Romans 8:18-27 "Kingdom Eager" Scott Hoezee

In April the news was abuzz with a wonderful story. Sixty years after it had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was discovered in remote areas of Arkansas. Due to loss of habitat through urban sprawl, it had appeared to experts that the Ivory-Billed had gone extinct, joining a long and growing list of creatures. Indeed, it is now estimated that species are going extinct at a rate 50 to 1,000 times more quickly than at any other time in history. Within the next century, upwards of 20% of species that now exist may well be irretrievably gone. For all who love the creation of our great God, that is very bad news. It is tragic.

So how lovely to find a ray of light shining in the midst of that ecological darkness. The Ivory-Billed has survived. According to a newspaper article, after several unconfirmed sightings, one of this country's leading ornithologists rushed to Arkansas. When the morning came when this man saw the bird for himself, he wept openly for joy. As I have pointed out often these last dozen years, as created in the image of God, only we human beings appear to have the ability to revel in otherness. No other species on the planet weeps or takes joy in observing those unlike itself. Only we humans can do the God-like thing of reaching out beyond ourselves to celebrate other creatures.

Yet in both the Old and New Testaments, the biblical writers make some rather startling claims about even that non-human portion of the creation. The psalms and the writings of the prophets assert repeatedly that the trees of the fields, the birds of the air, and the ocean swells are not just reasons for us human beings to praise God but that these non-human entities themselves offer up praise to God. We tend to chalk up such rhetoric as mere metaphor--after all, how could the clacking of an oak tree's branches really be right up there with a Bach anthem or a Sunday school rendition of "Jesus Loves Me"? Everyone takes delight in the warbling song of the Cardinal but to claim that this is similar to a soloist singing "How Great Thou Art" seems a bit of a stretch.

Scripture, however, makes exactly such a claim. At the very least we would have to say that in God's ears anyway, the Cardinal's song and the oak tree's clacking sounds like praise. But at another level, there appears to be a great willingness in the Bible to give the non-human creation a bit more credit than we tend to give it in terms of rendering some form of praise to God.

In Romans 8, the apostle Paul makes himself an heir to that biblical tradition. In a striking image, Paul says that the entire creation is waiting in eager anticipation for the restorative salvation that will come when the children of God are made fully glorious at the time of Christ's return. The Greek verb in verse 19 is a rare word: apokaradokia, which literally means "to crane your neck." This is an image of the entire creation standing on its collective tippy-toes, craning its neck forward in eager joy to see what it senses is coming just around the corner.

Recently I returned from a trip with a plane-load of local middle school students who had just spent three weeks in Europe. The teachers held the kids back for last when we all got off the plane here in Grand Rapids. So when I came out into the terminal area, I was greeted by a sea of moms, dads, grandparents, and younger siblings carrying signs and balloons as they waited in eager anticipation to see their kids. Nearly to a person, those people were on their tip-toes, craning their necks, scanning the exit area for their loved ones. Course, another passenger and I couldn't resist saying loudly to one another, "There weren't any kids on that plane, were there!?" Oh yes there were, and the parents knew it and could not keep themselves from physically manifesting their eagerness.

That's the image Paul uses in Romans 8. Somehow or another, at some deep level, the creation knows that its current bondage to decay, to species extinction, to sullying pollution and waste of all kinds will end. The Creator sowed a seed of hope deep into the soil of this earth. Liberation is coming and the creation is watching for it with an eagerness that has it craning its neck with anticipated joy.

This morning, as we stand between font and table, between the wonderful baptisms we just witnessed and the sacred sacrament of joy we are about to take to ourselves, I wonder how often we find ourselves straining forward in eager anticipation for the kingdom of God's advent. When we pray as our Lord taught us, we pray "Your kingdom come." But too often we locate that kingdom at so distant a place on our mental horizons that although we pray for the kingdom, we feel none of the anticipatory joy that would have us on our tippy-toes, craning our neck to see it. That's how the phrase "kingdom come" gets used in popular parlance. When someone says he's going to knock something clean from here to "kingdom come," he means to a distant point very far away.

But that cannot and must not be our Christian conception of the kingdom for which we pray. Yes, we do ultimately mean the return of Christ. But did you notice something about Lord's Day 48? There is not one future-tense verb there. It's all present imperatives. "Rule us, keep your church strong, destroy the Devil's work, do this until your kingdom is complete and perfect." It's all present-tense, it's all right here, right now, today. When we pray "Your kingdom come," we are asking for it to come within our hearts now. When we pray "Your kingdom come," we are asking for God's Spirit to so radically mold the shape of our everyday living that the watching creation will see previews and examples of the coming kingdom in us already now.

"Your kingdom come" means letting the influence of that kingdom into the board room when we have meetings at work. "Your kingdom come" means letting the power of the kingdom work through us when we encounter even ugly and difficult situations with our neighbors and colleagues. "Your kingdom come" means letting the grace of the kingdom call the shots when we absorb the wounds inflicted on us by the sometimes thoughtless people we have to deal with week in and week out. "Your kingdom come" means exercising good stewardship over the riches and resources of this earth in lives that show respect for the wonderful variety of life on planet earth. "Your kingdom come" means we see the kingdoms of this earth and the politics of the day as of at best short-term importance compared to our ultimate allegiance to God's rule of the cosmos.

This morning here in this place we are awash in God's grace. We've seen God's covenant embrace extend to precious little ones. We will soon see the ongoing presence of that grace at our Lord's table. We take simple cubes of bread and tiny cups of juice and yet see in and through them a kingdom reality. But it's just that kind of kingdom eyesight that is key for all our living.

We read the newspaper and remind ourselves, "The news of this day is not all the news there is to ponder--there is yet the good news of the gospel that tells us all this world's pain, warfare, violence, cruelty, and loneliness will end." We listen to the talking heads on TV telling us what's what but even so we remind ourselves that there is yet the reality beneath the reality of the day's events--there is yet a coming kingdom present already now and it is so real, why even storks and giraffes and Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers are on tip-toes straining forward to see its full in-breaking.

If the creation has the gift of hope, then surely we do, too. In this hope, Paul says in verse 25, we wait patiently for also our full and final liberation from all that pains us. But Christian, gospel-based hope is not pie-in-the-sky optimism by and by. Hope is a source of motivating strength. Hope leads us to a kingdom lifestyle right now. Hope lets us display another world to our friends, family members, neighbors, and coworkers. The whole world is looking for a reason to have hope, to locate something so real and so joyful as to warrant a tippy-toe craning of the neck to see what else will yet come because of what is already true today. They need to see that kingdom hope and joy in us.

This morning as we drizzled water onto bewildered infants and as we now take small nibbles of food and small sips of drink to ourselves, we proclaim that our faith-filled vision is intact, we see a kingdom and it's real to us. "Your kingdom come," we pray. But we know it has already begun to arrive in us. We simply cannot leave this place today having seen the sacraments, heard the Word, and sung the hymns of old--we cannot leave here unchanged and unfazed. We leave here with fresh infusions of the kingdom in us and that simply must be displayed in how we live. "Your kingdom come," we pray to God by the Spirit. And that same Spirit answers back, "It's already coming in you--now let me help you show it to the whole world." Amen.