SPEAKER_00: In our New Testament reading today, Paul uses a really visceral word to describe the experience of being in this world as we await the redemption of our bodies.
SPEAKER_00: As we await resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the word groaning.
SPEAKER_00: Those of you who know me know that I've had many surgeries in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And some of those surgeries have been emergency surgeries.
SPEAKER_00: And for me, those emergency surgeries were often preceded by a period of really, really intense pain that kind of indicated, you know, that some heroic measures needed to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, it was around this time, a couple of years ago, I can recall being at the emergency department in mission under you know the fluorescent lights and the smell of rubbing alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm laying on a gurney in a hallway writhing and groaning because of this intense pain.
SPEAKER_00: And it just reflecting on that, that this image of groaning, it's often like by the time you get to the point where you're groaning, it's like a lot of things went off the rails to get to this moment.
SPEAKER_00: You kind of feel like you're at the end of things.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the medication didn't work, the interventions didn't work, you know, all these other measures didn't work, and now I've arrived to a point where I'm groaning.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever experienced like that intensity of pain where it's it's accompanied by this sense of like helplessness, right?
SPEAKER_00: Of powerlessness, this loss of agency, like I can't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: And and groaning, uh, it's it's like this this last ditch fleeting effort to find some kind of comfort in this pain that will not go away.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I can't do anything, but I'll I'm going to groan and just comfort myself from this pain.
SPEAKER_00: Paul will say, even just moments later, right, that the spirit groans inwardly with groans that are too deep for words.
SPEAKER_00: And this, I can also recall a season in my life years ago where I'm writhing in bed in my room, groaning, but not because of physical pain, but an interior pain.
SPEAKER_00: This feeling of helplessness and despair that was just growing in me, felt like I didn't have any other options, this disorientation and just groaning in pain.
SPEAKER_00: This image of groaning is so visceral.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says that this is the image, this groaning is what describes life in this world as we await the resurrection, as we await redemption.
SPEAKER_00: That in fact it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that all of creation is groaning.
SPEAKER_00: All of creation.
SPEAKER_00: This deep and intense spiritual pain in the world that is evidenced by this groaning, we're often not always there, thankfully, but certain seasons of life can kind of initiate us into this, where we become aware that something deeply is off, something deeply is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: If you go through a season of suffering, sometimes it feels like an initiation, where you're initiated into a world that you didn't even know existed.
SPEAKER_00: A world where pain is real and it is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: This is a world that we're often ignorant of or naive about, especially if we've grown up and we haven't experienced a whole lot of like deep suffering or deep loss or deep pain, and we can kind of be insulated from it, but it it feels like when we're initiated into it that oh my goodness, this is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, we often look around like, why didn't you tell me about this?
SPEAKER_00: You know, this often, this season of profound pain or profound suffering can initiate us into the reality of this intense pain and this groaning of creation.
SPEAKER_00: This groaning, Paul says, is on account of creation being subjected to futility by means of Adam's transgression.
SPEAKER_00: This futility, the word there, meaninglessness.
SPEAKER_00: Be encouraged.
SPEAKER_00: The creation itself has been subjected to futility or meaninglessness or vanity.
SPEAKER_00: This is the futility or the meaninglessness of the book of Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_00: The vanity, all is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: This is the wisdom, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is the wisdom of being fully aligned with reality, of being totally sober about the absurdity of things.
SPEAKER_00: The wisdom of Ecclesiastes is the wisdom we come into after we realize that the wisdom of Proverbs, proverbial wisdom doesn't cut it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a hundred percent true all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Proverbial wisdom, the book of Proverbs is formulaic.
SPEAKER_00: A plus B equals C.
SPEAKER_00: You reap what you sow.
SPEAKER_00: If you raise your kids up in the way of the Lord, they won't depart from the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Ecclesiastes comes along and says, actually, you will not always reap what you sow.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you may do a lot of sowing and very little reaping.
SPEAKER_00: A plus B actually doesn't always equal C.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, you can raise your kids in the faith, and you can see them depart from the path.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can pour everything into this situation and it all falls apart.
SPEAKER_00: You can pour your heart out to this person and she walked away.
SPEAKER_00: The futility, the meaninglessness, the vanity of life, where life doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: Life doesn't add up.
SPEAKER_00: This is the meaninglessness that the servant who goes to the master in the parable has.
SPEAKER_00: It's like this ancient question of theodicy, the the problem of evil in relation to the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The servant looks out at the field and sees weeds.
SPEAKER_00: And the servant rushes over to the master and is deeply confused.
SPEAKER_00: He's confused because he actually believes the master's good.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand?
SPEAKER_00: Like you sowed good seeds, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like you're good.
SPEAKER_00: There's weeds over there.
SPEAKER_00: It's this experience of the where life doesn't add up and it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: Where the experience is, the the experiences of our life feels like how in the world do I draw a straight line from my experience and the goodness of God?
SPEAKER_00: Where it seems like the life I'm living and the goodness of God seem mutually exclusive.
SPEAKER_00: We see in no uncertain terms, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says in this parable, the master says, an enemy has done this.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord does not sow wheat.
SPEAKER_00: Lord is not the author of this meaninglessness, this futility.
SPEAKER_00: Well then, where is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: This is so profound, and Paul, see, I love Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is an incredible theologian and philosopher.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul, at the end of the day, Paul is a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Romans is the writing of a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: See, Paul is writing, and he knows that this church in Rome, they're going through many things.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of internal struggle that the church is dealing with, and there's a lot of external pressure and persecution and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is writing to them.
