A month ago, an Indiana University college student went missing as she made her way home from an evening out with friends.  A police investigation and intensive search in the past weeks have found no trace of her. Something is wrong.

 

In March, more than 15,00 people were killed in most powerful earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan’s history in March. It also triggered a number of nuclear accidents affecting hundreds of thousands of residents. 

 

A few weeks ago, a high school football champ was stabbed to death, on the night of his graduation, in a brawl over a bottle of cologne. Something is wrong, very wrong.

 

Deadly tornadoes spun all over the country this spring, including one that cut a 6-mile swath through the town of Joplin, MO, where it tore the roof of a hospital and a high school and turned homes and businesses into piles of rubble. 

 

And just this week, an 8-year-old-boy who was allowed to walk home from day camp for the first time, was abducted and murdered. 

 

Things are not as they should be.  Things have not been as they should be, as God intends them to be, for a long time. 

 

Paul understood that. 

Paul was writing to Christians in Rome, Christians who were suffering for their faith, as Paul suffered for his.   Setting aside the issue of religious persecution, they were suffering pain and grief and loss and sorrow in the way that all human beings suffer.  And yet he writes, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”  Paul affirms that suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but even more strongly he affirms that suffering will not have the last word. 

 

My theology professor seemed to have two favorite Biblical images, two phrases that she quoted often.  When we students were distressed about an assignment or test grades, she would refer to the children of Israel murmuring in the desert, complaining to Moses.  But more often, when the news of world events or local tragedy surfaced in prayer concerns, she would speak of the groaning of creation. 

 

The groaning of creation reminds us that humans do suffer, but we are not the only ones.  Paul says that the entire creation is in bondage.  He is referring to Genesis 3, to the story of the sin of Adam and Eve which resulted in changed relationships between God and humans, and between humans and the rest of creation. However you choose to interpret that story, it seems fair to say that it is a story about limits, about boundaries, which humans chose to violate.   

 

I’d like to share just a bit from an essay that I read last week.  The author, Georgia Harkness, writes:

 

In America there is a prosperous and, in many respects, an outwardly comfortable state of affairs.  Ours is an affluent society unequaled anywhere else in the world.  In spite of rising costs of living, salaries and wages for great numbers of people are high enough to afford all the necessities and provide many of the luxuries undreamed of by our fathers.  More fine homes, lovely furniture, expensive cars, elaborate country clubs, and well-built schools and churches are produced, used, and at least partially paid for now than in any previous era in history.  In spite of this, there is economic insecurity everywhere.  Hurry and worry, dissatisfaction, and a sense of grievance are chronic aspects of the world of work. Fears of a loss of profits, unemployment, and economic insecurity in old age hang over our heads.  Vast numbers of persons are in debt, frantically trying to meet their payments on houses, furniture, cars and much else.  The keenness of competition in business drives many persons to practices that are admittedly wrong, but which seem so necessary for survival that conscience accommodates itself.  Where is God in all this rat race? [1] 

 

Except for the fact that she seems oblivious to our current recession, this author’s description of life in America seems on target to me.  And she is unaware of our current economic situation because she wrote this in 1952. 

 

Fifty years ago, Americans were dealing with many of the same struggles.  We were in bondage to our affluence, hurrying and worrying to pay our bills and afraid that it was all going to collapse around us.  And fifty years before that, there were similar worries.  And if we kept going back fifty years at a time, we would find a similar pattern over and over.  Not the exact same pattern every time, but the same concerns with surviving, getting by, the same fears and worries and pains.  The creation is waiting for redemption, for an end to that kind of futility. 

 

Paul says that the world has been groaning in labor pains until now.  The earth groans because of pollution and greenhouse emissions.  It groans as ice caps melt and rain forests are clear-cut. The creation groans from the trauma of war, from bombs and missiles and landmines and scorched earth strategies.  And it suffers disease and natural disaster, earthquakes, flooding and tornadoes.  

 

We sometimes describe the world as fallen or broken.  People have a tendency to look back and think that things were better in another time.  That there was a golden age when people were more moral, when children respected their elders, when there was less crime, but the truth is that the only real good old days were in the time of Eden.  Ever since sin first came into the world, the world has been broken, cursed by sin.  Human beings were given the job of caring for the earth, and as we have sinned, we have failed at that job. 

 

The good news is that God is redeeming the whole creation. Christian faith is not simply a personal salvation transaction between individual human beings and God.  It is way bigger than that.  It’s so big that Matthew Fox refers to it as The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. 

 

The good news is that this present suffering is not to be compared with the glory that is on its way.  Mixing his metaphors, Paul says that the groaning of creation is like labor pains and that the whole creation is on tiptoe, anticipating with great eagerness, the day when God’s children will be revealed for who they really are.  Again, reaching back to the Genesis story, Paul understands that humans were created in God’s image, to be stewards of God’s creation.  And that God’s redemption of the creation will restore humans to their rightful place in that role.

 

Now, maybe that doesn’t sound like glory to you.  Maybe you were thinking of something more impressive, like being as powerful as Superman or being treated like royalty or at least getting to wear a crown made of real gold.  “Steward of Creation” might not have exactly that same cachet.

 

At the beginning of this text, we read, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God . . . and if children, then heirs, joint heirs with Christ.”   We share in Christ’s inheritance, in his suffering and his glory. 

 

British theologian Tom Wright says “ . . . as God sent Jesus to rescue the human race, so God will send Jesus’ younger siblings, [that’s us] in the power of the Spirit, to rescue the whole created order, to bring that justice and peace for which the whole creation yearns.”[2] 

 

The whole creation – sun, moon, sea, sky, birds, plants – everything, is longing for the time when God’s people will be revealed as God’s glorious human agents set in authority over the world. The work of redemption which was begun in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is on-going.  As Jesus’ brothers and sisters, it is our task, our calling, to bring God’s healing justice to bear upon a groaning world. When we become what God always intended, we will be true stewards, true care-givers for the creation.  On that day, things will be right, they will be as they should be, and I suspect, we will find it glorious.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.