Creation Awaits: Sermon on Romans 8:18-25

You may or may not remember when this story hit the news. It's been a while. Sometime around the year 1930 – and nobody is precisely sure when – in a small Spanish village – there was a church, the Santuario de Misericordia. And in that church, a noted art professor offered up two hours of his time to render a quick gift in God's name. But his skill crafted a fresco on the church wall – nothing large, less than two feet high; nothing too extravagant, but an intensely life-like rendering of Jesus crowned with thorns – the infamous scene where Christ, treated mockingly as the king he really was, is offered by Pilate for public view with the cry, “Behold the man!” 

For years, for generations, the fresco was an object of some local appreciation; it had local spiritual and sentimental value. In time, it came to be neglected. In time, the pervasive effects of humidity in the Spanish summers began peeling the paint in flecks off so much of the work. And it was time to send in professional art restorers to make the fresco shine full and clear and good as new, just as it was when Elías García Martínez first painted it on the wall. The funds were provided by the original artist's granddaughter.

Only, they found as they examined it in 2012, someone had beaten them to it. Someone had come in and taken it upon him- or herself to restore the painting. That someone was a churchwoman in her early eighties, Cecilia Giménez. Cecilia claimed, after the fact, that the local parish priest had given her permission. Be that as it may, Cecilia was no professional art restorer. She was an enthusiast. But the work she produced was remarkable! It gained worldwide fame! 

Or, should I say, infamy. Oh, it was remarkable, all right. But not remarkably good, nor remarkably similar to what it was meant to be from the beginning. This once simple, elegant, life-like fresco of Jesus had been transformed, through Cecilia's ineptitude, into what one journalist described as “a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic.” You have to see it for yourself to appreciate how drastic the ruin of whatever artistic merit the original could be said to have had, and the potential for its use in spiritual devotion of any sort. Cecilia Gimenez, in her very effort to fix what was falling apart, broke it forever. You see, it's a great shame when a worthwhile piece of art falls into corruption and begins to fade away in bits and pieces; but so much worse is it when marred by foolish caretakers!

And such it is with the world we live in, Paul tells us this morning. In the beginning, God unrolled the canvas of existence, woven by him from scratch, and began to paint in living colors. He painted broad expanses of black, dotted with stars and pulsars and quasars, littered with speckles of beauty. He painted a world beneath a fine yellow sun and blue sky – a world of green trees, of verdant bushes and grasses, of multi-hued flowers to put wealthy kings to shame; a world of mighty mountains and slicing valleys, of murky oceans and cerulean lakes and rivers, of the beige of the desert and the white of the tundra; a world full of creatures unfathomable, illimitable, great and small, and the Lord our God hath made them all. A masterpiece of beauty. 

And he himself, not just the first Master Artist but also the first Art Critic, approved it. A quadrillion stars out of five. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Intricately crafted, with brushstrokes so fine as to paint each and every subatomic particle just so as to beautify the whole. And, no static portrait like a fresco or a wall hanging or one of our stained-glass windows, this grand creation was a dynamic masterpiece, to which he invited a new breed of art enthusiast, the painters called Adam, to appreciate and savor and be enraptured and then to add brushstrokes of their own to continue the theme by the Artist's Spirit.

And it was made to thrive, to shout, to sing praise, to overflow with beauty, as it is written: “The grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness; the meadows are covered with flocks, and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing” (Psalm 65:12-13). “The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. … Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy” (Psalm 98:4,7-8). Creation – all the universe – was made good, so good, so very good, so wonderful, made to be maintained and completed in joy by an artful team full of the Artist's Spirit.

And yet that's not what we see around us. This masterpiece is flaking and crumbling. It ain't what it used to be, and it ain't what it ought to be. Does it seem that way to you? Paul calls it “subjected to frustration” (Romans 8:20). It was made to be subjected to an artful team – “You have made [the human] ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and all the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas” (Psalm 8:6-8) – but instead fell beneath the feet of another master. Frustration. Futility. It's the word used in the Greek translation of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) – “Smoke and mirrors, everything is just smoke and mirrors!” It's mist, it's vapor, it's choked in shadow and fog. Creation, the universe, is frustrated because it's subject to smoke and mirrors. No beauty lasts. All things fall apart.

