17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 26, 2020
Rom 8: 28-30
Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.
“We know that all things work for good for those
who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8: 28).
As I observed to you a few weeks ago, we’re making
our way thru 13 weeks of reading parts of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We’re now on our 4th week considering the 8th
chapter of the letter, weighing our sins in the balance of God’s great mercy,
weighing our human weaknesses in the balance of the power of the Holy Spirit.
“All things work for good,” Paul affirms. “Even during a pandemic?” we may ask. “Even during a crisis in the Church over
sexual abuse?”
Put our situation into a wider context. You remember the story of the apostles and
Jesus being caught in a big storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41). The apostles were scared out of their wits by
the storm’s violence, and Jesus sleeping in the stern of the boat—possibly
Simon Peter’s fishing boat. The apostles
woke him up, crying out, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing? We’re about to founder, and you’re
sleeping!” Jesus rebuked the storm,
which ended abruptly, and then he rebuked them as men of little faith. If Jesus is in the boat with them, how can
they think they might go down? Even so,
he implies in his rebuke, is bodily death the worst that can befall us?
(Rembrandt)
OK, the apostles at that point didn’t really know
who Jesus was and what great work he was carrying out to conquer sin and
death. For us, if the bark of Peter—the
Church—sometimes seems to be foundering, that’s happened more times than we can
count in 2,000 years. Do we forget that
Jesus is still in the boat with us?
St. Paul reminds us that God has a purpose, a
plan, for all of creation, including us humans, according to which everything
will work out well, as we heard 2 Sundays back:
“Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children
of God…. Creation itself [will] be set
free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the
children of God” (8:19,21). God’s
directing the plan.
You remember Tevye’s song “If I were a rich man”
in Fiddler on the Roof. He asks
God, “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?” According to St. Paul, Adam’s fall and all
our human sinfulness shall not spoil God’s vast eternal plan. How much less will illness or natural
disaster, not even bodily death, defeat his plan. His own Son suffered persecution, torture,
and a most painful, shameful death; and he rose triumphant from the grave and
was raised to the heights of heaven, enthroned at the right hand of the Father.
God didn’t will the fall from grace of the 1st
human beings. He didn’t will his Son’s
rejection by the Jewish and Roman authorities.
But out of all that evil, God worked good, delivering the salvation of
all the men and women who come to Jesus as Lord.
“Those who love God,” those whom God has “called
according to his purpose,” God takes the initiative of calling to become
disciples of Jesus, calling them “to be conformed to the image of his Son”
(8:29). Our destiny as followers of
Jesus is resurrection, eternal life, a sharing in the glory of Jesus. This is the good that God works out for us. Jesus Christ is “the firstborn among many
brothers and sisters” (8:29), the firstborn from the grave to eternal life.
If God has called us to this purpose, he’ll
justify us—give us his grace of holiness—and then glorify us alongside Jesus
because we reflect the person of Jesus—are “conformed to his image.”
In the next passage of this letter, still from ch. 8 (vv. 31-39), part of which we’ll hear next week, Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Can anyone condemn us? Or any earthly affliction defeat us? Paul answers emphatically, “No! In all these things we conquer overwhelmingly thru him who loved us.” When we adhere to Jesus, everything else, even plague and human depravity, will fall into place in God’s hands. “All things work for good for those who love God.”
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