An Attitude of Eagerness

As followers of Christ, we are each awaiting, I hope with some eagerness, the Promised Day of Christ’s return.  My Bible study group read through what Revelation had to say of that day.  While it could scare the wits out of us, the ultimate fulfilment of the promise had the blessed effect of putting the fear and violence in another perspective.  Paul has just told us that the way to glory, in this fallen world, lies through suffering, for the sake of our faith—by faith to take firm hold of the suffering and lift it to God.  Christ shows us the way, opening the way for us, placing his seal on the certainty of the goal.  Life is rough; Lord knows how hard we work to keep it smooth and the frustrations and sorrows with which we try to cope!  God doesn’t promise smooth.  God is strong enough to see us through.  Let the Sacrament be a tangible reminder.

Christ suffered, not because he was a glutton for punishment or just couldn’t be happy unless he was miserable.  Christ suffered because this is a broken world.  Creation, Paul tells us, senses it isn’t right—something off, something crucial, missing.  There are days when it can seem as if the earth feels happy, days when the earth feels sort of sad, and days when the earth can seem downright angry.  The natural world takes its anger out on people, indiscriminately.

In a broken world, the one who is not broken will either be worshiped or reviled; maybe more often reviled than worshipped, envy being what it is.  You and I experience this universal brokenness, as we are well aware.  The Unbroken One was broken for us, that we might be made whole, in him.  Christ suffered because he is the way through this shattered life, suffered because he was perfectly faithful in a faithless world.  No, life was not easy for Jesus, especially, knowing what he knew, seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard.  A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  We like laughing Jesus, better.  We don’t much care to contemplate Christ on the cross—as you can see: we don’t see him there.  There is a strong theological reason why we do not have an image of Jesus on the cross.  Let’s also remember he was there, and his cross showed it.  Yes, Jesus laughed; it’s beautiful to remember it.  Let’s not neglect those other parts of the story that don’t leave us feeling chipper.  The joy and peace in all seasons are that Jesus has overcome the world, and in, him, so shall we.

The world will never object to a Christianity reflecting the world’s ways and wishes, comfortably accommodated to current culture.  You know, nice Christianity.  So soon as the Christian finds him or herself athwart those ways and wishes, that Christian will know what it is to be rejected—and saved.  “As it is [. . . ] I have chosen you out of the world.  That is why the world hates you” (Jn 15:19).  It begins with saying something to someone from a hope to persuade them to salvation.  Persuasion to salvation runs contrary to the persuasions on offer by the powers of this world, and these powers will not be crossed.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).  We don’t want trouble.  We want a happy, comfortable, well-insulated life.  Everything just nice.  Trouble is our common lot.  How shall we respond?  To whom shall we turn?  Who has the words of life?  Perhaps if we were to share our stories of the times we turned to what was not God, we would find we had turned to many things that were not God, many things where God would not be found, because we weren’t looking for God, in the moment.  We were looking for . . . something else.  And we found, as we already knew we would, even more sorrow, more discouragement.  As though there really were no victory over the world, no way out of the swamp, just different sorts of accommodations to “reality,” more or less successful.  Becoming comfortably numb.  How we long for success.  What makes a life truly successful, beloved?  How do you suppose God would answer?

We turned to many things.  Now we know, because the Spirit showed us the door; we heard Christ, knocking there.  We let him in; the door remains open, because Christ has come to lead us out.  We thought we were letting Jesus into our heart; he knows he’s setting us free from our prison.  There will be trouble; there is also Jesus, with us.  The problems, troubles, and suffering are real; they are heavy—you can tell me!  They can be hard, hurtful, lasting years, even decades of life.  Troubles wear us down, as we know.  Sin is determined, beloved.  Brokenness breaks, means to break us and keep us broken.  There is a force of darkness at work in this world.  We may feel inclined to dismiss the rainbow hail Satan banners as incidental, provocative nonsense, but there’s a real undercurrent there.  God also is determined.  And even if we’ve never believed that sin, after all, is stronger, well . . . our actions on more than one occasion have veered that way.  And we have an anchor, within the veil: Christ has a long, strong reach, beloved.  His arms were never open so wide as on the cross.  He wants us to know: he is here, with us; he is here, too.  O, turn your eyes upon Jesus!

