Dr Ken Baker

Romans 8:18–30

¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that^[a] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[b] have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstbornamong many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Opening Prayer

God of the present and the not-yet,
you meet us in what is unfinished.
In our questions, in our waiting, in our weariness—
you are already here.

As we turn to your Word,
quiet what is hurried,
soften what is closed,
and awaken in us a hope that does not deny reality
but dares to trust you within it.

Amen.

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Section 1: Suffering and Glory (vv.18–21)

“Our present sufferings… future glory…”

Paul the Apostle begins with a startling claim: that present suffering and future glory are not comparable.

This is not because suffering is small—
but because glory is expansive.

Paul does not explain suffering away.
He does not justify it.
He places it within a horizon that is still unfolding.

Creation itself, he says, is in a state of frustration—not by choice, but in hope.
The world is not as it should be, and yet it is not abandoned.

We are living in the tension between what is and what will be.

Reflection Question
Where, in your own life or in the world, do you feel this tension most sharply—between present reality and hoped-for restoration?

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Section 2: Creation Groaning (vv.22–25)

“The whole creation has been groaning…”

Paul imagines creation not as static, but as labouring—
groaning like a body in childbirth.

This is not the groaning of despair, but of anticipation.

And we, too, are part of that groaning.
Even those who “have the firstfruits of the Spirit” still wait.

Hope, in this passage, is not possession.
It is posture.

It is the willingness to live faithfully within incompleteness.

Reflection Question
What does it look like, practically, to live with hope as something you wait for rather than something you control?

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Section 3: When We Cannot Pray (vv.26–27)

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness…”

Here the passage turns inward—deeply personal, quietly radical.

There are moments when we do not know how to pray.
Not because we lack faith, but because life exceeds language.

And in those moments, prayer does not collapse.
It is carried.

The Spirit intercedes—not with polished words, but with groans.
God meets us beneath articulation, beneath clarity.

Prayer, then, is not performance.
It is participation in a deeper communion already underway.

Reflection Question
How does this reshape your understanding of prayer—especially in times when words feel inadequate?

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Section 4: All Things and the Work of God (vv.28–30)

“In all things God works for the good…”

This may be the most quoted—and most fragile—part of the passage.

Paul does not say that all things are good.
He says that in all things, God is at work toward good.

This is not a formula.
It is a confession.

A way of trusting that the story is not finished, even when we cannot see its direction.

And yet, the text resists easy closure.
It gestures toward purpose without explaining every pain.

It invites trust, not certainty.

Reflection Question
How can we hold onto hope in God’s purposes without using it to minimise real suffering—our own or others’?

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Closing Prayer

God who hears what we cannot say,
who holds what we cannot understand,

we bring to you our unfinished lives—
our questions without answers,
our griefs without resolution,
our hopes that feel fragile.

Teach us to trust you
not because everything makes sense,
but because you are present in all things.

When we cannot pray, pray in us.
When we cannot hope, hold us.
When we cannot see the way, be our way.

And in all our groaning,
draw us—quietly, faithfully—
into your life, your love, your future.

Amen.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

It has so often been heard as a narrowing.
A line drawn.
A gate slammed.

But what if we’ve been listening with the wrong ears?

Because Jesus doesn’t say, I have a map.
He doesn’t say, I possess the correct ideas.
He doesn’t even say, I will show you how to get there.

He says: I am.

Not a system.
Not a boundary.
Not a password into heaven.

A person.

And persons are not abstractions you can weaponise.
They are encounters you can only receive.

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The Way

The first Christians weren’t called “believers.”
They were called people of the Way.

Which suggests something disarmingly ordinary:
a path worn by walking,
not a doctrine preserved in glass.

The Way is not about arriving.
It’s about how you move.

It is the slow learning of mercy.
The stubborn practice of forgiveness.
The quiet refusal to dehumanise—even when it would be easier.

If Jesus is the Way, then the Way looks like:
touching what others avoid,
eating with those others exclude,
and crossing lines everyone else insists are permanent.

The Way is not a detour around the world.
It is a deeper entry into it.

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The Truth

We have often treated truth like a possession—
something you can hold, defend, and deploy.

But Jesus never says, I will give you the truth.
He says, I am the truth.

Which means truth is not a static object.
It is relational. Alive. Encountered.

Truth, in this sense, is not about being right.
It’s about being real.

It is what happens when illusion falls away—
when we stop pretending we are separate,
self-sufficient,
or superior.

Truth is what remains when love refuses to give up on us.

