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when Dana was pregnant with William and Alice I went with her for the
ultrasounds. The very first one with
William is probably the most memorable simply because it was the first time we
would have such an experience. The
technician lubed the ultrasound device and began to roll it around on Dana’s
barely beginning to have a baby-bump belly.
Then she focused in on William and there was the sound of a little heart
beating. We could see him move and he
had little fingers. He wasn’t even a big
as the palm of my hand, but on the screen he was the biggest thing in our
universe. Although, his disproportionately huge head and eyes had me a little
suspicious that he was an alien baby.
Pre-natal
ultrasounds are surreal experiences, but one thing they do is help the reality
set in that there’s a baby on the way, a new human life, a child, your
child. That realization brings with it a
few questions? What will this child be
like? What will it grow up to be? What will it be like to be a parent? What do we have to do now to get ready for
it? Some things are obvious – paint a
room, get a crib, buy clothes and toys. Go
to the pre-natal classes. For certain,
the new baby meant life was going to be very different; but, how different? In all these questions one thing was certain –
this baby was indeed coming.
Looking
here at Romans this eager expectation of a baby about to be born, is what Paul
says the Creation is presently experiencing.
The Creation eagerly waits with patient endurance and groaning like a woman
in labour pain. The baby is in there
coming to term and in the violent miracle called birth it will arrive.
Here’s
an interesting bit of trivia from Hebrew for your enjoyment. The Hebrew word for the created Earth is
Adamah. This is the feminine version of
the word for humanity – Adam. The first
child born of Adamah was Adam and he ruined things. He was made in the image of God but tries to
be God and that’s just twisted. The
result is that Adamah, like the parent of a disappointing child, is subject to
futility and death. But these new
children that are about to appear, Paul says they are the children of God and
they are not only made in God’s image but are actually indwelt by the Spirit of
God. When they are born the Creation
will be free from its bondage to futility and decay. It will be healed.
Who
are these children of God? They are us,
the followers of Jesus who have been born from above by God’s pouring himself, the
Holy Spirit, into us bonding us to Jesus.
By this bond, we partake of the new humanity that God the Father created
when by the power of the Holy Spirit when he raised Jesus from the dead, the
firstborn of the New Creation. If an ultrasound of the belly of the Creation
(Adamah) were taken, we, us, Christian community who in the power of the
indwelling Holy Spirit, are the image of Jesus, we would be the alien-looking
foetus obliviously growing away in the Creation’s belly until the time is right
for us to be born by resurrection into a Creation made new.
Now,
I bet you folks haven’t heard anything like this before. The image of pregnancy and the Creation
giving birth to a new humanity by means of the resurrection probably wasn’t one
of the stories we all heard in Sunday School when we were young. Just as Genesis 1-3 is the foundational story
that gives meaning to the present Creation, Romans chapter 8 is the
foundational story that gives understanding of the New Creation that is
coming. Paul says that the Holy Spirit
bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. This entails that the Holy Spirit with us is
the proof this is really happening. The
day will come when God makes all creation new and all creation will be healed
of the futility of sin and death and we will be raised from the dead as part of
that healing.
The
certainty of the arrival of this New Creation is the root of Christian hope. A pregnant woman doesn’t look at her unbelievably
expanded belly and say, “Oh, I hope I have a baby.” No.
She says, “Oh my God. I’m going
to have a baby.” Then she cycles through
every emotion you can think of on a spectrum from panic to awe and begins to
prepare for it. Hope leads to
action. With the same certainty that a
baby is going to be born from a very pregnant woman so the Creation is pregnant
with a new humanity that is for now, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,
embodied in the fellowship of the followers of Jesus. God is preparing the Creation in ways that we
can’t see even through telescopes or microscopes, in ways that we can’t begin
to imagine. The prophet Isaiah said “The
Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.
Anyway,
Paul also says that we the children of God also groan and wait eagerly for the
Day of New Creation. This waiting
involves living by the Spirit, not the flesh.
We don’t please ourselves, we love our neighbours. The Holy Spirit living in us teaches us who
Jesus is and makes us want to instinctually live according to Jesus’ ways. The
Spirit causes a profound discontent in us, a discontent with the world and the
way it is. Dissatisfied with the world,
we can find ourselves in conflict with the world and ourselves. If we act too much like Jesus, the world
shames us. If we act too much like the
world, we feel ashamed of ourselves.
We
begin to suffer with Christ as we start to struggle with making our lives, our
home life, our friendships, our relationships with neighbours more in the image
of the New Creation coming, the healed Creation coming, the New and healed
Humanity that’s about to be born.
Waiting
in eager expectation for the Day of New Creation also involves praying. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who
spearheaded the work of reconciliation in South Africa arose everyday at 3:00AM
to pray for the healing of South Africa.
It would be prudent to say that the ardent prayers of that one man
stayed off a civil war in South Africa that would have been as disgustingly
evil as the genocide that happened in Rwanda in the early 1990’s.
Jesus taught his disciples a prayer that begins, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Praying this from the heart continuously and in turn living accordingly will bear its fruit and be the proof that a new day is surely coming. Amen.
