A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. Jisun Kwak at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey on July 25, 2010

Title: God is Good! All the Time!

How many of you came in on time today?
Never be late! Do you know why? I will tell you a story.

A priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congregation were chosen to make the presentation and give a little speech at the dinner. He was delayed, so the priest decided to say his own few words while they waited. “I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when questioned by the police, was able to lie his way out of it. He stole money from his parents, embezzled from his employer, had an affair with his boss’s wife; taken illegal drugs. I was appalled. But as the days went on I knew that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people.”

Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies for being late. He immediately began to make the presentation and gave his talk. “I’ll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived,” said the politician. “‘In fact, I had the honor of being the first one to go to him for confession.”

Moral: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER BE LATE!

In Romans, the 8th chapter, the 28th verse:

We know that in everything God works for good
with those who love him…

Do you really know that in everything God works for good with those who love him?
Is that mean those who love God will not get sick get into an accident or never get fired or go hungry?
How do we go about explaining, making sense out of those recurring headlines of catastrophe;
tornado, flood, oil spill, and accident,
that unforgettable scene at Virginia Tech and Columbine, those inconsolable parents, teachers, classmates, friends.
How do we, as Christians, begin to deal with the enormity of human anguish, the sheer magnitude of a Holocaust, a Hiroshima, or AIDS, or at the other end of the scale the microcosmic individual agony of one child, one friend, one family member, who dies of an incurable disease?
How do we explain why bad things happen to us, to me personally?
And how to reconcile all this with a loving Father/Mother-God?
There have been answers given in the past; answers many of us cling to as, maybe not perfect, but the best that we can find.

Woody Allen proposes one that has a certain
offbeat appeal when he suggests that maybe God is not malevolent after all, merely an underachiever.
This text of Paul’s:
We know that all things work together for good to
them that love God…

has been both used and misused in this context.
There is, you see, a dispute between ancient manuscripts here.
Some, reading as I have just done, would seem to suggest that everything is always OK:
…all things work together for good…that everything that happens really does reflect God’s will and therefore must turn out for the best.
So if you love God, just accept, submit, and murmur quietly:
Thy will be done. Lord, thy will be done.
Now while there is a certain strength, a certain shade of the truth in such a reading, I often find it impossible to accept.
I speak only personally here, but even to suggest that such things are God’s will, to propose that either hurricane or holocaust the massacre of children or the deterioration of an elderly mind into chaos or abusive relationship; to suggest that any or all of this is the will of God seems to me to verge upon blasphemy.
What kind of God would wish this hell upon his children – even as a form of punishment?
Whatever kind, and it’s not the God I learned about from Jesus; not the kind of God that l can call my heavenly father or mother, that I can trust with my immortal soul.

Now note with me the alternative reading of this verse:

We know that in everything… in everything God
works for good with those who love him…

Do you catch the difference?

Not that everything itself is necessarily good.
Not that there is no such thing as evil, tragedy, injustice.
But that in and through the evil, God is with us,
working at our side seeking with us the potential that is surely even there for good for hope, for truth and love and faith.

And if we love God, since we love God, we will recognize God there,
join our work to his, and bring forth hope even from the depths of what appears utterly hopeless.

Jesus – do you recall? – told a parable about this.

Two persons built two houses, one on rock, the other on sand.
One fell, one endured;
but, and this is the important part for us today- an observation we all too often miss –
they shared the same treatment.

Storm, wind and flood came equally upon those two houses.
They both were tested,
both pushed to the breaking point by all the buffeting this world affords.

The difference came,

not in the treatment they received from life,
but in where they had set their roots,
had placed their trust.

I have been telling you! There is evil in this world. The innocent do suffer unjustly. How can anyone deny it?

There are hurts and depths of pain that no one should ever, could ever deserve.

The message of the cross, of our gospel, of Paul, is not that we Christians are exempt, completely delivered from such pains, miraculously lifted out of them because we love the Lord.

If this were so, the crucifixion would be a mockery, a meaningless ugly episode on the face of human history.
The message rather is that in all this, in every hardship and agony,
we will never be abandoned,
we will not have to face it alone.
Our God is with us.

Our God Emmanuel which means
“God with us — God beside us.”

One thing more:
Paul says we are predestined:
We know that in everything God works for good
with those who love him, who are called according
to his purpose. For those whom God foreknew he
also predestined…

We hear this word today — predestination —we think of predestination nowadays and get all caught up in debate about whether he or she, or they, or even we, are going to end up in hell.

That is not, I am convinced, at all what Paul had in mind.

When Paul here writes “predestined,” he means precisely what it sounds like, that our destiny has been determined in advance;
that this God who spared not even his own Son, but freely gave him up for you and me, this God has his own plan, his own pre-destiny for his own creation,

and that destiny means redemption,
means renewal,
means deliverance and blessing,
means God’s amazing, almost unbelievable, and yes, all-sufficient grace.

You see, The future finally, lies in God’s hands, not ours.
Thank God for that!

And in everything that happens, whether good or evil,
God is working to bring forth his future through your life and mine.
That is what gave to Paul his supreme, amazing confidence.

That is how he could write that we are:
more than conquerors through him that loved
us… more than conquerors.

Do you realize, do you have any idea how absurd that must have sounded?

Paul, a wandering, Jewish tent maker.
One who had been lashed, stoned and shipwrecked — no, he didn’t write these words in a seminary library — Paul a homeless, unprepossessing prisoner of the Imperial Roman Justice System.
And here was this, this wretched Paul claiming to be more than all of them, “more than conquerors.”

The Good News that Paul bore with him.
The hunger that he bore it to.

Above all, he knew his Lord,
his Lord who died to show that he was trustworthy,
and then returned to give him strength,
power for the journey.
Paul’s living words ring in our ears today:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life (and when you’ve conquered those two you can conquer anything!) neither death nor life, nor angels, principalities, powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now that’s what I call conquering!

Let us pray: