A man named Dean lived a quiet, but remarkable life.

Dean lived through the Great Depression, taught school in a one-room schoolhouse by the time he was 16. He briefly played minor league ball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and then flew for the Navy in World War II. During the war he married the love of his life.

With her, he buried the first of their children. Worked and raised with her two more children. He sang at pie suppers, churches and at community events with his siblings, all of whom he eventually outlived and mourned.

Dean’s faith was grounded in a God who held tight to him all the way through. So with that musical background, when he died it was not surprising that Dean and his wife had pre-selected a hymn they wanted sung at his service.

You see, Dean never forgot that love from God. The love that stayed with him for his 89 years. He lived out his love as a response to God. Shared it with his family and neighbors, they say. In fact, they say Dean knew God to be faithful, gracious. and merciful.

Dean’s family would say that he knew how to love because he knew God’s fierce, persistent love.

In fact, in his last days a visitor says that Dean could be heard feebly singing--
God will take care of you...
...Through every day, o’er all the way;
God will take care of you,
God will take care of you.

Well, I have good news for us today– despite the hard questions that life will cause us to ask of the scriptures– God is still working and calling.

God is still actively working within our lives and within Creation.

And God is still in the business of calling those who believe and who respond to God’s love, to be part of an unfolding Kingdom of Heaven that we long for.
And that’s pretty important if you’re curious as to whether God will let you go and just leave you to fend for yourself. That’s pretty important in life if sometimes you wonder where God is-- or whether your faithfulness really matters. That’s pretty important if you’re afraid that you can lose God’s love. Or if you’re afraid sometimes that you already did.

The apostle Paul writes here in Romans 11, and he’s talking about his heritage and he’s talking TO Christians also. He’s reached a conclusion. He says, “For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” (v29b)

You thought you had missed what God wanted you to do, and so now it won’t get done-- but you’re not that powerful. You thought that some cultural shift, some movement in our country or in our collective mood, even what you may perceive to be the move of people away from God, will thwart what God’s trying to do in our world-- but I’m here to remind us all we’re just not that powerful. You think you’ve got it figured out who’s in and who’s out-- but the apostle Paul indicates that maybe you don’t have everything quite as buttoned-up as you thought.

Here’s what was happening– at Rome, the church had been started by dispersed Jews, probably from Jerusalem. It had been set up in great part with some of the Jewish tradition built in.

But, apparently there emerged more Gentile Christians for a time there than Jews.

Makes sense when you consider that there would have been more Gentiles at Rome than Jews. Apparently they had reached some. And that’s great!

But now, they were growing in Jewish Christians again. By the time Paul wrote this the Gentile Christians were holding the reigns of the church...and they liked that. So, there was a little territorial thing going on, it seems. The Gentiles were pointing fingers at the Jewish Christians, saying that they had rejected Christ as a people.

In these few chapters in which 11 is part of a group-- Paul was trying to referee that a bit.

His assertion both teaches us and reassures us.but also raises questions that I can’t completely answer. And nor will you, this side of Heaven. Here is what is important for them then, and us now-- God is still at work in Creation. Redeeming humanity. Bringing about Heaven and Earth as it was supposed to be.

Paul assures them (and us thousands of years later) that God’s promises are still good. That even if the chosen people for instance have rejected Christ, God will not reject them.

That if God has called them, or us, we're still called. Do you hear what I am saying?

If God has loved you-- Paul seems to be saying-- you are still loved. If God has placed a hand of calling and purpose upon your shoulder, there’s still a place where you are a part of what God is doing. If God has included you in where God is headed, you are still invited to walk alongside God.

And that becomes important when you grow to a point that you believe you are beyond God’s repair. When you believe that you have lived yourself right out of the scope of God’s reach.

It becomes important when you believe you’ve neglected your faith or your church. When you wake up one day and realize that you have been asleep at the wheel of your faith.

And that becomes important if the present state of the Church is still central to your life, but doesn’t seem to be as much so to others.

Paul says that God has not been asleep. That God is still in control. God is still calling those whom God has ever called, and loving those whom God has ever loved.

Let me acknowledge that there can be a struggle with Romans 11 for some. None of this really adds up to us. We’ll even try to use other scripture to argue against this scripture.

Then, we remember what the Prophet Isaiah said in chapter 55, “For your thoughts are not my thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

That which is good news for us, will also baffle us a little along the way. For that also means we won’t always understand how or WHY God does what God does.

We are like Paul, who does not profess to always comprehend God’s ways, but Paul does trust God’s promises.

If it’s not anything we might do-- if it’s not anything we might have any fault with-- life can still sometimes bring us to a point where we wonder if God has moved on.

Moved away from us. Decided we’re just not in anymore.

Paul says here in Romans 11 that’s just not possible.

George Matheson was like anyone else who felt the tug of God’s call upon his life. He was also a normal teenager growing up in Scotland. Except that he already had at that young age failing eyesight. It being in the 1800’s, the options for treatment were not what they are today. Maybe something could have been done; maybe not.

George went on into college, graduating when he was 19. He went right to Seminary, but his eyesight failed completely. Now blind, what would he do? His sisters came to his rescue, learning Hebrew and Greek and so on to assist him.

And that was tough, and it tested his faith. What broke him was when his fiancee’ decided she didn’t want to spend a lifetime married to a blind man.

George never married. The pain of that rejection never really left him, they say.

Years later, a sister came to him with the happy news of her own engagement. He celebrated with her- because that’s what family does. But it pushed him further into his despair. He began a disciplined focus and exploration of his understanding of God’s love. A spiritual journey. A love which is never limited, never conditional, never withdrawn from us, and never uncertain...at least from God’s standpoint

It’s said that George Mattheson, out of his spiritual journey, wrote a hymn one summer evening in 1882 that can still sustain us today. He said of the experience-- “It seemed to me that its construction occupied only a few minutes, and I felt myself rather in the position of one who was being dictated to than of an original artist. I was suffering from extreme mental distress, and the hymn was the fruit of pain."

George Matheson went on to become a powerful and beloved preacher there in his native Scotland. It is said that later, George even became quite popular nationally, so fervent and accessible did his listeners find him.

And by the way-- George’s hymn is also one that was sung at Dean’s funeral service. You remember Dean...I opened this message telling you about him. He and his wife had chosen another song for that service long before he died. And that’s the one that George had written only about 20 years before Dean was born--
1 O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.

God is still working. Including in your life and in mine.
God is still calling people to accomplish what God will accomplish.
God will not stop loving us. God’s call upon our lives just may not stop either. And I don’t know about you, but I pray that it never does.