The Great Flood: Cleansing for the Earth? Or catharsis for God? (Lent 1 -- Feb 21, 2021)

 Lent has a reputation for being a season of renunciation and deprivations – as in “what are you giving up for Lent?”  But it’s really a time of looking forward to, and preparing for new growth and new life.

The word “Lent” comes a Latin word for lengthening – in this case, the lengthening of days, as we move past winter solstice and longest night, into a time of earlier sunrise, later sunset, soon the first hints of spring and the budding of new life, and the beginning of plans for what that will be – the shape of the garden, what will be sown in the fields, what projects will be undertaken, what use will be made of the summer so we have a good harvest again in the fall.

In the days of COVID we also talk about something we like to call “a new normal” beyond the pandemic – whatever “the new normal” will turn out to be.

And that’s what Lent is for.  For taking stock before winter is completely gone.  For looking around, and looking in, to see what really we have to work with, what we want to work towards, and what we might yet need to get and to learn to be able to do it.

Reading:  Genesis 9:8-17

We live in a time of global anxiety.  Global anxiety is not a new thing, though, to anyone familiar with the world’s religious and mythic traditions.

The reading is about the ending of The Great Flood in the Book of Genesis.  The Flood had come when God was enraged at how wicked humanity had become on the face of the earth.  It was God’s powerful attempt just to wash all the wickedness away.

But as the waters subside, God sees how near the world came to being totally destroyed.  God repents of his rage.  As Noah, his family and the surviving animals come out of the ark to start the world over again, God makes a promise never to use that kind of power against the earth again.  Instead, God will use his power to sustain and maintain all life on earth.

The promise God gives is that when the rainbow comes out in a time of rain – using the word for “bow” also used of a warrior’s bow for battle – the rainbow up in the sky will remind God of God’s promise to hang up his bow, leave it hung up, and never take it down to use it against earth again.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

“I now establish my covenant with you, and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you – the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you – every living creature on earth.  I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:  I have set my bow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

“Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.  Whenever the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

Sermon

I wonder how he felt as he stepped off the boat and onto dry land.  Well – probably not yet really dry land, but land nonetheless.

I wonder how he felt.  Noah, that is.

I imagine relieved after spending a full year on the ark.  As relieved as we’ll feel when we’ll be able to come out from our homes and be together at church again, after almost a full year now of being closed out, closed in, and socially distant – a little over eleven months now and still counting.

I imagine he also felt tremendously fortunate.  Like he and his family had won the lottery, which actually they did.  “You, Noah, and your family, from among all the families on Earth are to be enclosed in an ark for a year to survive the deluge of God’s sorrow, and start life on Earth all over again!”

And it really was like a lottery win.  It’s hard to believe Noah was the only righteous man on the face of the earth.  

And even though the story says Noah was righteous, blameless and walked with God, we also know that often when the Bible says someone “found favour with God,” it means only that God picked someone.  And many times God makes the strangest picks of the most unlikely people to be agents of God’s will.  Maybe just to show that God can work with any material that’s available, and make something good come out of anyone.

Like with Noah, who not long after landing on his feet on partly-dry land after a year in the ark, makes an unrighteous fool of himself and brings holy shame on him and one of his sons forever.

It makes me wonder if maybe one thing Noah grew during his time in the ark – aside from a COVID beard and a love of beating his kids at Risk on family games night, was a sense of entitlement.  Like, I deserve this.  Like, I must be someone special to be getting this special treatment from God.  Like, I guess I’ll be like a king or a guru or something when we land.  Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz.

It’s funny how that sense of entitlement so often accompanies those who have known God’s grace, and have known themselves blessed by God.  A month or so ago at the height of the Black Lives Matter conversation in the States and the white evangelicals’ response to it, I came across this comment, for instance, by Caroline McTeer, “White Christians should be leery of our own judgments; we are primed by culture to oppress and primed by religion [and, we might add, by our long experience of being blessed] to think God is on our side.” 

It’s a comment that may also apply in Canada to the Christian church in relation to the First Nations of our land, to rich believers anywhere in relation to the poor and the criminalized, even just to the fortunate in relation to the unfortunate, and so on and so on.

