'Brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-- if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.'
--Romans 8: 12-25
One of my wife Kristen's and my favorite tv shows is Supergirl. Of all the entertainment casualties of the pandemic, losing the final episodes of this past season of Supergirl has really bummed us out because it was doing some great things. The show is smart, witty, faithful to the spirit of its comic book origins, and very intentional with how it deals with contemporary issues.
Supergirl, like her cousin Superman, hails from the planet Krypton and wears a red and blue uniform with a curvy ‘S’ emblazoned on the chest. But on Krypton it’s not an ‘S’ but the seal of the House of El, Supergirl and Superman’s family crest. It’s a symbol that, in the Kryptonian language, means ‘hope.’ Perhaps that is what makes the tv show so good, that despite all of the challenges she faces—both of the alien kind and the human kind—Supergirl always maintains hope, both in people and in the promise of a better tomorrow. We both said that this is the show we need right now because it offers hope while not ignoring very real challenges that we face today. And we both highly recommend it.
Melissa Benoist as Supergirl in the CW television series.
Our reading this week from Paul’s Letter to the Romans deals a lot with hope. We might, at first glance, treat the kind of hope spoken of by Paul or Jesus as some kind of lofty promise that compels us to ignore the sufferings around us. To be sure, I’ve known my fair share of Christians who look at suffering—either their own or the collective suffering of the world—and say, ‘Well, none of this matters anyway because my hope is in heaven, not here!’ That kind of hope CAN give us something to look forward to, but it does nothing to actually help us face the challenges of our present time. The hope Paul gives to the Church in Rome is definitely not this kind of hope. Rather, it's more like the hope that Supergirl gives, hope in something greater without dismissing the sufferings of the present.
Instead of offering some sort of pollyannic escape, Paul acknowledges the reality of suffering, and the pain of that suffering is expressed in groans—labor pains, Paul calls them, pains felt by the whole of creation. Hope, then, for Paul, is born out of the disconnect between what is and what should be. The agony of what is does not get denied, but instead is acknowledged, experienced, and lived through.
Right now it can be said that the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains for the better part of this calendar year. COVID-19 came onto the scene, and creation groaned and cried out to all of us to stop what we were doing. Humanity, meanwhile, has been doing our own groaning, some over being unable to work, some over having to stay stuck in their homes, some over being sick, and some over watching people die. Meanwhile, all we have is time to sit and watch social media and cable news, and from this space an old, old groan has been heard once again, calling for justice for all of God’s people, and these groans, which were often drowned out prior to COVID, have joined together in chorus with all of the other cries coming from people and coming from creation itself. These are all labor pains, I believe, and there is, there must be, something on the other side. This moment right now that we find ourselves in is the moment when real hope is born.
Desmond Tutu said that hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all of the darkness.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Martin Luther King said we must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.
MLK
How could these two modern prophets speak of such a hope, of something that they could not see in their days of apartheid and Jim Crow, respectively? Perhaps because they believed Paul’s words that we are children of God.
Being children of God does not mean that we are free of suffering—just look at Jesus! But being children of God means we do not suffer alone or needlessly; we suffer together with one another and all creation, we suffer with a God who has suffered, all the while we live in hope of a redeemed and liberated world. This redemption and liberation has already come in Jesus, in whom, Paul says, we have seen the first fruits of the Spirit—Jesus’ love, forgiveness, welcome, and grace. Jesus has already won, already shown us what the fruits of the Spirit look like, but the creation still groans, and there is still hope that needs to be cultivated, still fruits to be yielded. Yes, it’s the hope for the kingdom to come, but like Archbishop Tutu and Dr. King, it’s also a hope that allows us to look at the way things have been, the way things are, and say, “No! This is not the way things should be!” This is the very hope that Jesus gave, the good news he preached to those who were poor in spirit. It’s the kind of hope that gets cultivated when we remember that we, too, are children of God, and if children, then heirs of the promise of glory that has both already come in Jesus and is still to come.
I believe that glory is on the other side of this suffering, and I take to heart Paul’s words to a suffering community in Rome and lean on them as good news for our country and our world right now. The sufferings of the present time cannot compare with the glory about to be revealed, I do believe that. However, we cannot think that the glory somehow erases the suffering or justifies it. The resurrection did not erase or justify the cruel, cruel injustice of the crucifixion. We hope for light at the end of this darkness, but we must not succumb to the false gospel that the suffering we have endured is good for us.
Our prayer right now is to lean on the hope God gives us, so that we may have strength and courage to endure what we are experiencing now and work for a better and brighter tomorrow, one in which we have learned from the sufferings of our past, so that we may not repeat them. This is the kind of hope that both keeps us from fully falling into despair while also staying away from any kind of apathetic acceptance of the pain we have endured.
Emily Dickinson
Look around you and you will find hope, but it is not the pie-in-the-sky, high, high hope. It is the kind of hope embodied by those who refuse to accept sickness, death, and injustice as a “new normal.” This is the hope preached by the prophets of old and by modern prophets like Archbishop Tutu, Dr. King, and Congressman John Lewis, who died this weekend. This is the hope Jesus gave to the outcast and marginalized. And this is the hope we need. There is light in this darkness, brothers and sisters, and there is glory on the other side that will be revealed to us, to which these present sufferings won’t even compare. Our God has already won and will win again. And our God has called each of us a beloved child.
Congressman John Lewis
That belovedness does not keep us from suffering, but it does free us to see that our future does not have to be a repeat of our past. So let your groans be heard and mingle with the very labor pains of creation, and from those cries may you find the hope to meet the challenges of today and ensure a glorious tomorrow.