Separation Anxiety

The scriptures referred to are Romans 8:26-39.

There are certain universal fears: death, of course, but also pain, falling, public speaking, losing control and separation. We see the fear of separation in small children. Mom and Dad are leaving and the child is inconsolable. He may cling to his parents or simply cry. They are going away and as far as he knows he will never see them again. Even if he knows they will eventually return, he fears what may happen while they are gone. The presence of Mom and Dad is comforting. It instills a sense of security. Mom and Dad are the strongest, smartest, most powerful people a child knows. And if he is lucky, they are the most loving.

We are born powerless and that memory stays with us all our life. No matter how old or how powerful we become, we remember that once we weren't. If we're smart, we realize that someday we will be weak again. And if we're wise, we will realize that we aren't as powerful now as we think we are.

Sometimes that realization is thrust upon us. We get sick or have an accident or are assaulted or get caught in some natural disaster and we are forcibly reminded that we are not invincible. When I was a private duty nurse, I was struck by how many powerful men (the only ones who could afford private duty nurses) simply gave up when struck by some chronic disease or disability. When faced with something that could not be outsmarted, bribed, bullied or bypassed, they caved. They resented being powerless once more. I think we all react like that to an extent. But for these men, the contrast between their formerly dominant lives and their present diminished ones was so complete that they went into despair.

When enduring one of life's reversals, we often feel that God has abandoned us. Not so, says Paul. And he was talking from personal experience. In today's climactic passage from Romans chapter 8, Paul asks, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” And then he lists a number of adversities that he himself had undergone.

Will hardship separate us from the love of Christ? The Greek word literally means “pressure.” We know what it's like to feel pressure. It may be the pressure to get things done. It may be financial pressure. It may be peer pressure. Paul knew all of those. Paul was called to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. But the central beliefs—that God became a human being, that he was murdered for our sins and that he rose from the dead—were looked upon as nonsense by many pagans and infuriated his fellow Jews. He must have felt tremendous pressure to modify his message, to make it more palatable to popular tastes. He must have been told that if he preached something more upbeat, more in line with current thinking, he'd have more success.

But Paul preached the truth, Christ crucified, and let the chips fall where they may. And as it turned out, he was ultimately right. It may not have been what people wanted to hear but it was what people needed to hear. And eventually they responded.

Again Paul must have felt financial pressure. He was traveling and supported himself by making tents, his trade. (Acts 18:3) That's a very labor intensive job. It must have been hard to juggle that and his evangelism. He couldn't just knock off at 5 and let the next shift take over. Nor could he cut corners because as Jesus' apostle, he represented God. Plus he had to periodically pull up stakes, move to another town and reestablish himself. That had to hurt his business. We know he had lean times but he learned to be content in them. (Philippians 4:11-13) He learned to make do. He was so devoted to his calling that he subordinated everything else to it.

Finally he got pressure from his peers. Some felt he was watering down the law of Moses to make Gentile converts to the gospel. He wasn't holding them to the kosher laws. He wasn't even circumcising them. Paul had to travel to Jerusalem to defend his ministry. It must have been hard to face the original believers as well as James, Jesus' brother, and tell them that he, a latecomer to the faith, was right and they were wrong. But Paul stood firm and was vindicated. (Acts 15) So he knew about pressure.

Will distress separate us from the love of Christ? The Greek word means a “narrowing of room.” Paul must have felt hemmed in at times. His enemies had so many weapons to use against him. They could accuse him of disrespect for the gods, essentially treason to the empire. (Acts 19:23-41) They could haul him before the authorities as a disturber of the peace. (Acts 16:19-24) They could even use violence against him. (Acts 14:19-20) All that he could use in response was the gospel and love. He must have wished that he could get back at his enemies but he couldn't. He had to remain true to the Spirit of Christ. Paul knew about distress.

Will persecution separate us from the love of Christ? Christianity wasn't a legal religion for almost 300 years. At first the Romans just thought of it as another school of Judaism. But even Jews objected to Paul's teachings and eventually, the Roman authorities caught on to the difference. Paul was a Roman citizen and it must have been tempting to pass as just one of the crowd. But that would be a betrayal of God's commission to preach the good news to all. So Paul couldn't hide his allegiance to Jesus just to save himself trouble. Paul knew persecution.

What about famine? There was no refrigeration in Paul's day, no freeze-dried or dehydrated foods. We enjoy such an abundance of food it is hard to image what it could be like. But then as now, if your crops were destroyed by a drought or a hailstorm or a cloud of locusts, people will starve, at least locally. Have several years in a row like that and the whole empire is affected. At one point Paul took aid to the Christians in Judea who were facing a famine. (Acts 11:28-30) So he knew about famine.

