"God Is On Our Side"
Romans 8: 28-39
Psalm 44: 17-26
Let me introduce you to a woman by the name of Myrna. Myrna is one of those persons you
meet who you just can’t help but to like. She is outgoing, friendly, sincere, kind, and helpful. When
work of any kind needs done around her church, Myrna is the “go to.” And everything she does,
she puts her whole self into. In terms of faith, Myrna might be described as a devout woman. She
has a rich devotional and prayer life. She’s a leader in her women’s mid-week Bible study group.
Myrna is recognized by everyone as a spiritual pillar in the life of her small congregation. Myrna has
the ability to light up a room with her presence. She is of Latin descent, her deep complexion, full
features, broad smile and mildly-accented voice make everyone feel comfortable in her presence.
Yet behind her smile and dancing eyes is a side of Myrna very few have occasion to see:
a deeply pained little girl who has known more than any fair share of rejection and suffering. As a child, she
had been abandoned by her biological mother. She was reared by kin folk who took her into their
home more out of a sense of obligation than as a labor of love. Their brand of discipline was very
severe and abusive. By the age of nine, Myrna had been removed from that home and placed in a
Bolivian convent orphanage where discipline was cloaked in religion, but was no less harsh.
At sixteen, she ran away and married a much older man who used her as the object of his and
his friends’ sexual desires. She bore him three children, and also bore the responsibility of raising
them alone when he ran off with another woman. Her youngest was then only two months of age.
In her early twenties, Myrna obtained a work visa and came to the United States with her kids.
Against all odds, she raised her family on the wages of a domestic housekeeper, and even put her
eldest son through the University of Pittsburgh where he was standout defensive end.
Just a year before I met her, Myrna had been diagnosed with leukemia. After several months of
brutal treatment, the disease was driven into remission. My first occasion to offer her pastoral
care was when her fifteen year-old son ran away from home. It was only then that I learned of all
this pain which was so well concealed behind her bright eyes and easy smile. It was also then that I
discovered that the God she worshipped – and genuinely loved – was in her understanding an
angry and vindictive God. Myrna was convinced that when each of the many trials in her life came
along, they were signs of God’s disfavor; indications of God’s lack of pleasure with her lifestyle, her
behavior, her faith, even her child-rearing. She would say in conversation: “If I could only stop messing up,
God might love me more. I must be a terrible disappointment. I feel like God’s punishing
me, and I guess I deserve it, right?
Considering everything Myrna has been through in her forty years, it’s not surprising that the
only God she’s come to know is a god of wrath. God as a merciful God is an entirely foreign idea to
her. She’s heard plenty in her church about God’s grace and forgiveness. But that doesn’t square
with everything her life experiences have taught her. She wants desperately to know God in a new
way, but she is mired in a past where everyone she has ever tried to love has abused and abandoned her.
In the thirty plus years I’ve spent in Christian ministry, I’ve come to realize that Myrna is not an
isolated case. It’s not uncommon to find even among the most devoted and committed Christian
folk a mindset like Myrna’s. The church is filled with people who have been through some pretty
terrible things: abandonment, abuse, rejection, loss. Many have sought through the church to make
sense of it all; to put in some semblance of order all the bad stuff which happens in life, even when
they’re trying to do the good and right things. Yet how common it is to find Christians, as they
reflect upon disaster and tragedy which has beset them, or someone they know, thinking to them-
selves: What have I done wrong? What is in my past which has brought this upon me? What did
he or she do which deserves this?
The oldest books in the Bible, and perhaps one of the most ancient documents ever written,
carries the title of Job. This folk tale presents a man described as “blameless and upright, one who
feared God, and turned away from evil.” As you know, Job was beset by some of the worst
tragedies imaginable: loss of his children; loss of his property; loss of his physical health. As Job laid
in the ashes of mourning, his friends came to him: “Job, your God has abandoned you. He has taken
your fortunes from you. So what have you done? Surely, there is something which merits this.”
Likewise, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, some of Jesus’ disciples were asking Him about a
tragedy in the village of Siloam. A tower there inexplicably collapsed killing eighteen innocent people.
