How to Beat that
Old Chicken Fresco Feeling

Romans 8:19-22

January 25, 1998

by Dave Wilkinson

"Why don’t we do something fun like they do in the Coke commercials?"

The question came from a boy, a high school sophomore, during a church youth group planning meeting. He wanted to be a laughing kid in a group of laughing kids. He wanted to slide down a mud bank or drop from a rope into a clear pool. He wanted this to be a time free from the pain of pulled muscles, hurting relationships, and deadlines to be home. He wanted to be a beautiful person in a company of beautiful people. He wanted his life, at least for one afternoon, to be lived to a soundtrack.

Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel that your daily routine doesn’t allow for much gusto in life? Do you ever feel that you want more?

Jim obviously feels that way. Jim, Jodi, and Sharon are real people. Their last names have been withheld.

"To Jim from Jodi: ‘If you plan to attend Sharon's luncheon, please let me know your selection by Tuesday, June 7 ($10/person). The choices are broiled sole fillets-lightly seasoned or stuffed and served with rice pilaf; popcorn shrimp -- bite sized breaded shrimp served with a baked potato; grilled chicken -- breast-marinated boneless chicken breast served with rice pilaf; or chicken fresco-- baked chicken tenderloins & vegetables all in a light garlic & Parmesan cheese sauce, served over linguine with fresh broccoli.

Here’s how Jim responded:

"Dear Jodi: Thank you for arranging this luncheon for Sharon. I'm deciding what to order, and I have a question.

What about us carnivores? I want meat. Red raw meat. I want them to lead it in on a rope and I want it to "moo" when I bite into it. I don't want anybody I know to see me eating "rice pilaf" or "chicken fresco." In fact I don't want anybody who knows anybody I know to see me doing so. I want a dignified American meal of steak and potatoes, served with flagons of blood-red wine. I want Hungarian red wine, with a picture of a cow on the label. I want to think about Eastern Europeans making this wine for slave wages and making it badly. I want the whole bottle. I want several. I want it served on a white tablecloth and I want that tablecloth to be so soiled when we're done that it can't even be used for rags. I want a meal to remember, in the midst of bawdy company. I want someone to tell jokes and I want us all to laugh till we cry. I want several people to fail to return to work afterward. I want to see a disciplinary memo sent down from the director's office in the wake of all this. I want the restaurant to refuse to serve anyone from the Lab for the next two years. I want to generate gossip. I want media coverage. I want arrests. I want some careers launched and others destroyed. I want this luncheon to divide time into a before and an after.

That's what I REALLY want. I just KNOW you're going to tell me I can't have it. So I'll get back to you with my food order."

You have to feel sorry for Jodi. Who could live up to that? But we can also empathize with Jim. We can share his desire for something to happen beyond the "chicken fresco humdrum" of daily life. We can resonate with his desire to somehow break through.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years over what has been called the quality of life. With Dr. Kevorkian keeping euthanasia in the spotlight of public opinion, we tend to think about whether life is worth living in certain circumstances.

We all want to be fulfilled, not frustrated. And I believe that everyone, Christian or non-Christian, sometimes wrestles with the apparent futility of life.

This is not a new problem or a problem spawned by our technological age. It has been around since the beginning of time. We all want to know what life is all about. Are we merely involved in a routine and mundane existence, doing the same thing today that we did yesterday?

I realize that this is a strange sermon to preach on Superbowl Sunday. There’s so much magic in the air. But we all know there’s no such thing as "super Monday."

James 4:14 asks "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

What a statement! What a negative, futile, hopeless statement! And yet, some of us can say, "I know exactly what James means. I am here today and tomorrow I may be gone." Some of us have friends with whom we went to school who are no longer with us because their lives were taken through some accident or illness. One of my good friends from kindergarten on, Steve DeBenedetti, died of cancer an few years ago. And you become aware whenever it happens to someone who is your age that life really is a fragile thing. It could be gone tomorrow. So what difference does my life make anyway?

What is this thing we call quality of life?

There are many people in the world who are materialists. They live for what they own. But they turn around one day and find that what they own actually owns them. They find that they are simply more obligated.

