Peace With Creation

Isaiah 65:17-25 // Romans 8:18-25 // Luke 5:17-26

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon for today includes all three readings. Let me read for you Isaiah chapter 65 verse 25, “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” Our text thus far.

Dear Christian friends,

In these weeks, we’ve been talking about peace, about the biblical concept of Shalom, and it’s not so much an absence of violence or hate or war as it is the presence of something greater. One commentator writes that peace happens when grace shows up and does its work in our relationships.

And so far, we’ve considered what the grace bought by the blood of our savior does to our relationship with ourselves, namely how it brings honesty and tranquility. We’ve considered what grace does to our relationship with others, namely how it brings reconciliation that seeks to build bridges rather than burn them.

And today, we take a look at our relationship with creation. Now, this isn’t as near and dear a topic for me as our relationship to our own selves, and it isn’t as comfortable a topic for me as relationships like marriages, siblings, neighbors, and the like. In fact, when I went through my preaching notes from the last three years, I can’t say I have ever given more than a passing reference to creation; much of my life application has had to do with human to human relationships.

Today, we meditate on the biblical witness of our relationship with creation, how the grace bought by the blood of Jesus Christ manifests itself in a peace that we share with all created things under our God. Three lessons for today. First that creation is part of God’s story. Second, that our disharmony means that even our good will do evil. Third, when Christ comes back, our harmony will be complete.

Our first lesson for today is that creation is part of the great story of God’s love. It’s not just a backdrop. It’s not just a really good set of earthly pictures to help us talk more clearly about God who is spirit. All of creation was rent apart by our Fall into sin, and it – these are Paul’s words – groans and longs for the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

A three-year-old kid came up to me and asked me the kind of question that a three-year-old asks, “Did God make hurricanes?” Which is the kind of question that you can think, “If I answer yes then he’ll ask why, and if I answer no, he’ll ask, but I thought God created everything. Who created hurricanes then? To which I replied, well, did God make wind? Well, yeah. Did God make rain? Well, yeah. And is everything affected by sin? Yes. That which God had intended for good had now been twisted and marred into destruction and mayhem.

In Genesis 3, the ground every bit as much as Adam as God curses him. In Genesis 6, creation bears the punishment that God unleashes in the flood. In Genesis 9, God gives humans permission to eat animals. Creation bears the curse with us. Creation is not just a backdrop for God’s story of salvation; it groans for a savior, and it longs for peace.

Second, even outside of the wickedness we are capable of, our good can do harm and suffering. The good of raising people out of subsistence can mean that our efforts scar the earth around us. Just ask any farmer if they intended to thin the eggshells of bald eagles with the use of DDT… they’ll tell you no! They just wanted to grow healthy crops. And yet, there was an unforeseen consequence on creation. How many of us that buy clothes intend that workers’ wages would be poor and their lives impoverished? And yet, we support systems that make choices which go against human decency.

You see, this is the double-edged sword of sin, this is again the struggle that Paul exemplifies in Romans chapter 7 and 8, this is the time and place where we see in stark relief how diabolical sin is, that it would take even the good that we do and the good that we do well, and still the devil can twist the outcome, so much so that what we intend for good, he would use for evil.

And it starts at the heart. Dear Christian friends, this is why Lutherans talk in such deep terms about sin and grace, because it allows us to see how people with the best intentions, with the best motivations, people with the best technologies and the best resources are still mired in the muck we call sin, because in our hearts, in our minds, in our environment, in the creation around us, even the highest good that we intend, if we intend it at all, bears still the curse of our sin.

But we hearken back to the story of Joseph from last week, because how wonderful and beautiful a truth it is that we have a good that would take all that others and we ourselves, whether intended for good or for evil, all that the devil would twist to his own devices, all that would in the end hurt and destroy and maim and kill, and he uses it for our good. What you intended for wickedness, our God has used for our good and for the good of all.

The treachery of Judas. The treason of Peter. The cowardice of Mark. The brashness, the harshness, the unthinking crowds, the deceiving Sadducees, each and every intention of the devil was shaped by our God into the story of salvation of all things. How beautiful it is that Christ was crucified for our sins, and how beautiful it is that he was raised up on the third day. How beautiful it is that he bears the brunt of the curse meant for us, and how beautiful it is that in his life we now life. How beautiful it is that we are sons and daughters of God, and how we, like all creatures, stand under the creator that, when he comes, will make the mountains and hills sing, that will make the trees of the field clap their hands, will make the creation in all of its glory to be in harmony together, and to be in harmony with humanity.

You see, because Jesus, in the end intends not only to do away with sin, but to do away with all the effects of sin as well. With all of the lameness, with all of the blindness, with all of the tears, all of the suffering, all that would ever hurt or destroy on all his holy mountain, this is the avalanche of God’s love that begins with the very simple words of Christ, the ones that he speaks to the lame man, saying, “I forgive you.” And if you do not believe that I can forgive sins, then let me say this, “Get up and walk.” The forgiveness that deals first with the very fundamental and basic need of forgiveness, how much more will it not attend, in its own time, to all the needs of body and soul?

Third, we look ahead to the day when our harmony will be complete. Where, in the new heavens and the new earth, we will see things as they are. The Greek word for sin, hamartano, means “to miss the mark.” It means to misjudge something, to look at something wrongly, to see it as it is not, to stare something down and to miss what it’s about. It’s sizing up a three-pointer and throwing over the backboard. It’s thinking that you see a pathway forward and, halfway up, you realize it’s a dead end. It’s opening your mouth and realizing you’ve bit off more than you can chew. That’s what it means to miss the mark, to see something and misjudge, for something to be not quite right. And yet Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, on that glorious day, we will not miss the mark, but instead see things as they really are.

My grandpa was a master woodworker kind of a guy and he would take my grandma Gerry to furniture stores where she would pick out the furniture she liked. When she pointed to something in the store, he’d take a look at it, and he’d stare it down, and then he’d say, yeah, I think I could make that. His eye had been trained to see things as they were. He could look at them like only a wood worker could, and see how they came together.
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Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, now we see in part, then we will see in full. Now we know in part, then we will know in full even as we are fully known. What a world it will be? How will it be when Christ comes back and we may see things, honestly for the first time, as they truly are? To see the soil and know what it needs to support us. To look up to the sky and see what weather the wind will blow our way. To rejoice where our God rejoices, to rejoice in a way that creation longs for. To be in harmony with nature in a way that protects and provides for all of God’s creatures in God’s time with God’s own hand, as his servants, as the pinnacle of creation, as the gardeners that stand by his side, in the new Garden of Eden.
Amen and amen.