The disciples asked their teacher: “Rabbi, do you think the ones killed were worse offenders
than the others? Surely, there is something in their lives which brought this on.” In effect, they were
inquiring about what these eighteen, or their families, must have done to God to cause God to revoke His love and abandon them to tragedy.
In the midst of or following earthquake, tsunami, tornado, fire, accident, pandemic, isn’t one of
the first questions we ask – even if only in our own minds: What brought this on? What have they
done to deserve this? What does God know that we don’t? One of the reasons the stories of Job and
the tower of Siloam have such enduring value, and are included in God’s inspired word, is that they
deal with such seminal questions: Why do bad things happen? Have I brought this on myself?
Where is God in all this? The mind set of our human condition – fallen as it is – has often construed
that trials, or persecution, or poverty, or disease, or distress are somehow indicative of God’s reject-
tion or abandonment; that when we experience life’s darker seasons, God has removed God’s love
from us.
It is true that we frequently act against God’s will and our own well-being; behaving contrary to
what we know is right and good; violating God’s created order, acting instead in our own self-interest.
And it is equally true that we often bring upon ourselves the natural consequences of such
action. But to make the sweeping assumption that all ill-fortune is evidence of God’s disfavor, or
viewing suffering as a sign of God’s falling out of love with us, is a distortion of the overall message
of the Bible. If the Bible makes clear nothing else, it should make this much clear: God is on our
side! God is on our side!
Nowhere is this theology better articulated than in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In terms of context,
Paul was writing to the church in a city where pagan worship was dominant. It was believed by most Romans
that there were multiple gods in control of different aspects of the natural order – a
god of thunder; a god of sea; a god of fertility; a god of prosperity. The worst one could do was to
offend any of these gods for there would be consequences. Being struck by lightning, drowning at
sea in a storm, failure of crops, prosperity to poverty – all these were considered to be signs of divine
disfavor and rejection prompted by human misbehavior.
Naturally, this kind of thinking crept into the mindset of the church and the theology of its members.
If you make the Almighty mad, there’s going to be a price to pay. This is not just some ancient thought or superstition.
Such a mindset and theology are still dominant in the lives of many devoted and committed Christians in 21st century America.
Paul was trying to convince the 1st century church – and is still trying to convince us today – that
this is not who God is. God is on our side! Paul declares: “What then shall we say to this?” What
shall we believe about God in the face of “the sufferings of this present time.” Confronted with the
reality that bad things happen, even when we’re trying to do what is good and right, where do we
see God in all this? As our adversary? As One who is looking to abuse and reject and abandon us?
Certainly not! Paul asks, “If God is for us, who is against us?” That is a clearly rhetorical question to
which the answer is a resounding No one!
Paul goes on to reason that if God would go so far as to give up His only Son Jesus – the very
essence of Godself, for our benefit; for our salvation; for our justification – how could we for a moment believe
that God stands against us, or would ever consider abandoning or rejecting us? Paul
then moves from the rhetorical to the practical question: “Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
In the midst of their distress, the nation of Israel was given voice by the Psalmist reflecting a distorted perception of God.
Paul quotes, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are
regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” Paul emphatically answers the Psalmist “No, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
In spite of the painful reality of all these things which befall us, we continue to have God on our
side. In spite of our rejection of God; our disobedience to God’s will; our falling short of God’s best
intentions for us, God remains forever in love with us. The Brief Statement of Faith developed by our
denomination in 1983 says it eloquently. However much we rebel against God; hide from God; violate and exploit
God’s created order, we are assured that “Loving us still, God makes us heirs with
Christ of the covenant. Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to
welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.”
In this morning’s lesson from Romans, Paul encourages us to see and understand God in a new
way. There will be trials and tribulations in our lives. Things like abuse, abandonment, rejection,
sufferings of all manner are inescapable realities of life. We will be faced with unfairness, injustice,
what seems altogether senseless pain. Even as we seek to address and redress these issues, we may
find ourselves tempted to look to God in such times and assume we’ve somehow disappointed God,
or caused God by our own behavior to reject and abandon us; to think that we do not merit God’s
love, but rather have earned God’s wrath. Those seminal questions haunt every generation of the
human family.
Might I close with a suggestion. A good passage to commit to memory is this reminder that God
is indeed on our side! Hear again these words of assurance: “For I am sure that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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 God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.