What's more, Paul says, the creation is in “bondage to decay,” or “enslaved to corruption” (Romans 8:21). The world we see around us isn't the world the world itself wants. It wasn't subjected to frustration by its own choice. It doesn't want all the destruction, all the disaster, all the decay, all the debris. The universe is a slave, the earth is a slave, to forces big and bad that want to weaponize it for our destruction. Which is not what God's creation wants.

How'd this happen? Paul looks back, and sees so much in his Bible to explain it. To Adam, that failed artist who had his own vision and scribbled all over everything, God said, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). The prophets cried out, “The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, … the earth is defiled by its people” (Isaiah 24:4). “How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and the birds have perished” (Jeremiah 12:4). “He turned the rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there” (Psalm 107:33-34). “The whole land will be ruined..., therefore the earth will mourn” (Jeremiah 4:27-28). So “the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (Romans 8:20).

We've seen desolate scenes like that. Our wickedness pollutes the earth – spiritually, we can imagine, but physically as well.  Really, how have we treated this planet handed into our stewardship?  How have we treated the forests and fields God has made?  What have we done with the rivers and the seas and the oceans?  What have we done with the atmosphere, from the troposphere through the ozone layer and beyond?  How have we treated the vulnerable creatures placed in our charge?  What have we done?  Oh, what have we done?  Wickedness!

Our wickedness kills off the animals and the birds; our wickedness has universal consequences, defiling the masterpiece of life God made. We have botched the upkeep and completion of this masterpiece far worse than Cecilia Giménez ruined the fresco in her village church. And so, Paul tells us, creation has been “groaning” in pain (Romans 8:22). The earth, the sea, the sky – they're in agony, they're hurting, they're lifting their pain up vocally to God! The Susquehanna River is groaning; the Welsh Mountain is groaning; the Pequea Valley and the state game lands are groaning; all the earth, from the Gulf of Mexico to the coal regions, from Mount Everest to the Marianas Trench, are groaning, moaning, agonizing. The deer and the antelope, the wolf and the walrus, the parrot and the platypus – groaning, saying, “Please, God, please, let our freedom come!” And the whole creation is craning its neck forward, trying to see what's to come (Romans 8:19).

And just the same, Paul tells us, our bodies are groaning. He says that “we ourselves … groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for … the redemption of our body; for in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:23-24). Brothers and sisters, who knows more than you what it means for your body to be groaning? I hardly have to tell you what that means! You know how it feels to be sick. You know how it feels to shake and ache. You know how it feels to have your strength and vigor be like vapor – you reach out and try to grab onto it, and it puffs through your fingers and leaves you empty, so empty. You know how you groan when you sit and when you stand, if you can do either. You know how your heart groans in irregular rhythm, how your lungs groan from inadequate oxygen, how your ligaments groan from sprains, how your muscles groan from strains, how your joints groan from arthritis, how your bones groan, your skin groans, your kidneys and spleens groan, your whole body groans, saying, “Please, God, please, let my freedom come!” 

You know how we groan outwardly, and how we even groan inwardly, crying out for our bodies to be redeemed, to be set free from all this corruption and all this decay. Part and parcel of the created order, our bodies suffer with ailments never made for us, suffer with cancers and diseases and dysfunctions aplenty, and they groan, they groan, so loud they groan, and you know it's true, you've felt it yourself, and you pray to God to just give you steady health, but all things fall apart, don't they?

And God will answer that prayer. Creation will be redeemed. Your body will be redeemed. Paul says that the creation wasn't subjected to frustration, to futility, to anguish and smoke and mirrors, without a purpose in mind. And that purpose was hope. “For the creation was subjected to frustration … in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:20-21). That's just like “the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). What's more, the creation is longing, is groaning, to be “brought into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). And “the earnest expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).

