Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on Sunday, July 26, 2026
Good morning. This weekend I watched this documentary called Alabama Snake. And actually I sang in this opera this weekend as a part of the Kindling Arts Festival that was inspired by this story. And so I've been meaning to watch this documentary. So I finally got around to it on Friday night. And this story tells of this Holiness Pentecostal preacher in Scottsboro, Alabama, not too far from where I grew up, and this little Pentecostal church in the foothills of Appalachia that believed so strongly in the power of the Holy Spirit. They believed in the signs of the spirit, healing, deliverance of demons, speaking in tongues, and they believed quite literally in the words from Mark chapter 16 that says, "And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils. Shall they speak in new tongues, and they shall take up serpents?" These folks were snake handlers. So, guess what's in the box? [laughter] Margie, I'd like for you to reach your hands, [laughter] the day that the disciples of Christ become snake handlers is the day I walk out of that door and never look back. But it is this fascinating documentary, and I encourage you to go watch it if you have the streaming service. But there was something so intriguing about the fact that these people believed so fervently in the power of the Holy Spirit, in the providence of God, and the love of Jesus that they trusted that these animals would not strike them. A couple of weeks ago, I preached on the beginning of Romans chapter 8. And while Romans may not be everybody's favorite book of the Bible, I'm glad that we're coming back to it today. You may remember that I mentioned that several theologians have said that Romans chapter 8 is the heart of Paul's letter to the church in Rome. The Roman church was composed of both Jewish and Gentile believers which occasionally led to tensions amongst them. Thus, the need for this letter by Paul. The church in Rome also faced significant persecution as you heard in the reading that Daniel just read, particularly by the emperor Nero. But even so, this church in Rome grew and flourished, even being under the direct thumb of the empire. And lastly, this church in Rome held a significant place in early Christian history, being one of the earliest and most influential Christian communities around, likely established by Jewish Christians who were actually present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. So, they had witnessed these miraculous things and then returned back to Rome. So this is this very important and influential and intermixed group of early believers. So our passage for today seems to be these three important things that Paul's wanting to mention and declare to the Roman church. The work of the spirit, understanding God's promises, and then finding meaning in a confusing time. So perhaps it feels like a separate thought by Paul as you hear this text compared to the one that we read two weeks ago, but it's not. It's actually a continuation of what Paul was saying before, except he's focusing now not on the future, but on the present. Theologian and commentator Nick Carter, who is not a Backstreet Boy by the way, says that Paul has claimed that we are indeed children of God, made so through the faith of Christ's sacrifice, and we have confidence in our future salvation. But now he's saying we have assurance for our present challenges. Paul has set forth all of these doctrinal statements in this passage from two weeks ago. And those were beliefs that he was instructing the early church in Rome to believe that there's no condemnation in Christ and that the law of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. That people whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things. But people whose lives are based on the spirit think about things related to the spirit. And lastly, if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then the one who raised Christ from the dead will give you and your human body also through the spirit who lives in you. He's setting forth these doctrinal beliefs to form this, as you heard, mixed bag of believers that make up the Roman church. But in today's passage, he's also providing the reassurance that they need to sustain them through perilous times and this persecution that was mentioned in the reading. He knows that these people are persecuted. They're occupied. They're oppressed. They want to believe and they know what to believe, but they need this reassurance that the God who saves, who liberates, and who frees hasn't forgotten about them. And so Paul is reminding them in this passage from today's reading that the spirit will come to their aid, that God is working all things together for their good and that nothing can separate them from the love of God. A few weeks ago, I quoted this womanist theologian and her take on Paul's letter to the Romans. Specifically, I quoted Reverend Dr. Wil Gafney, who is this black Episcopal priest and scholar, and she noted that freedom, that liberation is communal. It's not just individual. Paul's language about walking according to the spirit in our text from a few weeks ago is a communal ethic. This idea that freedom is not just personal salvation. It is collective healing and liberation. No condemnation, as from our text a few weeks ago, becomes this call to build communities where stories are honored, where leadership is shared and vulnerability is safe. In a place like this, where joy is a theological practice that each of us embody, and where freedom means creating spaces where everyone can breathe and speak and dance and lament and flourish without fear. There's a reason that liberation theology and theologians that the civil rights movement and other movements that are centered on justice have found solace in the gospel writings and in these truly prophetic and progressive words of Paul. They too need this reassurance that the God who saves, who liberates, who frees has not forgotten about them. And while I can't get into the snake handling, I do think that this type of fervent spiritual belief that we find in Appalachia is because they too need that reassurance of a God who will never leave them nor forsake them. They need the reassurance of a God that's working all things together for their good. And they need to know that if God is for them, then no one can be against them. These communities in Appalachia are often food deserts. They're often in economic poverty. They're often in infrastructural