Will nakedness separate us from the love of Christ? It sounds weird today but don't think of it as nudity so much as vulnerability. We rarely see the poor and homeless go naked these days. But in Paul's time, there were no governmental Department of Welfare, no United Way, no Salvation Army, no Goodwill. For that matter there were no department stores. Your wife or your mother made all your clothes. And unless you were rich you didn't even have a change of clothing. So if your wife or mother had no loom, or died, and if you didn't have relatives to help out, you were vulnerable to outgrowing your clothes or having them fall apart with wear. The naked poor must have been a common sight in Jesus' day because in his parable of the sheep and goats he says, “I was naked and you clothed me.” Even today in the cold of winter homeless people die for not having enough or proper winter clothes. In many parts of the country people are dying from the heat because they have no shelter. Imagine what it would be like if they have no clothes to protect them from the sun. Paul knew about vulnerability to the elements.

What about peril or the sword? Think of a world with no Geneva conventions, no United Nations, no World Court, no radio, TV or internet to bring you the news. In the ancient world you literally never knew if the next day an enemy hoard would invade your town, burn your houses, kill your men, rape your women and take your children into slavery. At the time Paul lived the one good thing about the empire was that it brought peace...to those who complied. But if your area revolted the Romans would burn your town, crucify your men, rape your women and take your children into slavery. Less than a decade after Paul's death the Romans put down a Jewish revolt and destroyed Jerusalem.

The early Christians lived in a very uncertain world. Disasters, natural or man-made, were all around them. And when they were suffering it was tempting to think that God had turned his back on them, that he was punishing them, that they had failed him and he had left them to suffer the consequences.

Paul says, No! God is not a human being. He is not fickle. He doesn't give up on us. God loves us with a steadfast love. Mere circumstance cannot make him abandon us. Therefore we are not defeated. We may look like lambs being led to the slaughter but so did his son. By evening on Good Friday, Jesus looked to all the world like just another failed visionary. He had suffered pressure from family and friends to stop teaching. (Mark 3:21; John 7:5) He was persecuted. He was whipped, beaten, nailed to a cross, naked and thirsty, and impaled with a spear. And yet in the light of Easter, what should have been defeat was seen as a triumph. The ultimate victim became the ultimate victor. He took the worst that anyone could throw at him, including death, and he came back stronger.

So Paul says, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” In Christ the conventional way of reckoning winners and losers doesn't apply. Unlike the saying, he who has the most toys does not win and he most definitively isn't given first place. Nor does he who has the most land or armies or followers win. The winner is he who gives the most and helps the most. By this measure Jesus is first because he gave all to help all. If we take up our cross and follow him, we also will triumph.

But this is hard to remember when trouble strikes. It is hard to feel victorious when you are writhing in pain, or bent over in nausea, or fighting deep-in-the-bones fatigue. It is hard to feel triumphant when you are just trying to survive some major or personal catastrophe. It's hard to feel like a winner when everyone says you're not.

That is why we need faith. We need to trust that God's way of seeing things is the right way because, quite frankly, the deceivers are pretty convincing. The world is always telling us that what matters is things: money, popularity, good looks, sex and power. We have to keep reminding ourselves that what is really important is people and their wellbeing. We have to keep remembering that the first commandment is not “look out for number 1” but “Love God with all your being.” And the second commandment isn't “do right by those who can do you some good” but “Love others—family, friends, neighbors, strangers and even enemies—as you should love yourself.” For we are all created in God's image. It's that simple to grasp and that hard to do.

Daily we must affirm that nothing separates us from the all-encompassing love of God. Nothing except ourselves. He will not turn his back on us but we can turn our back on him. He will not give up on us but we can give up on him. He will not abandon us but we can run from him. Why? Because he gave us free will. We are free to choose his love or not. He will not force himself on us. He will only woo us. And only we can keep his love at bay.

People keep God at arm's length because they don't want to give themselves up to his love. They are afraid they will change, become someone different, be less cool, be less themselves. Well, they will change but they won't be less than they are; they will become more.

Look at Paul. He was a brilliant and zealous rabbi with a very logical and narrow view of the world: if all the Jews obeyed the Torah, God would end the present evil age and inaugurate his kingdom, where the Gentiles would be either servants of Israel or fuel for the fires of hell. But then God changed him into the foremost proclaimer of his grace, the apostle to the Gentiles. He saw the kingdom starting in his lifetime in the spread of the good news of God's love and forgiveness which includes everyone, male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. Paul changed, all right. He became a bigger person than he had been. He had a bigger vision of life and he did more than he would have before. And he realized that no thing—not death, nor the demands and desires of life, nor supernatural powers, nor fallen angels, nor stars in their ascension and decline, nor anything present nor in the future—could stop what God was bringing about in us. No thing ever can.

I wish to close by quoting the last sermon that the Rev. Paul Rasmus ever preached as Dean of the Keys. And I will quote it in its entirety. He said, “God loves you. And there's nothing you can do about that.” I just want to make one addition to that: Yes, you can. You can accept God's love. And if you do, there is no power in the universe that can take you from him. Not now, not ever.