The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
February 27, 2005 

Mr. In Between
Romans 5:1-11

Suffering and glory. Outside of church these two terms would seem to be unrelated. Suffering and glory. Two words that seem to be at opposite ends of a spectrum with nothing to relate them—nothing perhaps, but the cross of Jesus Christ. In the cross, we see Jesus’ suffering as a means to the glory that would follow. Jesus suffered on the cross on Good Friday and was glorified through the empty grave on Easter Sunday.  

In today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Paul wrote that those of us who have been justified by faith, “boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Let’s pause there just a moment. Justified by faith. That’s a religious term that means that we have come to faith in God and God sees us as just or right even though we have done plenty of things that are wrong.  

We have sinned, which means to miss the mark God sets for us. Yet even though we missed the mark, God sees our faith in Jesus and says that we are set back right. That’s what it is to be justified by faith. Some would call it “getting saved.” We come through faith to have a relationship with Jesus, and in that act, God forgives our sins. This doesn’t make us perfect. The German reformer, Martin Luther, would note that we are at the same time justified and a sinner. We are justified by faith, and yet continue to miss the mark set by God. So what can we boast of in this? 

Paul writes that those of us who have come to saving faith may boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Notice that we can’t yet boast that we share in God’s glory. Our only boast is our hope. I have preached before that, 

We Christians don’t have better lives, cooler cars and nicer houses. We Christians don’t have easier lives, more fulfilling jobs, and perfect children or parents. We Christians don’t have all the peace we long for. What we Christians have is a relationship with the God who is working to redeem our world one life at a time. What we have is the knowledge that everything we now see and experience is not all there is. What we Christians have is hope. Hope. 

That’s what Paul is writing here to the Romans. The only glory we can boast if is the glory to come. We have already been seen as just in God’s eyes, but we have yet to be welcomed into God’s kingdom in its fullness. And here in the meantime, everything is far from perfect. 

Paul’s very next sentence says that we boast in our sufferings. First he said we boast in our hope of glory, but now he says in the meantime, we boast in our sufferings. The glory is yet to come, but the suffering is in the here and now. That probably comes as a surprise to no one in this room. 

Yet the church has been guilty at times of emphasizing glory, while barely discussing suffering. This happens when we talk about the empty tomb, without stopping to consider the cross. The apostle Paul’s writings suggest when we want to say what we know about God, we are to begin with the cross. For the cross of Christ is the clearest point of revelation of who God is and how God acts. 

Start at the cross and you see the love of God in its fullness. Jesus, the miracle worker, could have prevented his own death. But God had become human and would not change the rules. If a human who spoke out for love and justice would be put to death, then God would be put to death. Jesus loved us all so much, that he would not give up on that love no matter what the cost. The cost became torture and death and Jesus still loved us and refused to give up on that love.  

Do you ever wonder why God allows suffering? God allows suffering because suffering is the price of freedom. If we are free to make choices that have consequences, then pain and suffering are possible. There can be no free will without suffering. But that is not the whole answer. God did not leave us alone to suffer along with our freedom. God was also willing to enter that world and live and suffer as one of us.  

Knowing that Jesus could and did suffer shows that God is willing to be with you in your pain, your hurt, and your loss. Jesus didn’t do this for you because you are perfect. You know that’s not true and so does he. Jesus suffered out of the love he had for us regardless of our imperfections.  

That’s why Paul wrote, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” If Jesus had waited until we got our acts together before he died for us, he would still be waiting. Jesus suffered and died for us even though we didn’t deserve that kind of love. 

Not only does the Bible show that Jesus suffered, it also never promises that we won’t suffer. Instead, the Word of God tells us that God is present with us in our sufferings. As Paul writes, it is through those sufferings that we will find our way to hope. 

Our same German reformer, Martin Luther, wrote about two competing theologies: The theology of glory and the theology of the cross. He saw the theology of glory in a church that emphasized triumphalism without acknowledging suffering first. The theology of glory is sort of spiritualized positive thinking that talks of resurrection without mentioning the cross. This theology of glory works great until something goes wrong in your life. Once you realize you’re not yet in heaven, this way of talking about god falls short. 

Luther contrasted the Theology of Glory with a theology of the cross. This is a way of speaking about God that doesn’t try to sweep under the rug such inconvenient ideas like sin, judgment, and death. This is a way to talk about God that acknowledges the very real darkness in the world around us.  

In understanding the Theology of Glory and the Theology of the Cross, the songwriter Johnny Mercer is helpful. Johnny Mercer sang “You gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don’t mess with Mr. In Between.” [1]  That is the Theology of Glory. It is nothing much more than the Power of Positive Thinking. Be positive and everything will work out just fine. But that sort of raging optimism doesn’t get you to far in the real world. Eliminating the negative would eliminate the cross, suffering and death. If we remove the cross of Christ from our theology, our own suffering is senseless. 

On the other hand, we don’t want to focus on suffering and death, not that alone. The Theology of the Cross uses the experience of the cross as a means to understand the resurrection. We know that God is with us in our suffering and that the pain, hurt and loss we feel is not the end, because we see that the cross was not the end of the story. Jesus was resurrected, as you too will come to the day where God wipes every tear from your eye. 

So rather than accentuating the positive or the negative, we become Mr. and Ms. In Between. We live in the time between the times. Jesus has already died and rose for our sins. We have not yet come into the fullness of God’s kingdom. 

Jesus took on the negative. He died for us while we were yet sinners. Guess what? That’s still true. We are still sinners. We have an ongoing need for redemption. So it is a very good thing that God loved us before we deserved it. We’ll probably never deserve the love God has for is. But God goes on loving us even as we try to get our act together.  

We are Mr. and Ms. In Between. We have already been shown the love God has for us and we have not yet fully responded to that love. To get there, we can’t eliminate the negatives. It is a fallen and hurting world. We live our lives in this fallen world. But we do so transformed by the hope that is in us. We have the knowledge that this is not all there is. The glory to be revealed is still on the way. 

We are called to be one another in that in between. We are to sit alongside others in their pain and suffering, to make God's presence real in their lives. We do this in response, to the love of Jesus, the original Mr. In Between. He left behind the light of heaven and came to the darkness of earth to bridge the gulf made by human sin. Jesus reached across the divide between us and God to reconcile us to himself. Jesus showed that God can be and is present in our suffering and loss helping to make sense out of the pain we feel. God does not abandon us, but lives with us and in us in the vast In Between.  

Amen.