17 September 2023 Season of Creation 3

All our readings speak of groaning, of desolation and of pain.  But they do not do so in a negative sense.  They speak of the reality of desolation.  Joel speaks of a time of drought where the fields fail to bring anything to harvest, where the animals struggle to find anything to pasture on, where the residents cry out to God because of what they see around them.  These times are ours too, a couple of years ago we were all in time of drought, our fields and forests were being burned at a great rate, and many animals were lost because they were either burned or left without food due to the fires.  Then the rains came and for many people this was as devastating as the drought because of the flooding it caused.  And now we are being warned we are about to enter another period of drought.  What have we learned.  Have we changed our practices to try to minimise our carbon footprint or do we just placate ourselves that it is just ‘how the weather is’.  But was not always like that.  When I was a child growing up in Brisbane, we all knew that it rained at around 4pm most afternoons from December to February, cyclones came around December/January but they were mostly in the north of the state.  Now, everything is changing.  It rains in months we are not used to, and it doesn’t rain in the months we normal expect it, cyclones come more frequently and they come in areas that are not used to experiencing them or prepared for them.  Urban spread has meant that ‘green spaces’ where our native animals lived and found food are now residential areas covered in bitumen and concrete with few trees left in situ and we object when the native animals come into ‘our’ backyards because, in their efforts to look for food, they destroy the ‘pretty’ gardens we have planted.  And that is just the picture in southern Queensland.  It is amplified across the globe with some small island communities facing the reality of having to evacuate the island completely and whole populations are having to relocate into areas that are not familiar to them, all because of the effects of climate change and rising sea levels.  A news item I saw recently reported that this year’s entire breeding population of an icelandic penguin has died because the ice shelf on which they were born melted before their feathers had come in and they drowned because they were therefore unable to swim.

In our Romans reading we see three groups groaning - humans, creation, and the Spirit.  And the groaning reflects not just the suffering of creation, but also the birth pangs of hope for a new creation.  The Spirit is our connection with Christ, which helps us hear the groaning around us.  The author of this letter warns us to put away ‘earthly ways’ and be led by the Spirit of God.  He tells us we have received a spirit of adoption – we are children of God – we are joint heirs with Christ – and in that adoption we gladly suffer with Christ that we may be glorified with him.  Creation is waiting ‘with eager longing’ for the revealing of the children of God, creation will not be destroyed but liberated and renewed through Christ.  The unspoiled wild of the Outback may be a symbol of hope for that restoration.  When Jesus is baptised, the Spirit that fills the Earth now fills Christ in a very special way, and following his baptism, Jesus goes into the wilderness – the Outback – and there he connects with creation.  Jesus spends 40 days in the outback, connecting with creation, connecting with his Father, and connecting with the world that he came to save.