July 21, 2002—10:05 & 11:15 Worship Services
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
I confess that I like sweets. I blame my mother. After working in a sewing factory in downtown Boston, she would go to the bakery in the Jordan Marsh Department Store and buy a dozen of chocolate eclairs. The eclairs would be all lined up with this rich chocolate frosting on top and sweet custard inside. “Ho-hem.”
I like sweets so much that a meal is not complete until we have desserts. Sometimes when I’m out for dinner, I would first decide what I would have for dessert before ordering my entrée so that I would leave enough room for a piece of apple pie or a chocolate eclair! So even after Diana Lee/Suzanne Mak has warned us against the danger of glucose, fructose, and sucrose, I still love my sweets. I’m addicted!
Remember the pancakes we had at the retreat last Sunday? After piling three or four pancakes on our plates, we covered them with thick syrup that dripped over our plates. It was both disgusting and delicious at the same time. Too much sugar can be an unpleasant experience—like a trip to the dentist!
Sugar tastes good but it isn’t healthy. In the long run, it leaves you feeling hungry and dissatisfied.
Bowl of Sugar
This morning’s scripture passage is like a large bowl of sugar—all five pounds worth! It’s one of my favorite passages. I like this passage because when I am facing times of stress or moments of loss and grief, I turn to this passage because it makes me feel that everything is still sweet and good.
At a funeral, this is one of the passages that I often read. In grief and sorrow over the death of our loved ones, we want to hear these victorious words of Paul. When devastated by death and illness, we want to hear the hope of the gospel.
After a Chinese funeral service, we pass out the little wrapped packages of candy and a coin. The coin is to be spent to symbolize that you will continue to have good fortune and prosperity. But the candy is like the “bowl of sugar.” It brings sweetness to the bitterness of death. With candy in our mouths, we are reminded every time that life is victorious and good.
But somehow when I studied these verses once again, I found them shallow and just too sweet to digest. With terrorism in our minds, with war and endless conflict around the world, I found myself arguing with Paul—accusing him of denying the human pain that we feel. It seems to me that Paul was sugar coating his theology.
Paul tries to tell us this morning that all things work together for good and that nothing can separate us from the love of God—not peril or danger, nor hardship or terror. But what is “good” about children being blown apart; about families dying in terror; about mad serial killers destroying children? How loving is our God if pain and suffering is allowed to exist, with no miraculous intervention and no compassionate healing?
Paul’s Violent World
Living in our violent world today is hardly the only time when there’s been violence. When he wrote this letter, Paul was thrown in jail because of his actions and beliefs as a Christian. Rome, the center of imperial power was not going to roll out the red carpet for him. He knew that Rome would not treat Christianity kindly.
Paul knew that the ways of the Roman world are in conflict with the ways of the Spirit. He knew that immorality, poverty, decadence, and violence are the values perpetuated by the Roman Empire—the ways of the flesh. But even when Paul knew that the way of the Spirit is filled with peace, purity, kindness, compassion, honesty, justice, community, these were barely visible in the chaos of Roman society.
In fact, Paul admits that all of creation is groaning, waiting eagerly to be fully born into wholeness and peace. He knew that there would still be great suffering on this side of the promised fulfillment of Christ.
In this troubled world, we find ourselves groaning for answers.
A groan that all Chinese people say is “aiii-yahhh.” When bad things happen to us, we all say, “aiii-yahhh.” But in this text, we are being taught to pray, not as we do, but as we ought. By letting ourselves go to the prayers of the Holy Spirit, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows how to direct our prayers, and also knows that all things work together for good. When we come to prayer as we ought, we can stop groaning.
Coming to God in prayer, we establish a genuine relationship with God. Prayer connects us to God using words. And when words fail us, as they often do, Paul said the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs and groans too deep for words.
“Aiii-yahhh” is like spilled milk/soup but prayer is like a bowl of sugar. We can count on prayer to teach us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
It is important to understand what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that, “all things are good.” Paul is not saying that when innocent people who died in the Twin Towers on September 11th was good, or that a good God caused it. What he is saying is that God can work for good in all things—that God inter mingles joy and sorrow, beauty and pain, harmony and terror so that good can eventually emerge.