See, creation is groaning with us, just like we groan with it. And the whole creation is longing with craned neck and focused eyes to see what we really are. We're already God's children, but just what that means isn't yet on display. The curtains haven't been lifted; the smoke hasn't been dispelled. Our bodies don't yet match what God is doing on the inside. But they will. One day, we will be free. And every deer and every antelope, every wolf and every walrus, every parrot and every platypus, is part of creation's excitement to see us in our glory, to see us free. Because only in our freedom can they be free. Only in the restoration of us, body and soul, can there be restoration of the meadows and mountains, the skies and seas. The only final solution to pollution is resurrection and restoration! And it isn't for us alone, but for the whole earth and beyond to taste and savor.

That's what we're all groaning for! Whether we know it or not, we're groaning for that day. The redemption of our bodies and of the whole earth. The redemption of the Susquehanna River and Cocalico Creek; the Welsh Mountain and Pequea Valley and state game lands; the redemption of every farm and every lawn. Hope set in store for squirrels and sparrows, moose and minnows, foxes and felines. In the Holy Spirit, we have just the first taste, the opening sample, the appetizer of what all creation is groaning for (cf. Romans 8:23).

When we see the patchiness and paleness of our yards, we groan with them. When we see dying flowers and wounded deer and roadkill, we groan with them. When we see polluted streams and desecrated fields, we groan with them. And when our bodies ache, when our lungs struggle to breathe and hearts struggle to beat and organs bleed and malfunction, we groan with outcries to God, “Please, God, freedom, freedom!” But the only freedom is the glory of full redemption, the glory of God's family, the glory that comes to creation only through us and to us only through Jesus' Spirit.

Amidst our frustrations and our cries, Paul tells us to crane our necks forward, to fix our eyes on what's coming when the vapor dissipates and the curtains lift. “For in this hope we were saved” – already saved, but hardly done with! See, “hope that is seen is no hope at all.” What we already have is not the limit of what God aims to do. The brushstrokes painted around us and in every cell of our bodies is not the finished work. “Who hopes for what they already have?” Nobody! There is so much more in store. “But if we hope for what we don't yet have, we wait for it patiently,” Paul writes (Romans 8:24-25). We endure the suffering. We endure the pain. We endure the grief. We put up with the obvious flaws and imperfections of our bodies and our world as we now see them.

We don't whimper in hopeless resignation. Nor do we scream in senseless rage. We groan in hopeful prayer. We cry out with groaning words and groaning deeds for all to be restored, and restored well. We groan, in our acts of medical care, for God to redeem our bodies. We groan, in our acts of environmental care, for God to redeem our habitat, his masterpiece. We groan with pain and suffering, we suffer at the earth's side, we enter in and share its woes and frustrations, we cry out to God. We groan in frustration in a way that only those with hope can do, only those who are waiting for a God who hears to be a God who moves, a God who blows away the smoke, who smashes and sweeps up the funhouse mirrors, who tears the veil and unveils what we already are by making glory radiate through our bodies and our world.

And here's the promise, here's what Paul has figured out, his settled conviction and conclusion: “Our present sufferings” – all our present sufferings, all our anemia, all our arthritis, all our cancers, all our collapsed lungs, all our congestive heart failure, all our diabetes, all our disability, all our inflammation, all our ischemia, all our macular degeneration, all our nephropathy, all our osteoporosis, all our pulmonary diseases, all our rheumatism; all our deforestation, all our pollution, all our ruination; all our you-fill-in-the-blank-here that you're suffering from right now – “all our present sufferings are not worth comparing with” – not even worth measuring on the same scales as – “the glory that will be revealed in us,” revealed to redeem creation as we become the truly artful team of God's Spirit-born, Spirit-filled children for all the earth to see and to feel and to taste (Romans 8:18). The weight of glory yet to be seen is great, “for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). 

 As you feel the frustration of your bodies, as you behold the frustration of the earth, go ahead and groan – but groan in hope and eager expectation. Revelation, redemption, restoration are in the offing. And know that whatever you're suffering, whatever your world is suffering, there's eternal glory ahead for the world to share – in and through us.