Pentecost Sermon: Groaning with Creation

By Joanna Lawrence Shenk

Romans 8:22-27

Where is the Spirit at work in the world? For what am I groaning? Who are the prophets among us today? These are the questions I have been sitting with as I’ve reflected on this Pentecost sermon. 

As you may remember, Pentecost is connected to the Jewish holiday Shavuot. Shavuot is the celebration of God giving the Torah to the Hebrew people at Mt. Sinai. It is a celebration of Divine revelation. 

Pentecost is in keeping with that history of Divine revelation. The Spirit rushed into the room where the disciples were hiding to call them out of fear and isolation. The Spirit empowered them to speak boldly about the movement of liberation Rabbi Yeshua had initiated and that they were continuing. 

Throughout history we see ongoing revelations of the Spirit – not held captive by any one religious tradition – and always in the service of liberation. In the Acts text we understand the Spirit as subverting systems of domination – the young people will prophesy. People of all ages will have dreams and visions. The Spirit will be poured out on those held in bondage. 

These prophets often come to us in human form, and I want to talk about young prophets I have met recently. But first, I would argue that prophetic witness is not exclusively human. That’s why I was drawn to the passage from Romans for today. Creation is with us in this longing for liberation – creation is groaning just as we groan for the liberation of people, lands and creatures. The word used for the groaning of creation in Romans is similar to the word used to describe the groaning of the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt. 

Creation is groaning to be set free. How do we open ourselves to hear creation’s prophetic call to liberation? One way is knowing the land on which we live and cultivating relationships with the web of life sustaining us. We can also become students of Indigenous communities who have maintained relationship with the land and creatures – who have groaned with creation through the violence of colonization. 

I remember the words of Wendsler Nosie when he and the Apache Stronghold visited San Francisco a couple years ago now. He said the Apache people were some of the last Indigenous people to be colonized which means they are the least acclimated to colonization. They have a role to play in helping others to break free. For people who came from Europe, he said, your colonization was so long ago you don’t even remember it happened. You can’t see your chains. 

Our support of the Apache Stronghold and their efforts to protect sacred land is one way I experience us to be learning to listen to the groaning of creation, as well as recognizing its deep wisdom and generosity. The web of life is groaning at the bondage it endures and yet is still nurturing and sustaining our lives. 

Jim Lichti, who visited Oak Flat last fall, reflected that Wendsler wants people to come not just to be a protective presence but to get to know the land itself. Jim described Wendler as sinking into the environment as he would walk the land at Oak Flat. He was attentive and present – just as you or I would be when spending time with a loved one. 

One of the first places Wendsler led us to was Ga’an Canyon at Oak Flat.  Ga’an is the word for a spirit in the Apache language. They inhabit specific places, such as this canyon. The hike to Ga’an Canyon provided a time of spiritual preparation.

Once there, Wendsler simply had us sit on large rocks at the edge of the canyon.  I gradually noticed a deep, hollow sighing down within the canyon, as if it had its own voice. In a sense, canyons do. As the sun rises higher in the sky and reaches the walls and the floor of the canyon, it heats the air that had settled there overnight. This expands the air, which then moves upstream with its flow channeled by the canyon walls. Later in the day as the sun moves down in the sky and the canyon surface is cooled, the canyon would “inhale” air, compressing it in its depths.

What I was hearing must have been the canyon wind’s morning “exhale.” The sound might be called a howl. It had the smoothness and depth of a wolf’s howl, but also a spaciousness that communicated the size of the canyon’s “throat.” It expressed the authoritative power of the place.

Ga’an Canyon, a place where the spirits live, breathes and groans. It is alive and sacred, just like the land under our feet, under our buildings. 

Wendsler’s invitation was not only to get to know that land, but for people to transform their relationship with land in all places. To be present, to listen, to recognize the land as a relative. 

Creation is groaning and sighing and breathing. And the Spirit is groaning with us, longing for the liberation and restoration of all things. This is not a hope to be whisked away to an other-worldy heaven, but instead to be a part of creating a world where swords are beaten into plowshares, where everyone has enough food and shelter and health care and love, and where the land is known as relative. We groan and we grieve and our hope is active as we work to manifest such a reality. 

On this Pentecost Sunday the other prophetic voices I want to lift up are the students I’ve met in the last couple weeks on the campuses of UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. I visited both campuses offering spiritual support to the young people in the encampments. At UC Berkeley I co-led a communion service and at USF I joined Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian faith leaders to stand with the students in their calls for disclosure and divestment. 

I cannot speak to what has happened on every college campus but the two that I witnessed so far were organized, peaceful, full of life, and clear on why they were there. 

I have been astounded by the level of violent repression that has come down on students across the country in similar encampments. These students have struck a nerve as they demand that their universities do not continue to financially support the destruction of Gaza. They are angry because not one university remains standing in Gaza, because over 70% of homes have been destroyed, and because over 15,000 children have been killed. I don’t even know how to sit with that number…

The young people I heard prophesying at USF, a Jesuit Catholic university, were connecting many dots between the founding of this country on genocide and enslavement and the ongoing US imperialism in Palestine, in the Philippines, and around the world that represses, violates, and kills vulnerable people (as well as destroys the land) and how it depends on investment in weapons manufacturers who then suck up all our tax dollars with military contracts. These tax dollars are desperately needed to shore up public education and crumbling infrastructure, as well as feed, house and provide medical care for people without a safety net in this country, due to no fault of their own. US imperial policy steeped in white supremacy, they pointed out, devastates and kills dispossessed people around the world and here at home.

These students are coming to the same conclusions as Martin Luther King Jr., which he articulated in the “Beyond Vietnam” speech of 1967.

“There is…a very obvious connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

For this speech, King was loudly condemned by liberals and conservative alike. 

I invite you to consider why the movement for divestment is being so harshly repressed on college campuses across the country. While it is specifically focused on divesting from the war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine, it is also pointing out the way that US institutions of higher learning (liberal and conservative alike) are deeply invested in the manufacture and sale of weapons, resulting in the need for endless war and preparations for war. 

I saw a headline this weekend that said if the UC system divested from everything the students were demanding it would be to the tune of 32 billion dollars. I’m not sure if that figure is correct, but whether it is 3 billion or 32 billion, it is a staggering sum. 

Whether or not you agree with what the students are doing, I encourage you to look at what they are prophetically pointing out about the demonic, destructive suction tube of an economic system dependent on war and suffering. We are all groaning under the weight of it. The people of Gaza are groaning for an end to the bombardment while enduring a level of suffering, starvation, and grief I can’t even begin to fathom. The earth is groaning with all those who long for liberation and peace. 

May we, like the disciples of Rabbi Yeshua, who at one moment were fearful and isolated, be filled with the Spirit – to boldly speak and act for liberation. May we heed the words of the prophets in this time and place. And may the howling, groaning, breathing Spirit intercede on our behalf when we do not know how to pray. 

I invite you to take a deep breath with me. Spirit of the living God fall afresh on us. Amen.