My father wrote a sermon in 1943 during the greatest conflict in world history, WWII. In it he professed that St. Paul’s letter to the Romans contained a verse that he called “possibly the greatest of all St. Paul’s epistles.” He expressed that it was a “summation of all the aspects of the Christian life.” Paul wrote: “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

These words ring true to me, even in today’s world, a place of war still but fraught with economic disaster and environmental challenges. What is happening to the human population in 2011 is as messy and perilous for endurance as any time in history. We live in a country currently battling politically as to what is best for our future. Our Congress is arguing about debt ceilings, bailouts, Social Security, Medical insurance, women’s rights of choice, and many other divisive issues. Some people have little or no money for necessities while others hoard cash and property holdings in opulent amounts. We fight wars in two countries and assist uprisings in several other arenas.

I am not going to take a political stand in this blog, today. But I am going to refer to a prediction I made about five years ago, a prediction I stated to my wife. I said that I thought our country has about 50 years left before huge changes come about. As a student of history, I have read about various civilizations and empires which grew and proffered for many decades and in some cases centuries before undergoing a critical melt down and return to a less glorious status. We in this country have enjoyed a rousing 200 plus years of growth to become the greatest nation in the history of humankind. We are for the most part, comfortable and reasonably secure in our lifestyles. True some have more than others, but that reality is not new in history. There have always been those who are capable of maximizing ability and those who are fraught with failure.

So how does what I am writing relate to the Paul’s message? Well, I am a firm believer in the idea we are better off having unflinching and undying faith in God’s love for us than we are by protecting ourselves with worldly goods and false hopes. Yes, we all need to be employed earning a living at something we find enjoyable and rewarding, financially as well as emotionally. We are after all in this world; we just aren’t of this world. I hold with the ideal of Romans 8: 31, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” which to me says God loves me in ways I cannot fathom and understand, in ways so powerful that no harm can come to my spirit. I can endure the cross as did Jesus. (Not that I wish to.) I can believe that Jesus died and rose again to save me from what this world will do to me.

Christians proclaim many things in the name of what is in the Bible and what they declare God wants. I am curious about some who make statements that I feel contradict Jesus’ teaching. This is not a political position, by the way, but a dogged understanding that Jesus was a Jew with darker skin tones than mine, a radical reformer whom the establishment wanted out of the way, and a man who believed in socialistic ideals before they had been defined. As my father wrote in 1943, during a nasty war which cost millions of lives, it takes stamina to live. Paul warned the Roman Christians that “to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” I hope for each of us to be at peace with our own lives and the lives of our families, friends and neighbors. Really, who can be against us if we follow in Jesus teachings? I guess the answer is in an old cartoon strip called Pogo, who stated that “we have met the enemy, and he is us.” Walt Kelly may have written the strip in 1971 for the first Earth Day, but I think the tenet of the statement applies to more than our caring for the environment. I think it is applicable to most of what we are doing in our world today. Enjoy my father’s sermon from many years ago.

Romans 8: 31 “If God be for us, who then can be against us?”

This text, from possibly the greatest of all St. Paul epistles, might well be the summation of all the aspects of the Christian life.

At the time of writing his letter to the Romans, Paul had been a missionary in the church for twenty years and had but a few years left for his ministry. It was during these twenty years that Paul had acquainted himself with all the truths of the faith and the power that is of God for all men who will but accept it.

The great disciple of Jesus Christ had just completed the establishment of the church at Corinth and now wished to help that group of Christians whom he had never seen nor visited. The faithful followers at Rome were facing persecutions, trials, and tribulations and Paul wrote that He might give them the power of the gospel to help them in their hardships. “If God be with us, who can be against us?” Paul was assuring those faithful in Christ that although their bodies may be destroyed, no man, factor, or machine could destroy their spirits. “God spared not His own son but delivered Him up for us all.” And in the same way, all who choose to be the sons of God, although they give themselves up in body for us all, they shall sit on the right hand of God.

Paul went on a step further and warned the Christians at Rome that “to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” This is so because the carnally minded are never subject to the law of God. Only those who are of one mind with Christ can come to the fullness of life because, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

This message of Paul, although almost two thousand years old, is most applicable for our time and age. It is a message that brings consolation and peace to many. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Although the church must and will be concerned with war and the pain that comes out of it, I think that we must be careful not to dwell on the subject too often. I, for one, do not like to think of all the misery, suffering, and pain that is in the world because men have not yet learned to love God and their fellow man, and yet I feel in my heart that we have to face it and give ourselves wholly and completely to the comforting of those who have personally felt misery and sorrow.

