17th Sunday After Pentecost (Ordinary Time)
27 July 2008
D. Ross-Jones
Plymouth Church (UCC), Milwaukee

Rom. 8:26-39


Creator God, we thank you for all things: especially today’s opportunity to gather together as your community and approach you through your Word.  We pray now that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

I don’t know.

How many times do you catch yourself saying or thinking those three words during the course of a regular day?  From something as simple as watching the other drivers at a four-way stop to ascertain who is going to move first; to something as elaborate as trying to understand suffering in the world; or something as concerning to Wisconsinites as whether or not the Packers will be any good this year without #4 — or is it with him today? — those moments of “I don’t know,” those question mark moments are the stuff from which faith is born.

“I don’t know” is one of the first complete phrases we English-speakers learn in our early childhood development.  It seems that it permeates our entire being, from birth to death, and so it makes perfect sense that Paul addresses it in his letter to the Romans.

Today’s reading comes from a book where the central theme is of salvation by grace through Jesus Christ, not by works of the law.  Right away we start out with a great “I don’t know,” for if we are saved from the law, what must we do to be in right relationship with our Creator?  What shape does this new covenant take?  Hallelujah that we escape the impossible requirements of the Old Testament law, but now we’re in a new paradigm: one without a model for us to draw upon.


Growing up in a tradition that doesn’t just live in religious paradox, it fully embraces and indeed seeks it, I can’t help but chuckle at all the potential pitfalls in this passage.  Paul establishes a litany of the elect, defining those people called according to God’s purpose.  In tension with this group are… well, everyone else.  Just a few passages before this one, we read about the world to come, a future condition where all pain and suffering ceases, a place that is so dissimilar to this world below its not even worthwhile imagining it.

There’s some assurance: that the Spirit speaks for us what human language can only groan.  But then there’s that little statement that God makes all things work together for good for those who love God.  That’s where I really don’t know.

How am I to take peace in this divine intervention when everywhere I look, I am affronted and offended by my surroundings?  By a nation suffering through economic uncertainty, by a region enduring one natural disaster after the next, by a city shattered by violence in the streets, suffering in the grips of injustices of racism, sexism, classism and all the other -isms.  A global energy crisis, the likes of which may very possibly destroy the whole of creation.  Famine and food shortages and an entire continent engulfed in an AIDS pandemic.  Human beings killing other human beings simply because they want to.  What about all of the current times, God?  What about them?  I don’t know how I’m supposed to have faith through all of this.

Paul goes on to reassure us.  Through Jesus’ atoning act, through the very being of God-with-us joining the human condition, suffering human doubts, suffering human needs, suffering human frustration, indeed suffering a brutal human death, there is nothing that can separate us from God’s tether.  He uses the famous words, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  God, in God’s never-ending grace and mercy already has and continues to deliver us from more than we can bear, won’t stop loving us, won’t stop caring and providing and enabling the creation God made.

And when I get caught up in my own condition, in the collective atrocities of humanity, that’s when it hits me:

I don’t know.  And what a wonderful thing that is.

Because I don’t know, I can take the good to spite the bad: like when I visit with the people at the mid-week community meal at an inner-city church.  I don’t have a clue what its like to be along the very extreme margins of society, relying on the charity of others and civil assistance in order to even survive.  I don’t know what its like to have to rely on the free clinic that is housed in the church basement.  I don’t know what part of God’s plan is being fulfilled by such services even needing to be provided, but I do cherish the conversations I’ve had with the people as they come in on Wednesdays for a warm, hearty meal, health check-ups and Bible study.

I don’t know what part of God’s plan is being fulfilled by quitting my job, giving up the pension plan and the health insurance and the fringe benefits and deciding to go to seminary, spending three more years in the halls of academia and — God willing — eventually being ordained to the pastoral office.

Even more, I don’t know what happens after that is all done.

Augustine says it best, when he summarized earlier Greek theologians: “If you have understood, what you have understood is not God.”  In other words, those “I don’t know” moments are good, strong moments when we can further develop our faith in God the Creator, God-with-us the Redeemer and God-for-us the Spirit.

Dan Chun is a Presbyterian minister, who serves the community of First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu, Hawaii.  He talks about the strongest affirmation any human can make: “I’m pretty sure I’m right, but I might be wrong.”  We don’t have all the answers, even when we’re certain they’re written on our nose.  No one holds a crystal ball with which to interpret the future.  And above all, no one knows what God’s beautiful, wonderful plan for creation is to be.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”  We are called to be people of faith… question mark?  Without question marks, without “I don’t know,” without Christian charity in our work now, we fail to approach God in faith that God’s plan will be carried out.  In the text, we are comforted with the assurance that all things work together for good, not that all circumstances of this life are good, but that amid all these things, God’s purpose prevails.

What is that purpose?  I don’t know.  But thank God for faith… question mark?

Glory be to God alone.  Amen.