In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton of Alabama was arrested for the murder of two fast food managers in the Birmingham area. Despite having a solid alibi and no solid evidence connecting him to the crimes, Hinton was found guilty and sentenced to death. For thirty years, he spent 23 hours a day confined to his 5’ x 7’ cell. During that time, 54 prisoners were executed, each of whom had to walk past Hinton’s cell on their way. He heard and saw and smelled unspeakable things over the course of those years, and he believed he would never get out, even though he did not commit the crimes he had been convicted of. 

In 2014, The United States Supreme Court unanimously found that Hinton’s lawyer had not provided sufficient counsel for him in the case, and a retrial was called for. When forensic experts were unable to match the bullets from the crime scene to the gun at Hinton’s mother’s house, the charges against Hinton were dropped and the conviction was overturned. The first thing Hinton said when he stepped out of prison as a free man was, “The sun does shine.” Later he wrote a book titled “The Sun Does Shine” about his experience spending 30 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. In that book he said something that deeply connected with me. He wrote, “I try to make meaning out of something so wrong and so senseless. We all do.” 

When bad things happen, we want to find meaning in them. What lesson are we supposed to learn? What good thing will come after we’ve made our way through the bad thing? Surely, this awful situation or experience or tragedy has to mean something. We find verses in Scripture that, on the surface, seem to urge us to look for the meaning in our suffering. The passage we just read from Romans 8 contains one of those verses: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Does this mean that no matter what I go through, it will eventually work for good? When I suffer, can I draw a straight line from that suffering to a blessing? And…to ask a very uncomfortable question…does this mean God plans for us to suffer so that something good will come out of it?

This morning as we explore this often-quoted passage from Romans 8, I want to lift up three things. My hope is not that these three things will answer all our questions about why there is suffering in our lives and what it all means, but that they will instead help us to recognize the mystery. We simply cannot know or understand everything, as hard as we might try to do so. And even still–even though we cannot understand the meaning of it all–through it all we can have confidence that God is with us. Nothing can separate us from God, not even the most difficult situations we might face.

The first thing I want to lift up from this passage in Romans 8 is that this passage is not just about me and my suffering; it’s about us. Anna M.V. Bowden, Professor of New Testament

Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, writes this: “The key to interpreting Romans 8 is to recognize that Paul is writing to a collective community. He repeatedly refers to the first-person plural (we and us) and to “those (plural) who” love God. In a culture that tends to read Romans as a roadmap for individual salvation, we must remember that Paul’s letter does not address the faith or belief of single believers; it addresses a faithful, corporate body of Jesus-followers—God’s beloved in Rome (1:7).” Christians in the church at Rome were experiencing increasing persecution. Christians were being either exiled out of Rome, or they were arrested, beaten, and even killed. Eventually, they had to worship in secret, and they witnessed as friends and fellow believers were taken away.

I imagine they wondered where God was in all of this. How long would God delay in coming to their rescue as they suffered? Paul wrote the letter of Romans both to remind the people of the good news of Jesus, but also to encourage them that God had not forgotten them. Even though creation was groaning, even though the church was groaning, even though the suffering probably felt like too much to bear at times, God still had a plan–a good plan–for God’s beloved people.

Right after this passage, Paul begins a long theological reflection on what will happen to God’s chosen people–the Jews–when all is said and done. As a man who had dedicated his entire life to following Jewish law and worshiping the God of Israel, when he encountered the risen Jesus, I think he thought his family and friends would all recognize Jesus as the Messiah, too. When this did not happen, he was devastated. How could he reconcile his belief that God had uniquely chosen his people with the realization that his people did not see Jesus the same way he did? 

When we read Scripture, the context of what we read is deeply important. While a verse here or there might provide comfort or insight, we will struggle to grasp the full meaning if we don’t understand the Scriptures right before and after it. This is evident in a huge way in Romans 9-11. In these three chapters, Paul is wrestling with what will happen to his people. It isn’t until you get to chapter 11 that you see the conclusion Paul draws: God never stopped choosing God’s people, and in the end, God will continue to choose them. No matter how many setbacks there are, no matter how impossible things might seem, no matter how far any of us strays from God, God is still working for our good. 

When Paul writes about all things working together for good, he is primarily writing to us collectively, not individually. That’s not to say these words aren’t also true in some way on a personal level, but just to remind us that when they were written, they were written to a suffering church. The second thing I want to lift up is this: We do not need to find the words–or the meaning–in the midst of the bad thing. When we are suffering, we might be tempted–or people around us might be tempted–to jump to the positive. This has more to do with our discomfort with suffering than anything else. We don’t want to feel sad or angry or lost or broken, and so we tell ourselves, “Everything will be so much better on the other side of this.” And that might be true. But in the moment, our primary job isn’t to talk ourselves out of our suffering. 

We don’t need to push the suffering under a rug and say positive things about it. In fact, we don’t have to say anything about it at all. Paul writes, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” We don’t have to put a happy face on for others. We don’t have to have the most spiritual answer for why something is happening to us. We don’t even have to pray the right words. Even if all we can do is groan or cry, the Holy Spirit is praying to God on our behalf. And God who loves us, listens to the Spirit groaning within us and cares deeply for us.

One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, once wrote this: “Sometimes the first time we pray, we cry out in the deepest desperation, ‘God help me.’ This is a great prayer, as we are then at our absolutely most degraded and isolated, which means we are nice and juicy with the consequences of our best thinking and are thus possibly teachable.” In our suffering, we don’t have to find the lesson. We don’t have to show what good will come of it. We don’t even have to ask God to be with us. God just will be because that’s who God is. If all we can do is squeak out, “Help me,” or all we can do is wail, God will be with us because God is in the business of drawing near to brokenhearted people. Later on, when the suffering is in the rearview mirror, we may be able to look back and see the ways God was with us. We may be able to use these sufferings as testimonies to bless others who are suffering. But while the suffering is still upon us, we can release ourselves from the need to find the meaning. 

These words from Romans were written to a suffering “we,” not just a suffering “me.” We do not have to find the positive spin while we’re going through the hardships of life. But, most importantly, this passage teaches us that nothing has the power to separate us from God–not even the darkest valley we could ever face. Paul wanted the suffering people in Rome–and us–to know that no matter what life throws at us, even if it is the worst possible thing we can imagine, nothing has the power to separate us from God’s love. God chose us, God draws near with compassion when we suffer, and God continues to choose us and work all things together for good for God’s people. No matter how the world rejects us, God will never leave us nor forsake us. 

Wicked is a book, which was later made into a Broadway musical and then a two-part movie, that imagines what life for the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West was like long before the plot of the movie The Wizard of Oz. In Wicked, these two unlikely characters end up being roommates in college. Even though their lives are different and their futures will take divergent paths, these two young women influence each others’ lives in profound ways. 

Near the end of the musical, they sing the powerful song “For Good” with each other. I want to share some of the words of that song with you:

I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason

Bringing something we must learn

And we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them

And we help them in return

Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true, 

But I know I’m who I am today because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun

Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?

But because I knew you

I have been changed for good

No matter what we go through, God is with us. No matter how deep and dark the valleys we face, God is with us. No matter whether we are too confused, or wounded, or broken to find the words, God is with us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ. In the meantime, we can walk with each other. We can lift each other up. And we can give thanks to God whose love changes us for good. Amen.