Paul knows it, feels it, lives it.  This is why he can say and not seem like a fool for saying: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (8:18).  Contemplate what awaits us: glory, light, freedom, joy, peace—eternally.  Paul was well aware of present suffering.  So is God.   No, Paul didn’t go through things we have been through.  I can tell you: I hope I’ll never have to go through things the apostle went through.  We hear about some of it, in Acts.  Paul tells us more as we read 2 Corinthians.

Present woes—some keenly feel the inadequacy of their financial means to meet their obligations, and not always because they have been wasteful.  We don’t work fewer hours, yet we have less to work with: ability to pay doesn’t seem to keep up with costs.  Time was when $20 was real money.  One hundred is the new twenty, yet most of us are still carrying, maybe, a couple twenties in our wallets.  The difficulties don’t really go away; we can learn to manage them better, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we will.

Some of us feel the inadequacy of these bodies we’ve always relied on to do for us—the aches don’t go away, anymore.  The pain remains.  Some of us walk with the torn shreds of where our lives had been sewn to others no longer here, no longer with us.  That place beside you in the pews can feel awfully empty!

We live under a culture that elevates what is not of God while assuring us it is, and scolds and shames what actually is of God.  There are those whom we had thought of as fellow believers who lost enthusiasm, lost the desire to gather, drifted away, rejected God’s teaching, preferring another word, reabsorbed by our fallen culture.

Many psalms sing of the hurts that come with living faithfully in a faithless world.  Victory is not the abolition of challenges.  Victory is in looking to Jesus in every situation, trusting God, discovering the peace of Christ.  Victory is knowing the one who has overcome the world.  Let the light of Christ’s risen glory shine upon present sufferings, ours and those of our loved ones.  That doesn’t make the suffering go away, we know!  Regarding all things in the light of God’s grace in Christ’s glory, we find comfort and strength, assurance and hope: we find God’s love, already with us, walking with us, all the way through.  For years, my mother had one of those silly Hallmark store pictures on the wall, a basset hound with an icebag on its head: “What can’t be cured must be endured.”  I guess that rang resoundingly true for her.  And I know she would agree that an even better saying would be what can’t be cured must be met with faith.  As my mother knew, it might not be cured in this life, but Christ overcomes, and we are in Christ.

Now, Paul puts the matter in a way we ought to consider a bit more closely: he writes of the glory that will be revealed in us.  I would have thought he would have said the glory that will be revealed to us, like when we see Christ, as when we depart this life to be with the Lord forever.  Revealed to us: the curtain pulled aside and we bathed beautifully in warm, holy light.  But Paul writes revealed in us; we might also understand that as glory revealed among us, or even as revealed through us.  What is he getting at?

He helps us begin to see: “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed” (8:19).  Where are they?  O, that they would come!  The children of God, remember, are those who have received the Spirit, in and through whom the Spirit shall become more evident: the faithful ones.  The faithful ones hold on for dear life, making a God-directed God-desiring life visible on earth, more visible for a creation that, in its secret heart, longs for hope of salvation, redemption and return—homecoming.  The children of God live in such a way that hope is made visible: light for the world.  The faithful ones don’t look any different from almost anyone we can meet.  The difference isn’t on the outside.

The ancient Greeks had a story about hope: hope was all that was left in the box after all the monsters had been let loose to terrorize the world.  And who set them loose?  “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (8:20).  Who subjected creation to frustration, to thwarted purpose?  A life of frustration!  This earth was meant as a gift for us, a place where life would flourish, rejoicing in God’s blessing.  Humanity would be a blessing, to God, to one another, also to this earth.

In the Garden, so long ago, a choice was made.  It was the wrong choice.  We know about wrong choices.  We live with the consequences of bad choices, including many made long before we ever existed.  “Subjected to frustration”—what a phrase!  I feel it.  Creation does, too.  But who did this to creation?  This subjection to frustration came about “by the will of the one who subjected it.”  That sounds like it ought to be a mighty big will.  And we well may think that the only will big enough to subject creation to frustration must be God’s will.

