“Neither Death Nor Life”
Psalm 23 and Romans 8:26-39
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
10/1/23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
(Psalm 23 – NRSV)
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 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. (Romans 8:26-39 – NRSV)
Every human community has its share of hurt to deal with. And while no one in this room is running from drone strikes or dying from malaria, none of us remain untouched by some kind of illness, loss, or anxiety.
In Romans 8, Paul talks about the Spirit helping us when we are weary, and praying for us when our own words fail.
He talks about being known by God, about being predestined to bear the image of Christ.
He talks about things working together for good whenever our actions are fueled by love for God.
And when we embody God’s love, says Paul—that is, when we follow the path of humility, compassion, and justice for the oppressed—God stands with us in such a way that any who stand against us don’t stand a chance. Not in the long run.
I know that Paul is writing to encourage new Christians who are suffering persecutions that we can’t imagine. Still, after reading the assurances of this chapter, it feels a little bit like listening to the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Even when he says exactly what we want to hear, Paul can come across as a little pie-in-the-sky.
Then again, that’s not entirely fair to Paul.
While some biblical passages do say that God protects the faithful from suffering, the overwhelming witness of scripture, and of life experience, exposes that idea as wishful thinking at best. And at worst it’s a futile attempt to protect and preserve a distorted and distorting image of God—the image of God as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Let’s go back to Paul’s promise. With the deep conviction, born of his own experiences of suffering and of causing suffering, he says that God stands faithfully with us and sees us through: “hardship...distress...persecution...famine...nakedness...peril…[and] sword.” And this very assurance itself declares the equally trustworthy promise that human beings will endure such trials. Regardless of God’s presence with us, regardless of our faithful intentions, and regardless of whether we think any given experience of suffering is deserved or undeserved, human existence includes suffering.
While that sounds depressing, maybe even fatalistic, the gospel being revealed through Jesus does not allow us to associate faith and faithfulness with lives of perfect ease. And it seems to me that to suggest otherwise is to lead oneself and others into denial, and, ultimately, into violence, because the only way one can create the illusion of avoiding suffering is by causing others to suffer.
I'm not saying there's a literal and eternal hell. But if there is, it’s not something we have to wait on. To do more than imagine hell: Twist greed into a virtue. Impugn the humanity and dignity of others. Cultivate division. Seek retribution. Do these things and a life of hellish misery will certainly follow, because the only way to do them is by denying the image of God within oneself and others.Paul knows about such hell. As a former persecutor of Christians, he helped to create it. So, when he talks about being killed all day long and being accounted as sheep to be slaughtered, he is both commiserating with the current experience of the Roman Christians and confessing his own past sins. Then, Paul turns and declares hope and deliverance not just from the deep quagmire of suffering, but within it.
“I am convinced,” he says, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
I hear Paul saying that even in the midst of the worst that the world can throw at us, we can still love as we are loved. We can still love ourselves and others the way Jesus loves the Pharisees who harass him, the way he loves the disciples who abandon him, and the way Jesus loves even the soldiers who blindly follow the order to crucify him. That is the love from which we cannot be separated.
You and I, we are equal parts recipients and bearers of the love that is creating and redeeming the universe. And the point of Paul’s teaching, like the point of Jesus’ life itself, is that God calls us to be signs and demonstrations of God’s love in, with, and for a suffering creation. God intentionally makes us aware of suffering so that, as followers and imitators of Christ, we might enter that suffering with healing and redeeming love for everyone and everything that suffers.
This Wednesday will mark the completion of my 13th year as pastor of Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. Over these years, I’ve witnessed you enflesh the gospel in countless ways. You have struggled and suffered with friends and loved ones as they have struggled and suffered. And you don’t withhold that blessing. You don’t make membership in this congregation a prerequisite for care. In love, you have stood in solidarity with neighbors in this community to proclaim that God’s unbounded love does not play favorites, that the household of grace welcomes all people. You have, as Paul also says to the Romans, rejoiced with those who rejoice and wept with those who weep. (Romans 12:15) And, with sighs too deep for words, you have prayed with and for each other.
Even now, you are at work declaring the relentless love of God in Christ. And I stand in grateful awe of all of that.
Now, our work is never perfectly done, nor is it ever complete. God continually calls us into a world, a culture, and a denomination that are always changing, always growing and becoming. Our challenge is to allow the ever-present, ever-praying Spirit to lead us into ever more daring and ever more vivid expressions of God’s relentless love for the Creation.
So, even as we affirm ourselves, let’s ask ourselves: Are there people in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our church, our families for whom we just cannot muster the energy to love with the kind of love with which we are loved? The answer to that question is always Yes. And yet, even now, with deep, wordless sighs, the Spirit is calling us to and equipping us for a love we may not be able to receive or offer right now. We may not even be able to conceive of it.
If that’s true for any of us, we can take heart. Christ’s table of grace and renewal is set before us this morning. And at his table, he feeds us with his own embodied holiness, with his own prayerful Spirit, and with the very energy and courage that animated his own life. He feeds us with all of that so that we may receive and share the love of God—the love from which we cannot, under any circumstance, be separated.
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