It was a cold night on
the sea. A storm was approaching from a distance, but hadn't yet
overtaken the shivering sailors of Sparta as they sat and stood
around the deck. They were on their way, under the command of
Lysander, to wage war on the allies of Athens. But this storm this
night, in this cold and this dark, had a few of the younger sailors
unsettled, in spite of all their vaunted Spartan bravery, heirs of
Leonidas and the three hundred. One asked doubtfully, through
chattering teeth, “What hope have we in the storm to come?”
An elder pointed above,
to two stars overhead, and asked, “Do ye remember the story of them
gods of our city? Men tell of a queen of Sparta, Leda her name, and
her husband King Tyndareus – though unbeknownst to her king and
husband, Leda was visited by the king of the gods, Zeus, one day in
disguise, sating his sovereign lusts. Leda gave birth to children,
among them these twin boys, Castor and Polydeuces. Oh, the
adventures they had together, thick as thieves! Side by side, they
chased the Caledonian Boar. Side by side, they sailed on Jason's
Argo. Side by side, they
rescued their sister Helen from Theseus' grasp. Not a thing did one
do that the other didn't. Theirs had no rivalry, no contest, no
variance of path; only unbridled friendship and untainted
brotherhood. Wild on horseback and fierce athletes, the two of them,
and never the one without the other.
“Oh,
over a pair of twin sisters they began a feud with their twin cousins
– twins against twins, Castor and Polydeuces against Lynceus and
Idas. Castor and Polydeuces stole the latter's cattle, but Lynceus
and Idas saw them in the act, caught them in the act, and Idas in his
fury thrust a spear through Castor. Polydeuces gave chase, killed
Lynceus, was in danger of retaliation – until a thunderbolt
consumed Idas. Polydeuces ran back to his brother, his dearest
friend, dying, death rattling in his throat. Polydeuces wept hot
tears, cried out to Zeus, begging to die at his brother's side, 'for
glory is departed from a man robbed of his friends,' said he. Zeus
came to him, told him the secret truth: Leda had lain with Zeus and
the Spartan king in such quick succession that the twins were, in a
fashion, sons of both – but Polydeuces heir to Zeus and
immortality, and Castor heir to the king and the inevitable pains of
death. Nonetheless, Zeus offered Polydeuces a choice: 'If freed from
death and the harsh years of age, it is thy will to dwell beside my
throne upon Olympus, companion to Athena and to Ares, god of the
shadowing spear, this choice is thine to take; but if, in thy heart's
travail for thy brother, thou art in mind to share all things alike
with him, then half thy days shalt thou beneath the earth draw
breath, and half within the golden citadels of heaven.' And
Polydeuces had no need to think twice: he gladly bartered half his
divine heritage away to his brother. Oh, you may hear from some that
they trade off, passing as ships in the night, but believe them not.
One day, the two together are among the heavens; the next day, the
two together make their home in the darkest valleys of gloom; but
together always. And in the sky Zeus placed their stars, to watch
over ships, but surely those of their kinsmen and fellow-citizens of
Sparta on the sea.”
And
so the Spartan sailor might well have consoled his shipmates with the
old myth – a moving myth, of the exalted heroes who share and share
alike, half-immortal each. Castor and Polydeuces were, through love,
made inseparable. Polydeuces – or Pollux, as the Romans would
later call him – refused to let anything, not even a mortal wound,
not even death itself, separate Castor from him. Just a myth – but
a myth with beauty to tell. Their popularity spread far and wide,
vastly beyond Sparta. Paul passed by the Anakeion, their temple in
Athens. He surely passed by their statues in Corinth, day by day, as
he wrote his letter to the Roman churches. The early Roman
Christians, as they went about their business and passed through the
forum, walked beneath the gaze of statues of Castor and Pollux set in
front of their temple there. And when Paul finally left Malta where
he'd been shipwrecked so that he could journey and be with the men
and women who'd read his letter, the ship that took him there, Luke
tells us, had carvings of Castor and Pollux on its prow (Acts 28:11).
