Romans has long been a book that I have wanted to understand and love, but for reasons I will touch on later, I have struggled. When I saw Romans 8 on the lectionary for today, knowing this chapter to be widely considered the climax of the book and amongst the most significant chapters in the Bible, I knew it is what I wanted to reflect on.
The past few weeks we have been following a bit of Abrahams journey in Genesis and I actually think this is really connected. Abraham was chosen to be the father of faith and a blessing to a broken world. Ralph spoke 2 weeks ago about how God’s vulnerability in choosing to partner with humans and in working out that partnership. Mel spoke last week about how God chooses unexpected people. And I think we all find ourselves surprised at times that God wants to use us, and how he uses us to bring about his will on Earth.
Romans 8 is all about this surprising partnership and calling.
So I have called today’s reflection
Chosen to be a blessing:
- Partnering with creation in liberation
- Partnering with the Spirit in prayer
And so as we launch in, let’s pray.
Holy Spirit, I thank you that that you search our hearts and minds and you intercede for us. Please come into our midst this morning and help us to understand your work in this world, to be encouraged and excited by it. Amen
Like most the New Testament epistles – or letters – the book of Romans was written by the Apostle Paul to the an early church grappling with the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, trying to work out the significance of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, there’s conflict within and persecution from the outside.
But unlike other epistles, this letter, written to the Roman church is widely considered to be the most comprehensive presentation of the good news or the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe this is true and that’s why I want to love this book. In much of the modern church that gospel message goes like this…
Romans 3:23 — “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:10 — “There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Romans 6:23 — “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 5:8 — “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 10:9–10 — Confess Jesus as Lord and believe God raised Him from the dead to be saved.
And this salvation takes you to heaven when you die.
These verses are obviously very important and we should continue to grapple with them. However, I know that I am not alone in struggling with Romans because I have been taught this IS its message, and that the primary reason we are on this earth is to believe this so that we can go to heaven. And even if we know there’s more to the story than this, I have found this make it hard to understand how what we do on Earth could possibly matter.
But I think it is precisely this chapter at the climax and heart of Romans that gives an extraordinary image of the significance of this Creation. Of connection between our call as image bearing humans and the liberation of this Earth. The hope that we have that God is renewing, transforming, even rebirthing this world according to his purposes – a work begun in Christ that we are called to partner with today.
The hope that we have that when we die or when our loved ones die, they will be with Christ is an immensely important hope that we should all find great comfort in. But we should not mistake this to be the end of the story. Those studying revelation in the Thursday Bible study will be able to tell us, that the Bible ends with God coming to dwell on a renewed Earth, where we will all be resurrected. There will be a city, a river and a garden, there will be industry and arts, music and perhaps even nations that receive ongoing healing. But there will be no curse, there will be no war, God will wipe away every tear and make all things new.
From the first chapter of the Bible, God gives image bearing humans the call, the call we will always have… To partner with God, to tend to the Earth, to rule over it with wisdom and fairness.
Three chapters in, humans choose not to partner with God, 11 Chapters in the whole thing is a mess. And we are introduced to Abram who is called to have a family which will be a blessing to all people on Earth. But as we know, things still do not go well. Being a blessing is hard. And we do really need Jesus to come and show us how to be that blessing, for him to die and be glorified.
I think one of the most surprising things in Romans 8, is what it says about what happens when we are glorified…
Creation, you see, was subjected to pointless futility, not of its own volition, but because of the one who placed it in this subjection, in hope that the creation itself would be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified.
Not “going to glory” by escaping the Earth as so many have imagined… But freeing Creation from slavery to decay, or in some translations, freeing it from corruption. Our calling, our justification and glorification all linked to our partnership with all creation.
And I hear this partnership throughout scripture, where the land is regularly personified in a way that points to its active participation in the covenant between God and humans.
