"God's Intimate Love"

This morning we’re looking at the deepest and most distinctive teaching contained in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, his teaching on the Holy Spirit that dwells in our hearts.  I believe it’s one of those perfect “God things” that we’ve come to this particular passage on this particular Sunday, because Tuesday is St. Valentine’s Day, a high holy day for expressing love and for sharing valentines with the special people in our lives.  Romans 8 is God’s valentine to us, delivered through the Apostle Paul.   

We’ve all heard that “God is Love.”  The words are from 1 John 4:16.  But, have you ever stopped to think of what that really means?  There can be no love without relationship, so when we say that God is love, what we’re saying is that the essence of God is the expression of relationship.  Even before God began the process of creation, before there was an “other” to love, even when there was only God, there was love.  That’s the paradox of what theologians refer to as the “unity of the Godhead,” which is described as a divine mystery, the mystery of the trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  You see, even when there was only God, there was already the essence of relationship, of love inherent in God.  And it’s from that love of God that all creation has come to be.  The whole world and everything in it is an expression of God’s love.  One of the most profound expressions of that love is contained in Paul’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  The subtitle of Chapter 8 is: “Life Through the Spirit.”

“You are not in the flesh,” Paul writes.  “You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.”  [Romans 8:9]  And “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” [vs. 14]  Already, Paul is using the most intimate descriptive language he possibly can to describe the relationship we are invited to enjoy with God, our creator.  We are God’s “children.”  And, to underscore the intimacy of that relationship, he goes on to say, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”  What you need to know here is that “Abba” is the Aramaic word for “Father,” but it is the most familiar, intimate form of the word.  Our word “daddy” would actually capture the intimacy that the Aramaic word “abba” seeks to express.  Paul is saying that there’s something within us, a divine spark, a Holy Spirit that God has placed in our hearts that was created to be in the most intimate relationship possible with the awesome God of all creation.  Our heavenly parent, “papa,” created heaven and earth, and created us to be in the most intimate, personal and loving relationship possible with him.  We are God’s children. 

But then there’s a caveat that needs a word of explanation.  He goes on to say that we’re joint heirs with Christ “if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”  What does that mean, to suffer with Christ, and be glorified with him?  It means, simply put, that the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be overly spiritualized, to the point that the children of God are taken out of the world.  In what scholars refer to as Christ’s “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17:13, Jesus prays:  “[Father] I do not pray that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from evil . . . As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

What Paul is saying here is that God loves the world so much that God doesn’t take us out of the world – instead God comes into the world!  God takes on the very flesh and blood suffering of the human condition, becomes like us, that through Christ we can become like God.  That’s the mystery of the incarnation.  God becomes flesh in order that we might become spirit. While we are in the world, in the flesh of our bodies, there will be suffering.  Christ suffered just as we suffer, but he gave it all to God, committed his whole life and even his death to God and thereby sanctified human suffering, making it a channel of grace.  We are not alone.  God’s love has taken on flesh.  Suffering is inevitable and inescapable.  But, there is hope.  If we approach our suffering even as Christ approached his suffering, as a prayer, as holy ground, as an avenue of grace, then we, like he, will come to know the glory of that original unity, the love and intimacy of that original divine relationship that Paul describes as “being glorified with him.” 

Paul knew what he was talking about.  This isn’t just a theory or idle speculation for Paul.  He was beaten, shipwrecked and run out of town in the course of his ministry.  So, in words that are clearly autobiographical, he says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

And this next passage could have been ripped right out of the morning headlines.  I’m sure you’ve all been hearing about how a group of evangelical leaders have begun speaking out on the issue of global warming.  I find that incredibly hopeful. Do you remember me saying when we started this series that Paul describes four great relationships - with God, with our neighbor, with our own deepest self, and with the earth?  Here, in verses 19 – 22, we have Paul’s teaching about a biblical view of ecology:  “For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the children of God . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.”    Again, notice the most intimate relational, and incarnational language possible.  Paul describes the suffering of nature, personifying it as though creation were a woman in labor.  And it is profoundly hopeful.  Childbirth is pure pain, but it is pain with a purpose, the promise of new life. 

