Hilton Head Island, SC – March 3, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 8:18-39
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28 (RSV)
The apostle Paul believed in the doctrine of predestination. According to John Calvin, predestination means this, and only this: Before anyone is born, God decides whether that person will go to heaven or hell, and there is nothing anyone can do to alter that outcome. Technically that is double predestination, meaning that each of us is predestined either one way or the other: for heaven, or for hell. What predestination doesn’t mean is that God preordains everything that happens in our lives. Many people think that’s what predestination is, but it isn’t. And if you have never heard that before, you have now heard it here first.
Paul and Calvin weren’t the only ones historically who subscribed to predestination. So presumably did Moses, the prophets, Jesus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and numerous other less famous luminaries. In this sermon I shall again address this idea, but only briefly, and in a way I am certain Paul would disapprove.
In the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he was talking about what happens to the people God has chosen to be His own for both time and eternity. They come to live “in the Spirit,” as he says, which means in the Holy Spirit. This presumably means these people have an intimate knowledge of what the Church came to call the Third Person of the Trinity, though Paul knew nothing of the Trinity. That doctrine would not be solidified until three centuries later.
Anyway, said Paul, when believers are “in the Spirit,” (or, as I would prefer to describe it, “in God,” or perhaps more descriptively that God is “in them”), they can withstand anything that comes their way. Already in Paul’s time Christians were starting to feel some persecution, first from the Romans, and secondly from the Jews. Most of the New Testament Christians perceived themselves as Jews, but soon the Jews considered the Jewish Christians apostates, much as many Sunni Muslims think Shiites are apostate, and vice versa.
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us,” Paul wrote (8:18). Things were going to get infinitely better, he said. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (8:26). That verse is strongly reminiscent of the last four lines in Wordsworth’s great poem called Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. “Thanks to the human heart by which we live/ Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears/ To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” In other words, some things are simply inexpressibly and wonderfully profound.
When God is in us, and we are in some mysterious sense “in God,” nothing can ultimately defeat us. That was what Paul declared, and I hope that is what all of us believe. To live with that conviction is to withstand every impediment thrown into our life’s path.
Then Paul makes one of the most astonishing claims to be found anywhere in scripture, or anywhere else, for that matter. “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” You may be more familiar with that verse in the King James Version: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” In everything God works for good? All things work together for good? Earthquakes? Hurricanes? Cancer? Tsunamis?
The most lethal tsunami in history, on Dec. 26, 2004, killed 170,000 people in Indonesia, and 60,000 in Sri Lanka, India, and Africa. By comparison, the tsunami and earthquake in Japan in March of 2011, which caused the nuclear reactor to melt, killed 16,000. One of the things that has resulted from these and other tidal waves is that better warning systems are being installed in areas subject to these massive geologic disturbances. That no doubt is good. Without question, however, that will not prevent all future deaths from major natural disasters. So how can Paul or anyone else glibly declare that in everything God works for good?
Forty years ago a flood ordinance was enacted for the South Carolina coast. It said that houses or other buildings within so many yards of the high tide line on the beach had to have their first floor from twelve to fourteen feet above the high tide mark. In the event of a flood from a hurricane, the water would not inundate the structure, but flow under or around it. There is more to it than that, but the point I am trying to make is that good came out of previous devastating floods from hurricanes. Thus we are forced to try to lessen our own folly by living so close to the ocean in the first place. We don’t see millions of people flocking to the South or North Carolina Midlands as a result of these measures, but at least many of us won’t find our homes washed away in a hurricane, but merely blown away. All things work together for good, don’t you see.
There are two conditional clauses in today’s sermon text. “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” Paul apparently intended to say that everything works for good only for those who love God and who feel called according to His purpose. This statement applies to those predestined by God for salvation, but seemingly not to others. Or at least that’s the way I interpret these words.
Let’s agree to set aside the notion that only the predestined to salvation will discover good in everything. Predestination has always proven to be a divisive doctrine anyway. But might we agree that everything does work together for good for those who love God? If we truly believe in God, and if we believe that His will for us is solely for good, then might we conclude even the worst of events can work out to our benefit if we continue to trust that God loves us, and that He will care for us?
There seem to be more frequent news stories these days about sexual abuse of children or young teenage girls. Either that or we are informed more frequently about predatory men using human trafficking for purposes of sex. Whether these incidents truly are more frequent only God knows. And whether we are better or worse off for hearing about this so often I don’t know. But can anything good come out of this? And if so, how? Can potential sexual predators learn not to act on their impulses because they see that other such men have been punished for their crimes? Can good emerge from these horrible situations through more arrests and convictions?
For the last fifteen or twenty years of his life the incomparable German composer Ludwig van Beethoven was completely deaf; he couldn’t hear even the loudest of sounds. Nevertheless he continued composing up until the time he died.
How could anyone, even Beethoven, do that? For one thing, he had perfect pitch. For those of you who aren’t musical, that means he could hear in his mind any note he or anyone else had ever written, whether it was an A-sharp or an E-flat or anything else. And further, he could hear it in its proper octave. It is possible that perhaps Beethoven was a better composer than he might otherwise have been because of his deafness. Not being able to hear anything at all, perhaps he was able to concentrate completely on his compositions, with no external distractions.
