Nothing Shall Separate Us Series: 02 – CREATION WAITS

Nothing Shall Separate Us Series: 02 – CREATION WAITS Romans 8:12-25

One thing that I could never do when I worked in the Jewelry Department at Kohl’s was to “upsell” people. It happens often in a variety of retail settings. For example, a gentleman might come in looking for diamond studs for an upcoming anniversary. Now I had relatively inexpensive stones and I had top-end certified stones. There were traditional cuts and then we also had “champaign” cuts. Traditional stones, from the side, looked like what we think of a diamond looking like – a rounded top coming to a point at the bottom. The “champaign” cut was flat, as such, there was texture at the top but there was no point at the bottom. They looked bigger but there was less to them, so they were cheaper.

He might have been drawn to the lower price, but the idea would be to skillfully direct him to the higher price point, top quality diamonds that we carried. The idea was not to rip people off but to encourage them to buy something more worth the investment of a bit more money.

Personally, I worked from the dollar amount they were looking to spend. I might show them different options but would never push them to spend more money just to make our bottom line better.

When it came to low-quality diamonds, I usually kept my mouth shut. High-quality diamonds refract light very well because they are clearer. Lower quality stones can be “cloudy” or have black carbon flecks in them. Some people knew what to look for, others didn’t. I concluded that many people were just happy to buy a diamond for a loved one, and the recipients were just as happy to get them. All the technical “quality” stuff just complicated things.

From the retail side of things, The Apostle Paul would not have made a good salesman. In today’s text, as usual, Paul doesn’t pull any punches but lays it out just like it is, warts and all.

If his goal were to get people to join him in his journey to follow Christ, wouldn’t it have been best to leave out the “wart” parts of it all? If I had pointed out the flaws in every diamond people looked at, I would have sold very few of them. And no one would have gotten the joy of giving and receiving.

But Paul didn’t let that stop him. In verses 16 and 17 he speaks of suffering.

For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. _NLT 

I mean, shouldn’t he have just talked about the benefits and not the burdens? Wouldn’t he have gotten further if he had shared the joys and not the heartache? The way he goes about it makes us feel like we need to talk about this passage with something like “OK, he didn’t really mean that…”

As we said last week Paul isn’t saying that bodies are bad. In our current context, one way to look at the whole spirit versus flesh thing would be to say, “if you live according to self, you’ll die; but if by the Spirit – the love of God and others – you put to death the desires of the self and you’ll live.”

Paul said it better, but it helps us see his point. When our culture touts, “You owe it to yourself!” – giving credit where credit is not due – can we live acknowledging our obligations? Can we live as debtors?  Paul argues that our ultimate debt is not to ourselves, but to God and His grace. We owe it to Love. The end of verse 17 reminds us,

…if we are to share [Christ’s] glory, we must also share his suffering. _NLT 

First and foremost, we are indebted to God. But we also owe it to those who have loved us when we weren’t all that lovable. We owe it to those who saw in us what we couldn’t see for ourselves. We owe it to those who let us be wrong because that was the only way we would learn.

We are all debtors to love. We are debtors to the Spirit who shaped us, who claimed us, who offers us a future with hope and fulfillment and joy. And we have experienced that Spirit most vividly through those who walked beside us every step of the way.

For whatever reason, I don’t remember a lot of things from my youth. But some things do stick out in my mind. These names won’t mean a thing to any of you, but they mean something to me.

• Miss Fleshman –first-grade teacher in Quick, WV
• Bob Paris – mattress factory owner, a leader in my church in Archdale, NC
• Zelma Woodruff – mowed her grass, leader in my church in Mason, OH
• Ernie Carr – a faithful, loving man who loved and served his pastor and family in Parsons, WV
• Tom Lasley – the first pastor I had the privilege to serve under – Brandon, OH

And I just chose one from some of the places I lived growing up. There were many, many more. You have your lists, too. We all have a list of people who walked beside us every step of the way.

Our lists may include parents, teachers, and fellow students; work associates we have come to love and appreciate; maybe it was the church that nurtured us and told us that we were worthy of loving, that we were the beloved of God and it was an honor to guide and shape and love us.

I’m sure most of you have heard the phrase, “No man is an island.” It came to mind as I worked through my sermon, and honestly, even though I was familiar with it I had no idea as to its origin.

“No man is an island” is a quotation from the English metaphysical poet John Donne who lived between 1572 and 1631. Listen to the whole poem.

No man is an island entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as any manor of thy friend’s,
Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

“No man is an island.” We are all debtors; we like to think we are free and unfettered, but we are bound… bound together in human community. And the truth is…we are better that way. We are able to be glorified, to reach our full potential, to claim the gift of eternity, because of the debts we accumulate, because of the relationships we are blessed to live in, and because of the community that we are becoming.

I think that you would agree with me that we benefit from those relationships, but we suffer from them, too. Relationships in which we invest our time, and energies, and love, are replete with blood, sweat, and tears. But in the end, it is our privilege to suffer in service to those relationships.

Think about it. Wasn’t that what Jesus did? …….

I had never really thought about it very much until I became a part of the United Methodist Church, but it is not just the human relationships to which we are indebted. We are in relationship with all creation.

Read along with me as I read Paul’s words from Romans 8:19-22,

¹⁹ For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. ²⁰ Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, ²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. ²² For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. _NLT 

The whole of creation is groaning in labor pains, hurting because of what it wants to birth, what it wants to bring forth. Of course, we say, that Paul is talking metaphorically about spiritual matters, not physical ones. But is he? It seems that Paul is hinting that our salvation is tied with the bondage and decay of creation. The fate of the world, the fate of the planet is woven into our fate, into our future, and our hope.

Not only that, but all that God has made relies on us—not just us. That is, not just us as we are, but our better selves, our true selves, our lives as the sons and daughters of God.

We all were created by a wonderful, creative, vast, and awesome God. He made us for a purpose. We are unique; gifted with talents and abilities like no one else. We are not mistakes. We are not creatures of happenstance. He created us to be who we are and when we surrender our lives to Him, He can utilize us to accomplish His will in the world. And we are not alone in that task. He will help us and guide us and direct us to what we need to be, to who we were created to be. He will be with us all along the way!

So, we have a responsibility to treat our world as though it were a part of God and a part of us.

I want to be very clear here. Our world is not God; that’s a very important distinction to make. We don’t worship the creation. We aren’t tree worshipers and mountain disciples; we are not grass gurus or flora and fauna followers No, we are followers of Jesus the Christ, worshipers of the Creator of all that we see and all that we are. Creation is not God. Yet, we get a glimpse of the Creator when we comprehend the creation. We know the artist when we examine and protect His works of art. We commune with the author when we spend time in what came about because of His Word.

There’s an urgency in our task. On many fronts, we can look about us see that things aren’t getting better on their own. We are called to take an active part in building God’s kingdom – suffering and all. Working with God and working with each other. All of creation waits!

Core by DEREK WEBER / https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/nothing-shall-separate-us/sixth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-a-lectionary-planning-notes/sixth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-a-preaching-notes

July 19th, 2020, Sun, 8:41 pm