"In All Things"

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"In all things God works together for their good with those who love Him."

-- Romans 8:28

With these beloved words we find ourselves in the most inspiring and most perplexing place in all of the New Testament; inspiring because we hear that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ, perplexing because this joy seems to be reserved for a privileged class whom God has specially chosen.  One of the early 19th century Methodist circuit riders, whose story I remember but whose name I forget, tells how when his father died at an early age leaving his mother to raise their brood, she fell into a deep depression over the thought that this misfortune indicated that she had received only general grace and not the special grace of election. She was a Presbyterian; he became a Methodist when, while brooding over these things in a nearby forest, he heard a Methodist circuit rider trotting by singing hymns to God’s free and universal grace, the very opposite of Presbyterian predestination, followed to hear him preach, and was delivered from his anxiety by the news that God had chosen the whole world for salvation and that those who were excluded had excluded themselves by freely refusing the invitation to believe in Christ. This news inspired the great missionary enterprise of the 19th and 20th centuries – if all the world has been chosen and called by God somebody had better get out there and tell everybody all about it!

Now I certainly don’t want to revive the quarrel over predestination between the Methodists and the Presbyterians, (You realize of course that your two pastors represent these two denominations, and I can assure you that predestination is unlikely to be among our infrequent disagreements), which is in any case impossible because not only the times but also the convictions in question have changed.  Rather I would like to invite you to appropriate anew the profound and essential truth of our faith that if we love Him by answering His call to discipleship, God works with us in all things for our good. I believe that this conviction is one of the most precious and powerful of all, one that we all rely on to make it through the ups and downs of life. Paul the Apostle certainly did, and I think he is speaking from experience. The fourth century bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, writes, “Even opposition and disappointment are turned to good, which is exactly what happened with this remarkable man, the Apostle Paul” (Homilies on Romans, 15). 

Paul certainly encountered opposition and disappointment in his work, which we may read of especially in 2 Corinthians, but there is also an important example from his personal life. He was chronically ill, and many of us know how hard it is to live with chronic illness; but instead of healing him God told him, “My grace is all you need, my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul therefore believed that, “When I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10). An example of this strong weakness is that it was because of this illness that Paul was forced to stop and spend time in Galatia, and so we might say that the founding of the Galatian churches and the writing of the powerful and wonderful letter to the Galatians was the result of God’s working through Paul’s weakness to bring forth the good (Galatians 4:12-20). The essential thing, of course, is that Paul made his illness an opportunity to love God. In all things, in sickness and in health, (as the traditional wedding vows say. Might we add, “…for better for worse, for richer for poorer”?) Paul loved God, and God worked great good through that love.

We have begun our reflection with the negative things in life and the claim that God works ever through them, and I don’t want us to end there, but before we leave them we must note that it is possible that those who use the negative opportunity positively might grow spiritually more rapidly than in ordinary times. St Jerome, the 4th century church father writes of Job, “When Job lost all his wealth, when he lost his sons, everything seemed to be working against him, but since he loved the Lord, the evils that befell him worked together for his good…Before the time he is tempted God has never spoken to him; after he is tempted, however, God comes to him and speaks familiarly with him, as a friend with his friend” (Homilies on the Psalms, 6). This is not to say that suffering is a good thing in itself or that it is sent by God to help us learn and grow. Rather, everything depends on whether we can find a way to love God in, with and under our suffering. If we can, tribulation can be an express route to intimacy with God, as Job shows. 

So where are we in our reflection? We have agreed that the call (election) of God in Christ goes out to every human being, but that the felt benefits of that call come only to those who answer it and turn to loving God.  With these God works together in all the things of life, the negative and the positive, to bring forth the good. We have dwelt on the negative side of life because it is such a challenge to find any good there, but our faith and experience insists that it is precisely there in the heart of the negative that we find God’s free grace, in the form of a Cross, a grace that is enough and a power that is made perfect in weakness. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s statement, and he surely suffered, “I have often been driven to my knees by the conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” He speaks for all us at one time or another in our lives, and he confirms our experience that prayer is the place where we reliably find grace.

Let us turn now to the other areas of life where we might find God working with us, or rather calling us to work with Him, other places where we might encounter grace.  God works with us in all things. “All things” means even the bad things as we have seen, but by the same token it also means all the areas of our lives without exception. Imagine your life as a series of concentric circles. The center is our individual physical, emotional and spiritual self, (which is why personal illness can be so powerfully negative), and as we move out we pass through the circles of intimates, gradations of family and friends, business and professional colleagues and clients, civil participation, all the way to world events, and then in the fullness of time, beyond this world. In all the things of all life’s circles God calls us to show our love for Him by working with Him to bring forth the good, and in that synergy shows His changeless love for us.

If we do not answer the call we exclude ourselves from the company of the elect, who are those who have answered the call and thus become heirs of the predestined Kingdom and inseparable from the love of God in Christ. If we do not work for the good in all of these circles in which God has placed us the good will be retarded or defeated. For evil to triumph it is sufficient that good people do nothing. The disdain of the German academic, intellectual and aristocratic classes for politics in the 20’s and 30’s of last century was legendary. They remained aloof in their individual lives, their silent studies and elegant social circles. One refined Jewish lady I knew said that in the thirties in Berlin everyone in her circle was reading Proust. Now for those of you who don’t know Proust, let me tell you that reading his multi-volumed The Remembrance of Things Past could take years of forgetfulness of things present and to come! Politics was for sweaty proletarians and the perspiring middle class - and its despisers reaped the harvest of shame. God needs those who love him to be involved in all things, however distasteful, so that He can work with them to defeat evil and bring forth the good.

By now you know that in my sermons I always try to apply the Gospel to one and all of these circles of the world.  I hope you notice that I always proclaim the eternal Gospel before I try to apply it, and that the applications I make are tentative and open to disagreement in a way that the Gospel is not. Recently some have said that I have illegitimately brought politics to the pulpit. It may surprise you to know that I find politics and politicians deeply distasteful, chiefly because with rare exceptions their vaunted public service seems so patently the service of self. I agree with the cliché description of current politics as telling people what they want to hear regardless of the quality of what is said, with a view to being elected; that the purpose of politics is not to serve the public but to be elected. In that sense politics has no place in the pulpit; but when politicians use their office to commit crimes against their constituents and against humanity, how can the pulpit be silent? Does the Gospel have nothing to say to public sin? Does truth have nothing to say to power? We cannot cower in the inmost circle of our individual spirituality, we must follow God into all the world. If we do not move out to the world our faith turns to selfishness, and instead of generosity we shall develop the cozy, querulous, critical spirit of those for whom the church is their private club not Christ’s servant to the world.

For those who love God He works in all things for good. For those who love God He has prepared the glorious things of the Kingdom ready since the creation of the world. For those who love God, nothing can separate them from the divine love in Christ

But these promises are not indiscriminate; it is possible to be separated from the divine love, by our own free choice to love self more than God, to say “No!” to the call, and to refuse to join the elect. (By the way the word “church” translates the Greek, “ekklesia,” which literally means “those who are called out,” “the elect,” so the definition of church membership is “affirmative response to the call of God’s love in and for the whole world”).