This past week we experienced a heat dome that raised temperatures to more than 100 degrees, followed by a blast of the worst air in the world due to Canadian forest fires. Of course, a power outage led to the cancellation of the service on July 5th. In other words, we haven’t been experiencing the most pleasant weather of late.
I’m not sure if Paul had weather-related issues in mind when he wrote here in Romans 8 about the groaning of creation, but it does seem that creation has been groaning because the spirit of death and corruption is permeating creation.
Paul tells us that creation groans because it is waiting to be set free from its bondage to decay. You might say, that Creation is waiting for its redemption so it can start over from the beginning. According to Genesis 1 when God set about creating the universe, God declared that each element of creation was good, including God’s human creation. Unfortunately, things began to go bad in chapter 3 of Genesis. Although God had given humanity stewardship over the created order, before long humanity decided not to partner with God but would instead do their own thing. It is at this point that the spirit of death that Paul speaks of here enters the picture. The question is whether we will embrace the spirit of death, which is marked by fear, or the spirit of life that comes to us through dependence on the grace of God. The choice is ours. We can let fear dominate our lives or we can let the Spirit of God to transform us, through adoption, into children of God. Because we are children of God, we are joint heirs with Christ of the things of God. While we decide which path to take, creation groans in anticipation of our choice.
Before we get to the effect of our choices on creation, we should hear what Paul has to say about our adoption as children of God. We often think of adoptions involving young children, even infants. However, first century adoptions might also involve adults because a person of wealth or importance needs an heir. Roman emperors, even if they had children of their own, might adopt someone they trusted to succeed them. Unfortunately, Marcus Aurelius, who was among the wisest of all emperors chose to pass the throne to his son, Commodus, who made a mess of things. Of course, if he hadn’t passed the throne to Commodus, we wouldn’t have the basic storyline of The Gladiator!
When it comes to understanding Roman adoption practices, the story of Ben Hur offers us a good example. Most of us know this story, which was originally written by a Civil War general named Lew Wallace and subtitled “A Tale of Christ.” Most of us know this story because we have watched the 1950s epic starring Charlton Heston as the title character, Judah Ben-Hur. Judah was a Jewish noble who had ended up being sold into slavery because of his opposition to the Roman occupation of Judea. However, his luck changed after he saved the owner of the ship on which he served when the ship experienced a shipwreck. In gratitude for this act of compassion, the ship owner adopted Judah Ben-Hur. As a result of his adoption, Ben-Hur received Roman citizenship and a new Roman name. Although Judah Ben-Hur eventually renounced this identity, the story illustrates nicely the Roman understanding of adoption. Because we have received our adoption papers from the Spirit, we have a new identity and a new purpose in life. As heirs of God’s promise, we live in the hope of the resurrection.
The good news is that God has adopted us in Christ as God’s children, making us joint heirs with Jesus. However, this new status doesn’t mean we are free from suffering. Even as Christ suffered, we may also experience suffering in this life. While he acknowledges the possibility of suffering in this life, Paul doesn’t consider suffering, which he experienced on a number of occasions, worth comparing with the glory that has been revealed to us in Christ. Here is where the groaning of creation comes into play.
This word about the revealing of God’s glory points our attention beyond the present to the future when God will redeem all things. This is what creation is waiting for. That’s because the redemption of creation is connected with our redemption. Even as we will experience freedom from slavery to decay and will be “brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children,” so will the rest of creation.
Paul connects this word about the groaning of creation with the labor pains a pregnant woman experiences before she gives birth. The same is true for creation, which looks forward to giving birth to new life.
I should point out that as far as we know, Paul never married or was a parent. So, whatever he knew about pregnancy and childbirth he learned from others. Some of you here in this room have a better understanding of what it means to give birth than either Paul or me, even if I was in the room when our son was born.
So, as the account found in Genesis tells us, creation was subjected to corruption because of human sin. That is, creation suffers from birth pangs because we failed to embrace our calling to be stewards of creation. So, now it groans in anticipation of that moment of redemption when the new creation is born.
Although creation groans as it awaits freedom from corruption, which comes with the birthing of the new creation, we still have a responsibility for creation. It’s a responsibility that comes to us as adopted children of God and joint heirs with Jesus to care for creation. That’s because our welfare is connected to the welfare of creation itself.
We live at a time of great concern about the state of the earth. We know that the earth is suffering. We hear it groaning because of environmental degradation. We hear regularly about climate change, and what it means for the future. While we have done much to reverse pollution, there are efforts underway to weaken the rules that have kept the water safe and the skies clean. Having lived in Southern California, I know that air pollution isn’t as bad today as it was when my mother was growing up in Southern California. Unfortunately, some of this progress is being undermined by climate change, which fuels, among other things, the many fires we’ve been experiencing across the globe. Because fires, to name something we’ve been experiencing, are on the increase due to the warming of the climate, unhealthy air is on the increase. So, even though we’ve instituted rules and regulations that have helped control pollution, that doesn’t mean we can’t see the return of situations like when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969. Fortunately, that river is cleaner today and hopefully will never catch fire again, but what if the rules change, and people start pouring pollutants into the river? What message will the earth send us? What message is creation sending us right now?
With that question in mind, I’ll offer another scenario facing our world. You may remember the scene in the 1969 movie The Graduate, in which a family friend gives Benjamin one word of advice. That word was “plastics.” In other words, if he wanted to be a financial success, then he should pursue the world of plastics. If you invested in plastics in 1969, you would be very wealthy because plastic is everywhere. However, we are now facing a world inundated with plastic, which fills our landfills and even the oceans. While many of us try to recycle, we don’t know if the plastic is actually being recycled. Most of this plastic isn’t biodegradable, which means it will be around for millions of years.
Yes, plastic is convenient, but too much of it ends up fouling the earth. Diana Butler Bass wrote a book titled Grounded about seeing a CNN video during coverage about a lost plane in the Indian Ocean that reported on “a massive tangle of human garbage, including thousands of the now ubiquitous plastic water bottles.” This stuff has formed floating islands in the ocean, and she writes that “as the trash degrades, it contaminates the food chain that begins in our oceans and sickens fish, birds, animals, and eventually us with chemicals no living being was ever meant to ingest” [Grounded, p. 83]. The problem is that much of this toxic trash is out of sight, which means it’s out of mind. But, if we have ears to hear, then perhaps we can hear the earth groaning in anticipation of our redemption. So then, how might we join with creation as God’s children in waiting for our redemption?
I don’t think that Paul was aware of climate change or the dramatic impact of plastics on the environment when he wrote to the church in Rome. But, if we have ears to hear, this can be a word from God to us, reminding us of our connection with the rest of creation, as together with creation we await, groaning in anticipation, of the resurrection, when all things will be transformed. In the meantime, because we are children of God by adoption, we are heirs with Jesus of the promises of God, including the promise God made to Abraham that his descendants would be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 12:1-4).
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