Hope for the Groaning (Romans 8:18-25)

The gospel reading this morning comes from Matthew chapter 13, verses 24 to 30, and continuing on verse 34.

Matthew 13:24–30

Okay.

He put another parable before him, saying, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who show who sowed good seed in his field.

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

And when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds came.

How then does it have weeds?

He said to them, An enemy has done this.

So the servants said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them?

But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat amongst along with them.

Let us both grow, let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first, and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

All these things Jesus said to the crowd in parables.

Indeed, nothing he said to them, he said nothing to them without a parable.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

I will open my mouth in parables.

I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.

Then he left the crowds and went into his house, and his disciples came to him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.

He answered, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.

The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom, the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

The harvest is at the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age.

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

He who has ears, let him hear.

The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

Let us confess our faith in the words of the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God, the Father the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

And friends, let's gather our heart.

Let us pray.

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.

Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we running to obtain your promises, maybe become partakers of your heavenly treasure through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Amen.

So writes Paul in our Romans lesson today.

Suffering is a universal experience, isn't it?

It's been said that two things are certain in life death and taxes, but I suspect suffering is a close third.

Every world religion has its understanding of suffering, and every world religion has some kind of response to suffering.

In Paul's day, suffering was understood to be something related to destiny.

One was fated to suffer in a particular way.

It was simply written in the stars.

What someone was called to do is endure that suffering like a hero.

And if you can endure that suffering, you can enjoy exaltation and glory and honor in some enduring way to come.

But the truth is, suffering itself is really rather meaningless.

There's no particular reason you're experiencing that suffering.

It's simply a matter of indifferent fate.

The truth is, I think that's somewhat similar to a secular understanding of suffering, something that's maybe common to us here in 2020, living in Canada.

Suffering is really something like an inconvenient accident, like a like a meaningless interruption of chaos into our life.

We didn't ask for it.

We don't want it.

The only solution we have is to manage it, maybe to seek out expert help or expert intervention, to minimize it, to overcome it as best we can.

But what we have in common with the ancients is that suffering itself presents no meaning to us.

Think of the myth of Sisyphus, which uh philosopher Albert Camus, you might be familiar with, he reimagines that for our own day.

It's this idea that we perform the same tasks day after day and are subjugated to this experience of suffering.

And the best we can hope for is to rebel against that suffering, to re- to create our own oasis of meaning within what is essentially an indifferent and cold and meaningless universe.

At the end of the day, we might be able to fight against suffering, but suffering itself presents no greater meaning to us.

So, what's the hope of the Christian in that?

How does a Christian respond?

Suffering is truly a universal experience.

We can't avoid it, we can't sidestep it.

I think our Romans text today gives us great hope in the midst of suffering.

See, I think as Christians, we ought not to shy away from the reality of suffering.

Sometimes we're tempted to do that, aren't we?

We're tempted to sidestep it or downplay it.

We're tempted towards triumphalism sometime.

Because we have victory in Jesus, it's like we shouldn't give ourselves permission to feel the pain and anguish and the groaning that comes with suffering.

No, I think we should groan.

We worship a crucified God, a crucified Messiah.

Suffering is very real, but we have a very real hope in the midst of suffering.

I think the Christians' hope in suffering makes the difference between a life of despair in the face of a cold and indifferent universe, and a life of resilience, a life of hope, a life that looks beyond the present for a future glory to be revealed that will make everything else pale in comparison.

Friends, that's the kind of hope that I want.

In the very real reality of suffering, in the very real reality of COVID and this pandemic, and the very real reality of cancer and joblessness and persecution and whatever else may come our way, we desire a hope that makes us resilient.

A hope of glory, a hope for the future.

That's the hope in front of us today.

What makes a Christian resilient in suffering?

This is what Paul would ask us today.

And I think Paul wants us to see two things in our text today.

What makes a Christian resilient in suffering?

It's the hope of the renewal of God's creation.

And it's also the hope of the redemption of God's children.

Two things that make a Christian resilient in suffering: the hope of a renewed creation and the hope of the redemption of God's children.

So let's dive into our Romans text today.

Let's discover some hope in the midst of suffering.

This isn't an easy solution, by the way.

I'll just preface that.