Elvis, for example, had three jets, two Cadillacs, a Rolls, a Lincoln Continental, two station wagons, a Jeep, a custom touring bus, and three motorcycles. His favorite car was his 1960 Cadillac limousine. The top was covered with pearl white Naugahyde, and the body was sprayed with forty coats of a specially prepared paint with crushed diamonds. Nearly all the metal trim was plated with 18-karat gold. There were two gold flake telephones. There was a gold vanity case containing a gold electric razor and gold hair clippers, an electric shoe buffer, a gold plated television, a record player, an amplifier, an air conditioner, an electrical system for operating any kind of household appliance, and a refrigerator that could make ice in precisely two minutes. But Elvis died a lonely and unhappy man.

When Diet Coke was available only in the United States, Christina Onassis would each month dispatch a jet to the U.S. at the cost of a $30,000 round trip to pick up fresh cases. Friends who were too busy to spend all their time with her were paid $20,000 to $30,000 per month to be her pals. Yet, Christina Onassis died an unfulfilled and profoundly unhappy woman.

The Bible, through the prophet Haggai in Haggai 1:5-6 called upon the people of his day to take note of their indulgences, which were also attended by diminishing returns:

"You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

The materialist looks at what he can possess and thinks, "If I can just gain more things, I will find some measure of fulfillment." But Luke 12:15 says that a person's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. The humanist knows this and looks at it from a different perspective. He says, "If life does not consist in the abundance of a person’s possessions, life must consist of a person’s relationships with humanity." "I am not really seeking more possessions. I am seeking a better relationship with my wife, my children. I am trying to be a better father (or mother). I am trying to relate better to my neighbors, to do good things for people." But is this really the big picture? Is humanism the answer to the question of life? No. The humanist, being people centered, is further along than the materialist. But he does not have the answer either. Because he dies and the relationships dissolve. Sooner or later we all turn into faded faces in old frames -- held in the hands of a future generation who will ask: "Who the heck is that?"

Christians say, "We have the solution! Christ is the answer! He is the purpose for life! He is the reason for living! Now this is true. Christ does give meaning to life and a promise of eternity.

But here’s the reality behind the true statement that Jesus is the answer. Here’s the profound tension in this passage. Paul tells us in Romans 8:23 that when we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ we find that we struggle too. Many of us, even as believers, are frustrated. We’re looking for more.

We can understand how those who do not know Christ struggle. But why is it that even as a believer we experience frustration? I believe that is precisely the question Romans 8:23 addresses.

Romans 8:23 tells us that we experience frustration because we, even as believers, have not yet arrived at the place we are going in our Christian lives. In Romans 8:23 Paul talks about us groaning. He talks about a frustration that we feel that is shared by the nonhuman creation.

Paul has already told us why creation groans. We looked at this last week. The Bible indicates that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they brought death not only to themselves, but to the created order of things. Creation, once perfect in God's sight, declared to be good, now suffers because of human sin. Creation was subjected to frustration.

This is really a fulfillment of a scientific law called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the law of increasing entropy. Simply stated, it means that creation is running down. Things tend toward decay. Even our bodies are running down. Creation is subjected to frustration. It is subjected to futility. Things are coming to an end. So Paul writes that creation groans for the revealing of the children of God. For when we are glorified, creation will also be set free.

But not only does creation groan within itself. Paul says in Romans 8:23 that we also groan within ourselves. Like creation, we are waiting for something very good to happen. We long for God's good purpose to be ultimately fulfilled in our lives.

Now Paul says that as Christians we groan is because we have hope. We have hope because we are internally alive to the ways of God. We have hope because something very good has already happened to us. For as believers, Paul writes, we have already received the"firstfruits of the Spirit."

This is a tremendously rich image that Paul uses here. It is a harvest image drawn from the Old Testament. Leviticus 23, says in part, "When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. He is to wave the sheaf before the Lord. It will be accepted on your behalf." The portion of the harvest presented to the priest was called the firstfruits. It was an offering that consecrated the entire harvest.

In the Old Testament, firstfruits were something the worshiper gives God. But in the New Testament Paul usually reverses this. In 1 Corinthians 15, for example, he says that the resurrected Jesus is the first fruits of those who have died -- that Jesus’ resurrection is a promise of our own resurrection. Here in Romans 8:23, Paul says that the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit is a first fruit given to us by God as a guarantee of something that God will certainly fulfill.

