Romans 8.28-39
“FINDING OUR PEACE IN GOD’S PURPOSE”
Last Sunday John opened his sermon telling of a comet far out in space. Some scientists speculate it is possibly the source of life on earth. So I looked it up. It seems most comets have water at their core. Think of chocolates with that liquidy burst as you bite into them. So, the theory has it, after hurtling through space this “goody-filled” comet exploded on the face of the earth. Its internal organic life sprayed out basic life forms. The primitive bacteria multiplied and evolved. Voila, millions years later, you find this guy on the sofa fiddling with the remote control.
How does that notion sit with you? The idea that the glancing blow of a comet in earth’s hospitable environment resulted in life as we know it? Two scientists with unpronounceable names give this theory an exotic name, cometary panspermia. Last week John said how he felt about that. Apart from the idea of God’s hand catapulting these comets our way, the idea of random chance being behind it all left him a little cold. It wasn’t making his heart sing. Frankly, I feel the same way.
That is what I want to preach about today. I want to say that your life and mine is no accident; that God’s guiding motive in making us was love; that we are all here for a reason. God has a purpose to be worked out through each of our lives. And the individual purposes--as unique and special as everyone gathered here-- are smaller but essential parts of the greater drama that Jesus called the reign of God. His overarching plan and purpose is just that personal, just that universal.
The Bible has this message written all over it. We heard Isaiah declare God as our Creator and that we were already in God’s care even before we were born. Then we heard Paul proclaim that in everything God is at work for good with all who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Hearing God’s undaunted purpose, experiencing it, then sharing it with others makes my pastoral heart sing
I had that chance a few weeks ago. You remember me talking about doing the memorial service for 20 year old Chelsea Joslin whose untimely death rocked our world.
Where do I start? I wondered, looking into their upset faces. I don’t have some tidy script to make this all right. Those young adults thought they were living in another world than this random and accidental, this cold and cruel world of loss. They thought it all made sense and everyone was headed onward and upward. How do I begin helping them rebuild a deeper, unfailing, and abiding foundation?
Spontaneously, the same words from Paul welled up within me and issued from my lips. God is at work for good in everything with all who love him, with those called according to his purpose. They didn’t know I was quoting Scripture. They just grabbed it as a glowing promise. It glowed all the brighter on that bleak day. As their tidy and orderly world had been blown to bits, they needed to hear that an overarching purpose abides despite the dark and disturbing ache in their heart and lump in their throat. I passed the microphone and all testified courageously to their love of
Finally, as the testimonies petered out, I closed with the same words. God is at work for good in everything with all who love him, with those called according to his purpose. I said that because they are the words I tell myself when hell breaks out. And I might well have added, if God is for us, then who can be against us?
Maybe the challenge is to find ways to live and hold onto this in our workaday routine instead of waiting for the massive crises to knock this sense back into us. Maybe the challenge is to recognize lesser things that we let drive our lives in-stead of trusting in God’s overarching purpose, known most completely in Jesus. Because if we notice and evict the lesser purposes that inadvertently drive our lives, maybe we can make room for God’s will to dwell more deeply in our hearts.
Too many of us let guilt drive our lives. We spend too many days running from regrets and hiding our shame. Guilt-driven people are prisoners of the past and manipulated by memories. We allow our past to narrow the options of our future. We can unconsciously punish ourselves by sabotaging our chances for success. And it’s true, we are products of our past. But God’s purpose is not limited by our past. If Jesus’ death and resurrection proved anything, it proved that. Just ask Peter who denied him or Thomas who doubted him or Paul who persecuted him. Guilt crowds out God’s purpose with defeatist, depleting doomsday scenarios.
Too many of us let resentment and anger drive our lives. We hold onto hurts and never get over them. Somehow, despite the time we spend at church, the mes-sage of forgiveness as the highest form of love hasn’t nested deep within us and shown itself in our relations. For instead of releasing pain through forgiveness, we rehearse it over and over in our minds. In our emptiness, we even relish that pain just for the sake of feeling something rather than feeling nothing. We feast on our resentments and anger. But we end up an emaciated skeleton sitting at that banquet table. For they always end up hurting us more than those we are upset with. Think of it, our offender has likely forgotten the offense and moved on. But there we stew in our pains and perpetuate the worst of the past. The vindictiveness of resentment and anger keeps God’s redeeming purposes at bay.
Too many of us let the need for approval to drive our lives. We allow the expecta-tions of parents or friends or teachers or spouses to rule over our lives. Many of us never get over the no-win proposition of trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents. Our parents may no longer be alive and we still dance with that chilling ghost. We wake up from our sleep in a cold sweat about not being good enough or not having tried hard enough or not having achieved enough.
Others worry about how contemporaries perceive us. Do we ever give away too much influence to peers over what we wear, how we speak, where we vacation, whom we befriend? Do we bestow omnipotence on those who don’t deserve it? I do sometimes. Then I dislike myself for it. Bill Cosby said, “I don’t know what the key to success is, but the key to failure is trying to making everyone happy.” So I remind myself that ultimately, I belong to God and not to tribes, clans, and empires commanding my conformity. If we grant other people this status as de-fining arbiters of our worth, we will not live purposefully as God’s beloved children
Nothing matters more than knowing God’s purposes for our life. And nothing else can compensate for not knowing them—not success, wealth, fame, or pleasure. Without the divine overarching purpose, life is motion without meaning. Life is like the boat leaving
Life is not some random accident. The gift of life comes to us from God. Life is personal and purposeful, even if our purpose becomes elusive as distracting and trivial details obscure what is essential. Think of it this way. We have each been given an envelope from God with our marching orders inside. Our goal is to discern the contents of that envelope without being able to tear it open to read it! For whatever reason, God does not deal with us on the step-by-step-Time-Life- guide-to-doing-whatever basis. God deals with us inviting within sacred mysteries of mercy and grace, forgiveness and reconciliation, truthfulness and commitment.
Instead of wasting our days dancing with ghosts like guilt, resentment, anger, and approval, we might seize the day by dancing with two other partners: spiri-tual gifts and personal vocation. I would like to lead a series on spiritual gifts. But unless I can make this case first, you will see that offering in the Steeple Bell and say, why is he offering that? Or why is that so important. So I put that offer in context today. And I invite you to ponder it with me. By understanding how God has gifted us, we can best understand how we’re called. By following our calling, God’s purpose for us will always clarify. Does anybody else see that with me?
In a George Moore novel, he tells of Irish peasants in the Depression who were set to work building roads. For a time everything went wonderfully. The men were glad to have jobs. They sang songs as they worked. But after a while they discovered the roads they were building led nowhere. They expired in peat bogs or simply ended. (Does this remind us of a certain bridge in
So let your hearts sing this tune: God is at work in everything God for good with all who love him, who are called according to his purpose. If God is for us, who can be against us? Instead of living our lives like pushing a boulder up a hill we might let this purpose—this goal, this destination, this end point—pull us forward. For the risen Christ has promised us that God’s purposes cannot be defeated. Amen.