You have to understand the radical nature of Paul’s metaphor against the backdrop of a Greek concept of history as cyclical, and suffering as essentially random, whimsical and without real purpose or direction.  Paul’s thought is rooted in the Hebrew concept of history as purposeful.  God created the world and called it good.  And God has acted decisively in human history to redeem suffering, to bring it to glorious fruition in unity with the divine purpose.  That’s how Paul understands Jesus Christ, and that’s how he understands us, as children of God, empowered with the gift of the Holy Spirit to act as responsible agents of reconciliation in right relationship with God and therefore in right relationship with the earth and all of creation.  Creation has been groaning in travail, subjected to the pain of abuse and exploitation, but even this suffering of the earth is seen as hopeful, like childbirth, longing for the responsible, loving children of God who will enter into the glory of a love relationship with both Father God and mother earth! 

When Father Isaac Skidmore of the local Eastern Orthodox Church met with a group of us last Thursday night for an interfaith dialogue, he shared an example of what this right relationship, this loving attitude for creation might look like. He quoted St. Isaac of Syria’s description of the mystic’s loving heart for God’s creation: 

“When one with such a heart as this thinks of the creature and looks at them, his eyes are filled with tears because of the overwhelming compassion that presses upon his heart.  The heart of such a one grows tender, and he cannot endure to hear of or look upon any injury, even the smallest suffering, inflicted upon anything in creation.  Therefore he never ceases to pray with tears even for the dumb animals, for the enemies of truth and for all who do harm to it, asking that they may be guarded and receive God’s mercy.  And for the reptiles also he prays with great compassion, which rises up endlessly in his heart, after the example of God.”  (St. Isaac of Syria)

And now we come to the very heart of Paul’s teaching on the Holy Spirit, words that are among the deepest and most profound he ever uttered:  “Likewise the Sprit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs [groans] too deep for words.” [Romans 8:26]  I know you have all had the experience of feeling so overwhelmed that you just didn’t know how to pray.  I mentioned my New Testament professor, Walter Wink, a few weeks ago.  He and his wife, June, travel all over the country doing workshops.  June is a dancer and a potter, so their workshops are a unique blend of their gifts.  Walter does Bible studies, which are left brain, intellectual exercises, then June gets people out of their heads and into their bodies, teaching a more experiential, right brain approach to scripture.  One of the most memorable experiences I have ever had with scripture was when, after talking about this very passage for an hour with Walter, June had us actually rise to our feet, begin moving throughout the room in our bodies – taking great steps, swinging our arms, feeling the unity of our breath and our body movements, and sighing!  Groaning out loud as we moved! Then she’d have us call out various personal and planetary ills, and we’d spontaneously groan and move about the room.  Someone would cry out, “Cancer and the suffering of loved ones,” and we’d groan, and feel our bodies respond.  Someone else would cry out, “Global warming and the extinction of the species,” and we’d feel the pain, groan, and move.  It went on for 10 minutes and then she had us collapse and lie on the floor, and offer up our silent prayers in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  It was one of the most profound and most incarnational bible studies I have ever experienced. We went from the mind of Christ into the body of Christ, from the head directly into the heart.  The Spirit intercedes for us in sighs too deep for words. 

There is so much more I could share, but I want to close by reading these final words without comment.  I know they are familiar to you and there’s really nothing I could say that would make them any more powerful that they already are.  These words have brought hope, assurance and comfort to more people throughout the centuries than perhaps any other words that Paul ever wrote: 

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,” [Romans 8:28] and “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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.”  [Romans 8:38]

Those words are God’s valentine to us, the expression of God’s most intimate love experienced through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that is closer to us than breath, closer than life itself.  From God’s heart to yours - thanks be to God.  Amen.