriate size.  Because, with our list of loved ones in hand, we will realize that when the smoke clears, the flood waters subside, we will all be there together.  Nothing around us may look the same.  But those who love us, including God, will look the same.  And those who love us, not our houses, not our jobs, not our investments, those who love us/those we love are the essence what constitutes our lives.

Money, success, assets—they come and go.  God remains.  And if we look closely, we will see lots of others who are committed to remaining with us as well. 

“For I am sure than 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 God....” Words upon which we can build our lives and travel through troubled times. 

Let us pray: Loving God, you love us into being.  You love us on the Way.  You love us back into your Presence.  Thank you.  Help us to feel and trust your love.  For it is always there—the one constant in an always changing, changed world.  Great and wondrous are your ways.  Amen.