A man arrested in California appeared before a judge for killing a giant condor. The Judge asked, “Why’d you do it? Don’t you know condors are on the endangered species list?” “Your honor, to be honest, I’m unemployed, got a wife and three kids. We were hungry. So we barbecued the condor and made three meals of it. I do hope you will take that into consideration in sentencing.” The judge, clearly touched, sat back in his chair. “By the way,” he said, “what does a giant condor taste like?” To which the man said, “Sort of like a cross between a baby seal and a bald eagle.” [i]

The excuse, the excuse of material need is real in our world.  We need to eat & drink; we need shelter, need some means to travel; we need beds, maybe even pillows; we need medicines that ease and heal, need DVD players (well - maybe not); we need clothing -- not six pairs of jeans, 20 t-shirts, and seven pairs of shoes, but we do need clothing.   We need food for our beloved pets, and space to grow flowers and vegetables. We need the sun’s warmth, and the mystery of mountain vistas, the magic of waves, and the holiness of the forests and streams of life.   We need the wonder of hawk flight, deer sightings, funny squirrel antics, whale spouts, dogwood blossoms, a dog’s love, a cat’s purr, a fish’s dance and even the dandelion’s yellow heads.  

We have true material needs and then we have many material wants.   Demonically we too easily allow our anxious sinful appetites to addict us to more than we need, to ravage Eden to provide stockpiles of sheets, and plastic containers, and Styrofoam conveniences.   We “haves” want to stay “haves” and we imagine that the “have nots” can have more than enough too.   But we also know somewhere deep within our stomachs that if everyone had the same amount of the material wealth we waste and enjoy, God’s beloved Eden would die.   There is just not enough cotton in God’s creation for everyone to have 20 t-shirts. So we are perplexed, conflicted, burdened, frightened, and guilty. The “haves” groan out of our bellies a discomfort for we know something is wrong in Eden. The “have not’s” moan out of their hunger, their thirst, for they know something is wrong in Eden.  

The human race, born in the image of Creator God needs to see and smell, feel and hear – the diverse dance of creation’s elements. We need to be in relationship with all the creatures of God’s seven day adventure of making the world. This leads us to another necessity; we children of God need non-material food, we need spiritual food, and its beauty. We need a spiritual purpose and we need the knowledge that we belong to something & someone greater than ourselves. We need people who love us, who respect us, who listen to us, who make us feel safe.   We need people to love and listen to. We need to give and graciously receive. We need to worship God. We need to work and to rest. We need at times to sweat hard digging earth, building shelter, working to provide for our families and our neighbors. We also need silent times away from our brothers and sisters to watch the light green buds of branches unroll into leaves on trees. We need to breathe the winds, and walk the woods alone and with friends.    We need to be in relationships, many relationships with people, animals, vegetables, minerals, forces of nature, and our God. 

Our hearts wither; our minds become deranged, when our souls starve. I cannot diagnose Seung-Hui Cho and the roots of his mass-murdering motives, but I believe his soul was emaciated. Something was terribly wrong with him. In our society of abundant, material wealth, this young man somehow starved spiritually and emotionally. Deeply wounded, he wounded us all.   How horrible that he mis-understood and mis-represented in his video clip Christ’s martyrdom.   Of course Christ’s death was not for death’s sake but for life’s sake, for love’s sake, for God’s sake, for our sake, for creation’s sake. While on the cross, Jesus forgave the sinners at his sides, those who persecuted him, and all humanity. He showed us that God’s calls for justice and peace silence our false ideas of God’s demands for punishment and death.   Jesus proved that he trusted in God’s redemptive-resurrection power. Jesus witnessed his trust that God will ultimately transform this world into an Eden of Shalom.

As Christians we need this spiritual food of trust; we need hope; we need to seek justice. It is a basic requirement that we who follow Jesus become hard-wired justice seekers; we are hard-wired to be hope-driven. We seek justice for people, that everyone will have food, shelter, a means to travel, beds, pillows or something soft upon which to lay their heads in slumber -- that everyone will know they belong, are loved, are valued in God’s beautiful Eden – that creation will be nurtured and cherished, brother wind and sister water beloved.

