This last week 14 of us participated in our own Hometown Mission here at Grace of God. Since our regular YouthWorks trip to Nashville got cancelled because of the pandemic, we decided to organize our OWN mission trip right here in our own community. It went really well, although there was one big challenge.
It was not a challenge to find places to serve. We were able to connect with places here in our community doing significant work for those in need and they welcomed us to be a part of it and gave us opportunities to participate with them in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and caring for those in crisis and trauma. We served at the Christian Cupboard food shelf and the food shelf garden and Hope for the Journey Home family shelter — all at Guardian Angels down the road. We spent a day at Catholic charities in Saint Paul preparing meal bags and we volunteered at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis located at “ground zero” of this spring’s uprising and riots. We were able to do lots of good work.
It was not a challenge to find a place to stay. We got permission from our landlord to stay overnight right at the church and we had enough space that we were able to make arrangements for everyone to stay in their own room or with a sibling or family member. It was actually quite comfortable and fun to use our own church as our base of operations for the week — where we had our meals, prayed and studied together, played together and rested together.
It certainly wasn’t a challenge at all to find willing and energetic youth to serve. We had an exceptional crew of youth who worked so hard. There was nothing they would not do. There was no task that was too hard for them or beneath them. Every place we went they exceeded expectations. They put their whole heart and soul into working together and serving our neighbors. It was a joy to see and be a part of.
The biggest challenge we had serving during this time of the pandemic was social distancing. We wore masks every day, but trying to keep everyone appropriately separated was extremely difficult. it’s just not how are made. And in many respects it is so inconsistent and incompatible with being together as a church. Our theme was. “Let love flow” and then we had to say, “but don’t hug anybody or touch anybody or get too close to anybody and don’t talk to anybody without wearing a mask.” We did our best, of course, in order to create as safe an environment as possible, and we realize that this distance is actually in itself an act of love. But it did not feel natural or normal or good to have to do that. We had to make lots of adaptations to do important things and still maintain some level of distance. It is hard to separate friends who like to be together and who enjoy each other’s company and who feed off each other’s energy and support.
In our reading for today from Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter eight, we have some very familiar and comforting passages of scripture. The most significant of which comes in the last two verses of our reading where Paul says, “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.” In Christ there is no separation or distance from God’s love.
Paul had experienced many things that threatened to separate him from God. His own past identification as a Pharisee, taught to obey and enforce the law, created a pride that could have kept him separated from ever knowing God’s love. His fiery determination to eliminate Christians seems unforgiveable. That in itself should have created not only some separation and distance but avoidance and condemnation! As a follower of Jesus Paul had experienced many of the things he lists in these verses as possible things that might separate us from God: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Any of them could have led to despair and insolation. But Paul has become convinced of God’s love. The word he uses means something like, “I was convinced in the past and I am fully convinced in the present.” When Paul says he is convinced, he speaks as one who has staked his life upon this unchanging certainty.
So many things seem to threaten our experience of love. Fear, distrust, resentment, jealousy, pride, stubbornness. Trying to maintain dominance or superiority. Trying to protect ourselves from hurt. Being injured and scared and not knowing how to be vulnerable and open.
As we spend time in our community where there is real pain and suffering it is easy to see how things like hunger and nakedness and distress and hardship can threaten one’s experience of love and force people into an oppressive isolation.
Wherever we are – whoever we are – there are things that make us doubt the power of God’s love or question it. Life can make us LESS convinced of God’s love and so we live in separation and distance. And we struggle to give love and receive it.
And note that Paul is not saying that there is nothing the can separate us from OUR love for GOD! Oh, there’s plenty of things that do that without much trouble. Just about any little distraction or inconvenience can separate us from OUR love for God!
But thankfully, it’s not about that. Our confidence is not based on how much we love others or how much we love God or how much we remember to pray to god or even how hard we work for God or how many service hours we put it or even how much we believe in God. What gives us confidence – the kind of confidence we can stake our lives on – is based on God’s love for us.
Paul lists all the things that cannot separate us from God’s love. It’s pretty exhaustive list. Wherever we go, whatever condition we find ourselves in we cannot ever arrive at a place where we could escape the reach of Gods love. There is not a skeleton in the closet or ghost of the future that can threaten this love. Nothing in time or space – nothing high or low – can take us out of the purview of God’s love. Where we live and work – there is LOVE. When our work is done, we rest in LOVE. When we are in the dark – in the shadows – among the brokenness and rubble around us – we find strength and hope in LOVE. And when we feel distant, separated, isolated, unworthy or cut off from those rely on for energy and support, we trust in LOVE.
And when we are in doubt, we look to Christ – we hear his voice — we see his cross and that alone convinces us.
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