Suffering, I don't think, is some kind of Rubik's Cube that we can work out a solution to.

It's not going to be that.

But this is a call to endurance, a call to perseverance, a call to resilience, because we are invited to a future glory.

So let's dive in.

What kind of hope are we called to as Christians here?

We're called to a hope of the renewal of God's creation.

There are four words, I think, that are uttered more than anything else on the long and arduous car trips of our childhood.

And those four words we can probably guess are Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Haven't we all spoken that?

Maybe even now we we say that on our long and stuffy card trips, where we're just ready to make it to our destination, ready to see our grandparents again, ready to make it to Disney World.

That long and arduous trip seems to languish on and on and on, and so we groan from somewhere deep in our childhood being.

Are we there yet?

There's something of that that captures what Paul is talking to us about in verses 20 to 22.

He says this, he says that creation itself was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption, and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

What's Paul talking about?

Well, Paul is talking to his audience about a passage that they would be well familiar with, and perhaps we're familiar with it as well.

It goes right back to the beginning of the Bible.

It goes right back to Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

God creates a good creation, a delightful creation, and crowns this creation with us, creatures created in his very own image, human beings, male and female, created to cultivate creation and partner with God in this ongoing act of creation, of this delightful good creation spilling out.

It's a wonderful imagery of overflow.

And it means that creation itself, by its very existence, by the very hand of its potter, that's the word that the words in our Isaiah reading, by the very hands of its gardener, is wild with meaning.

Creation is not a cold and indifferent universe.

Creation is wild with meaning and goodness and delight.

But Genesis chapter 3, we see that creation was subject to futility and corruption, not willingly, but because of the actions of our first parents that subjugated creation to this futility and corruption.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 3, verse 17, Adam and Eve have chosen to rebel against God and to eat the forbidden fruit, and now God is turning and he's recognizing that they have turned away from him and he's pronouncing curses.

Genesis 3:17

If God's desire for them was blessing and flourishing, they've turned away from God, and now they've entered into a state, a cursed state, of life, of growing lifelessness, of spiraling into decay.

And so God pronounces these words to Adam regarding creation.

He says, Because you have eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat, cursed, that is corrupted, is the ground because of you.

In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

And then continuing chapter 3, verse 19, until you return to the ground.

Oh, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

We hear the curse, we hear the corruption in the first part, we hear the futility that we were taken from dust.

Now we're going to return to that dust.

Doesn't matter what we accomplish, doesn't matter what we earn on this side of eternity, to dust you were from dust you were made, and to dust you shall return.

I just, I, you know, in it it's a wild thing, isn't it?

I s I suspect that this doctrine of original sin, this doctrine of corruption and decay, this Christian idea that things on this side of eternity are not the way they're supposed to be, is not a doctrine we have to work a whole lot at to prove.

There's a lot of Christian doctrine, maybe that seems so cerebral and so removed from real life, but I think this is a doctrine that is so real to us, isn't it?

Every time we open up a newspaper, we see that things are not the way they're supposed to be.

And because we groan, because we long for a day where wrongs will be made right, it witnesses to the fact that the very ground we labor on is cursed, it's corrupted, and it's subjugated to futility.

Creation cannot, on its own accord, save itself from this futility.

So what does the Bible promise?

Verse 22, Romans chapter 8, verse 22, the Bible promises new life.

Romans 8:22

In the midst of lifelessness and corruption, the Bible promises new life.

This is what Paul's talking about when he talks about the creation is groaning in the pains of childbirth.

Creation is held captive and corrupted, but will eventually be liberated into a new freedom, into a new glory.

See the Bible anticipates that day where creation will be released from its futility and corruption and will be restored into that glory that God has always intended for it.

Tom Wright talks a lot about the point of the Bible, and he pushes a lot, uh he pushes against this common idea that we have from time to time, that the Bible is all about how we get to heaven, right?

I don't want to end up with the with the uh with the weeds in the furnace, so to speak.

I want some fire insurance, and that's what the Bible is all about, right?

And Tom Wright, Bishop Tom Wright says, no, that's not what the Bible is about.

The Bible is about a bigger vision about what God is doing to renew and restore all of creation, to gather it back to himself.

