God Is For Us!
I had the task of preaching the Sunday after the 2016 election. It was that historic presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. At the time I was an Associate Minister at the New Hope Baptist Church in Metuchen and November 13, 2016, just happened to be my turn in the preaching rotation. I knew well in advance that I would be preaching, but I also knew that while the election results would not change the Gospel, the results would determine what kind of message God’s people needed to hear on that Sunday. So I prayerfully selected a text, Romans 8: 31-31, where Paul raises the question, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things?” It was a valid question regardless of the outcome of the election, however I did not start working on the sermon until after it was confirmed that Donald Trump would be the 45th President of the United States of America.
Through feelings of personal and communal despair, disappointment, and dancing at the brink of hope and hopelessness, I wrestled with the question, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things?” Ultimately, I found great comfort in the answer that Paul provided, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” This answer carried me through Trump’s presidency and the tripartite evils of racism, sexism, and classism that have been openly going to and fro seeking whom it may devour since his presidency. We survived what we thought we couldn’t because God is for us!
Still, like many of you, I find myself with amplified feelings from 2016, I believe that God being for us, evidence of God’s faithfulness, God’s power, and God’s justice, will carry us through the next four years and whatever lies ahead. For as Paul continues later In that same text, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Growing in Christ
Pastor Donna Olivia Owusu-Ansah