Paul
and the Roman Christians alike rejected their temples and statues and
observances, but maybe, just maybe, they could appreciate the
sentiments of the story. Things in the Roman churches – and note
the plural – had not been great. The spread of the gospel had met
reception and opposition there in the Jewish community – and it had
gotten heated. Fed up at the strife, the emperor Claudius had given
an order expelling Jews from Rome. It was this that sent Priscilla
and Aquila to Corinth where they met Paul. In their absence, the
Gentile converts had taken the lead in Roman church life, crafting an
approach all their own. And then the Jews, including many Jewish
Christians, returned. Now nobody saw quite eye to eye; we'll find
out more about that in the months to come. But there were many
churches – some more Gentile, some more Jewish, some with one
position, some with another. And there were some Gentile-heavy
churches that evidently got the idea, from treatment like this, that
God had chosen them to replace
the Jews as God's chosen people, even to replace Jewish believers –
that the Jews as a whole, even the believing remnant, had been
rejected, separated from God's electing love. After all, look at how
they had suffered in their exile from the city! And didn't everyone
know that disaster was a sign of rejection? Didn't even Jewish
wisdom say that “seven kinds of punishment come to the world for
seven categories of sin” (Pirqe Avot
5:8), with famine, distress, and the sword among them? Didn't Jewish
writings themselves identify God's wrath with “evil diseases,
famine, thirst, pestilence, and the sword” (4Q504, frg. 2)? If the
expelled believers were suffering all these things, when the Gentile
believers were building the church fine on their own, how could the
afflicted exiles under God's wrath not be separated from the love of
Christ?
We
might consider it an odd way to think. Or do we? Rome, when Paul
wrote, was full of churches judging each other, full of believers
judging each other, full of churches and believers reading love and
wrath into the big events of their communities and the littler events
of their lives. The emperor's order comes down, and you know some
Gentile believer mad at the Jewish guy in the other pew thought to
himself, “Ha, serves him right.” You know that, even after the
Jews were readmitted to the city, Roman churches at odds would start
to look for every twist and turn of fortune as signs of God's favor
or disfavor. You know there were surely at least a couple believers
in exile who came back, heard what the others were thinking and how
they were judging, and started internalizing it, thinking, “Maybe I
am rejected. Maybe all this was punishment. Maybe God isn't for me
any more. Maybe I'm outside the love of Christ.”
And
is it all so different today? Aren't we tempted to think like that?
To worry that we'll be rejected, turned out, turned away, cut off?
To wonder what we've done wrong when things go wrong? To see God's
favor or God's disfavor, God's love or God's wrath, in the numerical
growth and decline of churches and denominations, or in the
circumstances of our lives, or the health of our bodies?
“Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or danger, or sword”
– the seven classic woes that Paul and the Jewish Christians
expelled from Rome were actually suffering or close to suffering, and
some of which will enter our lives, too – well, aren't we tempted
to think they offer evidence that God isn't with us, that God isn't
for us, that we've been “separated … from the love of
Christ” (Romans 8:35)?
Paul
has three things he wants to say to that. The first one is pretty
simple: “No”
(Romans 8:37). The answer to his question, “Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ?”
(Romans 8:35), is none of those things. Such things like that cannot
be used as evidence that God has divorced his people, or a segment of
his people – that they, or we, stand now under God's wrath instead
of God's love. Tribulation doesn't prove that. Distress doesn't
prove that. Famine or drought don't prove that. A radical collapse
into poverty to the point of nakedness and destitution doesn't even
prove that. Not even being attacked or executed proves that. All of
these are real, live possibilities for faithful Christians. The
story may have had Zeus protect Polydeuces by dropping a thunderbolt
to make Idas crispy, but seldom does fire fall from heaven to
immediately smite those who want to hassle us. God, the real God,
may not intervene to keep you out of tribulation or distress. God
may not fill your table in the time of famine. He offers no
guarantees against poverty and homelessness. God may well allow
distressing things to cross your path – allow cancer and car
crashes, danger and dementia, exclusion and ejection, falls and
famines. Is it evidence God loves you any less? Evidence God is
punishing or rejecting you?
The
Roman Christians needed proof, so Paul opens up Psalm 44 for them.
It's one of those psalms that starts the right way – praising God
for his ancient deeds, when he expelled the Gentiles from the
promised land and planted the Jews there as a free people (Psalm
44:1-2). For that, the chosen people could always say, “Through
you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who
rise up against us” (Psalm
44:5). But after a moment's thought, the psalmist sees something
confusing in his day: “You have made us like sheep for
the slaughter and have scattered us among the nations”
(Psalm 44:11). They became a “laughingstock,”
tarred by “disgrace”
and “shame” (Psalm
44:14-15). 'Scattered among the nations,' 'sheep for the slaughter'
– just like what happened to the Jewish Christians again under
Claudius and in their wanderings.
