Towards Sunday, April 21, 2013 (Earth Sunday)

Readings:  Genesis 1:26 - 2:3; Romans 8:12-25

A few notes about the readings

Genesis 1, like creation stories of other ancient peoples (Egyptians, Babylonians, etc) depicts Earth's creation as progressive emergence of order out of primordial chaos.

But there are significant differences in the Hebrew story.  Other people, especially the Babylonians, tell Earth’s creation as a battle story, with Earth and life as we know it coming to be through a series of battles won by a Great Hero, usually a warrior-king.  They see warfare as creative – a good way to bring order out of chaos.  The warrior-king is revered as the agent of the divine will.  And the message is that as long as the king is in power and ruling the world as he sees fit, life will be good.

The Hebrew story is different.  Earth and life as we know it come to be peacefully through obedience to a progressive revealing of God's good will.  Chaos is resolved not through war between competing forces and the defeat of one by the other, but by making places for everything to be.  And in the end the great hero of Earth, if there is a hero at all, is neither a warrior-king nor a warrior-nation, but all humanity -- ordinary men and women of the earth together who listen to God and act as God would for the well-being of earth and life on it.

Paul's Letter to the Romans is written to a community of Christians in the capital city of an empire that sees itself as Earth's lord and saviour.  Rome sees its culture, economy, technology and power as the envy of all people and the solution to the world's problems, and believes that it is for Earth's good that they impose their will and spread their culture over as much of the world as they can. 

But Paul has been converted to a different point of view.  He has come to see Christ (crucified and risen) as the supreme revelation of God’s good will, and to see in the Christian community (open to, and filled with the spirit of Christ) the beginning of the kind of humanity that Earth is in need of.

 

First thoughts towards Sunday's worship -- Earth Sunday

 

“…The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…” 

Two generations ago it was suggested that Earth’s ecological crisis is due in part to Western Christianity, in how we have interpreted “dominion” as “domination” and have justified the West’s conquest of other people, other creatures and Earth itself.  Some have also suggested that humanity as a species is the problem, and that even though Earth’s evolution led to humanity’s emergence, Earth now needs to expel us from its bio-system (or at least limit our existence) for its own good.

Science and Genesis 1 both see that humanity is a relative latecomer in the evolution of Earth, with a huge impact because we imagine, control and shape the world in ways that other creatures do not.  Need this be a problem, though?  Are we necessarily destructive just because we are powerful?  If so, (to use scientific language) is the evolutionary direction of life on Earth ultimately wrong and self-defeating?  Or, (to use biblical language) was God wrong to put Earth into our hands?

Perhaps the problem is that (to use scientific words) we haven’t evolved enough, or (to use biblical words) we haven’t yet grown into the fullness of God’s wisdom?  Maybe we are still too much like a rebellious adolescent in household Earth, newly aware of our personal power, thinking it’s all about us and what we want, imagining that what we want is what all the world needs, making everyone else in the household accommodate us and our desires, and not yet willing to live within appropriate limits and boundaries for the good of the whole.

Are there signs of hope (always hope?), though …

• using biblical language, that God's gamble in putting Earth into our hands might yet work out well?
• using scientific language, that we can evolve into life-serving rather than life-jeopardizing creatures within Earth's biosphere?
• that Paul is right, that through Christ and openness to his spirit a new humanity can be seen (either within or without the church) -- the community of mature, divine Wisdom that Earth is in need of?

Towards Sunday, April 14, 2013

Reading:  John 21:1-19

I used to have a book from the Sixties titled What To Do Till The Messiah Comes -- a wonderful compendium of photos and thoughts about inner happiness, community, and living in touch with creation and creativity.

Whether religious or secular, fifty years later many people still live with the same focus -- what to do till Jesus returns (and the kingdom comes), what to do till we elect the right leader (and our country's decline is reversed), what to do till I win the lottery (and my life becomes a personal paradise on earth).  What do we do until...?

I think the Gospel of John suggests a different question: what to do now that...especially, now that the messiah has come?

