“Getting Online with God”  6-15-08  Romans 5:1-8  Dr. J. Ben Sloan

                Last week we had a thunderstorm on Wednesday night and one on Thursday night- they provided welcome rain, so I am not complaining.  But they also knocked out our internet service and e-mail for a half-day each.  When you have e-mail you think that you are instantly communicating with people- sometimes you are…but sometimes you are not.  In our case, some people were thinking they were telling us things, but we could not access them.  We were trying to listen, but we could not hear.

                God tries to communicate to us.  He speaks in several different ways- but always through His Spirit. He speaks through creation- the heavens are telling the glory of God.  He speaks through his people and church- for where two or three are gathered together there He is.  He speaks most clearly through the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments we say in our confessions.  God is trying to speak to us, but sometimes something happens that cuts off that communication- that is our sin.  Our sin is the lightning that cuts the line between us and God. 

                When we are in the midst of messing up, we don’t want that voice of conscience speaking in our ear.  Most likely you are not reading scripture when you are really in the midst of falling away from where you know you ought to be.  The other day we had some fruit salad in these special crystal glasses that had been handed down to us from one generation to the next.  We were always very careful about these things.  But, I am a bit like the bull in the china shop.  I was washing dishes and I sat this special glass part of a set, basically irreplaceable, too close to the edge, and it broke.  My daughter comes up to me and says, “Dad, did you break this crystal glass?”  What do I do now?  I want to run. I want to hide (like Adam and Eve did when they got caught).  I want to say, “No- the dog did it.” [Maybe they won’t be mad at the dog.  That too is what Adam and Eve did- the serpent did it].  Maybe I could say, “If you didn’t choose to have to eat in those special crystal cups, then this wouldn’t have happened!”  Or maybe, if I just ignore my daughter the situation won’t be so bad.  A lot of people try to say God doesn’t exist or just ignore God because they don’t want to deal with sin or guilt.  Right then, when I am caught, there is this tension. I have gotten caught.  The truth will come out.  Sin is the cause of tension between us and our Maker.  It breaks down communication.  It separates.  It gets us offline.

                The grace is that though I have broken the crystal, my wife is the great repairer of broken things.  She comes, she mends, it is healed.  Though we break our line to God, though we mess up, God is the One who heals us, and makes us whole again.  Our scripture says as much- verse 6 “for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…vs. 8: God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  We messed up- we alienated ourselves from God, and God is the one who takes the initiative and comes into the room and fixes things. 

                Our passage talks about having peace with God.  This is a very, very important concept.  Peace, of course, is the translation of the Hebrew word “shalom.”  It means wholeness, oneness.  God made human beings to have peace with Him, peace with each other, and peace within ourselves.  If you cannot stand being in community- if everybody, and every church, and every family member rubs you the wrong way- then you best be prepared for loneliness.  The North American Porcupine is a very lonely creature- and no wonder- it has 30,000 quills!  Maybe you have your quills up toward God.  Loneliness is a terrible thing.  Mother Teresa said it is the leprosy of modern society.  Robert Putnam wrote a book called, “Bowling Alone” describing our steady decline in isolation.  For example, more people bowl, but they don’t use teams.  Less people take part in group things- civic clubs, churches.  Putnam said this is one of the reasons for families falling apart- loneliness even in our families.  We don’t spend time together.  The average American family has the TV on for 6.5 hours and the internet on for 2.5, and the average father talks to his child at home 2.75 minutes a day. We need peace with each other.  One of the most thorough research projects on relationships is called the Alameda County study by Harvard Sociologists who have studied 7,000 people for nine years.  They found that isolated people are three times more likely to die than those with strong relational connections.  We are made to have peace with each other.  And the One with whom we are ultimately to have peace with is God Himself.

