[From a sermon delivered in April 2019 in Santa Barbara, CA]
When I was a kid, my image of God was Santa Claus - not the long white beard, but making a list, checking it twice, trying to find out who’s naughty or nice, and I believed I was on the naughty list, and everyone else was on the nice list. What a way to live!
Paul writes, “our God is for us” - but do we truly believe that? I know I’ve struggled with it. Do we really believe that God is not out to get us, watching us with a magnifying glass to see when we mess up? The story of the woman caught in the act of adultery comes to mind, when Jesus says “who is left to condemn you?” “No one, sir.” And he says, “neither do I.”
God is in our court. Let me repeat that. God - is - in - our - court. If God is for us, who can be against us?, Paul asks. Many of the saints and martyrs of our tradition knew this very well. They knew that God was in their court, so no matter what happened, God was always right there with them in the thick of it all.
There is a song by the Christian singer Chris Tomlin that says, “if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us, and if our God is with us - then what can stand against?”, I often have songs stuck in my head, but I have been purposefully playing this song over and over in my heart this weekend. The song, and this scripture, are full of questions, but the answers lie in God’s deliverance. You know, sometimes God is like a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, or a mother bear protecting her cub - not condemning - but protecting, and loving us.
It doesn’t mean we don’t face struggles, challenges, even pain in this life. The Stations of the Cross remind us of the cross that Jesus bore and the ones we bear. But as the Chris Tomlin song says, “Our God is greater, Our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other, our God is healer, awesome in power, our God, our God.”
Do we really believe those words today?
And "if Our God is for us," then what can stand against us?
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