(Sermon preached at St Giles.)

When I first came to be Vicar of St Margaret's, my first proper grown up job, I was having a few doubts about my ability to cope. I told my sister this and a couple of days later I picked up the phone to hear my then 3 year old niece on the other end greet me with the words “Don't worry Uncle Ichard, you're a good vicar”.

Now never mind that she hasn't the first clue what a vicar is or what makes a good one it was one of those ahh bless moments. The sort that you might think would make you want to have kids of your own.

So why do I want to put off having kids for pretty much as long as biologically possible?

Actually I quite like babies especially when they throw up and you can just give them back to their parents and wander off and watch telly. Which I suspect is not quite the deal when they're yours. Although I do live in hope.

And living in hope is exactly the point.

Paul says: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption. But in hope we were saved.

There are types of suffering that people go through that seem entirely pointless. Entirely hopeless. However Paul I think chooses the image of pregnancy because it is quite the opposite. However much a woman in labour might want to beat her partner round the head and tell him it's all his fault and he is never getting them near her ever again, at least it is pain for a purpose. A pain that it is worth enduring for the joy that follows. Easy for me to say isn't it, but I'm standing by it anyway.

Paul is trying to encourage his readers to understand not only their sufferings but the pains that they see all around them, not as hopeless signs of the world's demise but as the first signs of its rebirth. In other words not as an end but as the beginning of something wonderful.

Pain with a purpose.

Furthermore, God is seen in this passage as in a sense the birthing partner, but in other passages even as the mother in labour herself. Although Paul says we cry Abba Father rather than mother, we might wonder 'why not mother?', since God's role is more than just a spot of supportive hand holding and some advice to breathe, breathe. In Jesus we see God's labour pains in bringing us to new birth, pains that Paul says we are still feeling as we wait for this birth to be complete.

This is a very different way of looking at life and its painful aspects isn't it, as signs of hope, part of the birth of God's new creation, rather than signs of despair, decline and inevitable defeat.

And if we are people who are saved in hope. If we are people who believe that pain has a purpose then surely Christians can't be be part of the 'its all going to hell in a hand-cart-everything was better in my day brigade'. Change and decay in all around I see, is the hymn line. But signs of new birth and fresh hope is what we are called to be looking for.

Of course there is more to this than just being an eternal optimist. Paul is talking about 'some suffering now' giving birth to 'hope and joy for eternity' later, but we know that it is not that simple here and now, in our lives as we live them is it? Of course Paul, living at a time when less than half of children lived to see their fifth birthday would have known this too. The other disciples who were married would have lived this out for themselves, probably several tragic times over.

This reading has looked very different to me at different times. The first time I preached on it, 6 years ago, my sister was pregnant with her first child and and I was excited by the idea of being an uncle. But when I came back to it 3 years later, by then my cousin's wife has lost two children in pregnancy and I was involved with a family whose young son was fighting leukaemia. Giving birth isn't simply a gateway into eternal joy.

It is far too glib to say that Paul's images of birth pangs mean that suffering is OK because it will all be all right in the end. As if we just have to suck on the spiritual gas and air and push push our way to heaven.

The reality is that pregnancy is a much more risky and precarious affair. One based perhaps more on hope than on certainty – as Paul puts it “Hoping for what we do not see”. In other words, and here is maybe why I guess I'm putting the whole children thing off as much as possible – It's a big risk, to put it mildly and can bring you more highs and lows than possibly anything else in life. And yet parents put themselves on the line because they have hope. Sometimes they even do it more than once – you'd have thought they'd have learnt the first time.

But here's the thing.

It is hope that allows us to take risks. It is hope that allows us to face the possibility of failure and loss and trust that we can recover from it. It is hope that gives us the patience to persevere and the courage to try again. Hope doesn't depend on knowing there will be a happy ending. Hope is willing to struggle and suffer to find that happy ending. To do everything in its power to find it, and not be defeated.

If we are going to use Paul's image as a way of understanding and dealing with difficult times, we might as well be realistic about it. And being realistic, I doubt many mothers go through pregnancy entire unworried and unconcerned. My wife has taken to watching that TV series, One Born Every Minute, which is a documentary series about a maternity ward. Its a very effective form of contraception.

But if we take Paul seriously, and look upon the struggles and pains of life as an expectant mother may look upon her labour, we can find hope and realism held together. We fully expect life to involve sleepless nights and dirty nappies – and that there is always the possibility of something much more painful, but I am more prepared to take the risks, to face the possibility of falling flat on my face, because I know that in God I have a parent, the one to whom we cry Abba, father, who will go through this process with me.

That's the thing isn't it – how many people, when they had their first child, turned to their parents to see them through? God who went through his pain to bring us to birth as his children, helps us through our the labour pains of our lives. Christian hope is not a quick, too posh to push delivery, followed by an endless series of photo album moments. That is not what we are offered.

What we are offered is a relationship. A birthing partner who will be there with us. One who is also a parent. Who knows what it is like to open ones self up to the risks and fears and pains of giving birth to something, and who will live in hope with us and waits to share our joys and trials.

Paul says those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you received the Spirit of adoption. And by him we cry, "Abba,Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs - if indeed we share in his sufferings - in order that we may also share in his glory. For in this hope we were saved.

So may God who is with us in all the labour pains of life, bring us to new birth as children of hope.

Amen.