Wearing a mask has been suggested, it has been encouraged and recommended, and it has been mandated, resisted and refused.
From the moment of our birth, we breathe in — and we breathe out. Rarely ever do we pay attention to this basic rhythm and reality of life: we breathe in — and we breathe out. Like the tide on the beach, with every breath an ocean of air flows into our lungs and into every cell in our body — and it flows out. And as all the water on Earth is one — one stream cycling through rivers, oceans, clouds, glaciers, and layers of soil and sand and rock — so is the air we breathe one — one Earth, with just one atmosphere, shared by all living things that breathe.
The global pandemic has reminded us with great urgency that we do indeed breathe the same air. For some of us, the mandate to wear a mask over our mouth and nose in public is blatant government overreach, and not wearing it is a defiant statement of liberty. For others, the mandate reflects well-informed and prudent judgment by public officials, and so they obey and do their part, be it happily or grumpily, sporadically or consistently.
And there are those, few in number, who never needed a mandate, and they wear the mask because it reduces the number of viruses that might return to the air on their breath — to them it is a simple and powerful way to love their neighbor. It wouldn’t occur to them to think of this simple act as an imposition — on the contrary, they might see it as an expression of their freedom to act in love, unconstrained by proud self-assertion.
He who believes that to be free is to be led by no one but himself, may not understand them. He who believes that being led by another can only amount to bondage and servitude, may shake his head when they tell him that to be free, to them, is to be led by the Spirit of Christ.
“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia. “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”[1] Freedom, according to the men and women whose witness we receive in the Scriptures, is not absolute autonomy, but the building of relationships that are free of manipulation, relationships of mutuality and care.
“Because God is a God of life and blessing, God will do redemptive work, should those gifts be endangered,” writes Terence Fretheim. “The objective of God’s work in redemption is to free people to be what they were created to be. It is a deliverance, not from the world, but to true life in the world.”[2] True freedom, true life, for all people, all things, is to be what they were created to be.
We read a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans this morning, where he declares, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[3] It’s not just human beings who long to be who we really are, who we are meant to be as creatures made in the image of God: the whole creation is waiting, because its freedom, its true life, is tied to ours.
I talked about the single ocean of air that envelops Earth and the single stream of water that cycles through air and land and sea, and through every living thing. In Genesis 2, humanity is made from the moistened dust of the ground, and the name we are given in Hebrew is intimately connected with the stuff from which we are formed: we are adam, made from adamah, earthlings made from earth.[4]
In Genesis 3, in a poetic reflection on what happens when humanity fails to live in right relationship with the creator of all things, adam, now differentiated as Adam and Eve, man and woman, experiences life as exile, and the breach in the relationship between humanity and God ripples through all of creation, landing as a curse on adamah, the very ground from which we come and on which we live.[5]
“There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land,” the prophet Hosea laments.
Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.[6]
And Isaiah cries, “The heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth.”[7]
A curse devours the earth because humankind, made for relationship with God, assumed it could achieve a more satisfying relation with the world if it freed itself from its relation with God. We prefer proud self-assertion over trust and interdependence.
Bill McKibben, one of the leaders of the global struggle against catastrophic climate change, wrote earlier this month,
The battle is not just to swap out coal for sun; it’s to swap out a poisoned and unfair world for one that works for everyone, now and in the future. Of course, no matter what we do now, we’ve waited too long to prevent truly massive trauma. Already we see firestorms without precedent, storms stronger than any on record, Arctic melt that’s occurring decades ahead of schedule. We’re losing whole ecosystems like coral reefs; we have heat waves so horrible that in places they take us to the limits of human survival. Given the momentum of climate change, even if we do everything right from this point on those effects will get much worse in the years ahead, and of course their impacts will be concentrated on those who have done the least to cause them, and are most vulnerable. That means there is another area we need to be working hard: building the kind of world that not only limits the rise in temperature, but also cushions the blow from that which is no longer avoidable. … we’re going to need human solidarity on an unparalleled level, and right now that seems a long ways away.[8]
A curse devours the earth because we prefer proud self-assertion over trust and solidarity.
We know, says Paul, we know that the whole creation has been groaning until now. He couldn’t imagine the groans we’re hearing. But he knew in his bones that God is a God of life and blessing, a God who does redemptive work, when those gifts are endangered. Paul knew that God made a way for Israel out of bondage in Egypt: They groaned under the yoke of slavery, and cried out, and God heard their groaning.[9] And Paul knew that God made a way for humankind out of our bondage to sin and death in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
No groan goes unheard. We know, says Paul, that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for … the redemption or our bodies.[10] To him, the two groanings are of a piece. All of creation is caught up in the same process of salvation, the same process of being “set free from the bondage to decay” to share “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[11] So God’s people are being saved not from creation but with creation: the gift of the Spirit does not distance us from the world but increases our solidarity with creation.[12] And solidarity is just another way of saying loyal love or building relationships that are free of manipulation.
As people of God, we trust the One who abides with us in the profound solidarity of love, who suffers with us, who groans and endures with us, and who inspires in us a longing for wholeness that gets us through the night. Paul calls the gift of the Spirit to the church “the first fruits,” which sounds like the beginning of the harvest season — the first basket of grain, the first cluster of grapes, first fruits waiting to become loafs of bread and cups of wine for the great banquet of the redeemed.
The gift of the Spirit poured out on all flesh is the first fruits, the first taste, the first glance of the redeemed creation. The gift of God’s Spirit kindles in us a fire of holy restlessness that cannot put up with the world as it is.
First fruits — we know there’s more where that came from, and we lean into that promise. That’s what our hope is, a leaning forward into the promise of resurrection for all of creation. And it is no easy hope. Audrey West writes, “This is hope as a woman in labor hopes: breathing through the pain, holding tight to a companion, looking ahead to what cannot yet be seen, trusting that a time will come when this pain is but a memory.”[13]
Many of us struggle to hope like that when dealing with broken relationships, devastating illness, or simply the daily avalanche of soul-draining news. We often find ourselves closer to groaning than to singing.
Paul tells us, You are not alone. The groans that rise up from the depth of your heavy heart are God’s own as much as they are yours. The Spirit is praying with you and for you, with sighs too deep for words. In the profound solidarity of love, God abides with you, suffering with you, groaning with you, enduring with you, inspiring in you a longing for wholeness, and kindling in you a fire of holy restlessness. God will not put up with what the world has become. And why would you?
[1] Galatians 5:13
[2] Terence Fretheim, “The Reclamation of Creation: Redemption and Law in Exodus,” Interpretation 45, 359; my italics.
[3] Romans 8:18-21
[4] Genesis 2:5-9
[5] Genesis 3:17-19
[6] Hosea 4:1-3
[7] Isaiah 24:4-6
[8] https://350.org/bill-mckibbens-letter/
[9] Exodus 2:23-24; 6:5
[10] Romans 8:22-23
[11] Romans 8:21
[12] See James Dunn in Soderlund, Sven K. and N. T. Wright, eds., Romans and the People of God (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 1999), 87-88.
[13] Audrey West http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1306