Not correctness.
Presence.

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The Life

And life—
not merely survival,
not mere biological persistence—
but life as participation in something vast and shared.

The kind of life that pulses through everything:
through creation, through community, through communion.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Not selectively.
Not sparingly.
Not just for the few who got the answers right.

Abundantly.

Which raises a troubling, beautiful question:

What if life—real life—
is not something Jesus restricts,
but something he reveals
is already breaking in everywhere?

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No One Comes…

And then the line that has been used like a locked door:

“No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But what if this is not about exclusion—
but about recognition?

If God is like Jesus—
self-giving, radically forgiving, boundary-crossing love—
then no one comes to that God except through that way of being.

Not through violence.
Not through domination.
Not through fear.

Only through love.

Which is not a threat.
It’s a description of reality.

Because you cannot arrive at Love
by becoming less loving.

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A Wider Mercy

The irony, of course, is that the one who said these words
spent most of his time dismantling the very boundaries
we later built in his name.

He healed outsiders.
He praised heretics.
He forgave before repentance had time to catch up.

If this is the Way—
then it is wider than we imagined,
and nearer than we feared.

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The Table, Not the Gate

Maybe we’ve been picturing a narrow gate
when we should have been picturing a table.

A long table.
Set in the open.

With places already laid
for more people than we would have invited.

And Jesus—not checking credentials at the door—
but breaking bread,
looking us in the eye,
and saying:

This is the way.
This is the truth.
This is the life.

Come and see.

It’s time for a quiet unmasking, for a willingness to stop pretending that what has grown up in the name of Jesus still bears much – indeed, any – resemblance to the life he lived or the vision he breathed into the world. If he were to walk gently back among us today, there would be much he would not recognize—and even more he could not leave unchallenged. Not out of anger for its own sake, but out of that fierce, clarifying love that refuses illusion.

What began as a proclamation of the kingdom of God—not a distant heaven but a subversive, present reality—slowly drifted into abstraction. The urgency of justice was softened into promise. The transformation meant for now was postponed to later. And so the sharp edge of Jesus’ announcement was dulled, relocated into a future that never quite arrives, where it no longer disrupts us.

In time, a movement shaped by practice became a religion shaped by admiration. But Jesus did not ask to be admired… worshipped, praised so much as followed. Yet it is easier to revere than to imitate, easier to declare belief than to embody love. The living question—How shall we live?—was replaced by What must we agree to? And something essential was lost in that exchange.

At the heart of his life was an unbroken union with God, a knowing of intimacy that he extended freely to others. But rather than receiving this as invitation, we built systems around distance—narratives of separation that required managing, fixing, and mediating. What he revealed as already whole, we recast as fundamentally fractured.

Jesus taught in the language of the body—through meals shared, wounds touched, boundaries crossed, and courage enacted. Yet over time, explanation replaced participation. The living witness was overshadowed by secondhand certainty. Words about truth became more important than lives shaped by it.

His life could have remained a doorway, an opening into what is possible for all people—to live awake, courageous, and grounded in love. Instead, it was elevated beyond reach, made exceptional in a way that quietly relieved us of responsibility. Reverence was preserved, but at the cost of transformation.

Where Jesus seemed to widen the circle of knowing—pointing to experience, relationship, and the unmistakable authority of a changed heart—his legacy was often narrowed into systems that preferred certainty over mystery. Questions became suspect. Dialogue gave way to defence. And what was once alive and open became something to guard.

His posture toward people was marked by a kind of prior belonging, a dignity that came before correction. Yet the story we inherited often begins with guilt, with unworthiness, with the need to be fixed. Fear became a teacher where love had been the ground. And so many learned to see themselves not as bearers of divine image, but as problems to be solved.

Jesus sent people outward—to heal, to reconcile, to participate in the mending of the world. But somewhere along the way, that shared responsibility was deferred. Action was replaced with waiting. Faith became a kind of suspension, a hope that someone else would finish what we have not begun.

He also seemed deeply suspicious of language that floats free from life. Words, for him, were never enough. And yet, it is often words we cling to—phrases, formulas, declarations—hoping they will accomplish what only love enacted can do. Meanwhile, the quiet truth he trusted—that human beings already carry the capacity for transformation—remains largely unclaimed.

And perhaps most poignantly, what was once aligned with the vulnerable and the marginalized became, in many places, entangled with power. The symbols endured, but the substance thinned. What began as a path of courage, compassion, and deep solidarity was gradually reshaped into something more concerned with control than with communion.