SPEAKER_00: This is a church that is experiencing pain, experiencing persecution, experiencing suffering, experiencing this groaning.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul recognizes that God does not deny this growing.
SPEAKER_00: God does not deny the reality of pain.
SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus doesn't look out, the master doesn't look out into the field and say, I don't see any weeds.
SPEAKER_00: You know, things look pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: No, Paul, he's absolutely, he doesn't deny the reality of pain, the reality of this groaning.
SPEAKER_00: But what's so incredible is that Paul reframes this in a larger framing of hope, such that the pain that this Roman church that they're experiencing, that we experience, the pain that bevels up in this groaning, this pain is not evidence of our own despair.
SPEAKER_00: It's not evidence that things are going to go off the rail, and it's not evidence that this is not going to work out.
SPEAKER_00: But what Paul says is this pain is evidence that something good and big is coming.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't deny the pain, but what he says is this is the pain.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's pain.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it hurts.
SPEAKER_00: It's the pain of childbirth.
SPEAKER_00: It's the pain of new life.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is the God and Father of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: This is the God who's able to bring things out of the grave, bring life out of death, bring honor out of shame, bring purity and blamelessness out of the depths of guilt and sin.
SPEAKER_00: To bring joy out of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: This is a God who can draw straight with crooked lines.
SPEAKER_00: This is a God who, in the midst of all the groaning and all the pain and all the suffering, this is a God who can take this and bring new things.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says in opening this up, he says, right, I do not compare the sufferings of this present time to the glory that is to be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't imagine like a doctor or somebody standing over me in the gurney while I'm groaning and like saying, you know, hey, this doesn't compare to like the good that's ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is what Paul daringly says.
SPEAKER_00: No, doesn't compare.
SPEAKER_00: Really, Paul?
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't compare.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that he's denying the intensity of the pain.
SPEAKER_00: He's already named this as a groaning.
SPEAKER_00: He's not denying the reality or the intensity of the pain.
SPEAKER_00: He's not denying how bad things can get, how much off the rails life can go.
SPEAKER_00: He's not denying that.
SPEAKER_00: He's just totally convinced of the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: The word we use is hope.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul is speaking about.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for us, we often use hope in a less theologically sophisticated way.
SPEAKER_00: You know, like I know as you do when you leave here, you stop at the BP up here and you get scratch offs, and you say, you know, I hope I'm going to win a lot of money.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's not that's not Paul's language of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Hope in the Bible is actually a certain expectancy.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm expecting this.
SPEAKER_00: So it's more theologically for me to say of my wife, like, I hope Crystal loves me.
SPEAKER_00: That's that is the weightiness of the confidence that Paul has in Christian hope.
SPEAKER_00: It's this certainty for something we can't see.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a certain we can't see it, but we're certain.
SPEAKER_00: We have this great confidence of it.
SPEAKER_00: And I love how how Paul he ends this section here that we wait for this, this hope, this goodness of God that we cannot see in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the groaning, and he says we wait for it with patience.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it interesting?
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this in our language of medicine in the West, right?
SPEAKER_00: A person who's under the care of a physician, they're called a patient.
SPEAKER_00: And it's literally, it goes back to the Latin for the one who endures, the one who is suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And this vision that Paul has here, it's a vision like we're all God's patients.
SPEAKER_00: We're all those who are enduring and groaning and waiting.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is totally convinced that this period of groaning and pining will be eclipsed by the goodness of God, the redemption of our bodies, the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm seeing more and more, and especially just over the last several weeks in the scripture reading, like these big spiritual virtues, right?
SPEAKER_00: Faith and hope and love, not to sound like reductionistic or to reduce everything down.
SPEAKER_00: But one clear continuity that we can see, one clear thread between all of this, the readings that we've seen over the last several weeks, is that whatever faith means, whatever love means, whatever hope means, I think most of the time, it seems the lion's share of the time, the way that faith, hope, and love express themselves in this present time, this present evil age, is patience.
SPEAKER_00: Patience.
SPEAKER_00: This is faith.
SPEAKER_00: Patience.
SPEAKER_00: This according to Paul here, hope.
SPEAKER_00: Patience, Paul will say in uh Corinthians 13, love.
SPEAKER_00: May we see that we are patients in the care of this heavenly healer who looks upon us not as some distant father, some distant, you know, uh remote doctor that you just like logged into via Zoom.
SPEAKER_00: But this is a God who is deeply intimate with the pain of creation.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Paul says that we who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly, and later that the Spirit groans in us.
SPEAKER_00: So the question of, well, where is God when X happened?
SPEAKER_00: Where is God when the pain's real?
SPEAKER_00: Where is God when this went off the rails?
SPEAKER_00: According to Paul, that groaning, that deep intense pain that we experience.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God's there.
SPEAKER_00: As St.
SPEAKER_00: Maximus the Confessor will say that God's suffering in Christ is directly proportional to our own suffering.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the hardest things about pain is that I cannot physically experience your pain.
SPEAKER_00: There's a gap between your experience of pain and my own experience.
SPEAKER_00: And so pain, suffering creates a loneliness and a sense of isolation where we can't bridge the gap to experience to be in solidarity fully with someone in their pain.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a problem for God.
SPEAKER_00: Full solidarity with us in the groaning, in the waiting.
SPEAKER_00: May we recognize that our lives are in the hands of the great physician, that we are patients, right?
SPEAKER_00: That church is hospital for sinners, that we can come with confidence of the goodness of God, that even in the midst of the groaning, in the midst of the pain, in the midst of everything that we're experiencing, that we can see with the eyes that Paul had.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I consider the sufferings of this present time.
SPEAKER_00: They're not even worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.