Ninth Sunday after Pentecost; 30 July 2023; Proper 12A (RCL); Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:21-34, 44-52.
Who doesn’t love this passage from Romans, with its assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ? The list sounds pretty extreme, so surely nothing we face can compare. But for Paul hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or the sword was a catalog of dangers he had faced personally (see 2 Corinthians 11:21-29 — five times he received the forty lashes less one, and then a whole list of other trials). And yet, he was confident of the gospel he preached.
Continue reading “What shall separate us?”