Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
This evening, somewhere around 8:00, I invite you to sit
outside in the shade, have a glass of cool water to sip, and take your bulletin
outside with you, open it to the Epistle reading from Romans 8. Read it once
inside your head, then a second time out loud; then, be quiet and just listen.
Listen, and you will hear creation groaning. You’ll hear the tree branches
rubbing against each other, sighing in the hot, dry wind, praying for relief
from the heat. You’ll hear the dry rustle of grass and weeds, moaning in agony
as moisture is drawn from the stomata in their leaves, leaving them thirsting
for water. You will hear the song of birds crying out, thirsty, seeking a cool
drink to quench parched throats. You will hear the song of the cicadas, singing
out, pleading for God’s mercy in this fallen, sin-stained world. You won’t be
able to hear it, but even the dry, parched earth will join this sad song with dehydrated
agony.
For the record, this is not a message of green, “woke”
environmentalism. Nor am I overstating the case, romanticizing and personifying
what you will see or hear in your yard or pasture. What I am doing is placing
you alongside Paul as he considers the reality of the world in which we live.
When you sit outside and you read the text from Romans and then listen closely,
you will be reminded that all of creation is fallen. Yes, it is beautiful and
wonderful and magnificent from massive grandeur to tiny microcosm, but it is
all part of a fallen creation – even what we call “outer space.” Paul reminds
us, sin is not just a you-and-me problem, something that impacts our horizontal
relationships with each other and our vertical relationship with God. Eve’s forbidden
bite from the forbidden tree plunged all of creation into the chaos of sin,
death and unintended, unknown consequences.
We gloss over half of God’s words in Genesis 3. We know the
curse against satan, how he will bruise the Seed’s heel, but the Seed will
crush his head. We know the curse and how it impacts mankind. There will be
pain in childbearing; the perfect husband-wife relationship will be filled with
conflict; work will be filled with pain; living will be a hard, sweaty process;
and, in the end, you will die (the devil lied about that one, too) – from
dust you are, and to dust you shall return. We often speak of this as
the fall of man, but it wasn’t just Adam and Eve, though, that was cursed. Creation
is also fallen. Creation was impacted because of that unfaithful bite: “Cursed
is the ground because of you.” Where Adam’s vocation, pre-fall, was to be a
steward of the land, now mankind and creation would fight and wrestle against
each other. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it
all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…”
And creation groans. The groans echo through the centuries,
starting in the Garden, and still reverberating in your own garden, your yard or
your pasture. When it’s reported in the news, the media doesn’t realize it, but
they tell creation’s fallen story. From drought to wildfire, from earthquake to
hurricane, from blight to Pine Bark Beetle, from floods to sweltering heat,
from oak wilt to sod webworms, from ants that sting to ivy that itches,
creation groans under the fallenness that rests upon it as well as mankind. Sometimes
this is the cause of human suffering. Sometimes it is because of human
suffering. Regardless, creation is in dire straits and it groans.
But these groans aren’t merely groans of misery, of loss and
destruction, creation’s version of “Woe is me.” Hidden in these groans is a
groan of hope. St. Paul says that creation waits with yearning for its freedom
from this curse, longingly and eagerly waiting for the complete and final
unveiling that is to take place in Christ Jesus.
In Christ Jesus. That is the key to answering all of creation’s
groans. Christ enters into creation, supernaturally conceived yet born
naturally of woman. He who was begotten, not made, nevertheless sets aside His
full divine nature and takes on human flesh. He who created chose to live
within creation, walking upon it, sailing upon it, eating and drinking from it,
seeing it, breathing it, feeling it, smelling it, tasting it, using it – even
with its fallenness - to give insight into the Kingdom of God. God becomes flesh
and enters into creation so to redeem that very same creation, including
mankind.
Holy Scripture tells us of another time when the groans
escaped from a Tree. These completed the groans that began at the tree in the
Garden. One can only imagine the groans
of agony which escaped Jesus’ lips on Calvary as He bore the burden of the
creation’s guilt and pain and suffering on Himself. The groans of creation are a reminder of the
fallen nature of creation. The groans of
Christ were not because He was guilty of sin; He was perfect in every way and
without sin. The groans of Christ were
really not His groans… they were our groans, creation’s groans, transferred to
Him. He groaned for fallen creation and
all of its misery and pain. And, when at
the end He bowed His head and the last groan of “It is finished,” passed
through His sin-chapped lips, it was a groan which literally shook creation as
if the world were about to collapse. The
ground trembled, tombs were ripped open, and even the Temple curtain was rent
asunder.
