Sermon: "The Christian Confidence"- July 26, 2026

Romans 8:26-39

The Rev'd Ezgi Saribay Perkins, The Rector 

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Please be seated. Growing up with a Turkish father, I learned early that there was always a proper and improper way to behave. And he was very quick to remind me when I acted improperly. We learned things like respecting and honoring your elders and welcoming the guests generously. We learned things like you don't waste the food, you eat everything that's on your plate. And to this day, up until a couple of weeks ago, my dad reminded me that I needed to finish everything on my plate. We emphasize things like working hard and minding our manners and never embarrassing the family. And unlike the kids these days, they didn't have to remind us these things. There was generally a hand gesture or a look that they gave us that communicated to us that we were not doing what we were supposed to be doing. And I tried that with my little nephew, and he just kind of turned around and looked at his tablets. So clearly I need to change my techniques a little bit. There is, of course, nothing wrong with good manners and self-discipline and honor for others. I'm very grateful for much of everything my father taught me. But when you grow up with a strong sense of what you should or should not do, it can become easy to imagine that the whole purpose of religion is also to make people behave better. Christianity, when you think about it this way, can sound like one more set of those expectations. Be kind, be patient, control your temper, help the neighbor, and try really hard not to disappoint God. But that is one of the chief misunderstandings of the Christian faith. That the belief that Christianity is primarily a system of moral improvement. Cast out all the supernatural mumbo jumbo, and what is left is a guide to being a better person. And here's a bit of ice cold reality for those who think this way. The reason that the supernatural mumbo jumbo is there is that morality isn't the main problem we face in becoming a better person. Most of the time we know exactly what we ought and what we ought not to do. We just don't seem to be able to do it. That's what Paul says in the epistle. Why aren't we able to do it? Paul suggests that the difficulty arises from the fact that we have a fleshly force inside of us that is a legalist. It tells us that we are only as good as we behave. Two weeks ago, Paul reminded us that we have a spiritual force inside of us too. This force tells us that God doesn't love us because we are always good. It tells us because God always is. The spiritual force says your problem isn't that you need to become someone else, a better you, it's that you need to believe that you are who God says you are. His beloved child with whom he is well pleased. In this way, the knowledge that the Spirit dwells in us enables us to do things we could have never done, motivated only by our sense of right or wrong. The power of the Spirit is greater than the power of the law, and thus moral improvement comes primarily through spiritual awareness of who we are in Christ, instead of moral effort to become a perfect someone else. But last week in the epistle we heard that there's a little problem. Both spiritual force and the fleshly force still dwell in us. One tells us we're alright by doing what is right, the other tells us that we are alright because we are a child of God. The problem is that the first one leads us to fear that we are not enough. The second one leads us to the faith that we are. So how then do we learn to listen to the latter, not the former? Paul tells us that whenever the fleshly force drives us to question whether we are good enough, if the heart cries out, Father, Abba, then we know that the Spirit is in us, and that is proof that we are children of God. The whole point for Paul in Romans 7 and 8 is not morality, then but psychology, how we improve, not chiefly by moral effort, but by faith in who we are as children of God, how we believe that we are siblings of Christ. For you see, the faith in God is not simply affirming a set of religious propositions, it is trusting that we are who God says we are in Christ. And that brings us to the epistle this morning. Paul is answering an important question. The question is, when the going gets tough and I don't feel right with my God, my neighbors, and myself, how can I reassure myself that all is well, that I am a child of God? The first thing Paul tells us to answer this question is don't let the weaknesses of your prayers lead you to believe that you aren't a child of God. The same spirit that works in you to cry out, Daddy, when going gets tough, is praying through you. He writes, We do not know how to pray as we ought, that the very spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words, and God who searches the heart knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. So when our prayers don't seem to reach the ceiling of the room in which we pray, even when we feel so empty and alone that we can't get ourselves to pray, the Holy Spirit who dwells in us is praying to the Father on our behalf. God loves us so much that He even helps us communicate with Him. Think about it. He doesn't grade our prayers either by the pound or by profit profundity. God places the Spirit within us to unlock the prayers we don't even know we ought