Otherwise the land will vomit you out, too, when you defile it, like it vomited out the people before you. – Leviticus 18:28
Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. – Leviticus 26:28
But the exile happens, bloodshed, suffering and pain happen because humans keep making sub-optimal choices. And because there is curse. Paul says that creation is subject to frustration, and so as we go about our partnership with Earth and the Spirit, we carry this frustration too that things are not yet as they ought.
Parker Palmer describes this as the tragic gap, not tragic because it is sad, but because it is inevitable. The gap between what is and what should, could, would be. And I would add the gap between what is and will one day be when God makes all things new.
But Palmer says our job each day is to put one foot in front of the other in that gap. Each step matters because “[every] social change that has occurred in the history of humankind… has been achieved by a million tiny steps, usually over generations.”
And I, Mikaila, believe every single step in the right direction will have eternal significance. I believe our bad deeds are burned up or washed away, but all our good deeds will remain in the age to come (See 1 Corinthians 3: 11-15).… This is amazing grace.
And I see this church full of people putting one foot in front of the other in that gap, doing eternally good works. But it is hard.
Yeah it is says Paul. Like childbirth in fact…
I at times begrudge many aspects of being born female, and being a woman, and I have questions about the conversation that God has with Eve after she eats the from the tree in Genesis 3… Pains in childbirth, a husband ruling over me? Really God?
But I think it is important to remember that this is proclaimed as part of curse. I think the Biblical authors knew it wasn’t a good thing that husbands rule over their wives (why else would it be proclaimed as part of curse?) and that it is not a good thing that birthing new life should bring so so much pain.
I recently heard on radio, Christians talking about the end times – or the birth-pains of creation – war and natural disasters – like they were the will of God because they were necessary to bring about Christ’s second coming. The tone troubled me as it felt like an absent God was sending this suffering so he can enter the world.
But that is not the God I read in Romans 8…
We don’t know what to pray for as we ought to; but that same spirit pleads on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. And the Searcher of Hearts knows what the spirit is thinking, because the spirit pleads for God’s people according to God’s will.
The Spirit of God is right here, groaning, lamenting, crying out: this is not right! This is not how I will things to be!
And our Spirit joins with the Holy Spirit in this cry, this prayer.
Like the surprising partnerships we’ve been talking about, prayer is a surprising partnership… How could me talking to God possibly make a difference in the world?
And yet like most the questions I might bring to the Bible, I don’t find a systematic explanation. Instead, I find stories, images and metaphors. Including stories in which God changes God’s mind. Including those in which God the Son spends whole nights dialoguing with God the Father. It gives images of angles battling demons in the skies to get the message through to God. It gives images of our prayers as incense rising up as a pleasing aroma to God.
And here in Romans 8, I get the image of childbirth – as our Spirit, partners with the Holy spirit, and with creation’s groaning to be released from corruption. The noises we make in childbirth are really important on all these levels that we can’t fully understand. Our prayers are like this as new things are birthed on this Earth.
NT Wright puts it:
“The vocation of the image bearing Christians is to be people in prayer at the place where the world is in pain. So that God and the Spirit may be right there in that place… thereby creating us in the pattern of the image of Christ himself.”
I hear prayers like this in the prayers of the people each week in this church. And I know our weeks contain many moments of lament, groaning, sighing. I pray that as we do this, we are conscious of the presence of God’s Sprit.. That precisely in our moments of weakness, of not knowing what to pray, our prayers arising from the pain of living and working in the tragic gap, that we know God himself at work in us, interceding from within our hearts, in creation.
I am almost done but cannot talk about prayer without saying that God also gives us the best prayer book ever in the Psalms, which includes the full full range of human emotions including complaints against God for the times when its really really hard. I cannot more highly recommend a practice of praying the Psalms regularly.
But I will stop here. As the musos come up, I will leave you with the incredibly good news that Paul ends this epic chapter with. And I pray that as we partner with creation in liberation, and with the spirit in prayer, that we would know this truth deep in our hearts.
In all these things we are completely victorious through the one who loved us. I am persuaded, you see, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
