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I remember the ultrasound visits when my children were in-tummy. 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 a 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 means life is going to be very different; but, how different? In all these questions one thing was certain – this baby is 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. Creation is pregnant with a New Creation and will give girth to it.
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 Hebrew word for humanity – “Adam”. The first child born of Adamah was Adam and according to Genesis 1-3, he ruined/ruins 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 the futility of the disease of sin and death. But looking at Romans 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 life-gluing 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 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 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 culmination of it all will be that “The Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).
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 by the flesh. We don’t live pleasing or looking out for ourselves, rather 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.
