Ravished by Beauty; Groaning for Redemption

Scripture: Psalm 104: 14-35; Romans 8: 18-25

Sermon: Ravished by Beauty; Groaning for Redemption

Topics: creation, beauty, brutality,

Preached: June 22, 2014

Rev. Mike Abma

¹⁴ You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,

   and plants for people to use,

to bring forth food from the earth, 

¹⁵   and wine to gladden the human heart,

oil to make the face shine,

   and bread to strengthen the human heart. 

¹⁶ The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,

   the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 

¹⁷ In them the birds build their nests;

   the stork has its home in the fir trees. 

¹⁸ The high mountains are for the wild goats;

   the rocks are a refuge for the coneys. 

¹⁹ You have made the moon to mark the seasons;

   the sun knows its time for setting. 

²⁰ You make darkness, and it is night,

   when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. 

²¹ The young lions roar for their prey,

   seeking their food from God. 

²² When the sun rises, they withdraw

   and lie down in their dens. 

²³ People go out to their work

   and to their labour until the evening. 

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are your works!

   In wisdom you have made them all;

   the earth is full of your creatures. 

²⁵ Yonder is the sea, great and wide,

   creeping things innumerable are there,

   living things both small and great. 

²⁶ There go the ships,

   and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. 

²⁷ These all look to you

   to give them their food in due season; 

²⁸ when you give to them, they gather it up;

   when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 

²⁹ When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

   when you take away their breath, they die

   and return to their dust. 

³⁰ When you send forth your spirit, they are created;

   and you renew the face of the ground. 

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure for ever;

   may the Lord rejoice in his works— 

³² who looks on the earth and it trembles,

   who touches the mountains and they smoke. 

³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;

   I will sing praise to my God while I have being. 

³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,

   for I rejoice in the Lord. 

³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth,

   and let the wicked be no more.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Praise the Lord!

Romans 8: 18-25

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that 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. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; ²³and 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. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

Don’t you simply love this time of year?

Everything is green and lush.

It is neither too hot nor too cool.

We get to play in our gardens,

putting our hands into the wet, rich, fragrant soil;

watching the tomatoes plants grow slowly,

the marigolds begin to fill out

the flox tower as they get ready to flower.

Last weekend we were at Hoffmaster Park at the Big Lake for the annual

Woodlawn camping weekend.

What is more soothing than hearing the waves of Lake Michigan gently roll

onto shore?

What is more inspiring than walking through that majestic forest of oak

trees, sentinels standing guard on the shore?

Summer, a season to explore the wonder and beauty of our world.

Last summer our family was in the Rocky Mountains.

We hiked through a mountain pass above the tree line,

hard, strenuous, but breath-takingly beautiful.

Last week my brother who lives just north of Vancouver phoned.

He told me he saw a cougar – or mountain lion or puma or … (apparently this cat holds the record for how many names it is called)

– well he saw one on his way to work at 5 am.

The cougar turned and looked right at him

with piercing eyes

and my brother said he had not seen such a wondrous sight in quite some time.

This may come as a surprise to you,

but long before June 5, when over two thousand school-children in Nepal set the record for the most simultaneous tree-huggers,

Reformed theologians were waxing eloquent about the beauty of creation.

John Calvin, Richard Baxter, Jonathon Edwards – they were all nature-lovers and in today’s parlance, tree-huggers.

Creation for them was like a stage, like a theatre —

it was a theatre that showed God’s glory and goodness,

in millions and billions of ways.

The beauty of Creation was so important to these Reformed theologians,

that saying so became part of their Confession of Faith.

In the Belgic Confession, article 2,

it says that the universe is so wonderful, so beautiful

that it is like a “beautiful book”

in which everything in creation are like letters

and punctuation marks

causing us to ponder God – God’s invisible qualities:

His power,

His glory,

His love of order, his love of diversity.

Creation is so very, very beautiful

In order to stir our hearts

To desire God

To love God.