Today’s lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans pictures a maternal creation groaning in labor pains. Paul unites humanity’s cries to that groan as we too wait to be adopted, as we wait for our final inheritance of Shalom.   The world groans in labor pains a paradoxical cry of pain and anticipation, suffering and hope.   Like the pain of childbirth, the suffering of this world becomes messianic as a new beginning is born. I cherish the image of the world howling with positive, potent, hope-filled growing pains.   I fear the image of the world shrieking with the pain of parasitic humanity’s torture.   I need to believe the world is alive to ever change my ways. I need to trust that God is with us in this world, if I am to ever believe we can be rescued.    I need to believe in something greater than myself, than bumbling, selfish humanity, because I desperately need to trust that a day will come when petulant students don’t kill, and fanatics don’t bomb, and nations don’t war.

Our faith in God is the answer, our trust in God’s Trinitarian dance answers. There aren’t really any direct scriptural references to the Trinity but this passage in Romans is deeply Trinitarian. We have a Creator God, Abba Father and the Holy Spirit that intercedes for us with sighs to deep for words, and the First Son, Jesus Christ who embodies God’s compassion and promise for humanity. We have a Creator who is beyond this world, embracing the cosmos with providential power. The son, our model sibling, shows us the way to become the gardeners of Eden. The Holy Spirit binds us all together. The Holy Spirit is the Green Face of God. By the Spirit, God is enfleshed within Creation.[ii]   By the Spirit, all of creation is united into one common biotic family.  

As humanity in its sinful imbalance and selfish greed pillage the world, we inflict upon God again and again deep wounds. God’s creation is dynamically alive. Creator God breathed the life of the Spirit into matter and designed this world of complex symbiotic patterns.   The Holy Spirit of God authors our relationships; human to human, human to creature, creature to creature, creature to God, human to God.    When the relationships are ruptured the very cosmos groans in wrongful pain. The cosmos also groans with penultimate hope and anticipation. 

The cosmos groans when people starve to death around the corner from waste bins brimming with earth’s fruits. The cosmos groans when living streams become cocktails of death dealing toxins. The cosmos groans when hundreds of thousands die because of genocidal prejudice and greed, when students and professors are killed within the sanctuary of the classroom.   The cosmos groans are joined by ours as we tear our shirts shouting out enough with wrongness, enough with dis-unity.    The Spirit within the cosmos cries out hope too, she creates, sustains, and renews our solidarity with each other.

As Christians we hunger for spirituality. We hunger for eschatalogical hope not despair, we cannot give into the death knells of realism, the death knells of selfishness, the death knells of apathy or weariness, or pessimism, or hopelessness. We live as the siblings of the First Child of God, Jesus Christ helping God turn all suffering into messianic opportunity, into resurrection. We live feeding the world both materially and spiritually. And of course we do not do it alone, nor do we just strive as collections of feeble humans. If we relied upon our human achievement to see us to victory, we would just botch it all up like we have botched up the world, and its societies time and time again. We strive for justice and peace for Creation with the very Spirit’s power relating us to God and all the beautiful elements of this world, and the skies above us, and the farthest lights of the cosmos.   We are people of cosmic hope!!!! 

On Tuesday poet Nikki Giovanni in her convocation address at Virginia Tech groaned with the Spirit crying with pain and offering hope.  She said,

 "We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. " 

The hope we have is more than just wishful thinking. It is more than a Pollyanna pretense or our ability to persuade ourselves that things will be better in the future. Our Christian hope is sure. It is sure for we experience a foretaste; we experience the Holy Spirit communicating the world’s redemption now.    We experience this restoration in the Holy Spirits continual gift of full communication between God and Creation. The Green Face of God, the Holy Spirit, beams our relatedness, she rains upon us our connections, she gives us the potential for communion our complete communication, with God the Trinity, with each other, with the world, and even the starry lights of the cosmos.   

We shall trust, feeding on the promises of our God, on the sun’s warmth, the mystery of mountain vistas, the magic of waves, the holiness of the forests and streams of life.   We shall sustain ourselves and always share the material gifts of food and water, shelter, and safety. We shall show others the wonder of hawk flight, deer sightings, squirrel antics, whale spouts, dogwood blossoms, a dog’s love, a cat’s purr, a fish’s dance, the dandelion’s yellow heads. We shall fight wrongness, feed and love our neighbors, feed and love the earth, groan with her in pain, groan with her in promise. We shall help God’s will be done. Amen.

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