Let’s go back to Genesis.  In Adam’s fall, we sinned all was the old, Puritan saying.  Remember, God had given Adam dominion over creation.  God gave Adam, and Eve, a will: ability to choose.  It comes as no surprise to us (though I still like to think it did to them) that they abused their freedom, abused the gift of choice; they did not govern their will—their desiring and choosing—by God’s Word.  The consequences are with us today, all around.  That rupture with God swept out over the earth.  Like the generations that followed, creation never asked to be thwarted—Adam and Eve never consulted creation.  Why would they?  But we know the powers of nature can be fearsome—the earth is not happy with us.  We labor by the sweat of our brow, especially here in Brazoria County in July.

So, creation was undermined.  Paul tells us that, despite our betrayal of the earth, creation still hopes—not in mankind, certainly, but in her Creator—hopes that release and restoration shall come from God.  Creation looks for signs of this imminent release.  Indeed, release and restoration shall come, as we hear, especially as we read the final chapters of Revelation.  Creation even now hopes for liberation “from its bondage to decay” also to be “brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (8:21).  Freedom and glory: yes please; sounds beautiful; sounds like home.  Change and decay, in all around I see.  Help of the helpless, O, abide with me.

Longing for a sign.  We know.  The sign of imminent release.  We groan, wanting something better, a change, hope: true, real, viable hope.  We aren’t the only ones groaning for renewal.  “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (8:22).  Sisters, many of you know the pains of childbirth; I and some of my brothers have only seen these, listened.  I’ve seen a volcanic eruption that made all around dark as night; I’ve been through earthquakes that shook the foundations, wrenching the room side to side.  With you, I’ve been through hurricanes.  I’ve smelled the drifting smoke of summer wildfires consuming miles of forest.  Thanks be to God, I’ve never been in the vicinity of a tornado—but some of you have been.  Drought and deluge.  Crop failures.  It doesn’t take much to remind us we are at the mercy of nature.  It doesn’t take much to remind us that all our reliance is really, always, only upon God.  The children of God live that reliance.  Such living becomes a sign: redemption is on His way.

“Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).  Perhaps because we have this hope, Christians groan more than others.  I once read a sad story of how babies in orphanages eventually learn to stop crying, because their cries get no response.  You and I know the One who establishes our hope, making it a true hope, a hope-worthy hope, and not merely more foolishness.  Together with the other apostles, Paul speaks of waiting “eagerly.”  We hear often about the blessedness of that attitude of gratitude.  Today, I want to extol an attitude of eagerness.  Eagerness prompts us to get up, get moving; eagerness adds energy to life; eagerness gives us eyes for opportunities and the motivation to try.

God gave us the hope of salvation, “the redemption of our bodies.”  The Spirit is getting these temples set back in order.  Salvation and keen hope for its fulfillment brings changed vision.  We knew the world was a mess, but we maybe had no idea what a mess it really was, let alone what we could do about any of it.  What devastations sin has caused in human lives; what sin has done to all creation!  God comes to set all things free from decay and death: but where is the sign?

We do not yet perfectly see or have that freedom.  No, we still see, and experience, decay, and death.  What do we have, then?  We have hope, a foretaste, the firstfruits of the Spirit; we have a sign; we are a sign.  Hope, Paul reminds us—maybe we need reminding!—“hope that is seen is no hope at all.  Who hopes for what they already have?” (8:24).  Well, we might hope for more of what we already have.  In our case, we might hope for more of whom we already have: Christ.  And God shall supply all our need; He asks of us faith, hope, love, and patience.  His Spirit gives us all these, abundantly.  Only consider the virtue of patience, and that God wants us to learn and practice patience—God knows why!  Consider, also, God’s patience.

I told you a moment ago about infants who learn to stop crying out, because their cries never got a response.  I fear many have learned that lesson from life in this world.  My grandfather had a few phrases he’d bring out, jokingly, yet with a hardened edge of experience on them.  Frequently he’d say, in his joking way, “Nobody cares.”  What we learn to do, gathered here, one of the reasons we come here, together, is to cry out, together, to the Lord.  God answers.  God cares.  This word I share with you today is for a reminder that God cares.  This table is for a reminder that God cares: here is tangible hope, tangible help—spiritually.  A sign from God, a reminder of God’s grace in Christ’s glory.  Let us strive to view all things in the light of God’s grace in Christ’s glory.  As we do, we will find comfort and strength, assurance and hope: we find God’s love, already with us, walking with us, all the way through.