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Romans 8:22-27 CEB We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free. We were saved in hope. If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see? But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience. In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit himself pleads our case with unexpressed groans. The one who searches hearts knows how the Spirit thinks, because he pleads for the saints, consistent with God’s will. We often have a rosy retrospection of the past, exaggerating just how good it was back in the day. We do the same thing with our religious faith, singing songs like “Give Me that Old Time Religion” or “The Old Rugged Cross.” Beloved songs to be sure, but ones that remind us to look backward, to remember, and even try to live as we did in those past golden days. Psychology tells us that our minds often have a bad habit of oversimplifying the past and exaggerating positive and negative experiences, so compared with the present, the past can start looking really good to us. However, as Paul reminds us in Romans, our Christian hope is not based on something in our past or even our present. Instead, our hope is found in a future that we cannot quite touch our see, and that is where the Holy Spirit, where Pentecost comes in for us, our divine intercessor helps us live into that hope, enduring through the present for God’s kingdom where all will be made right.
I want to start by talking about pregnancy, a strange place to start given that I, Pastor Paul, have never experienced pregnancy directly. Then again, neither has the Apostle Paul, but this is the image to which he turns to describe our present state of affairs. In Romans, Paul describes all of creation as “groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now.” I feel like this is stating things mildly, as labor ranks among the most painful life experiences,[1] and I think I even heard it said that the pain is like breaking every bone in your body. Even before labor, pregnancy comes with a host of discomforts like morning sickness, swollen feet, constipation, heartburn, diabetes, and just not feeling comfortable in your own body. I was even there in the hospital room with Caitlin when she experienced her labor pains. Now, I want you to imagine what would have happened if I had turned to her and said something like, “Gee, I hope you are like this forever!” Only slightly better would be to say something like, “Wow, this looks bad, if only we could go back to your first trimester, and just stay there!” All of this suffering serves a purpose after all, bringing a new life into this world, and, as bad as the pain is, something like 90% of women described the experience positively, just three months after birth.[2] Paul even says something remarkably similar, saying “I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18 CEB). Why then, would we want to stay stuck in the past? The past and the present are suffering, but they are the transitory pains of labor, all of God’s creation is giving birth to something new. New things are unknown things. I am so happy to become a father to our amazing daughter, but before she was born, I was terrified at times! Could I do it? There were some days when I felt barely competent in running my own life, but now, I am about to be responsible for this child! Come one! It’s not like they even gave us a test before we left the hospital other than making sure the car seat was properly installed, but after that, we were let loose into the world, our future of being parents to Sophie stretching out uncertainly into the future. Paul acknowledges this kind of fear of the unknown future in his way, as he acknowledges that amid the groaning and pain, this unknown future seems all the more terrifying and uncertain. The hope is for our salvation, but in the present, it feels less real than our fear. The past seems like a much better thing to hope for because we have already seen it, even if it was through rose-colored glasses, but our hope is the future “fulfillment of God’s plan for the world, including our final adoption as the sons and daughters of God and the full redemption [...] of our bodies.”[3] That time and place where we will live forever with our God as a resurrected people living in a restored creation. We cannot imagine it fully, let alone see it or touch it! Real life makes this hope hard. Right now, we have multiple wars and conflicts happening all over our world. We have political and social unrest. There is disease, poverty, famine, and violence all over the place. Even creation suffers from the impacts of pollution and misuse. Meanwhile, in our rural communities, we see aging and shrinking populations struggling with a lack of jobs, dealing with drug addiction, and decaying or non-existent infrastructures. We cast around for anything to hold onto, something to give us hope! Something that looks strong in this world which seems to be pulling apart at the seams! Nostalgic longing for a return to the past is just one tangible hope among many! Why do you think people cling to idols? A god carved out of wood or stone, from success or politics or wealth, at least is something we can grasp with our eyes and hold in our hands. They seem solid and sure. At the same time, no matter how tightly we cling to them, the pain and suffering only seem to continue. When one proves pointless, we keep reaching for the next and the next, like a drug addict needing more and more to get the same fix, we keep hoping that one more will be enough to give us what our hearts demand: an escape, an answer to our anguish! Paul knows all of this, and says to us, “In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness.” Our weakness is that we lose hope, especially when it is a hope that we cannot see. All we know and feel is what is with us in the present moment. Some hoped-for future seems like a poor salve for the loss of a loved one due to cancer. Some perfect tomorrow feels hollow when compared to finding out a friend has lost himself to fentanyl and meth. Paul knows this, and Paul reminds us that we are not without hope today because our God is ever present with us. Our God shares with us the Spirit, our helper. Can you imagine? Pentecost is the fulfillment of the promise that God will always be with us as God gives us his own Spirit. The Spirit that cradles us close, listening to our sighs, our groans, and our screams. The Spirit that reminds us how loved we are. Where and when does this happen? Through us, through the ones who are the “first crop of the harvest.” The Spirit helps us in our suffering by helping us to help each other. We don’t overcome all this pain and anguish in this life, but we do help each other endure it. When I was there in the hospital, I could not take away Caitlin’s discomfort or pain, and do you know what, nobody asked me to. Nurses and doctors rushed around helping something new enter this world. What did I do? I sat there next to my wife, and I held her hand. I listened to her and I reassured her. I was fully present with her for hours because that’s all I could do, but I will tell you something, that changes things. Think back to a time you experienced these groans and pains, did you have anyone who came alongside you? Did you have someone who gave you a tiny moment of something good? What difference did that make? That one good moment, that one loving person makes a difference. Having the Spirit with each one of us, making sure that we are never ever alone makes a difference. I think that’s the gift of the Spirit, it gives us hope for a different future than what our present predicts. In the documentary, The Civil War by Ken Burns, there is this quote from a slave in the first episode, “‘No day ever dawns for the slave,’ a freed black man wrote, ‘nor is it looked for. For the slave it is all night — all night forever.’"[4] Pain does terrible things to people. It can make us less than hopeful, it makes us frantic and half-mad, willing to do anything to escape it. How would you live if you knew the night would never end, that this suffering, whatever you call it in your life today, continued on and on without ceasing? How would that change your life? Conversely, what if you were promised that dawn would come, freedom for the slave, release for the captive, and peace for the suffering? I wonder if that is what it means to be the first fruit. We live differently, not because we are somehow better or more moral than we were before becoming Christians, but thanks to the Spirit, thanks to the way the divine lives in each of us, in this community, we live as people who have hope. The Spirit helps us live out hope. Right now, for so much of the world, it is all night forever, and the idols out there to cling to don’t do much to chase back the darkness. When war is all you know, how can you even begin to imagine peace? If the decay and rot of disease is your every day, can you even picture being well and whole? If the world is hard and mean, can you even try to be kind? I think that is the gift of the Spirit though, we, as Christians, become the foretaste of something different, something unknown. It is because we know dawn is coming. We give a taste of a future where those groans and pains won’t matter by comparison. Amen. [1] Melzack R, “The myth of painless childbirth,” Pain 1984, 321–337. [2] Morgan BM, Bullpitt CJ, Clifton P, Lewis PJ, “Analgesia and satisfaction in childbirth (the Queen Charlotte's 1000 mother survey),” Lancet 1982a; ii, 808–810. [3] Clayton J. Schmit, “Day of Pentecost - Romans 8:22-27: Homiletical Prospective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 3, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 15. [4] The Civil War, season 1, episode 1, “The Cause,” directed by Ken Burns, written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ric Burns, narrated by David McCullough, aired September 23, 1990, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00C139SSE/ref=atv_hm_vid_8_c_VvPzU0_1_8.
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