In Ephesians Paul uses another, similar image. In Romans Paul calls the gift the Holy Spirit the first fruit. In Ephesians he describes the gift of the Spirit as God's "arrabon," the 'first instalment, deposit, or down payment," which guarantees the future completion of the purchase. In Ephesians Paul also refers to the gift of the hold Spirit as God’s "seal" on our lives.

In ancient times, the seal, or signet of a monarch or other powerful person represented his authority and power. For example, when Daniel was thrown into the den of lions, King Darius had a large stone placed across the entrance and sealed "with his own signet ring and with the signet rings of his nobles, so that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel" (Daniel 6:17). Paul says that in an infinitely more significant and spiritual way, the Holy Spirit seals your salvation in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is God saying to me, "let nothing be changed concerning Dave Wilkinson." The Spirit says the same thing to you about yourself. As Paul said in verse 16 of Romans 8, "God’s Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God."

Look at the context in Romans. Romans 8:15 tells us that we have already been adopted by God. Romans 8:16 tells us that the Holy Spirit assures us that we really are God’s children. But verse 19 tells us that there is an even deeper and richer child-Father relationship to come when we are fully 'revealed' as God’s children. We aren’t yet where we want to be and know we will be. We groan within ourselves because we’ve had a first taste and we want it all. Now verse 23 says that fulfillment will come at the time of our resurrection which Paul calls here "the redemption of our bodies."

The greatest enemy we face is death itself which claims everyone and everything. No miracle can ultimately save us from it. A miracle is only a temporary solution. We need more than a miracle. Wee need a resurrection to make life eternally new. We long for a life in which death is finally and ultimately defeated.

Th redemption of our bodies is is an important emphasis at this point in Romans 8 for at least two reasons.

First, Paul has been talking about our sufferings, and it is chiefly in our bodies that we experience them.

Second, we are our bodies, not just our spirits and souls. Therefore, salvation must include our bodies if it is to be complete. The time or the ‘revealing of the children of God" is a time for the restoration of relationships -- the restoration of a proper relationship between God and the physical universe and also the restoration of a proper relationship between people and people and their own selves. In Romans 1 Paul speaks of our bodies being dishonored through sin. In Romans 7 Paul wished to be set free from his body of death. But there will come a time when even the body of death will be glorified -- our relationship with our own selves will be healed.

For me the promise of the resurrection is also the promise of a particular kind of fulfilment -- a special place of groaning. This is the fulfillment of my desire to really know God.

As I open God’s Word and spend time in personal reflection or in preparation for a sermon or a class, I become very aware that I am being somehow engaged by a mind of tremendous complexity, subtlety, beauty and love. In a sense, through the Word, I touch the mind of God.

But it is so incomplete. I resonate with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 that "Now we look at God and His truth as if through a dark glass." But that someday we will see God face to face. Right now, Paul says, we know only in part. But there will come a time when we will know God in the way that right now God knows us.

That’s a wonderful promise.

But there have been times in my life when I have looked at the promise of eternity with a degree of dread. The image of floating on a cloud playing a harp for eternity frankly sounds boring. But when I realize that this is not what heaven is, I get excited, When I realize that heaven is a place where I can engage and understand the mind of God that I have barely begun to taste through His Word, I get totally jazzed. It will be the opposite of passivity and boring sameness. It will be the breakthrough I have always wanted.

And it is precisely because I know of the feast that is coming that I get impatient with the chicken fresco and rice pilaf world. It is proper for us as Christians to experience the peace of God in out lives. But it is also proper to for us to experience the unpeace of God -- the holy longing for the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to us.

We have a great promise and a great future. But right now, Paul says, we face the great Christian dilemma. We are caught in the tension between what God has inaugurated by giving us his Spirit and what he will consummate in our final adoption and redemption. So we groan with discomfort and longing. The indwelling Spirit gives us joy, and the coming glory gives us hope, but the interim suspense gives us pain.

We have already been redeemed, but not yet our bodies. Already our spirits are alive but one day the Spirit will also give life to our bodies. More than that, our bodies will be changed by Christ to be 'like his glorious body'? 'Bondage to decay' will be replaced by the 'freedom of glory.' We will be, for the very first time, be totally God’s people, which means that for the very first time we will be totally ourselves.