ruin. They need the power of the Holy Spirit to sustain them through their own perilous times. Do you know what? I think that even though we're doing pretty good right now. I've been sailing a lot. I got a pretty nice suntan there. We've been traveling Europe. We've been traveling the US. We've been going to camp. We've been doing pretty well. But I think that we too need that reassurance at a time like this when more Americans have been killed by ICE than have been killed in the war with Iran. I need the Holy Spirit to intercede on my behalf with groanings that are too deep for words, assuring me and all of us that even when words fail, God understands the deepest and deepest needs of our hearts and our communities and our world, and that the spirit is advocating for us. When a 15-year-old boy from my hometown who was diagnosed with stage 4 osteosarcoma, which is this rare and aggressive bone cancer, when he died this past Thursday at the age of 15 after this long, hard-fought and public battle, I need to believe that somehow God is working all things together for our good and that there's a purpose to the things that we can't make sense of in this life or in this world. Theologian and commentator Wendy Farley asks, "Who can condemn when Christ has shown us how desperately God loves the world?" But after so many of the stories that I hear from people who have left church or were kicked out of church because they asked too many questions, they were too opinionated, they were too loud, they were too autistic, they were too gay, they were too this, too that. I need and truly everyone needs this reminder that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
I feel like we as disciples of Christ often know what to believe. We know the right versions of the Bible to read. We know the right commentaries to read. We know the right interpretations and the right exegesis of scripture to understand. We know the right lens of how to view the work of Christ and the work that caused us to. But I sometimes wonder how seriously we take the belief that it can work. I wonder how serious we are in believing that it can truly happen. What would our ministry look like if we here at Vine Street really leaned into those promises of God that Paul lays out? What would it look like if we trusted, truly trusted that the spirit is interceding for us? Not just in those quiet moments of prayer, not just when we feel holy or feel centered, but in those messy and chaotic and aching places where we don't even know what to say and we don't even know what to pray. What if we believe that God is indeed working all things together for our good? Not as a platitude, not as a band-aid, but as this deep, stubborn, spirit-driven hope that refuses to let a suffering world have the last word. Because Paul isn't writing to a people that have it all together. He's writing to a people who are barely hanging on. People who are persecuted and misunderstood, who are pushed to the margins, who are trying to make sense of a world that seems determined to crush them. And yet Paul says in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Not conquerors because we're strong. Not conquerors because we're clever. Not conquerors because we've mastered the right theology or read the right commentaries. But we're conquerors because God's love refuses to let us go. And if God is for us, then who can be against us? And if that was true, if that was true for the Roman church, then it has to be true for us, too. If the church leaned into God's promises, our ministry would look less like cautious optimism and more like courageous imagination. If the church truly leaned into God's promises, we would stop assuming that the limits of our budgets and our buildings and our comfort zones are the limits of God's mission. If the church leaned into God's promises, we would become a community where people who have been told that they are too much or not enough finally hear the truth that you are beloved, you belong, and you cannot be separated from the love of God. Imagine a church where the person who asked too many questions is seen as the theologian in the making. Imagine a church where the queer teen who was told that God could not love them maybe for the first time hears that nothing can separate them from the love of God. Imagine a church where the grieving parent or the exhausted caregiver, the person who feels like they're barely hanging on, finds a community that says, "We will hold hope for you until you can hold it again yourself."
Paul says that the spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. That means that the spirit is already praying for things that we are too afraid to name. The spirit is already advocating for the people that we don't know how to help. The spirit is already working in those places when our own strength runs out. And if that's true, if all of this is true, then our ministry doesn't begin with our ability. It begins with our availability. I want to say that again. If all of this is true, that means that our ministry doesn't begin with what we can do, our ability, but with our availability and our willingness to say yes to where the spirit is leading us. So here Paul's promise anew that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not war, not injustice, not grief, not fear, not doubt, not the church's failures, not the world's cruelty, not even the places that we feel the most lost. Nothing. So, Vine Street, what would our ministry look like if we truly leaned into the promises of God? I think it would look like a people who trust the spirit more than their own fear. And we don't have to handle snakes to trust the spirit. It would look like a community that believes that God is working for their good even when the world feels broken and lost. It would look like a church that refuses to let anyone believe that they are beyond the reach of God's love. It would look like us. It would look like us. Fully alive, fully committed, fully rooted in the God that never lets us go.
We have Kickoff Sunday in a few weeks, August 16th, as Margie mentioned. We've got this amazing year planned, and we want you to be a part of it because we know that the spirit is just waiting to burst at all of the things that we're doing here at Vine Street. So, may we be that church. May we trust that promise. May we live like nothing can separate us from God's love because our ministry doesn't begin with our ability but with our availability. May it be so. And may we make it so with our living and our loving. Amen.