to pray. And if this be the case, how could we think that our prayers aren't good enough? The one to whom our prayers are addressed is always praying in us and through us. Secondly, Paul tells us don't let the difficulty of your circumstances lead you to believe you aren't a child of God. The same God who raised the crucified man from the dead to redeem the world can redeem the sufferings in our life. For this he writes, all things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. What a great promise. God doesn't guarantee us a rose garden, but he assures us that the scratches we receive from the thorns will ultimately make us what he wants us to be. Our Presbyterian friends often miss the point of this particular passage. Bless their little Calvinist hearts. In this bit, Paul isn't trying to unpack the mysteries of divine foreknowledge and predestination. He's simply saying God knew what he was getting into when he got you. He also knew what he was gonna do with you to make you more like Jesus. Once God starts with a person, God will be relentless in bringing the good work he began the completion. And at every step of the process, he is moving us towards Christ-likeness. And once he begins, the process is going to be complete. And because of that truth, we need to tell ourselves we cannot fear that we are off track when the going gets tough. When the going gets tough, we ought to tell ourselves as Christians, God isn't angry with us. He is at work in us. He is working everything towards our ultimate good, even when it hurts. C.S. Lewis says something like this. We are like blocks of stone out of which the sculptor carves the forms of humans. The blows of his chisel which hurts us so much are what makes us perfect. Finally, Paul tells us don't let the forces at work against you lead you to believe you aren't a child of God. He raises a simple but crucial rhetorical question. If God is for us, who can be against us? Think about for a moment the implications of this question. God is the most powerful force in the universe, we believe. Actually that isn't quite accurate. God is the most powerful force, period, within the universe and without. And if that's the case, and if God has said to you, you are mine, what force is there that could possibly separate you from God? Paul tells us for this reason, and we often hear this in the funerals, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. If we say we believe this, and if it is true that nothing can separate us from God's love, as my husband likes to say, and what on earth and what in the hell are we worried about? If God is all powerful, all knowing, utterly relentless, what do we have left to fear? What we have left is to live our lives in the sure and certain knowledge and to teach each other, remind each other continually, that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus. In other words, gilax. God has got this because God has got you. One of my biggest frustrations as an Episcopal priest is that people who've been Episcopalians for 20, 30, 40, 50, and even more years often say to me, Well, I hope I'll be good enough to get into heaven in the end, because I've got a lot of sins. Long-term Episcopalians who live in this sort of fear should be able to sue their priests for malpractice. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died so that we can go to heaven. What's the point of Jesus' death then? Let's go become Muslim. At least we have Sundays off. I know some of you would like that. If Jesus died for no reason, then our faith is null and void. But if Jesus died for our sins, then we don't have to agonize over being good enough, or just get in or stay in the family of God. Instead, God tells us through Jesus, through what I have done in Christ, you are in, and that is made and will make you good enough no matter what you do. Trust that and trust me. Like most of you, I too spend some of my life agonizing over my insufficiencies. And when I'm about to forget them, my dad is always there to remind me. And some days I like to think about them more often than I like to admit. But the good news for people like me is that the fear of not being enough is unnecessary. Because Christ is enough, and we are united to Christ in baptism, then all of us in this room are enough. Let me close with something like this. When I began to run nine months ago, and I'm still a beginner, I hated running because in the back of my mind I was always competing. I was trying to meet expectations of my own or somebody else's. I was trying to beat somebody else at the gym because I was never as fast as I should be. And I always thought I should be faster than that guy. What would it be like for me to run if I weren't trying to qualify or to beat others? What if I were running simply for the joy of running? Some days I get that sense, but most days I'm still competing. What if I ran because how it made me feel and how it made me run better? Christian life should be like that. There shouldn't be competition, clock, fear or anxiety. Just the road before and the goal that is ahead. What would that be like if we treated like it? I think that it would be a sort of full and meaningful life that God has offered all who cry out Abba, Father. And that is the life in which we feel enough by resting in the knowledge and the confidence that God has called us, and today God calls us more than good enough. Amen.