Groaning in Travail

Sermon

18I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

On Friday morning, when I was getting ready to start writing my sermon on the parable of the unjust steward from Matthew 18, I texted a group of pastor friends. “I’m praying that the creation is indeed groaning in labor pains, birthing something new, and by implication, something better.” For the next half hour that stuck with me, and I decided to change the preaching text and the sermon.

Friends, I don’t need to tell you that creation is groaning – we see it. We smell it. We breathe it. It has been a heartbreaking week for Oregonians and our neighbors to the north and south. It’s been hard to muster any sort of hopefulness or cheeriness what with the miasma of smoke and ash that pervades our Portland. So I took comfort in something our new colleague Chris Dela Cruz posted on Facebook: “All I know is that I know empty platitudes don’t comfort, but encouraging hope, even in the worst of conditions, helps.”

So I turn to the apostle Paul, of all people, for a word of hope for us this morning. Indeed, creation is groaning; Paul invites us to see that groaning as labor pains. So the question for us to consider is this: what shall be born? And how will we respond to that new thing?

This text from Romans comes from the mighty chapter eight, one of the most exquisite theological statements ever written. The author Paul is building his case for our relationship with God, using hefty theological words like righteousness, condemnation, flesh, and glory. The argument crescendos with those words from the end of the chapter: who can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? No one and nothing.

To get us there, Paul uses this metaphor of birth. For Paul, creation is not separate from creatures in the work of God; creation too is beloved by its Creator. All of creation – not just human beings – will be redeemed by God.

Creation, too, responds to what is happening to the earth. We know what that is like. A dry summer, high winds, hot temperatures, and low humidity came together for the unholy birth of these fires. I

know that all of our prayers have been with firefighters, and those who have lost everything, with those who have had to evacuate, and especially with those who have lost their lives.

Is there a larger purpose in all of this? Honestly, I don’t know. And if I guess that there might be a larger purpose, I don’t necessarily like where that road takes me. To say that there is a larger purpose might imply that God intends this destruction and suffering, and that does not align with my understanding of who God is and how God loves us.

So let us consider not so much about the intention of this but the response. What is being born amid all this groaning, and how shall we respond?

Next week we will likely experience blue skies or rain, either of which will be a welcome relief. Our neighbors not too far away outside of Portland and our neighbors in California and Washington will have blue skies or rain too, and the charred remains of forests they held dear, of homes that held all their worldly possessions, of lives forever changed. In one sense, creation is birthing destruction, and all the things that go with that: rage, depression, hopelessness.

Can we look beyond that to see what else might be born? I believe that opportunity is being birthed as well, opportunity to be the church, opportunity to put our faith into practice.

Let me offer some possibilities of what might come from all of this.

Maybe a new empathy for our neighbors is being born. More than one friend of mine on Facebook commented along these lines. “How can I complain about smoke when some folks have lost everything?” It is hard to ignore the suffering that these fires have created – the suffering of the natural world and the loss and grief in the human world. Once we acknowledge the suffering, we respond.

On Friday, Portland Public Schools announced they were suspending their meal delivery to low-income families because of poor air quality. So a group of moms – yes, those infamous moms again – came together and in a matter of mere hours organized so that between Friday and Saturday, they served food and care packages to about 500 families. The suffering is real, and so is the empathetic response to that suffering.

Maybe a deeper commitment to earth care amid climate change is being born. For me, and maybe for you too, one of the interesting things about the pandemic in its earlier months was how it slowed us down and so gave the earth a chance to heal. Perpetual smog dissipated, and cities like Beijing and Kolkata saw blue skies. Seismologists noted that as humans were less active, there were fewer rumblings in the earth’s upper crust. Polluted rivers achieved a new quality of clean.

As the bumper sticker reads, there is no Planet B. This earth is all we have, and the fires, like tropical storms and typhoons elsewhere, are a reminder that we live in a mutually dependent relationship with the earth. Perhaps these fires will encourage us to be more intentional about how much we drive and will encourage larger corporations to take the necessary steps to cut carbon emissions.

Maybe a greater understanding of how much we can endure is being born. I imagine most of us have felt like we’re being tested of late. How much can we take? What more can happen? At what point am I simply going to lose my cool in the middle of the grocery store? When is the morning when I choose to

stay in bed all day? Every day it’s a wrestling match between our resilience and our living in this C-minus world.

I think the apostle Paul would tell us that these labor pains are a sign of God’s love, and what is being born is the redemption of every created thing – every needle from a fir tree, every vegetable garden that lies in ashes, every human body with the suffering and joy it carries.

And the birth of a new thing does not mean the end of the old thing, but a continuation of the original in a different form. When a baby is born, her parents do not cease to exist; rather, that baby carries the DNA from her parents, intermingled in a new way. There is a new creation.

Perhaps the artists out there get this – art doesn’t happen without mistakes. Novelist Susan Howatch describes this redemption of all things, the labor pains, and the new creation. She writes in the voice of an artist, a sculptor, who says, “Every step I take, every bit of clay I ever touch, they are all there in the final work. If they hadn’t happened, then this [sculpture] wouldn’t exist. In fact they had to happen for the work to emerge as it is. So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat, and tears, everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that is wrong so that, in the end, nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.” (Absolute Truths)

Maybe that is what God is doing among us at this moment – taking the ashes from fires, and the courage of the firefighters, and the empathy of the neighbors, and our shaky faith, and our deep desire for a healthier earth, and our deep love for our Creator, and reusing, reshaping, recasting all of it in love, giving the joy and the suffering meaning. Maybe God is saying no matter what, you are precious to me, and I will not abandon my creation or my creatures.

Truly, friends, I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor despots, nor any elected official,
nor wind or wildfire,
nor things to come, like who knows what,
nor powers, nor protests, nor pandemics,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.