Was
it evidence they did something wrong? The psalmist says no: “All
this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have
not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor
have our steps departed from your way”
(Psalm 44:17-18). The psalmist's people were suffering, and it had
no relation to whether they were right with God; there was no just
punishment involved here. And so the psalmist cries out to God to
“rise up; come to our help; redeem us for the sake of
your steadfast love” (Psalm
44:26). But first he summarizes the situation: “For your
sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be
slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22).
And
that's the verse Paul quotes for the situation in his day (Romans
8:36). All those seven woes – tribulation, distress, persecution,
famine, nakedness, danger, sword – they came against the psalmist's
people, and the word of God itself says that it didn't mean they'd
done something wrong. Their heart hadn't turned back that time.
Their steps hadn't departed from God's way. They hadn't forgotten
God or been false to his covenant. They were still chosen. Their
sufferings were no proof they'd been separated from his love. It was
for his sake that they were suffering in their exile. It was godly
suffering that God chose to allow, but it was no sign of God's
disfavor. God was still with them. God was still for them. You can
suffer all these things without it being a sign that God has stopped
being for you. You can go hungry, and it doesn't mean God's
abandoned you. You can be in poverty, bankrupt, homeless, and it
doesn't mean God's forgotten you. You can be in harm's way, you can
even be facing down death, and it doesn't mean you're separated from
the love of Christ (Romans 8:35).
There's
a second thing Paul wants to tell all the Roman Christians, and us
too. Remember, Rome is full of these churches busy judging each
other. The Jewish-heavy churches especially were all but wiped out
by Claudius' decree; they're persecuted, they're embattled, they're
still struggling to hang on. Plenty of the members of the churches
in Rome, some more than others, are populated by immigrants and the
poor, even though there are some fairly rich and well-placed
Christians, too. Some, fresh from exile, having been starved and
deprived, are struggling to rebuild a life in Rome – struggling to
keep a roof over their heads, struggling to stretch their food from
one day to the next, struggling to cover all the bills, struggling
with new forms of sickness and disease picked up on the way. They're
weak – in fact, we know that plenty of Roman churches divided
people into 'the strong' and 'the weak,' in more ways than one (cf.
Romans 15:1).
Some
of us know what that's like. Here in the United States, we're fond
of mentally dividing the world into 'the strong' and 'the weak,' 'the
deserving' and 'the undeserving,' 'the worthy' and 'the unworthy,'
'the haves' and 'the have-nots.' The strong think, “Why can't the
rest just get their act together?” We divide the world into
winners and losers. Major figures in American public life speak
openly today about how those who are with them are “winners,”
those who are against them are “losers and haters.” From our
school days onward, we learn to think of some as being the 'winners'
at life, and others as being the 'losers' at life. And what makes
the difference? The folks who have it all together are, to the
American eye, winners – clean bills of health, good clothes, good
diet, in keeping with our upper- or middle-class ethos and our
cultural values of production and consumption. The folks who
struggle are, to the American eye, losers – maybe compromised in
health, maybe malnourished or out of shape, maybe dressed poorly,
maybe at variance with our cultural values, maybe in jeopardy of
losing a home or defaulting on a loan, maybe unable to keep a job,
maybe cultural outsiders. Subject to things like what Paul listed.
And
here's Paul's second message: Poor and broken believers are not
losers. Depressed and wounded believers are not losers. Homeless
and destitute believers are not losers. Exiled and aimless believers
are not losers. Sick and disabled believers are not losers.
Immigrant and foreign believers are not losers. Fatigued and
worn-out believers are not losers. Unemployed and unemployable
believers are not losers. Awkward and ill-at-ease believers are not
losers. Persecuted churches are not losers. Underresourced churches
are not losers. Small and shrinking and struggling churches are not
losers. Confused and troubled and distressed churches are not
losers. None of the faithful are losers. Poor believers, depressed
believers, disabled believers, worn-out believers, sick believers,
afflicted believers – not losers, but winners, and more than
winners! For “in all these things, we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us”
(Romans 8:37)!
That's
right, and it means underresourced churches are winners! Small
churches, even shrinking churches, can be winners! Confused and
troubled and distressed churches can be winners. Persecuted churches
– winners! Churches in exile, churches out of place in society,
churches that see nowhere to go – winners! And not just winners,
not just conquerors; “more than conquerors,”
super-winners! The kind of winners who do more than just put up a
good fight, but who have the promise of one day seeing all their past
tribulation, all their past distress, all their past persecution, all
their past famine, all their past nakedness, all their past danger,
all their past execution, all that knocked them down and beat them
up, one day carried off the field of battle in body bags – that's
being a super-winner. And depressed believers are super-winners,
disabled believers are super-winners, destitute believers are
super-winners; disadvantaged churches are super-winners, distressed
churches are super-winners, declining churches are super-winners.