During World War II, thousands of people were being murdered in gas chambers. A philosopher named Berdwaev who was at one of the concentration camps wrote this:
“At one point a distraught mother refused to part with her little baby. The officer tussled with her, trying to split them apart because he needed only one more Jew to throw in the gas chamber to fulfill his quota for the day. And then it happened. Another woman, a simple woman named, Maria realized what was happening. In a flash she pushed the mother and the baby out of the way, and she became the one thrown by the officer into the chamber!”
“At that moment,” said Berdwaev, “I saw the power of Christ at work in the world for the first time, and I knew that never again could I be the same person again!” In the face of unspeakable horror, Christians are called to see the good that can eventually emerge.
God Suffers with Us
My friends, this morning Paul gives all of us a choice. We can choose to give into the power of evil and suffering, and become consumed with bitterness and fear. We can cry “aiii-yahhh” over the spilled milk/soup. Or, we can choose to believe in God. We can trust in the overall, long range, rock solid promises of a loving and sovereign God.
If we make the second choice, we must not kid ourselves. Things will not work differently. The newspapers will still headline bad news. The bombs and terror, the suffering and pain will not stop. But if we choose to love God, what can and will be different is the way we see things.
What sets Christianity apart from all other religions is our understanding of suffering. Among all the world’s various religions, only Christianity presents a God who suffers. Hindus and Buddhists try to escape suffering. For Muslims and Jews, a God who chooses the humiliation of suffering and death is unthinkable.
The only way we as Christians can accept Paul’s words of victory and hope about suffering, is to see and understand—that our God suffers in every way that we do. We can see this most clearly in the suffering of Jesus Christ who was a person with flesh and blood of a man.
We believe in a God that intimately intertwines and embeds himself in the human experience. God becomes one with humanity so that humanity can become one with God. And for us, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is the claim, the truth that makes our redemption possible. Jesus suffered with us so that God can understand our own suffering today. That’s why we say, “Sweet Jesus, Come.”
And when we believe in the reality of the resurrection, and know that this same Jesus is with us now as a living Spirit, we know we are not alone. Christ’ living Spirit is still sharing our suffering, enduring our pain, experiencing our evil, still finding ways to work for good in the midst of life. When we believe in this, we are not alone! Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
There’s a story about a farmer who was selling some puppies. He painted a sign advertising the pups and set about nailing it on a post on the edge of his yard.
As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.
“Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your puppies.”
“Well,” said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, “these puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.
The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.
“I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?”
“Sure,” said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle.
“Here, Dolly!” he called.
Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur. The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse. Slowly another little ball appeared; this one much smaller.
Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing the best to catch up.
“I want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to the little puppy.
The farmer knelt down at the boy’s side and said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.”
With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers. In so doing, he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially-made shoe.
Looking back up at the farmer, he said, “You see sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.”
Jesus understands when our world is groaning from terror and violence. Jesus understands when we are experiencing untold grief and loss. God understands because Jesus has suffered with us. In faith, we know that in everything, God works for good and those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
God’s Partners
Christians do not need to say that every tragedy or loss is part of God’s plan. We can say that in every tragedy and loss, God is still God and God still moves our lives and all of history toward what is good.
When we think about the enormous tragedies of human history, natural disasters, September 11th, or the pain and suffering we experience in our own personal lives, faith reminds us that God is still at work in the midst of evil, working toward the good.
The question, “Why did God let this happen?” is unanswerable. But the questions that we may begin to answer are: “What can God do with this evil to help bring about the good? How can we be God’s partners, God’s servants in that work?”
Sweet, Sweet Spirit
As I get a bit older every year, I know I will need to cut back on satisfying my sweet tooth. It’s too many unhealthy calories!
But in light of the world we live in today, I am glad that Paul has reminded us about the sweet and good news of God’s love in Christ Jesus. Paul sugar-coated his theology just right for us to believe that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, not 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.
There’s a gospel song that goes like this,
There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place,
and I know that it’s the Spirit of the Lord;
there are sweet expressions on each face,
and I know they feel the presence of the Lord.
Sweet Holy Spirit, sweet heavenly Dove,
stay right here with us, filling us with your love;
and for these blessings we lift our hearts in praise;
without a doubt we’ll know that we have been revived
when we shall leave this place.
Let us pray. Lord, thank you for always being there when we need you most. In our deepest times of struggle and tragedies, tell us again about your sweet Spirit is in this place. Grant us the faith and confidence to believe that all things work toward your kingdom to come. Amen.