The point of the Bible is not life after death, but life after life after death, and a glorious life after life after death in that.

It's a restored creation.

It's not the annihilation of what we know now, but it's the full liberation.

It's the full renewal of this broken and fallen and corrupted nature that we know now, will someday be renewed and restored to what God has always intended it to be.

And more, it will share in the very glory of God that He intended for it.

It's this hope of future glory that sustains us in the presence.

Because everything that we experience that is wrong with creation now, the suffering and the disease and the pandemic, all these all these examples of suffering that we experience right now, all these ways that things are not the way they're supposed to be, for the Christian does not represent the meaninglessness and randomness of the universe.

It represents the cause for the occasion for a future hope and glory.

We know that these things will be answered by our Lord.

Suffering will be taken into account, suffering will be answered in the kingdom come.

That gives us hope to face suffering in the present.

We can recognize things are not the way they're supposed to be, but someday we're promised, creation will give birth to a new life by God's grace, by his renewal.

The things will be restored, the creation will be renewed and redeemed.

That's a hope that can sustain us.

That's a hope that can make us resilient in suffering.

The creation, God's creation will be renewed.

There's a second thing Paul wants us to see, a second thing that makes the Christian resilient in the face of suffering, and that is the redemption of God's children.

I'm not, I really don't have a green thumb.

Rachel and I are working on developing our gardening skills.

We really are trying hard and we are losing a few plants along the way, but I think we're improving slowly but surely.

But those who really know about plants, uh those who are giving us a good education, they know about snowdrops.

And snowdrops are very common in the Midwest where I did my theological studies.

Snowdrops are the first flowers to bloom.

They bloom in January and February.

And it's a remarkable thing to think that in the midst of a bleak winter like that, here new life can be rising up from the ground, and it signals to those who have eyes to see it that spring is on its way, that new life is about to start.

This is something like that Paul is talking about when he talks about the first fruits of the Spirit.

Here's verse 23.

See, not only the creation, but we ourselves, we who Paul says have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

See, it's not only creation that is groaning for that day when new life and renewal will be realized.

It's we ourselves, we who have the first fruits of the Spirit.

We who've experienced that first grace, that first newness of life.

We who have been taken, remember Romans chapter 5, from death into new life in Christ.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

We who through baptism have been united to Christ's new resurrection life.

We have this hope.

We have the first fruits of the Spirit.

Something like a down payment that tells us that new life is on its way, like snowdrops that signal to us that new life is on its way, that spring and renewal is coming and it's coming quick.

The adoption as sons, Paul writes, we wait eagerly for adoption as sons.

And we talked a little bit about what this language means last week when we talked about Romans 8:14.

Romans 8:14

We talked about the spirit of adoption, the spirit of adoption as sons signals to all Christians, men and women alike, that we have full inheritance rights in Christ.

We all of us have been gathered together in Christ, male and female.

We all of us have the fullness of union with him and the full hope of eternal glory through his death and through his resurrection.

But the question we might ask, reading that from Paul, is I thought I was already adopted.

I thought I was already a child of God.

It sounds like Paul is talking about that day when we'll be adopted as sons.

And it's true.

This witnesses to that common biblical reality that the hope we live in is an already and a not yet kind of hope.

We already have this hope.

We can already bank on it.

It's been accomplished.

And we wait for its fullness to be realized in the kingdom come.

Yes, we are adopted as God's children.

We are sons and daughters of the Most High, and we wait for that day when we will be fully, completely caught up in God's kingdom together.

Imagine an orphan who knows they've been adopted, knows that a home is on its way, and yet longs for that day when they will be caught up in the arms of their new loving mother and father.

For us, that's the reality.

We have been adopted.

We've been caught up in the kingdom, and yet we wait for that day when we will be fully, completely embraced in the holy love of the Trinity, when we will be caught up in the full measure of our Father's love, when we'll be caught up in the arms of our Savior.

That's what we long for.

The full realization of that.

And what that implies is it implies the redemption of our bodies.

This is a physical, bodily reality that we will be in.

See, just like creation is being renewed, it's not being annihilated, done away with, and now we've got creation 2.0.

No, creation's being renewed and restored to what God has already intended it to be.

