"Love's Overflow"

Romans 5:1-5

Earlier this summer I drove to the headwaters of the Rio Grande River.  I got within a couple of miles of the river's source on Stony Pass, high in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado.  From that single source, the river tumbles over boulders and through steep canyons before reaching the Rio Grande Reservoir north of Creede.  From there it meanderers through the San Louis Valley of southern Colorado before crossing into New Mexico. Flowing south, the river winds its way through cities such as Albuquerque and Socorro. When it reaches El Paso, it forms the border between Texas and Mexico, finally spilling into the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, some eighteen hundred miles from its source.

Well, in our short reading this morning from Romans, Paul covers a lot of theological ground—justification by faith, peace with God, grace, suffering and hope. Paul's meanderings through vast theological territory may seem confusing, even disorienting, until we recognize that Paul is describing a river of love—a flow of grace that has its source in the very heart of God.

In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul begins to trace the route by which God's love has poured into the world. Paul understands creation itself as an overflow of God's love.   God is love, and love by definition has an outward flow.  It cannot be contained. Paul goes on to recall how Abraham and Sarah were swept up in the flow of God's love. By faith they stepped into its current even though they didn't know where it would take them.

 In a similar way, our baptismal prayer this morning mentioned some of the other biblical characters who became caught up in the current of God's love.  Noah, who rode out the storm trusting that God would provide a safe landing and a new beginning.  Moses, who could have lived a comfortable life with his family in Midian, if God's love hadn't caught up with him, carried him back to Egypt, and then swept him and the people of Israel out of Egypt, across the sea, and into the freedom of the promised land.

This baptismal prayer, like Paul's opening words in Romans, acknowledges how the river of God's goodness has flowed through the lives of the poets and prophets of Israel.  These men and women of faith served as guides and explorers.  Yet the radical message of Paul is that the river of God's compassion no longer has any religious or ethnic boundaries.  It has become universally accessible.

Recently the Austin American Statesman had a picture of Tom Miller Dam.  Because of all the rain we've had this summer, the dam's flood gates were wide open. The picture showed water spilling over the dam and rushing into Town Lake. Once the gates were open, water normally stored in Lake Austin poured downstream.  Well, Paul declares that Jesus is the one chosen by God to open wide the gates of God's love enabling that love to flow without distinction to Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. 

This is the point we made this morning as we gathered around the waters of baptism.  Today we witnessed how the waters of God's love overflowed onto Simone, sweeping her into the life of God. Baptism declares that the love that comes from the heart of God floods into our lives and flows out, through us, to others.  As Simone's parents, family and congregation, we promised to help Simone accept this love that has claimed her, to keep her within its flow, and to teach her about the deep peace she will enjoy so long as her life remains within the stream of God's unconditional love for her.

But we have to be honest.  This river of God's love flows over some rocky terrain, terrain that we refer to as human suffering.  Paul doesn't deny that suffering is part of the life of faith.  To the contrary, he declares that "we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."  Now we all know that suffering--taken by itself--doesn't necessarily produce endurance, character and hope.  It can just as easily lead to bitterness and despair.  Paul rejoiced in suffering, not because suffering is good—it isn't—but because the heart of God knows our suffering and suffers with us. Jesus endured suffering and rejection because that's where God's love carried him. Quite simply, suffering was the shape of Christ's life, and for Paul Christ's life gives shape to ours. Unlike so many preachers and prophets today, Paul isn't promoting a kind of spirituality that guarantees happiness, worldly success and material prosperity. The peace of which he speaks is something quite different.  It is the peace of being caught up in a love that flows toward the most vulnerable, helpless and destitute among us. This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer called suffering the "badge of true discipleship" and considered it the mark of the true church. Baptism immerses us into the life of Christ and then carries us with Christ in service to others. 

At our midweek Supper and Substance program last Wednesday, we watched and discussed the powerful film, Hotel Rwanda.  The main character in the film is named Paul, and he is the manager of the hotel. As the hostilities erupt against the Tutsis, initially Paul tries to keep himself and his family apart from the suffering of his neighbors. But as the movie unfolds, Paul refuses opportunities to save himself, and becomes more and more committed to the plight of those most endangered.  The more he identifies with and enters into the suffering of others, the more his character develops.  He emerges as a man freed from selfish preoccupation, and freed for solidarity with others, especially those who suffer.

At the end of our discussion last Wednesday, we were reminded that, while the Rwandan genocide is past history, such suffering continues in places such as Darfur. Since God's love flows in the direction of human suffering. Those of us who have been baptized can expect to be carried to those places where people are crying out for love, peace and justice. This is not altruism. It is a condition of Christian discipleship. 

Yet ironically those who enter most fully into the suffering of the world tend to be those with the most hope for the world's future. The more we enter into the love of God for others, the more convinced we become that love will win.  God won't give up on the creation.  Do you remember the drought of a few years back, when the Rio Grande River actually dried up before reaching the Gulf?  Well, we stand this morning around the waters of baptism, declaring our faith that the river of God's love will never dry up. We are a people of hope, declares Paul, and hope will not disappoint us. 

Theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: "People who hope are not people who have a vague sense that things will work out all right.  People who hope are those who know the name of God and the characteristic gifts of God…People who hope have complete confidence in God's coming shalom, a rule of order, peace, security, justice and abundance. Without denying any present disorder, confusion, or distortion, people who hope, watch, wait, pray, and expect, knowing  that God's shalom is as good as done.  People who hope are people who act in the conviction that God's future is reliably 'present tense' and act upon it even before it is fully in hand."

Friends, we gather this morning around the waters of baptism in the sure and certain hope that the river of God's love leads us to a New Creation, where suffering is ended, injustice has no place, hunger and warfare are no more. As the Psalmist declared, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High." Baptism sets each one us in this river that flows from the heart of God. In this water we have peace with God.  Riding its current, we are carried into God's promised future.