“I just don’t understand the will of God.”  That’s what the woman said after Alex Coffin’s untimely death.  That’s what led his father, William Sloane Coffin, to say that we never know enough to say that someone’s death was the will of God.    Coffin is right, but most of us have been where that woman was.  Tragedy has struck.  Someone we loved has died.  In the face of such loss, especially when we thought we were living according to God’s purposes, we have said, “I just don’t understand.” 

 

Last Sunday, we spoke of the groaning of creation which is Paul’s way of saying that the world suffers because things are not as they should be, not as God intends them to be.   Today’s reading picks up where we left off last week, and this time Paul is speaking of the groaning of the Holy Spirit.   Well, actually the text says “sighs too deep for words” instead of groans, but I think maybe that’s just a more polite way to describe it, since he is speaking about the Holy Spirit.  

 

If you were here last Sunday, you know that the red pins on this map represent places and people we are concerned about, places where the creation’s groaning is keen.  If you weren’t here last week, I invite you to take a look at this map after worship because it probably won’t be here next week.  Sometimes, if we let ourselves think about the reality of life on this planet – disease and famine, the needs of refugees, the ongoing conflicts and wars, any number of environmental issues, the grief of just one family over a loved one’s death – if we let ourselves stop and really take it in, we can easily be overwhelmed.   The issues are complex and every potential solution seems to have a downside, or we can’t imagine how all parties concerned would agree to it, and we might despair.  Or we might pray.  Sometimes maybe we don’t pray because we don’t know what to pray for, because we just don’t understand, because we don’t know what to want and we don’t know what God wants.  And then, Paul says, when words fail us, the Spirit intercedes for us.  The Spirit translates our wordless longing and beseeches God on our behalf. 

 

Today’s sermon is really supposed to be about prayer, but I have to digress for a minute to talk about the Trinity.  A minute is not enough time to talk about the Trinity, but there’s never enough time for that.  The mystery of the Trinity is one of those things that can delight theologians forever.  For myself, in a nutshell, the most important thing about the Trinity is that it means that God is fundamentally in relationship.   In ways deeper than we can understand, God understands and embodies loving connectedness.   And we are invited to enter into those relationships, to be part of that connection. 

 

One way we do that is through prayer.  Even when we don’t know what or how to pray, the Spirit knows and prays on our behalf with us.  Paul writes that the Spirit intercedes “according to God’s will.” Theologian Tom Wright says that  “This hints at something deeper than merely praying in the way God wants or approves;  God’s own life, love and energy are involved in the process.”[1]  This leads me to the radical thought that the Trinity is more than the three persons we usually think of.  The Trinity encompasses us.  We are within the life of God.  I don’t know about you, but I find that amazing. 

 

But if we are within the life of God, why do bad things happen?  Why did Alex Coffin drown at 24?  Why did more than 90 people die yesterday in Oslo?  Why did God let that happen?  Where was God anyway? 

 

The next verse of our text seems to give an answer.  Romans 8:28 – this is one of those verses that many of us have memorized.  Most of us know it like it says in our pew Bibles “We know that all things work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  How many of us have that version memorized, or at least it’s very familiar? 

 

All things work together for good . . . seriously?  All things?  Human rights abuses?  Cancer?   The holocaust?  Really?  There are things that happen which are not the will of God, evil things, so how can it be that all things work together for good?

 

Let’s take a quick look at the technicalities of translation.  The Greek verb which is translated “work together” is the Greek verb sunergei.  We get the English word “synergy” from it.  It implies an active, intentional involvement.  The noun panta means all things.  But in Greek, the form of panta would be the same whether it were the subject or the object of the verb.  In other words, the sentence might be translated “all things work together”  or “something works together in all things.”  Some, but not all, ancient manuscripts have additional words in this verse.  They have ho theos,  the word for God, as the subject of the sentence.  And so, if you read certain translations, you will see verse 28 like this: “In all things God works for good . . .”

 

To my ear, this is a sentence with more power, something I can really affirm.  To me this says that not everything happens for a reason, or at least not for God’s reason, that not everything is part of God’s plan.  We don’t have to pretend that our pain isn’t real, that bad things aren’t really bad,  but we can also believe that even in our darkest moments, God is at work for good.

 

A man named John was exiled from his homeland of Rwanda in 1959.  He was a member of the Tutsi tribe.  You remember that in the late 1990’s, the Tutsi people suffered genocide at the hands of the Hutu tribe.  In 1997, he moved back to Rwanda because he said he knew God was telling him that he could not leave the fate of his homeland in the hands of those who carried guns through the countryside. 

 

Shortly after he returned, his sixteen-year-old niece came to tell her Uncle John that she was afraid for herself and her family because of the Hutu raids still happening in the area.  John gave her some money and told her to bring her family to live near him and he assured her that they would be safe.

Two days later, the news came that rebels had infiltrated his niece’s home and tortured and killed her and her brother and mother. 

 

John was a pastor and up to this point, he had been preaching in prisons.  Many of those in prison were there for murder and torture of Tutsi people.  John wasn’t sure that he could go on preaching about God’s love and forgiveness to the kind of people who killed his niece.  But eventually he came to believe that he had to forgive them and to continue to preach repentance to those in prison and forgiveness to victims and survivors.  And then another idea came to him.  With more than 300,000 orphans in Rwanda, he decided to open an orphanage where Hutu and Tutsi children would live together and be taught to love and respect each other.  Today the Sonrise School and Orphanage does just that.  Many of these orphans lost their parents in the genocide, but the school staff works to bring about reconciliation, so that another generation of Tutsis and Hutus will not grow up as enemies.  In the midst of the worst atrocities that human beings can do to one another, God was at work for good.

 

Now please hear me carefully.  I am not saying that since God is at work for good in all things, everything will always come out all right.  Rwanda’s healing has taken years and the suffering goes on.  But I think it is clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that God is working for good there.  It might take time and that same hindsight for us to see the good that God is working in our lives as well.

 

I’d like to go back to the technicalities of translation one more time.  Remember that verb sunergei ?   I said that it means to work together.  In the rest of the New Testament, this word is used to describe two entities working together as a team.  In most cases, it is explicitly talking about God working with people or people working with each other.  So in the New Testament, this word is not about making things work together; it is about two parties working together.   As commentator Tim Geddert writes, “Romans 8:28 is not about God fitting all things together into a pattern for our benefit.  It is rather about God and those who love God working as partners, “working together” to bring about good in all situations.”  He goes on,

 

“We were called by God;  we love God’ and thus we join God’s work in the world.  God is working to bring about good and we are God’s fellow workers.  God’s good purposes will often come about in terrible situations, not because someone sat back and trusted God’s promise” but because someone “joined God’s work in the world .  .”[2]

 

Perhaps we need to remember to ask, “what is the good that God might be working for and how can I help?” Perhaps we are working to be patient and gentle with each other.  Perhaps we are reaching out to our world, to serve the poor, and to care for our neighbors.  Perhaps we are in the process of forgiving and loving in some new and maybe even painful ways.

 

In the midst of a groaning creation, let us affirm that in everything God is working for good and let us re-commit ourselves to be God’s partners in that good work.  Amen. 

 

 

Benediction

The way is long, let us go together.

The way is difficult, let us help each other.

The way is joyful, let us share it.

The way is Christ’s, for Christ is the Way, let us follow.

The way is open before us, let us go:

          With the love of God,

          The grace of Christ, and

          The communion of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.