3rd Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 5: 1-8
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.
Father God
Peace can mean so many things. In the context of our current day, it often brings to mind its opposite: war. We heard a little bit about the war in Ukraine last week, when Carroll College student Mariia Savchenko spoke to us, telling us about how her university was bombed. Dagim Degaro, another Carroll College student, told us about the unrest in his home country of Ethiopia, and how he was studying here in Helena, because he might be killed if he went back home. When we think of peace, we often think about the end of all wars, when people don’t have to be afraid of a foreign power and the violence they might bring. When we don’t have to worry about one group of people trying to eliminate of another group of people. This is probably what most people think about when they hear the phrase, “Peace on Earth.”
Another way that a person might think about peace is quiet and serenity. Being at one with the world, being at one with nature. The sound of a babbling brook, deep cleansing breaths, doing yoga or meditation. There’s a practice in Japan called shinrin-yoku, which translates into “forest bathing”. It’s the practice of intentionally spending time in the forest, experiencing the forest with all of your senses, to really notice what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing and smelling. The purpose of forest bathing is to refresh your body and mind, to reconnect with the earth. To be at peace.
Paul isn’t talking about either of these kinds of peace when he says, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul is talking about the peace of knowing that you are right with God, that God is on your side, knowing that at the end of it all, no matter what happens, you will be with God for all of eternity. Being right with God does not mean that all of your suffering comes to an immediate end. As Paul says, “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
This part is tricky, because a person could easily interpret this to mean that suffering is good, that we need suffering because it leads to endurance, and character, and hope. One might even make the mistake of thinking that suffering comes from God, as a way to propel us along this journey of growth or to help us learn. But, I don’t think that’s what this means, and I don’t think that God operates like that. I think what Paul is trying to say here is that in spite of our suffering, we endure. In spite of our suffering, we hold on to our character. In spite of our suffering, we have hope. And through it all, God is with us.
Today is Fathers’ Day. That, along with this text that is telling us to have hope despite our suffering, of course makes me think about the time that I spent in the hospital and in recovery afterwards, with my dad right at my side taking care of me, right before I moved here. I was in so much pain and I was so weak, but I can honestly say that I wasn’t as scared as I thought I should have been, because my dad was with me the whole time.
I love telling people about how he rode on a bus for eight hours to come help me pack to move here, because he knew that I was hurt and that I needed help. My dad coming to help me was actually one of the more nerve-wracking experiences during those few months, because he had forgotten to charge his phone before getting on the bus. So, he turned it off, to save the battery, and we had no way of getting in touch with him. I had scheduled an Uber to pick him up from the bus depot in San Francisco to take him the rest of the way to where I was living, which was about a 45-minute drive. You can imagine my panic when I got a call from the Uber driver who told me that he couldn’t find my dad, who wasn’t answering his phone.
And, all I could think was, “I lost my dad!” And, I kept imagining him walking around San Francisco with a dead cellphone, and I didn’t how I was going to find him, or how he was going to charge his phone, but he eventually called. His bus had been late, so I sent another Uber to pick him up.
He only brought enough clothes for two days, because he wasn’t expecting to stay for very long. But, within 24 hours of his arrival, I had to ask him to take me to the emergency room, because I was so sick and weak that I thought I had contracted covid. It turned out to be a staph infection that was the result of my injury, and the reason I was feeling so bad was because I had sepsis, so my dad’s 2-day trip turned into 3 months.
But, as miserable and frustrated as I was with my situation, I really did love getting to spend all of that time with my dad and getting to know him better. We’ve had our ups and downs in our relationship throughout the years, as any child would have with their parent, but I will never forget the love and the care that he showed for me during that time. He brought me blankets when I was cold. He turned up the air conditioning when I was hot. He cut up my food and helped me to eat. He helped me to find the remote control when it would get lost in the sheets. And, after I got I out of the hospital, he was always on me to use the breathing machine and to go on my walks, to rebuild my strength. It breaks my heart when people tell me about how worried he was when this was all happening. The way that my dad took care of me helps me to understand the ways in which God loves and cares for us, as a Father.
We take it for granted nowadays that we call God Father. Father God, Our Father in heaven, Our Heavenly Father, but when Jesus called God “Abba”, Father, Dad, that was a radical thing. That was something new for the Jewish people listening to Jesus speak. In the Hebrew Bible, in the Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, the writings of the prophets, it was most common to use the tetragrammaton when referring to God, the Hebrew letters yodh he waw he. These letters put together in this way are unpronounceable, because the name of God shouldn’t be spoken. So, anytime this appears in the Hebrew text, instead of attempting to say God’s name, the reader would say “Adonai” which is often translated as “My Lord”, or “Elohim” which is the plural form of the word for God, but treated here as a singular, or “HaShem” which simply means “the Name.”
They were God’s people, and Adonai was their God, but the relationship was more formal, more ritualistic, some might say distant. So, when Jesus called God “Abba”, he was claiming a different kind of relationship with God, and modelling for us what our relationship with God could be like. God is here. God cares about us. We can have a close and personal relationship with God, our Father, our Parent.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a loving father or father figure in their lives, but God is here for all of us, loving us with an impossible, incomprehensible, magnificent kind of father-love. There is peace in that, no matter what else is happening around us. There is strength in that, no matter how weak we are or how desperate our situation is. God’s love is greater than anything else. It’s the foundation of who we are and the foundation of our community. Whether we have loving father figures in our lives or not, we all have God, and God is counting on us to give that father-love, that parent-love, to everyone around us.
So be at peace on this Fathers’ Day, and if you have a father or father figure in your life, I hope that you have a chance to let them know what they mean to you. And, I pray that the Father-love that God has for you overflows and spills out into the world so that everyone who sees you sees the face of our Father God. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