Not through anything they themselves bring to the table, but “through
him who loved us” (Romans
8:37).
And
so we have that promise, “No weapon formed against you
shall prosper” (Isaiah 54:17)
– not when the day is done. Because you, if you have faith –
you, if you endure – are a super-winner. Through the name of
Jesus, we have that promise that we will indeed “tread
down those who rise up against us”
(Psalm 44:5). It's not because we trust in what we bring to the
table – whether the psalmist's bow and sword, or our own talents
and health and easy living – but a continual glorying in God in
spite of all that has us down (Psalm 44:6-8). That is being a
super-winner. And that is for the persecuted and exiled church, that
is for the struggling church, that is for the churches of Rome, and
that is for us, and that is for you. Through the love of Christ, you
are more than a conqueror; you are a super-winner.
And
you don't have to worry about anything coming in and getting between
you and the love of Christ. It's like Castor and Polydeuces – the
love of Christ gives itself for you over and over again; it never
leaves your side; it never succumbs to circumstances; it's with you
in the highest highs and the lowest lows, never forsaking you, never
allowing the slightest distance from you. The divine love that chose
you will never stop choosing you, never stop choosing to be for you,
never stop choosing to be with you. Nothing can divorce you.
Nothing can obstruct you. Nothing can separate you.
That's
why Paul is so totally “convinced,”
he says, “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 8:38-39). Death can't do it – not the sum total of every
form of weakness, every form of sickness, every disability and
depression and distress and disadvantage. It can't come between us
and God's love. Life can't do it – not the sum total of every form
of strength, every form of prosperity, all health and happiness and
comfort and privilege. It can't come between us and God's love
either. No otherworldly power, no thisworldly power, no underworldly
power can separate us from God's love. If Michael and Gabriel and
every archangel tried standing in the way, God's love would be
unbreakable all the same. If Satan and Belial and Beelzebub and
every demon legion marched across our path, God's love would shine
through unobstructed. If every government, every corporation, every
bank, every court, every media conglomerate were to propagandize you
and bully you and knock you flat every day for a billion years, it
would not hinder your access to God's love in the slightest – not
so long as you find God's love in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Not
the highest highs nor the lowest lows can separate you from God's
love. All the fate the Romans feared, all the astrological signs
they watched the sky for, all the heavenly power reserved in stars
and planets to dictate the course of events of life on earth, or so
they thought – even if it were true, not all the powers of destiny
and star could steer God's love away from you. Not a one, not the
whole bunch, could dictate to God how long he loves you, or dictate
to you whether he's yours forever. There is not a thing on earth or
above earth or under the earth, nor will the limitless halls of
eternity future ever evolve or reveal or develop or cobble together,
any force that can deflect the tiniest spark of God's love from you;
not a thing that can change his mind about you. Not all heaven and
not all hell can separate you from God's love in Christ. There is
nothing in all creation, not a one, that can get in our path,
obstruct our access, fence off God's love from you or you from God's
love.
That's
good news for all the churches in Rome. For the weak churches and
the strong churches, for the Jewish churches and the Gentile
churches, for the little churches and the big churches, for the poor
churches and the rich churches. Nothing can come between the
poorest, weakest, tiniest church or believer, and the all-powerful
love of God that chooses them or him or her for boundless hope in
Christ. Nor can anything come between the wealthiest, strongest,
biggest church or believer and the very same love of God, unextended
and unmitigated. And the love of God is more than all victory;
through this love, a prize greater than all conquest is all ours, no
matter what the world sees, no matter what others see, no matter what
we ourselves see.
Castor
and Polydeuces are but a pale pointer to the inseparable love of God,
with us in the highest highs and lowest lows the same,
self-sacrificing to the full but victorious forever. The brothers of
Greek and Roman myth have nothing on God's love as displayed in the
nail-pierced but living and lively body of Jesus our Lord. He may
well allow all sorts of affliction, even when we've done nothing
wrong. But not all the weapons of this world or the next can prosper
finally if formed against us. For “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
8:38-39). To him be the glory forever. With confidence we pray to
the God of Inseparable Love:
Rise
up;
come to our help;
redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
(Psalm 44:26). Amen.
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