Oh… yes, irrevocable!

The sermon text is below the sermon video; and please listen also to George Matheson’s hymn, “O Love that will not let me go”.

Click here for hymn “O love, that will not let me go” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW7lizMCyHI

Click here for sermon video: https://zionepiscopal.com/Sermon%20Videos/twelfth-sunday-after-pentecost-8-20-2023.html

Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
Sunday August 20th 2023
The Reverend Alan Neale
“It Is IR-REV-O-CABLE”

Romans 11:29 “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”. As the Message Translation reads, “God’s gift and God’s call are under full warranty – never cancelled, never rescinded”. As one commentator writes in a folksy manner – “this is how God rolls!”.

Don’t you just love that word? Irrevocable! Try it yourself, feel the power of those syllables hitting your tongue, your mind and your heart. Friends, if each day I can begin with the awareness of God’s endless grace… then that day will be good for me, and for those around me.

“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”.

John Watson, my dearly beloved mentor and friend, taught me this (amongst many other things), he taught me, “A text out of context is a pretext”.

So, let’s put Romans 11:29 into context. It all begins in Romans 11:1, as Paul asks the blunt question “Has God rejected his people?”. And this elicits an equally blunt and stark response “Me genoito” – translated by J. Christiaan Beker (Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary) as “hell no”, “no freaking way”. Paul could not have been more emphatic about the “no-ness” of his “no”. “Absolutely not, no way, you’ve got to be kidding, really?, I cannot believe you asked me that!”.

To quote Frank L. Crouch, “There is no budging, no fudging, no hidden escape clauses, no backtracking, no pulling the rug out from under anyone who has ever counted on God – no matter how fleetingly or how devotedly or anything in between.”

The book of Romans is a magisterial work of theology! In Romans 1-8 Paul outlines the history of our salvation, the work of Christ ending with those heart-ennobling words “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. In Romans 9-11 Paul deals with the subject that is close to his heart as a Jew but also as a Christian evangelist. He argues that God never has and never will desert his chosen people… why? Because he made a promise.
If this promise was empty, then what is to be made of the promises made through the work of Jesus Christ? In chapters 12-15, Paul describes Christian behavior in the world and prepares us for our great heavenly hope.

Our story from Genesis describes how God, despite all the shenanigans, the wheeler-dealing, the trickeries of his brothers, God led Joseph to a point where he could declare the faithfulness of God, the irrevocability of his promises. A theme runs through today’s reading from Genesis 45: did you notice it? Here it is, “you (the brothers) meant it for evil BUT GOD… you meant it for evil… BUT GOD… you meant it for evil… BUT GOD. Those two words express eloquently the irrevocability of God’s grace and call; no matter what happens to us, or who attacks us BUT GOD… will have the final word. Amen?

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 15) despite all the subliminal teaching about the status of the Jews; there is the obvious grasp of the Canaanite woman’s faith that God’s graces and call are irrevocable and for all (“even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table”).

This verse, and all its meaning, brings great joy to my soul and I hope to yours. But then… my delight to share this word with you was contaminated, diminished, harrowed by the horrific and wretched news from Maui as wild-fires snatched away lives, seized livelihoods and stole and threatens to steal hope and light.

I have to ask myself (in the company of the faithful today), where in all of this is the irrevocability of God’s grace and call?

In the early 1980’s I was Vicar of St. Andrew’s, Stanstead Abbots in Hertfordshire, England. It was a small English village with post office, pub and church and was packed with “characters”. One Sunday morning, during early service, a local bobby/policeman entered the church and approached the desk where I was leading the service. He whispered into my ear, “Vicar, a fire has destroyed a house in the village and two children have been killed”. He left, I made the announcement and we prayed. After church I visited the family, dreading every moment as I approached their temporary lodging. They never asked the dreaded question but, later, someone did… “Vicar, where was God in the fire?”.
My spontaneous answer then was this, “He was there… in the fire; he never left the children”. Forty years on… no other response has ever come to my mind.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no fire on earth, there is no fire within, that is beyond God’s presence, that will somehow, someway consume his commitment; for the gifts and the calling of God is irrevocable and will always grasp us firmly and propel us into a place set free from danger, decay and devastation.

When he was 19 years old, everything looked golden for Glasgow-born George Matheson (1842-1906). A brilliant student, graduating with honors, he was engaged to be married to the love of his life.
But then he rapidly began to lose his sight. The doctors said there was no cure. Turning for comfort to his sweetheart, he was stunned when she fled. She couldn’t be the wife of a blind man, she said.
Twenty years later, on the eve of his sister’s wedding, the shock of rejection resurfaced. By now, Matheson, the “blind preacher,” was beginning to amass attention for his scholarly writing and inspiring sermons, but all the success in the world could not cure his broken heart. Alone in the parsonage that night, 40-year-old Matheson succumbed to “the most severe mental suffering.”
And that is when he composed the words of the hymn “O Love that will not let me go.”

O love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

“The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” This is the theological bedrock on which Paul refuses to compromise, neither should we. There are plenty of rocks that life throws our way to create dissonance with these claims, to make us doubt them. But together, in prayer and worship, we end as Paul ends chapter 11 with affirmations of praise and worship. “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. AMEN