That's our reality too in Christ.

Our reality is that our bodies will be raised to a new, resurrected, glorified state.

We will be raised in a bodily reality.

We will be caught up, not as disembodied spirits in the kingdom floating around.

We will have an embodied experience of God's eternal state.

This is what Paul talks about in Romans, or pardon me, 1 Corinthians 15, 20, when he says that Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits, there's that key word again, firstfruits, of those who have fallen asleep.

See, what's true of Christ is true of us.

Christ has been raised from the dead, and we await the redemption of our bodies.

We await that same resurrection in the kingdom come.

What makes a Christian resilient in suffering?

It's the hope of the future redemption of God's children, this bodily and physical reality that we will be caught up in the full love of our Heavenly Father in his kingdom.

For all eternity.

For those of us who experience the reality of physical illness, those of us who experience the anxiety that comes, knowing that any time we go outside, we could catch this awful pandemic, we who experience the limitations and the fears that come with a fallen physical existence.

We wait for that day when our glorified bodies will be caught up in the kingdom and there will be no crying and no pain.

We will be restored, we will be renewed.

We will join all of creation in singing hallelujah as our groans are answered.

See, Christians have a hope.

We have a hope that makes us resilient in suffering in our in the present time of suffering.

And we do suffer in the present, don't we?

These are we we can think of Isaiah's words, the words we just read.

These are words written to God's people in exile, people experiencing oppression, people experiencing distance, people who feel so abandoned and disillusioned.

They don't know what their heavenly Father is doing because they see the holy city and the temple in ruins.

And they're crying out to God, remember us.

We can cry that out too in the times of our suffering.

We can echo the words of the prophets here.

And we can recognize that just like creation, subjected to futility, we too are powerless to save ourselves from this suffering.

There is no amount of self-will we can muster up to overcome suffering on our own.

And let's make no mistake, every human ism is another attempt to overcome that suffering, and yet they all fall short.

So here we meet the c here we see the cross.

Here we meet our crucified Lord, who takes creation's curse, our curse, our sin, upon himself and crucifies it on the cross.

He suffers on our behalf, and every cry and every groan of Jesus on the cross is the cry of a creation, is the cry of humanity, subjected to corruption and futility, as Jesus puts that corruption and futility to death, so that by his resurrection may entering into new life, he can offer us that very same hope, that very same new life, resurrection hope in him, so that there will be no more curse in his eternal kingdom when he comes again in glory.

No, every tear will be wiped away from our eyes.

There will be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain, for the old order of things has been has passed away, and creation has been renewed and restored.

That's the vision of Revelation 21 and 22.

God's kingdom is a kingdom where our Heavenly Father will dwell with us forever.

And it's in this hope you were saved.

That's past tense.

That's completed.

We can bank on that.

Whatever circumstances of suffering we experience, we can we can take great hope and take great conviction and certainty that Christ's, our our salvation has been accomplished by the cross of Christ.

It's done.

We can bank on it.

And now in the present we can practice a holy patience.

That's the hard part for me.

Oh my goodness, I'm bad at patience.

I'm bad at just waiting in the line at Tim Hortons.

But here we are called to a holy patience, where we wait for that day when the fullness of the kingdom will be realized and our suffering will be answered.

Hope that is not seen is not hope.

Who hopes for what one sees?

If we hope for what we do not see, we wait with patience.

So too, Isaiah calls us to wait.

He calls exiles to wait.

It's a hopeful patience.

It's not wishful thinking.

It's not pie in the sky.

It's conviction based on the certainty of God's promises, on the trustworthiness of his character.

We will share in the glory of God the Father one day in his eternal kingdom.

And that's the promise Jesus shares with us in Matthew 13.

We will share in the glory of the Father.

There'll be no more suffering.

It will be answered.

Friends, suffering is a universal experience for us on this side of eternity.

Things are not the way they're supposed to be.

But we can be resilient in our suffering.

We can take hope in the renewal of God's creation.

And we can take hope in the redemption of God's children.

Let's get caught up in the kingdom together.

Let's set our eyes on Christ.

Let's set our eyes on our crucified and risen Messiah.

Let's take up our cross and follow him and discover the way of glory.

Amen.