If any of this stirs discomfort, it may not be something to push away. Discomfort can be a kind of grace, a sign that something living is pressing against what has become too small. The invitation is not to reject the tradition, but to let it be renewed—to return, again and again, to the life itself. Because if that life still speaks, it does not only comfort. It also calls.

That’s the grace of discomfort.

“True dialogue begins not when we defend ourselves, but when we begin to listen.”
— Paolo Ricca

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There is a moment in the Gospel of Mark that feels almost nautical in its theology. The disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, rowing anxiously, while another boat drifts nearby. The miracle that follows—the great catch of fish—does not remain contained within a single vessel. The nets strain, the ropes creak, and someone begins waving frantically toward the neighboring craft. The Gospel says they signal to the partners in the other boat to come and help (Luke 5:7).

The image is irresistible for anyone thinking about Christian unity. No boat is large enough to hold the whole catch of the kingdom.

This is precisely the intuition behind the deceptively simple line from Paolo Ricca: true dialogue begins not when we defend ourselves, but when we begin to listen. Ricca’s remark is not merely etiquette for polite conversation. It is a theological claim about how truth is discovered within the body of Christ.

The Ecumenical Instinct

Much of modern theological debate still operates according to a courtroom model. Each tradition arrives with its doctrinal brief already prepared. Arguments are marshalled, historical precedents cited, and confessional boundaries carefully guarded. Dialogue becomes a carefully choreographed defense.

Ricca suggests something quite different. Dialogue does not begin when the opening statements are read. It begins when the lawyers stop speaking.

Listening, in this sense, is not a passive act. It is an act of theological humility. The assumption beneath it is startling: the other tradition may be carrying part of the catch.

This conviction runs deep in the ecumenical imagination. The churches, after all, did not begin as isolated vessels but as a flotilla of communities—Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Rome—each navigating the same gospel through different waters. Diversity was not an unfortunate byproduct of history; it was present from the beginning.

To listen, therefore, is not to abandon conviction. It is to acknowledge that the Spirit may have spoken elsewhere as well.

The Temptation of Self-Defense

The instinct to defend ourselves is powerful. Churches have memories. Those memories include controversies, condemnations, and centuries of mutual suspicion. When dialogue begins, the reflex is often apologetic: clarify our doctrine, correct misunderstandings, secure our identity.

But Ricca’s insight exposes the hidden irony. The moment we begin defending ourselves, we are no longer listening. And the moment we stop listening, dialogue has quietly ended.

Ecumenical conversations sometimes fail not because disagreements are too large but because the participants remain trapped in self-explanation. Each boat is busy describing its own nets.

Meanwhile, the fish are escaping.

Signalling to the Other Boat

The image from Luke’s Gospel suggests a more imaginative posture. The fishermen do not abandon their boat when the nets begin to break. They do something more interesting: they signal to their partners.

Signalling requires two things. First, it requires the recognition of need. The catch is too large for one vessel. Second, it requires trust. One must believe that the other boat is not an enemy but an ally.

Ecumenical listening begins here. It begins when a church recognizes that its own tradition—however rich—does not exhaust the fullness of the Christian inheritance. The liturgical memory of one community, the biblical scholarship of another, the contemplative wisdom of a third: each holds something necessary for the shared task of faith.

Listening becomes the act by which the boats draw near enough to share the nets.

The Theology of Humble Hearing

At its deepest level, Ricca’s insight echoes a fundamental biblical principle. In Scripture, hearing precedes understanding.

“Hear, O Israel” begins the central confession of the Hebrew faith (Deuteronomy 6:4). The prophets cry out for ears that will listen. Even Jesus’ teaching ends with the refrain: “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”

Theologically speaking, revelation is not primarily an argument to be defended but a voice to be heard. Dialogue, therefore, mirrors the very posture of faith itself. The believer listens before speaking; the church listens before defining.

One might even say that listening is a form of discipleship.

The Risk and Promise of Dialogue

Of course, listening carries risk. If we truly hear the other, we may discover that some of our assumptions require revision. Dialogue can unsettle comfortable narratives. It may reveal blind spots within our own traditions.

Yet this vulnerability is precisely where its promise lies. Listening allows the church to recover the breadth of its own inheritance. The ecumenical movement has repeatedly shown that traditions once regarded with suspicion often contain spiritual treasures long forgotten elsewhere.

Sometimes the neighboring boat has been carrying the very tools we need.

