GROANING

            My father in law was the king of dreadfully corny jokes and bad puns.  Sometime he’d call me up hardly able to contain himself with the latest bit of humor he’d run across at the retired pastor’s lunch or at the Norwegian club meeting.  Now the thing with Dick was half the time he’d either mess the punch line up or forget it altogether.  Most of the rest of the time though they were downright painful, the kind of jokes that elicited a deep sigh or a loud groan.  With him laughing uncontrollably on the other end of the phone, my normal response was something like, “You mean you called me up to tell that one?”  Life with Dick Nybro was one groan after another. 

 

Aside from our response to lame attempts at humor, groaning doesn’t seem to be a part of our everyday experience.  I mean, how many of us have you heard any real, bona fide groaning lately?  The truth is that groaning isn’t something that those of us who number among the comfortable, generally healthy and well fed of the world are likely to hear.  We all know the kind of people who spend there lives groaning and moaning about how the system has done them wrong, or how they seem to get a break or and quite frankly they’re just not the kind of people any of us want to spend our time with.  Of course that’s not to say there aren’t people in the world for whom a little groaning, maybe even a lot of groaning is justified.  Sick people without access to pain medicine have a right to groan.  Hungry people who are deprived of nourishment understandably groan.  People living under the weight of tyranny groan, but people like you and me that’s another story. 

 

So maybe it’s the manner in which we come at the whole business of groaning that makes Paul’s words to the church at Rome all the more difficult to understand.  Here in the eighth chapter he waxes poetically about a kind of deep groaning reflected not just in the “less fortunate” people of our world, but in the very foundation of the cosmos itself.  “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.”  And from Paul’s perspective, the groaning doesn’t stop with the world out there, but reaches into the very heart of our being as humans, and not just an unfortunate few but every last one of us.  “And not only creation,” he continues, “but we ourselves…groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”  So what then are we to make of all this groaning?

 

            Whether we recognize it or not, the truth is, there’s a lot of groaning going on in the world today in the very fabric of creation, not to mention our own lives.  When I read this passage, I can’t help but think about what we as human beings whether through negligence, carelessness or out and sheer lack of regard have done to the environment.  Our worship of the god of cheap oil has poisoned the air we breathe, the air that sustains all living creatures.  Water, the most abundant resource on the planet grows more and more polluted with every passing year in the pesticides we use to keep our lawns green and provide us with the cheap produce we love to find at the grocery store.  Our ravenous consumption of the world’s other natural resources is depleting our planet at an alarming rate to the point that future generations may well be in jeopardy.  Entire species of wildlife are dying off through deforestation, so we can eat cheap beef and drink inexpensive coffee.  So, what seems then like the fanciful of a guy who lived nearly two thousand years ago speaks to the hard core reality of our world these days.

 

            In the Life and Arts section of this morning’s paper, there’s a story about a ten year old boy named Terrail waiting for adoption.  “He’s a good and sweet child who’s very perceptive of how people treat him and others,” says his foster father.  I confess that I always have a difficult time reading the regular adoption feature in the weekend paper.  I try to imagine what it must be like for young guys like Terrail waiting, longing, and hoping for the right family to adopt him, one that will nurture, care for and love him as their very own.  Or if he ever wonders if that will ever happen a thought that seems utterly heartbreaking.  For Terrail and boys and girls like him, anxiety must be a way of life, a little groaning more than justifiable.

 

            And yet, we all share a similar experience.  “But we ourselves…groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”  Although we live on the other side of Easter, we still contend with the reality of sin and death in our world and in our lives brokenness—with all that would leave us orphaned, cut off, separated from God who is the source of our life, of our very being.  I think Bob Dylan gets pretty close to giving voice to the underlying groan of creation and humanity when sings “broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates, broken parts.  Streets are filled with broken hearts.  Broken words never meant to be spoken.  Everything is broken.”  Life in this world, it’s enough to make any creature groan!  So here we are, groaning and waiting, hoping and waiting for something new.

 

            But the good news is that we don’t wait empty handed, but with a gift of priceless worth, “the first fruits of the Spirit”.  At another time and another place makes clear just what he’s talking about.  “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.  But each in his own order:  Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.  Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.”  In contrast to the way we live our lives, to what the world perceives and would have us believe, the future, our destiny is not something we determine for ourselves.       

    

I don’t know if you’ve seen it but along I-35 southbound around Braker Lane, there’s a billboard touting some up and coming mega church up near Georgetown.  I can’t remember the name, but what catches your eye are what I presume to be the husband and wife pastors, blonde and blue eyed both of them, dashing, beautiful and smiles that reveal teeth so white I swear that if the lights suddenly went out at night I think you could still make out the phone number, address and worship times for their radiant porcelain veneers.  Anyway the church logo is simple and catchy.  “Come and discover your destiny!”  Hey, if my destiny looks anything remotely like them, then sign me up, today!  I don’t imagine that there’s much groaning going on in their joint on a Sunday morning.  But our destiny, our fate, our future is not something we discover for ourselves.  It’s the other way around.  The God of history, past, present and future discovers, finds us, for while we were yet sinners, while we languished under the weight of sin and death Christ died for our sins!  And from God’s future, with loving and redeeming arms, God reaches out to us and to the whole wideness of creation and will not rest until all things are made new.  This is our hope, the hope we share, the hope we have to offer to a world in need.

 

There’s another baptism at Ascension Lutheran Church today.  That makes three in the last couple of months and another one for sure in a couple more.  It’s kind of nice that the font is getting so much use these days, don’t you think?  By water and the Word of God’s promise, today, little Piper is received into the community of Jesus Christ.  Sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked by the cross of Jesus Christ forever.  Matt and Celeste, I for one love the name you’ve chosen for her, especially her middle name, Hope.  What better reminder of the gift God gives to her than by including it as part of her name.  And as we gather around the font in a moment to baptize her, to speak her name, may her name serve as a sign not only for her and for you her family, but for all of us.  “For in hope we were saved.  Now hope that is not seen is not hope, for who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

 

Because our destiny is secure, because we have hope, we can live full of the joy and peace that is God’s will for us and for all creation.  Because of God in Christ, we can be attentive to the world’s deep groan, to serve as God’s instruments of healing in a broken world—“that together we may proclaim the praise of God and bear God’s creative and redeeming word into all the world” through the ministry to which we are called, each and every one of us. 

 

As members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly Father, let us give thanks for all that God has done.  Amen.