To thank God.

PSALM 104 — Ravished by Beauty

Psalm 104 is written by a person whose heart has been stirred.

It is a playful psalm.

It is a delightful psalm.

There is very little darkness or chaos in this psalm.

Instead we have a picture of how God has arranged everything in its place:

The heavens are his garment

The earth is established on firm pillars

The land is watered with springs

The springs allow the land to burst forth in fruitfulness.

Trees become home for storks.

Mountains become home for goats.

Night is home for the moon.

Day is home for the sun.

Even lions, ferocious lions, have a place:

At night they hunt; during the day they sleep.

And humans vice versa:

Sleep at night; and during the day they work.

^[1]All peachy…

Even the sea,

which most Israelites feared as being

the home of chaos and the most fearsome creatures,

even the sea is full of God’s wonders,

and the leviathan – whatever kind of sea-monster that is —

frolics in the waves.

The whole picture leaves this psalmist singing in delight,

ravished by the beauty of creation.

RAVISHED BY BEAUTY — Brutality

To be ravished by beauty….that word ravished has two senses to it.^[2]

On the one hand, to be ravished is to be carried away by pleasure, by delight.

But to be ravished can also mean to be carried away by raw force.

Creation is beautiful – but it has a terrible beauty to it.

When my brother said he saw that cougar,

on the one hand he was totally overwhelmed by the beauty of that creature,

but on the other hand, when the cougar looked at him,

he realized its wildness,

Its power, and he was glad he was in his truck.

When we hiked in the Rocky Mountains last summer,

we were overwhelmed by how breath-taking everything was,

but when a storm suddenly flared up,

a storm not so different from that doozy we had Wednesday,

And we were caught on a dangerous part of the mountain

in lightening, and thunder, and pouring rain,

suddenly the beauty had a terrible power,

even a brutal dangerous power.

When we are in the wrong place at the wrong time,

When we run into a ferocious animal,

When we find ourselves in the path of a storm,

An avalanche or earthquake,

A tsunami or tornado,

A flood or fire,

Creation can scare us, terrify us, cause us to quake.

At those times we question whether Creation is for us or against us.

Is Creation beautiful or brutal?

BEAUTY – For Us

There is a whole tradition that mainly sees the beauty of creation.

The Romantic poet Wordsworth once wrote:

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.^[3]

If there is a clash between nature and humans, it is our fault.

Everything in the Garden was just fine, until us humans showed up.

In fact, in this tradition,

planet earth would be better off without us.

Just watch the History Channel Documentary

Life After People to see a stunning description of this.

If humanity is extinct, creation will revert back to the Garden of Eden,

with some old ruins.

BRUTALITY – Against Us

Then there is a whole tradition that mainly sees the brutality of creation.

This view was very bluntly expressed by Alan Lightman in a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Our Lonely Home in Nature.”^[4]

Lightman, a physicist, writes that any connection we feel with Nature,

any warmth,

any love,

any closeness,

is all an illusion – purely a construct of our imaginations.

Creation or Nature is a cold, heartless place

that does not care two-hoots about us.

He ends his essay by stating that

since Planet Earth is not concerned about us,

we humans should not be overly concerned about protecting planet earth.

Our main concern should be about protecting ourselves.

And if protecting ourselves means leaving planet Earth,

that is what we need to do.

When I read this, I thought this was a pretty extreme view.

No one really thinks like that, do they?

But then a few days later I was watching the 60 Minutes Show on CBS

as they were interviewing Elon Musk.

Elon Musk is the young entrepreneur who made millions on PayPal.

Then he started Tesla Motors – which is developing a fully electric car.

He then started Space X, a company that builds rockets for NASA.

When asked why he started a rocket company,

He said,

“I began building rockets because…one day this planet is going to be too brutal and difficult a place to live.

That is why I started SpaceX. For the survival of humankind.