This is especially clear in John 21, which tells the story of a strangely subdued, even awkward meeting of some of the disciples and the risen Jesus.

The awkwardness of the story and the way in which John 20 (vv. 30-31 especially) really seems to offer a natural end to the Gospel, leads some commentators to suggest that John 21 was added later by another hand, as a kind of epilogue or post-script -- an answer to the question: so what do we now that the messiah has come?

The story in John 21 incorporates a number of themes and images from the Gospel:

• the meal of fish recalls John 6:1-14 (feeding of 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish), suggesting that Christ's generosity in feeding his followers is not limited to the past, but continues in the present
• the catch of fish recalls other gospel stories current in the early church (e.g. Luke 5:6-7) and the fact that Jesus' disciples never catch or accomplish anything except at his direction
• the slow recognition of the messiah recalls Mary's slow recognition in John 20, and the disciples' slowness in coming to understand and accept the risen Lord, suggesting that the church never finds it easy to recognize the risen Lord
• the invitation to come and eat recalls Jesus' washing of his disciples' feet and acting as their table servant in John 13:3-17, suggesting that the risen Jesus comes in the same humility as did Jesus in the flesh
• the 3-fold question of Peter's love for Jesus recalls and redeems his 3-fold denial, foretold by Jesus in John 13:38 and acted out in John 18:15-17, 25-27
• the 3-fold command to care for his sheep recalls Jesus' description of himself as shepherd and sheepfold in John 10, suggesting that the way God's kingdom love was known then, continues still

Overall, the message seems to be that what was true of and with Jesus when he walked this earth in the flesh, continues still.  The Gospel is not locked in the past, but continues in the present.  The kingdom of the messiah is not future, it is here now.  The story of Jesus of Nazareth has come to a conclusion, but the living drama of Christ continues.

Did you notice, for instance, the unusually indeterminate dating of this story -- "after these things" -- which could mean any (and every?) time after the first appearances of the risen Jesus?

And the setting of the story (at the end of a long night of fruitless fishing, with dawn just breaking) recalls the very opening of the Gospel, and its affirmation of the light coming into the darkness, that the darkness cannot overcome (John 1:5).  Even though there is still darkness and frustration in our lives and that of that of the world, the light shines and God's kingdom dawns today, again and again, as it did then in him.

So maybe one question to bring this to a focus, and lead us into the dawning of the light where we are:  the story in John 21 seems to come to a point in the 3-fold command to carry on the ministry of Jesus -- to care for, feed and pasture Christ's sheep, and to be willing to give our lives in this as he did.  Who and where are Christ's sheep today in Winona, Hamilton and Niagara that we are to care for, feed and pasture?

For Sunday, April 7, 2013

Reading:  John 20:19-31

 

The story of Doubting Thomas – what a wonderfully human and universal disciple.  

 

This story is written about Jesus and his disciples in the days immediately following his crucifixion and resurrection, as they slowly come to understand what the resurrection of Jesus means for them, and where it leads them.  The story is written by and for the church a generation or more later, by and for people who never knew Jesus or the first disciples, as they try to come to terms with what the resurrection of Jesus means for them, and where it leads them in their time.  

 

The first disciples are trying to come to terms with a messiah whose way seems so right, but who allowed himself to be killed; they are wondering if his way of self-sacrificial love is still worth following or not.  The later church is struggling with their expulsion from the Jewish community (which is the context within which we should probably understand the statement that the disciples were hiding “for fear of the Jews”) and continued marginalization within the Empire; they are wondering if the way of Jesus will ever triumph in the world.

 

Do we ever doubt or have questions about the way of Jesus?  Do we sometimes wonder if it’s realistic to live as he tells us?  Are there situations where we doubt that it makes sense to make his ethic our way of life?

 

And – in light of what the risen Jesus gives his disciples (peace and the power to forgive people, and free the world from its sins) do our doubts and questions make us less at peace than we need to be?  When we doubt and question the way of Jesus as the way to live, do we limit the good effect – the liberating effect, we are meant to have on the world?

 

We come to worship this Sunday with these and other questions in our hearts.