Deafness to a musician would be more of a challenge than to anyone else, but could it be that it was a factor in Beethoven becoming even more outstanding? Could it be true that in everything God does work for good with those who love Him? Certainly Beethoven loved God; that is evident in his religious compositions. And what could surpass the godly triumph of the last movement of his last symphony, the incomparable Ninth Symphony? It is also known as the Choral Symphony. The final choral movement of the Ninth is based on Schiller’s poem Ode to Joy. We often sing a hymn taken from the fourth movement, called Hymn to Joy. We shall sing it again today. It has the famous text, “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee.” In everything God works for good. But it is those who consciously love God who know that truth to the fullest.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul was writing to people he assumed had been called by God and who thus loved God. Paul also assumed that meant those people were predestined to salvation. You may or may not agree with his premise, at least the part about their being predestined to salvation.
Nevertheless, I hope you can affirm the idea that people who truly love God and feel loved by God are capable of seeing good in everything that happens to them, no matter how painful or totally disruptive it may seem to them at the time. But we must understand it is an interpretation of events to say that everything works together for good. Only people of faith are equipped to perceive that truth. Otherwise awful things seem only to be awful things.
For the past fifteen years or so, I have been both a participant and an instructor in the Lifelong Learning program of Hilton Head Island. It attracts primarily retirees. In recent years I have become acquainted with a man who attends several Lifelong Learning classes each winter. He and his wife come to the island January through March. I will call this man Mack. Mack stands out in every class, except that he never stands. H always sits in the back or at the side of every classroom. He can’t stand, because he is in a wheelchair.
Mack and his wife rent a condo on South Forest Beach. He wheels himself to The Seabrook and Tidepointe for classes. Seabrook isn’t much of a schlep, but Tidepointe is. When I was teaching a course here at The Cypress, there was Mack. I assumed his wife drove him here, but after my last class last Monday, I noticed Mack in his wheelchair going down the bike path along Gum Tree Road toward the William Hilton Parkway. I had seen Mack in his wheelchair before, and I stopped to ask him if he would like a ride, and he always said no. So I didn’t stop. But, knowing that I was going to preach this sermon, I called Mack to ask him if he went all the way from The Cypress to South Forest Beach in his wheelchair. Oh no, he chuckled, he only went from here to the Sea Pines Circle, where he stopped to play a board game with some friends.
I have always been intrigued with Mack, so in our phone conversation I asked him to tell me his story. When he was a college freshman, he fell from a balcony and had a severe injury. He didn’t explain the fall, except to say he was doing some of the foolish things that college freshmen sometimes do. Ever since, he has been disabled from his chest down. He had been working for a large corporation in college, and they gave him a scholarship to finish college, and then sent him to law school. Later, Mack became very involved in wheelchair athletics. I can easily believe that, because he is as strong as an ox from his chest up, including what goes on between his ears. In Boston, at a wheelchair event, he met his wife.
Mack is unusually intelligent, although his politics and mine represent a political divide as wide was evident in the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday in their questioning of Michael Cohen. I asked him how his accident has affected his life over the past 40+ years. He said it forced him to focus far more intently than he had been doing prior to his fall. Without it, he said he almost certainly would not have received the scholarship to put him through college and law school, and had he not been in a wheelchair, he would not have met his wife. After their courtship, she married him, knowing who he was and how their lives would likely unfold from that point forward. On the phone I recited to him the text for this sermon, and asked again if it was okay with him if I used him as the primary sermon illustration, and without hesitation he gave permission.
I know nothing about Mack’s beliefs, and I didn’t ask him. But he seemed to agree that in everything God works for good. And the real reason I had to find out more about Mack is that in the discussion following our lecture, he was one of three people in this room with about the same number of people as are here now who said they would like to live 180 years. I’m not going ot take time to explain how that came up in the discussion, but I decided if Mack in his wheelchair would be pleased to live for a hundred and eighty years, and was willing to go from here to Sea Pines Circle in a wheelchair on the bike path, then he surely must believe that everything works for good for those who love God, and are called according to His purpose.
I watched most of the House Oversight Committee questioning of Michael Cohen on Wednesday. It was as dismaying, disgusting, and disingenuous a display of political gamesmanship on both sides as is likely to result from any judicial hearing anywhere. Is anything good likely to come from it? In everything does God truly work for good for those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose?
In the final three verses of the incomparable 8th chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul makes one of the most glorious declarations to be found anywhere in scripture. Despite the hardships and detours faced by all people, there is boundless hope for us in the end and for the end. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us,” said Paul. “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities (and that means governments), 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 Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:37-39).
If we don’t feel called by God, and if we don’t believe that God loves us, and if we don’t love God, then it might not be possible to live with such an invincible statement of faith. But if we do feel called by God, and we do know that He loves us and that we also love Him, then we will be empowered, forever, to declare that in everything God works for good. However, that will occur only when all those conditions are permanently operative.
How, then, are we going to choose to interpret all the many conflicting events of our lives?