5th Sunday in Lent
March 29, 2020
Romans 8:11–19 (NIV84)
How bad does it have to get before it gets better? That’s a question many people in our world are wrestling with today. Look specifically at the spread of a disease. People are getting sick. Those people are getting other people sick. We think there’s got to be some kind of end to this, but not even the brightest and best minds can give us a day when. They can’t even narrow it down to a week or a month, just a hope that by summer this is all behind us. And if this is the beginning stages still, then how bad does it have to get before it gets better?
We’re familiar with this question because this isn’t the first time we’ve asked it. Before this virus even existed we still faced bad things we feared could only get worse. And even after we figure this disease out, it won’t be too long before we’re confronted with the question again. And, like an old friend we haven’t seen in a while, we’ll just pick up right where we left off. That old familiar feeling of uncertainty, of vulnerability, and yes of fear.
The apostle Paul in our lesson today refers to this familiar feeling of fear as slavery. In Romans chapter 8 he says, “You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear.” (Romans 8:15) The word that jumps out to me here is the word “again.” This means that each of us used to be a slave to fear, then we weren’t, now we’re faced with the possibility of becoming a slave again. I don’t like the thought of that.
Slavery is a terrible concept. We may think it’s bad enough to be ordered to stay home and not go out while the virus is spreading, but slavery means you don’t even have a home. A slave is a piece of property and ordered around as such. There is no comfort there, no privileges of the family. Fear is a slave master. Fear grips you and whips you into a place of submission, controlling you. And the worst fear for a slave is that they will never see anything better. There is only slavery until there is death.
Now, I don’t know if you live in fear like this, captive to it, controlled by it. But I want you to listen closely to me now. When I said we are faced with the possibility of slavery again, this is because fear is not a certain thing. Will it get worse before it gets better? I can tell you that’s a fairly certain thing. But fear is not a certain thing. Fear means we don’t know if it’s going to get better. But faith tells us that it will. It will get better. I can’t give you the day or the week. I can’t even pin it down to the decade in which it will happen. Because the better I’m talking about happens not the end of a disease, but after it can’t get any worse. The absolute worst state we know of is death. Death is as bad as it gets. Anyone who has lost a loved one to death knows this. Jesus knows this too.
In the gospel of John chapter 11, Jesus lost his close friend Lazarus. And while I encourage you to read the whole chapter to see the love of Jesus for people in the worst of times, there are two words I want you to focus on, “Jesus wept” (verse 35).
This was the worst and Jesus knew it. Jesus felt it. Jesus processed all the emotions of grief and in that gut wrenching moment Jesus wept. He didn’t weep because this was a hopeless situation. He had only just told Martha that believers are given eternal life. Not to mention he was about to order the grave open so he could command life to a dead man. He wept because this was as bad as it gets. For every gut that ever wrenched at the death bed, funeral, or gravesite of a loved one, Jesus wept. Because this was as bad as it gets not only for his friend Lazarus but for every one of us as a result of sin in the world, Jesus wept. In order to share in our sufferings because he knows we will have to share in his, Jesus wept.
Where it couldn’t get any worse, Jesus met us. From the fear that it could never get any better, Jesus freed us. Jesus called out to that dead man and Death had no choice but to let him go. Jesus gave life to that dead man and his spirit had no choice but to return to him and bring him to life. This is the spirit Jesus breathes into our hearts. Paul explains, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
Notice that the opposite of the “spirit that makes you a slave again to fear” is not a spirit that makes your life free from reasons to be afraid. You will continue to have reasons to be afraid. These “present sufferings,” (vs. 18) as Paul calls them, are daily sufferings, life-long sufferings, sufferings that get worse and worse until we die. But for every reason we may have to be afraid, in every season where suffering is at its worst, you received a Spirit of sonship. And by him, that is, by this Spirit of God, moved by God because we are connected to God through Jesus, by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
We cry out in all kinds of ways when we are suffering. When things are bad and we wonder how bad they have to get before they get better, we could cry out in hopelessness, despair, and fear. But instead we cry out to God. We call him our “Abba Father.” We give him this special Father name because any other father cannot do what your Abba Father can do for you. He is your Heavenly Father, your Creator God, your Preserver and Deliverer God. When you cry out to your Abba Father, you admit, you confess, you take grip on the reality that you are children of God, children dearly loved, precious in his sight, not gripped and whipped but hugged and held.
Social distancing today says stay six feet apart. Not so with God. Not so with your Abba Father. Your cry out to him in times of suffering are met both with an ear and an answer to your prayer and with a hand to hold you in your need. Your cry to him when it can’t get any worse, when you are about to die and you cry out “Abba Father” from that moment it can only get better. Death cannot hold you; Jesus died to free you from that death. Your sins cannot disown you; Jesus took all your sins away and washed you clean in his holy precious blood. Fear cannot enslave you; Jesus lives in glory and promises to reveal that glory in you.
How bad does it have to get before it gets better? Only God knows the answer to this question. And while people may clamor for a cure to a spreading disease, we cry out to our Abba Father who set us free from fear. Fear is not certain no matter how bad it gets. While we weep for better days here, Jesus promises to reveal the best that is yet to come. While we greet the next calamity with the familiar, “Here we go again,” we go again and again and as often as we need it to cry out to our Abba Father for protection, for deliverance, for a Father’s love and embrace.
Let’s pray…
Abba Father, we are only worthy to speak to you because of your Son Jesus. But now, through him, we are all your children. Forgive us for allowing fear to take control. Fill us instead with your Holy Spirit and the confidence in knowing you will bring us safely to our eternal inheritance. Though we have to face suffering, help us. Though we have to face sickness, heal us. Though we have to face death, raise us up to heaven where you will deliver us from evil forever and where we will live with you in your glory. Amen.
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