There are two aspects to the relationship between us and the world: one, what we do to the world; and the other, what the world does to us. In prosperous times our major emphasis is on the first: we go out happily to do things to the world and to reap all the reward that we can. But the times to is all when the situation is reversed: the world takes the initiative and does things to us. Trouble, antagonism, disaster confront us, and the major question in our lives is whether or not we can stand up and take it.

Pretty much everything that we care for in life most depends on stamina, fortitude, and morale. Hitler was right in this regard – the outcome of the war depended on which side cracked first. In America this issue may not confront us in so dramatic a fashion, but in this congregation now how much of our problem as individuals, as families, as citizens, as Christians, centers in the question of stamina? Can we stand up and take it?

Indeed, this experience is a permanent element in human life. No man escapes situations where all his chances of positive, creative living depend not alone on what he can do, but on what he can stand. Only so did Handel write his Messiah. Says his biographer: “His health and fortunes had reached the lowest ebb. His right side had become paralyzed, his money was all gone. His creditors seized him and threatened him with imprisonment. For a brief time he was tempted to give up the fight – but then he rebounded to compose the greatest of all his inspirations, the epic Messiah.” So, whether or not that “Hallelujah Chorus” was going to be written hung in the balance there, teetered on the thin edge of doubt, until, in what looked like a hopeless situation, the spirit entered into him and set him upon his feet. What he could do depended on what he could stand.

This morning we take it for granted that we would like a share in such stamina. Our instinctive admirations go out it to it. These are difficult days and we know we need it. What goes on in the life of the man who has it? What do those people have who are able to smile and be cheerful when their sons and daughters are on the front lines facing death every way that they turn? What do those individuals, like the Rolls, have when they are able to give power and strength to men and women everywhere when they themselves have paid the supreme price?

They have the power, the faith, the love and the courage which of almighty God. They have instilled in their heart the gospel of Jesus Christ and thereby gained the rewarding spirit without which man is hopeless. Don’t be fooled though. They know pain and suffering as few men know it. They know also that to receive such a reward there must be sorrow, sorrow of the bitterest kind.

There is a law as deep as God that glory or ultimate success can be reached only through suffering. Suffering and glory belong to the same context. However inexplicable, the mystery may be, human life, in order to progress, must have suffering, or suffering’s equivalent. It is for this reason that you have to fill your hearts and souls with the power of Jesus Christ. You have to know His love and His mercy and the good place that your loved ones will have rest in His loving arms. For, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” It is one of the splendid commonplaces of experiences that from the beneath the shadows of agony springs much of the spiritual heroism in which mankind exults, as characters mount with rapid strides on the rungs of the ladder of pain.

The peace for which we all seek when our lives are laden down with agony is the peace which comes when there is no cloud between us and God. And this peace, this mystic peace, is not thrust upon us. It is simply made available. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, it must be taken by force – a force which comes with our faith that God is love.

The peace of God is the sweetest mystic possession and the truest solace that the inner life can know. It is a conserver of strength, which makes and keeps frail strong and the timid brave. Like God Himself, it is beyond analysis and explanation – it passes all understanding, as it keeps its untiring guard over our hearts and thoughts in Jesus Christ.

This is what religion means to us. The basic reason why men and women lie down on life instead of standing up to it is that within themselves they do not have the power and the love and the peace of God. The ability to stand up and take it is a power question, and power is not something we get merely by blowing on our hands and willing it, but by opening ourselves inwardly to spiritual resources greater than our own, and approaching them. “The water that I shall give you,” said Jesus “shall be in you, a well of water springing up.” “Strengthened,” said Paul “by God’s Spirit in the inward man.”

Life is a difficult game. It is no place for a cry baby. To play it well and play it through, takes stamina. And it is inspiriting to look back on history and see how the ostentatious conquerors rise, fall, and are forgotten, how imperial policies that once seemed everything appear nothing now in retrospect, while like mountains, seeming to rise higher the further we recede from them, stand out the souls who had such inward resources that for mankind’s sake they played the game and played it through.

“If God be for us, who then can be against us?”

We would remember before God all those who died to keep us free. May our merciful God wash their souls in the blood of the lamb and give them joy in serving Him in the wonder and glory of His nearer presence. And we remember all the anxious, bereaved and sorrowing; and all who in this life will see their loved ones no more. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Reverend Norman Stockwell – Sermon given at Gooding, Jerome, and Shoshone, ID, October 31, 1943 and again in Gooding, ID, February 11, 1945.