A Bigger Hope--July 23, 2026

A Bigger Hope--July 23, 2026

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, 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." (Romans 8:22-23)

It's not just about fire insurance for the afterlife.  It's not just about getting a ticket for the train to heaven.  The Christian hope is about God's promise to make all things new.  And that is so much bigger than the version of the story we are so accustomed to settling for.

These words from Romans 8, which continue a passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, remind us that God intends to renew, restore, and redeem "the whole creation," and that in fact the entire universe is aware and "groaning together" in anticipation of that newness.  That way of talking about Christian hope is essential to Paul's way of seeing the world, but for a lot of us church folks, it can sound unusual and extraneous.  If our theology comes from the reductive slogans of religious billboards (and let's be honest, for many of us, that's the messaging we are accustomed to), we might be used to hearing the Gospel as sales-pitch: "Trust in Jesus so that you can get to heaven when you die," or "If you'll pray this prayer, you'll get on the list to avoid hellfire." Those kinds of messages make it sound like Christianity's message has nothing to do with this world and this life and only pertains to your status after death--and therefore, that it's like having an insurance policy.  You know: it's something you should take care of on paper so that you don't have to actually think about it at all in your daily life or everyday routines, but can pull out and dust off in case of emergency.  For a great many folks, this is the version of Christianity they've been sold: Speak these words, and believe these facts about God, and that's it until you get to heaven.  It's a version of the faith that removes everybody and everything else from the equation except Me-and-Jesus, and even Jesus really only shows up enough to tell us, "You're on the list for the afterlife," with a friendly wink, and then disappears.

Well, as I say, Paul would beg to differ. Paul sees these deep connections between our own hope for salvation and the whole world's restoration. In the apostle's mind, you can't have one without the other, because they are all part of the same grand sweeping motion of God to make all things new.  It's not that we don't have hope for life after death--it's that our hope is not about being plucked up "out" of the world to go to a different place, as though the geography were the problem.  Our hope for life even beyond the grip of death comes from the even wider promise of God to bring about a whole new creation.  My hope for life beyond death is possible because God intends to "make all things new" (see Revelation 21, among other places).  It's less about being taken "out" of the world and more about restoring and renewing the world itself as a whole.  That makes sense, too, since my life is inextricably connected to the systems, patterns, and relationships of the wider world: from the water cycle to the air we breathe to the chain between plants and soil and my sustenance.  Just plucking me up out of the world and taking me to another place called "heaven" would be a little like yanking a fish from the river because the river is dirty and putting me in a stark and empty fishbowl; yeah, I mean, I guess a fish can live in a big glass bowl, but it's really meant for the whole environment of other fish, of snails to clean the water, of plants growing at the riverbanks, and all the rest.  Our hope, Paul reminds us, has to be bigger than just that God will yank us out of the river and put us in a tank; it's got to be more like God cleaning up the river until it is a whole new creation, which can sustain all sorts of life. It's about me as an individual, but it's about more than just me, and more even than just "Me and My Group First."  God's intention is to redeem all of creation, to which I belong as well.  I am included, but it's not just about me.

Letting that sink in can change our perspective, if we will let it.  It will certainly change the way we share our faith with other people.  Instead of peddling the gospel as a "sign-on-the-dotted-line-to-get-into-heaven" sort of deal, we'll share the news that God promises to make all things news because God loves the whole world in all of its entirety.  Instead of thinking the promise of faith is that we will get to escape the world and therefore don't have to care about our use of the earth and its resources, we will care deeply now about the world and the way we treat it, because it is the world that God is intent on redeeming. That doesn't lessen our hope--it expands it.  We have settled for so long with a myopic vision of God's love that it can surprise us to hear the Scriptures stretch our field of view wider: God's intention is to renew "all things." It is a redemption that includes us, because we are a part of the "whole creation" that is longing to see a new heaven and new earth brought forth like a baby being born.  The promise is not an escape "out of" the world, but rather a restoration, even a resurrection, of the world. It is indeed a bigger hope than we had been accustomed to thinking about.

That also means that living out our faith will happen in more than just Sunday morning church services.  It will include things we have always done, like prayer and Bible study and song and ritual, but it will also include helping to fix a neighbor's broken front step, cleaning up trash-strewn city lots, feeding hungry neighbors, rebuilding homes destroyed by floods or fires, conserving energy, or raising money for people half a world away to drill a well for potable water.  All of these might be ways of exercising our hope muscles and taking our faith seriously, because all of them are expressions of the same deep confidence in God's wide-reaching redemption.

There will be countless ways of living our faith today, and a great many of them take place outside of church walls.  Where will it lead you today, this bigger hope we have been given?  Where will we practice our belief that God is making all things new?

Lord God, work through us even today in your wider action to renew all creation.