We will need a way to leave this planet to become a multi-planetary species.”^[5]

Here are these two positions:

Those who see mainly the beauty of our planet,

and who think the best future for planet Earth is without humans.

And then there are those who mainly see the brutality of our planet,

and who think the best future for humanity is without planet Earth.

ROMANS 8 — TOGETHER

Part of the wonder of Romans chapter 8

is that Paul is very emphatic

that Earth is not better without us,

and that we are not better without Earth.

The truth is, Paul writes, we are all in this together,

All of humanity,

All the creatures of the earth.

In fact all of creation is in the same boat.

There is a deep beauty and yet a deep brutality

infecting all of creation and all the creatures of creation.

And we are all waiting….

we are all yearning

we are all groaning

for Christ to make all things new.

Creation eagerly awaits the revealing of the children of God —

namely the full redemption of humanity

at the final resurrection of the dead.

And not only is the whole creation waiting, and groaning,

but we,

the people with the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit

we wait, and groan and yearn for the renewal of all things —

both the new creation

and the redemption of our bodies.

Any way of looking at the future

that says Planet Earth is better off without humanity

or humanity is better off without Planet Earth

is not waiting or hoping or yearning for the right thing.

GOD IS FOR US, NOT AGAINST US

To ask whether Creation is for us or against us is

perhaps not really the correct question.

It makes about as much sense as asking

whether our bodies are for us or against us.

God created this planet for the flourishing of life.

This planet provides everything we need for life –

The oxygen we breath,

The food we eat

The gravity that allows us to stay connected to the earth

Everything…

And yet, we know that there is a wildness to this world

An unpredictability,

An uncontrollability,

Even a brutality.

The same is true for our bodies.

Our bodies exist for the flourishing of our lives.

And yet, our bodies, beautiful as they are,

can fail us, frustrate us,

they can betray us and burden us.

We are not fully human apart from our bodies.

And neither are we fully human apart from our home, planet earth.

That is why we yearn, together with all creation,

for the renewal of the earth

and the redemption of our bodies.

These go together.

The biggest question is not

whether Creation is for us or against us,

or whether our bodies are for us or against us.

The biggest question is whether God is for us or against us.

And to that question,

Paul is unequivocal in this chapter.

He is crystal clear.

God is for us.

There is no condemnation for those in Christ.

If God is for us,

Who can be against us?

If God is for us,

What can be against us?

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Nothing.

Nothing at all in all creation can separate us.

But likewise,

nothing can separate creation from the love of God in Christ.

Nothing in all humanity

can separate this wondrous creation,

this work of God’s hands,

from his love in Christ Jesus.

This is the promise of Pentecost:

For God so loved the world, the whole world,

us and everything in it, that he sent his Son

to make all things new.

CONCLUSION

Some of you may know about the Iona Community in Scotland.

It is a place of worship, of pilgrimage, of retreat, of renewal.

I know some of you have even been there.

John Bell, the hymn writer and pastor, is one of the founding members of that community. They have been producing prayers, and liturgies and hymns.

They call their publications Wild Goose publications.

I always wondered why they called it Wild Goose publications.

I only recently learned that the Wild Goose is a Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit.

Think about that as you listen to the end of Mary Oliver’s poem The Wild Geese

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

Are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination,

Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh, exciting –

Over and over announcing your place

In the family of things.

What a beautiful poem…

The world offers itself to our imagination….

For creation sings of God’s glory,

It speaks of God’s truth,

It groans in anticipation of our final redemption.

It calls to us,

like a wild and insistent goose.

Amen

1. ↑

2. This insight from Beldon Lane’s Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality. Oxford, 2011.

   It also outlines the “tree-hugging” Reformed tradition. ↑

3. From his Poem, Lines Composed A Few Mile Above Tintern Abbey. ↑

4. Alan Lightman “Our Lonely Home in Nature,” NYT May 2, 2014. ↑

5. Scott Pelley interview with Elon Musk, June 20, 2012, 60 Minutes, CBS. ↑