                WHEN WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD WE ARE ABLE TO STAND AGAINST THE PROBLEMS OF LIFE-  The phrase that is used in verse 2 is “the grace in which we stand.”  There is a sense if you know where your hope lies, then the problems of life cannot blow you around.  There are people who are blown around by the circumstances of life: the presidential election, the economy, the tragedies and victories of family life. They are like a family I knew on Sesame Street called “The Heartstrongs.”  They would be extremely happy or extremely sad depending on what is going on in their lives- almost manic-depressive.  Some of us go through life that when things go well they go very, very well.  But when things go poorly it is like there is no hope at all, and we are caught in a whirlpool spinning down and down, deeper and deeper.  But peace with God gives us strength against the ups and downs of life.  One of the ancient symbols is the anchor.  The anchor does not let us be blown around by this wind or that wind- it keeps us steady.  We talk about the solid rock of Christ which gives us a foundation against the shifting sands of life.  The glacier is another image Christian preachers have often used.  The glacier shows only a small portion on top, but the biggest portion is under water, keeping it steady.  Another image in the Bible is the image of the deep roots- be rooted and built up into him, established in the faith (Col. 2:7). 

                In some ways in the last fifty years, the church has let go its anchor in the name of freedom.  We have denied the power of the revelation of God.  We believe we can make God in our own image, using our own metaphors, regardless of what scripture says.  We find ourselves at the mercy of any scholar who writes or speaks or entertains well.  You know I have always been book poor.  When I was in college I gave up my meal program taking my money from my parents and fixing sandwiches so I could buy more books.  When we first were married we had $10,000 worth of books, $10,000 worth of chine, and yet not money enough to put food on the china!  Solomon said, “Of the making of many books there is no end.”  There are millions of ideas about God, and this makes listening more to the scriptures that much more important.  One Princeton seminary professor said that we do not leave our books to go to prayer, or leave prayer behind when we go to our books.  He said these are two legs on which we stand.  We need to use our minds to glorify God as well.  It is not that the body is one realm, the mind is another, and the spirit is another.  We are called to have shalom- wholeness, peace with God.  This wholeness, runs deep, anchoring our body, mind, and soul, and giving us the ability – the grace to stand when others would be pushed down.  I invite you to seek peace and pursue it in your lives.  Seek this peace of God.

                WHEN WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD WE HAVE PEACE WITH OURSELVES- When we are not at war with God, then we are not at war with ourselves.  Paul talks about suffering as something to boast in.  For the suffering points to our need to be purified.  Suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope.  Do not let your suffering control your soul.  I don’t mean you should have a stiff upper lip and be tough. But let the peace of God control you.  This is the peace that this passage talks about- peace that comes to us when we are weak.  Peace that doesn’t make sense- but passes all understanding.  Someone said that “safety does not consist in the absence of danger, but of the presence of God.” 

                Fred Craddock, who taught at Yale Divinity School spoke of a man he met at a restaurant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on vacation.  Craddock and his wife were having a nice quiet dinner and wanted to be alone- but they saw this distinguished looking man come in speaking to about every table in the place. Then he came to their table.  He found out Craddock was a professor of preachers and he said, “I have a story to tell you.”  He said he was Ben Hooper, born in the mountains, and no one knew who his father was.  When he was little boys would call him names and he had to play be himself.  He said people in those days would stare at him wondering who his father was.  He said when he was 12 they got a new preacher.  Ben and his mother went to church, and usually snuck out before the benediction, but not this day.  The preacher grabbed his shoulder, looked him in the eye and said, “Who are you son?  Whose child are you?”  He said he felt like even the preacher was about to put him down.  But then the preacher began to smile a smile of recognition.  “Wait a minute, I know who you are.  I see the family resemblance.  You are a son of God.” Then he said, “Boy you’ve got a great inheritance- go out and claim it.”  Mr. Hooper said, “That was the single most important sentence ever said to me.”  With that, Ben Hooper went onto another table.  It was only after he left, that Craddock realized that Hooper was the governor of Tennessee.  We are God’s.  He, as the loving Father He is, does not leave us alone- but has come to offer us peace with Him, and thus peace inside of us.  Get online with God. Amen.