The Shared Catch

The great irony of Christian division is that the gospel itself refuses to remain confined within any single tradition. The catch keeps exceeding the capacity of our nets. Scripture, sacrament, mission, prayer—these overflow the boundaries we attempt to construct around them.

Ricca’s observation, therefore, is not merely about interchurch diplomacy. It is about recognizing the abundance of the gospel.

True dialogue begins with listening because listening acknowledges that the other boat may be responding to the same call of Christ.

And perhaps that is the most hopeful image of all: a sea scattered with small vessels, each straining under the weight of the same miraculous catch, waving urgently to one another across the water.

The nets are full.
The boats are small.
And the partners in the other boat are closer than we think.

There are some sayings of Jesus that Christians have spent two thousand years polishing, embroidering, contextualising, and occasionally placing in a nice decorative frame so we don’t have to look at them too closely.

“Love your enemies” is not one of those sayings.

Because the trouble with that line—found in Matthew 5:44 and echoed in Luke 6:27—is that it comes without any helpful escape hatch.

No footnotes.
No pastoral exemptions.
No quiet clause that reads: except for people on the internet.

Just: love them.

Which is frankly inconvenient.

Now, we Christians are a creative people when we need to be. Faced with a command like this, our first instinct is to start looking for interpretive wiggle room.

Perhaps Jesus meant love them spiritually but not emotionally.
Perhaps he meant pray for them while still ignoring them in Tesco.
Perhaps he meant love them in theory but absolutely destroy them in committee meetings.

Or perhaps—and this is the theological equivalent of putting the command through a blender—we redefine the word enemy until it means something manageable.

“Enemy,” we say, must refer to really evil people.
Or perhaps ancient Roman oppressors.
Or maybe just the sort of villains that conveniently exist only in the movies.

But Jesus appears to have anticipated this strategy.

Because right after saying “love your enemies,” he adds: “pray for those who persecute you.”

Now we’re in trouble.

Because persecution is not theoretical. It involves actual people doing actual harm. And Jesus still refuses to give us a workaround.

It’s the Irritating Logic of the Kingdom

The problem is that Jesus is operating with a logic that feels almost offensively impractical.

In the kingdom he imagines, love is not a reward for good behaviour.
It is the default posture of those who belong to God.

If love were only for friends, he says, what exactly would be remarkable about that?

Even tax collectors manage that.

Even sinners manage that.

Even people who argue in church meetings about the colour of the carpet manage that.

The scandal of Jesus’ teaching is that God’s generosity spills over onto people who absolutely do not deserve it.

Which is awkward, because we ourselves are standing ankle-deep in that same overflow.

When the Command Gets Personal

The command becomes uncomfortable the moment we stop thinking about historical enemies and start thinking about ourenemies.

Not abstract villains.

But the colleague who quietly undermined us.
The politician whose policies feel cruel.
The family member who knows exactly how to push every emotional button we possess.

And suddenly we realise why Jesus left no loopholes.

Because the moment you introduce exceptions, everyone we dislike becomes the exception.

What “Love” Actually Means

Of course, loving enemies does not mean pretending harm is harmless. It does not mean abandoning justice, truth, or boundaries.

Love in the teaching of Jesus looks less like sentiment and more like stubborn refusal.

Refusal to dehumanise.
Refusal to mirror cruelty.
Refusal to let hatred have the last word.

It is not passive. In fact, it is probably the most disruptive force in the moral universe.

Which is why it is so difficult.

The Annoying Conclusion

If we’re honest, we would prefer Jesus to say something like:

Love your enemies when possible,
avoid them when necessary,
and absolutely destroy them if they post conspiracy theories.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he gives us a command that dismantles the entire logic of retaliation.

And then—almost casually—he grounds it in the character of God.

God, he says, lets the sun rise on the good and the bad alike.

Which means the love Jesus calls us to practice is not merely moral advice.

It is participation in the strange, reckless generosity of God.

And the frustrating truth is this:

There is no tidy way out of that quote.

Jesus really did mean it.

Which leaves us with one remaining option:

Not explaining it away.

But trying—awkwardly, imperfectly, prayerfully—to live it.

Prayer

Lord Jesus,
you give us many beautiful words—
and then you give us this one.

Love your enemies.

We try to step around it,
soften it,
explain it into something smaller.

But it sits there in the Gospel
like a stone in the road
we cannot walk around.

So take our hard hearts,
our quick anger,
our careful lists of who deserves kindness.

Teach us the strange courage of your kingdom—
where mercy is stronger than revenge
and love refuses to give up on anyone.

Even them.
Even us.

Amen.