For three days, the haunting sound of that groan hung in the
air until early Sunday morning when, instead of a groan, a weeping woman heard
a still, gentle voice say, “Mary.” That
afternoon, two men living in Emmaus heard the voice clearly explain to them all
that the Scriptures foretold about Christ, and heard those wonderful words,
“Take and eat. Take and drink.” Later that night, ten terrified disciples
heard the still, gentle voice declare, “Peace be with you,” and a week later,
another man was told to see…touch…stop being a doubter and be a believer.
The One who had groaned His last is now breathing and
alive! No longer does He groan under the
painful load of creation’s sin on the cross; now, He stands in victory at the
right hand of the Father, waiting to come again to judge the living and the
dead. No longer does the weight and pain
of sin and death and the devil threaten to crush; Christ, in His resurrection,
has crushed satan and his power over sin and death. In Christ’s victory, we have been given the
gift of our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. The adoption price
has been paid in full by the blood of Christ, and the adoption has been sealed
as we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Therein is our hope: in the promise of our
own resurrection, following after Christ, the first-fruits.
You’ve heard me speak of hope before. We hope for lots of
things. We hope the check clears. We hope the Barn gets our order in before the
crowd over there. We hope the cat doesn’t yak on the bedspread. It’s hope, but
it’s a soft hope…there are lots of variables, which makes it all a rather
hollow hope – isn’t it? The Bible describes as our hope in Christ as certainty,
confidence, and absolute trust in what isn’t seen. Hope’s power rests in the
power of the One who makes the promise – God Himself. Even though we don’t see
what we hope for, the hope is grounded in what we know: Christ is risen! He is
risen, indeed, alleluia! So, when we say we have Christian hope in the
redemption of our bodies through Christ, I want you to hear that with the Amen
and Amen of St. John’s Revelation!
While the promise is ours and the guarantee is certain, the
adoption papers sealed in Christ Jesus, we are still waiting for our bodies to
be delivered to the Father for eternity.
We continue to “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as
sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
Yet, our groans as we wait in hope are different than those groans which
are without hope. Do we still suffer the
horrific effects of sin – yes. Does
creation still groan? Yes. Yet, those groans have a purpose. As we groan
looking forward, in hope, for what is to come.
St. Paul said, “For in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is
hot hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not
see, we wait for it with patience.” We
hope for what is to come – the final resurrection when Christ comes again –
because Christ has risen. On that great
day, our bodies and souls will be reunited in perfection as Adam and Eve were
first created. “If you are a Christian, the chances are extremely good that you
will return to dust. The chances are
not, however, 100%; it all depends on what "soon" means. The chances of you not REMAINING dust are,
I'm happy to say . . . 100. Per. Cent.” (Jeff
Gibbs - If you are a Christian, the chances are extremely... | Facebook) We
will again know God perfectly and be in His image. Tears, sorrow, sufferings, and anger will all
disappear. There will again be true
peace and joy and love for eternity at the foot of God.
There is one other word of comfort for us in this morning’s
text. For those days when creation’s fall weighs heavily on you and the world’s
weight is squarely on your shoulders; when you read the paper or hear the news
and you wonder “How much longer, O Lord?”; when you scan the sky praying for a
drop of rain; when your heart beats faster because the doctor calls you
personally…on those days when you can not even frame words into a prayer for
God’s mercy, St. Paul says “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not
know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us
with groaning too deep for words.” Even when you don’t know what to pray for,
or how to pray, or what words to say – or even if all you can do is groan
literally and loudly – the Holy Spirit fleshes your prayers into perfect
petitions for your Father in heaven to hear.
In the meantime, as we continue to wait and hope for Christ
to come again, creation continues to groan.
But it is a different kind of groaning.
Do we still groan in sorrow?
Yes. Do we still groan in pain. You bet.
But our groans also have a sense of hope for that which is to come. The hymn writer Martin Franzmann expresses
the groans of hope well:
Give us lips to sing thy glory,
Tongues, thy mercy to proclaim,
Throats that shout the hope that fills us,
Mouths to speak thy Holy Name.
Alleluia, alleluia!
May the Light which thou dost send
Fill our songs with alleluias,
Alleluias without end!
Amen.
(Lutheran Service Book #578.5)
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as
you trust in Him, that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy
Spirit. Amen. (Romans 15:13, NIV)
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