Welcome to the first post of Welcome the Kingdom, a newsletter offering from the Friendly Neighbors that focuses on re-constructing evangelical theology after 2020. We’ll get into the thick of that work more next week. This week, though, I’d like to spend a little time taking stock of the ground that we’ve walked over the past year. For many of us who felt dissonance with our churches’ responses to the pandemic, racial strife, and political posturing of 2020, an extra layer of turmoil was laid over already difficult and painful situations. Our churches, which inhabit a central place in our lives, stopped feeling like home, leaving us feeling unmoored and homeless. If you felt like this over the past year and a half, this post is for you. My hope is to help you see yourself in scripture.
First, I’d like to address those of you who experienced unkindness and perhaps even hostility because of your commitment to loving your neighbors with masks, physical distance, and responsible worship during the pandemic. Though these experiences were painful, Jesus calls you blessed. Hear these words of Christ from the Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12, all scripture in the post taken from the NIV)
If you found yourself on the receiving end of insults and unkindness during the pandemic, know that Jesus took note. Know also that you will be rewarded for your commitment and service. When Jesus spoke the words above, he spoke in part of you.
Second, I’d like to address those who felt torn up inside as their moorings to faith communities came untethered in 2020 and beyond. The inward groans you experienced, disconcerting and uncomfortable as they were, have a place in the Christian life. Indeed, they are the reverse side of Christian hope.
When it comes to hope, there is perhaps no more powerful passage in scripture than Romans 8:18-39. In these verses, the Apostle Paul addresses the topic of suffering, speaking in terms of pained groans. Ultimately, there are three groans in Paul’s discussion: the groans of creation, the groans of Christians, and the groans of the Spirit. The first groan - the groan of creation - may surprise us due to our tendency to over-spiritualize salvation. When I was growing up, I heard a truly horrible acronym for the Bible: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. In this scheme, salvation is a plan for leaving the earth behind. Yet, the scriptures are far richer than this thin line of thought. As we read Ephesians, Colossians, Revelation, and the present passage in Romans, we find that the work of Christ is cosmic in scope. Rather than abandoning creation, God is redeeming creation in Christ. Thus, Paul can speak of a personified creation groaning as it waits for redemption. Crucial to Paul’s argument is the way creation groans: Here’s how he puts it in Romans 8:22:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
As a guy, I can’t speak with any authority on the pain of childbirth. I have, however, sat with my wife as she weathered labor pains while waiting for a delayed epidural. I learned that day that women are heroes and that the pains of childbirth are deep. Yet, the groans heard in maternity wards are not groans of despair. Rather, they are groans of hope, for the pain must eventually give way to cries of new life. This is how creation groans - as in the pains of labor. The pain is deep and must be acknowledged, but there is a reality beyond the pain. Creation groans expectantly, looking forward to new creation.
Having painted creation so vividly, Paul moves on to the groans of Christians. Like the groans of creation, our groans also look forward to new creation life. Here’s how Paul talks about that in Romans 8:23:
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
Note what our groans look forward to: adoption to sonship (and daughtership), which can also be described as the redemption of our bodies. That will be a glorious day, but future glory does not negate the pain of the present (though it does put our pain in perspective). Indeed, at times future glory even deepens our groans of pain. This dynamic is what Paul references when he talks about Christians having the firstfruits of the Spirit. The imagery of firstfruits here looks to the first gleanings of the harvest, which are only a small foretaste of the greater harvest to come. The Spirit is like that in our lives, allowing us to taste now a bit of the glory that will eventually encompass the cosmos. Like children whose hopeful expectation of Christmas morning is only deepened by their experience of past Christmases, we Christians wait with baited breath for the day when our partial experience of glory in the Spirit will be made whole and complete. In the meantime, the inward groaning we experience is the flip side of our hopeful expectation. Just as our expectation of what will be can elicit shouts of praise, so also can our knowledge and experience of its lack elicit groans of pain, for we know that things are not yet what they will be.
For many of you, the past year and a half has elicited inward groans due to your faith itself shifting along with so much else. This experience, no doubt, has been disconcerting and painful. It may have even felt “unChristian” because we falsely assume that Christians are happy all the time. Yet, as Romans 8 points out, groans are part of the faith. More than this, when framed well, they can serve to deepen faith by lifting our eyes to God’s glorious future. What if your groans of pain are actually groans of expectation for God’s better world? What if your groans have been the reverse side of hope?
Ultimately, our hope is for Jesus’ return, when everything will be made right and new creation will take hold. Yet, new creation doesn’t always wait for the future. By God’s grace, it can and does bubble up in the present. More than this, it can be embraced by God’s people, who live as ambassadors of God’s kingdom. That’s what the church is for. Always, we embrace and embody new creation imperfectly. Yet, the Spirit leads and guides us into greater faithfulness. That, I think, is happening now as many evangelicals reconsider the faith. Later in this same passage Paul will utter these famous words: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) Though we ultimately hope for the new heavens and new earth, we also hope in God’s present strength to work good through the shambles of 2020 in the here and now. By his grace, he leads us on toward a new faithfulness.
Of course, none of this discounts the pain of the past year and a half, nor does it make it magically go away. It does, however, reframe it in light of hope. Inward groans are like the pains of childbirth looking forward to the cries of new life.
And, there’s more good news. Beyond teaching us about hope in our groans of pain, God also comes alongside us in the same. Remember that third groan I mentioned earlier? According to Paul:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)
In those moments when things hurt so badly that we don’t even know how to pray, the Spirit joins us in our groaning and prays for us. God is present not just in the hope of what will be, but also in the pain of the present. Perhaps he is especially present there.
If you have felt inner groans over the past months, be encouraged that you are in good company. Not only have other saints walked groaning paths, but God himself is present in our pain and suffering. Our groans must eventually give way to the joy of new creation, and God is doing a new work in the here and now. May he give us strength to hope well and courage to embrace the future he is making.
Next week we’ll be exploring Christian mission. In the meantime, may the peace of Christ be with you, and especially for our friends of color, happy Juneteenth!
Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash