I don’t know about you, but I have been groaning a lot lately. I have been groaning about the end of the summer and the press of a too-full fall schedule. And I have been groaning over things happening in the United States over the last several weeks. The rearing of racism’s and anti-Semitism’s ugly head in Charlottesville, and the stark reminder that these hatreds are very much alive in this country. I am groaning over the devastation of two major hurricanes, one on the heels of another. And about the decision of our President and his administration to end the “Dream Act” without a plan for the lives of 850,000 undocumented children and young adults who had been protected by the Act from immediate deportation.
And I have been groaning about widespread famines in Africa. And about the missiles being developed and launched by North Korea. And much closer to home, groaning about the reality that there are children in Kingston without enough to eat, and about the deaths of two close family members in our congregation this week. There is more, but I will spare you. I know that some of you are struggling and groaning about things going on in your personal lives too. There is more than enough to groan about.
Of course it isn’t all bad news. It isn’t all gloom and doom. Far from it. Creation is still beautiful and fruitful. Despite the suffering we know, our lives are still touched by small pleasures, deep satisfactions, and much to be thankful for. And the crises of recent weeks have evoked lots of love and good deeds. Crises have a way of bringing out the best in us. We gather for vigils and protests. We light candles against the darkness. We link arms with strangers in the streets and raise our voices against injustices. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your immigration status, or race, or religion, or age, or sexual orientation, or how much money you have. Fishing boats become rescue boats, and people wade through deep waters to accompany other through grief and toward safety. We open our checkbooks. We groan together and work together, and discover again that together we can make a difference. We can make things better. And it happens too that in facing these crises, we think about the bigger issues, like racism, and climate change, and food security, and about what it means to put our trust in the military complex to secure our borders, and rights, and lives.
I am grateful for all of these good things, and I am groaning, and I know that you are groaning too. So let’s talk about groaning. Let’s talk about it in light of the bigger picture that Paul is showing us in the letter to the Romans. Let’s situate our experience within this cosmic view that Paul lays out. This is the deal. We are living in two realities at the same time. There is the old creation, the material world of planets, dirt, daffodils, oak trees, oceans, skunks, trout, and we are very much a part of this creation. We are creatures and kin to all other creatures and to the earth. We share our material substance with this ancient creation. The whole creation, including us, is beautiful, and fruitful. The whole creation, including us, is broken and decaying. The whole creation is groaning, and we with it.
The beauty and fruitfulness, the goodness of creation comes from God. The brokenness, the decaying, the death that haunts the life of the old creation comes from the choices that human beings made long ago, and the choices we still make. This old creation is our home. Our permanent address. And God is not content to let sin, and brokenness, and death have the last word over God’s good creation. God’s purpose is to redeem, renew, and save this whole creation. If God’s purpose was simply to get us to heaven when we die, then the rest of creation wouldn’t matter. It could just go to hell in a handbasket. It could just burn out, or freeze over, or flood away. It wouldn’t matter to God.
But that’s not God’s deal. God loves and cherishes every square inch of God’s creation, including every square inch of you. So God sets out to make the old creation new. In Jesus the Son, God breaks into the death trajectory of creation’s life. Jesus makes the created world his home. Jesus moves in. Jesus gets a new address. He plants his feet in the dust of the earth and shares in the dust of our being. He comes and adds his full-throated voice to the chorus of creation’s singing and groaning. And somehow, in the mystery of God’s creative power, Jesus’s living and dying and rising from death is the little bang of God’s new creation. A creation freed from the power of sin and decay and death. Just like that, the old creation’s trajectory is turned toward goodness and life. And it is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, that holds and energizes this trajectory. The Spirit of new creation is unleashed in the world, and takes up residence in human beings. The Spirit gets a new address in us.
And so we are living in two realities at the same time. Old creation and new creation exist side by side and vie for our devotion. There are two lives going on inside us, the old life, which has been corrupted by sin and is headed for death, and the new life that is being birthed in us, reviving, converting, re-making our old life. And Paul says: “the rest of creation groans and waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” in whom new creation is already at work, already at work, through the Spirit.”
The rest of creation longs for our conversion, groans for us to show up, waits for us to act from the new life in us. The polar bears on melting icecaps, the trout in polluted rivers, the oak trees inhaling carbon monoxide and working to exhale oxygen, the tightly caged hens, the child in Kingston without enough to eat, the Syrian refugee without home—the whole creation groans for our conversion through the Spirit who is already at work in us. The whole creation longs for us to act in life-giving ways. Not only when there is a crisis. Not only when tragedy strikes. But every day, doing what we can within the real limits of our time and ability and resources. We cannot do everything. Try as we might, we cannot fix everything. You and I know this well. It is part of our groaning. But, the Spirit of new creation in us, keeps pressuring us to live more fully into our God-given original vocation as earthkeepers and neighbor lovers.
With the whole creation, we are groaning and longing too. Groaning for all the ache of the old creation that we inhabit, and that inhabits us. And groaning because of the tensive energy of new creation already at work in us. Ours is a double groaning. We are groaning in the brokenness, the decaying, the dying. And we are groaning with the birth pangs of God’s new creation. This is where we live. In this already present, and not yet fully come reality of God’s new creation. We are working and we are waiting. There are things we can change, and things beyond our power to change them.
We cannot undo the powers of sin and death. We cannot raise ourselves from the dead. Only God can do that. And God has done that in Jesus Christ. And the Spirit is doing that in us. The Spirit is doing that in the whole creation, already, now. And in this time between, with the Spirit, we are groaning and we are rejoicing. Because God’s purposes are at work and they will not fail. God’s promises will all come true. We don’t know why God is taking so long to finish God’s new creation. We cry out, how long, Creator God, how long!? We struggle to keep faith in God. But this morning, we are invited again to put our trust and hope in God. We are invited to trust that the day is coming when all the groaning will end and the whole creation and our own bodies will be filled with the glory of God, the life of God, the goodness of God, as the waters cover the sea.