Any time there is inequity and a sense of “other” it’s always easy to imagine yourself as God’s favourite in some way, and create a theology to support it.

Thinking of that, I would like to think that something else Noah felt and thought as he walked off the boat, as he looked at the devastation all around, and remembered all the life that was gone – all the old neighbours and friends and even enemies drowned, and all the animals and plants and gardens and forests now reduced to a reeking mess all around him, was the simple but sobering thought, “There but for the grace of God, would I be.”

There, but for the grace of God.

I would like to think Noah felt deep sorrow for all that was lost.  For all that was destroyed and killed and now gone because of the wickedness of the species and of the race upon earth that he was part of.  Because of the race of humans of which he was one, all that once had life – even as bad it was – now was no more.

I wondered about this when I was in Sunday school.  I wasn’t old enough to worry about it.  I just wondered, and I hope I had the wherewithal and the courage to ask about it.

My Sunday school teacher, who was old enough to be able to worry about it, seemed not to.  The deep sorrow about all that was lost, and the questionable wisdom of divine action that destroyed so much of what the Divine One had created and so deeply loved in the first place, didn’t seem to be a concern to my Sunday school teacher.  It wasn’t mentioned in our Sunday school class, anyway.

I hope it was a matter of some concern, some sorrow, and some pretty deep grief and a reason for seriously rethinking a few things for Noah.

Because it was for God.

According to the story, God repents of what’s been done.  God changes God’s mind.  Maybe God’s heart changes God’s head.  Who knows how these things work?

All we know is that when God sees what has been done, God promises never to do that again.  Solemnly promises.  Even sets up a sign in the heavens as a constant reminder, in case God ever forgets.

“When the rainbow comes out in the sky in response to the rain when it starts to fall again,” God says, “I will look at it, and that bow will be a reminder to me of how I have hung up my warrior bow on the wall, never to be taken down again, to wreak such vengeful havoc upon the earth. 

“What I promise in place of judgement, is forbearance and forgiveness; and what I promise instead of retribution and punishment, is compassionate for what may be lost, patient love with what is broken, and long-suffering engagement with all life on earth – even with all human life on earth – towards the healing of what is broken and the righting of what is wrong, day by day, season by season, year by year, generation by generation.”

“For,” God says, in all humility and in full possession of a divinity worth worshipping, “I know now how much l deeply love all that I have made.  All plant and animal and human life.  And how deeply, self-sacrificially I commit my self to the inter-related life and mutual well-being of all.”

“You can count on it,” God says.

And I wonder what this does to Noah’s understanding of being God’s servant on the face of the earth, and of doing God’s will.

To his trust in, and happiness about lottery and luck as a way for people to get what they need for life.

To his sense of entitlement and special holiness.  To any easy judgments about those who are “other.”  To theologies that justify exclusion and inequality.

Does it make a difference to Noah to know how good and how loved by God is every creature, every plant, every form of life, every person under and inside the rainbow?

Do God’s feelings make a difference to Noah as he starts the world over again?

And what difference do God’s feelings make to us – all children of Noah that we are – as we go about creating another new normal after the pandemic in the days and the years ahead?

The continuing present: or, he's here, he's there, he's everywhere

 Opening Thoughts

The pandemic is not over, and restrictions to help us guard one another’s well-being will be needed for some time yet.  But even just thinking of an eventual return to greater openness and freedom to gather, make me realize how comfortable I have become at home.  Too comfortable?

Am I living in a real-life “echo chamber” – the kind of world that social media creates for us, as the algorithms protect us from having ever to encounter and be challenged by someone or something that we didn’t click, because it didn’t seem to click with us?

Are personal growth, spiritual transformation, and real human being possible with extended social distancing, isolation, and only virtual community?

Reading:  Mark 1:29-39 

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as someone who helps people see how close God’s kingdom is, in the midst of life as we know it.

Jesus has been preaching in the synagogue, inspiring folks there with a message about the nearness of God’s kingdom, and surprising them by driving an impure spirit out of a man who was there that day.

Now he goes from synagogue to the home of some friends, and astounds everyone there with more healings and more people freed from impure spirits.  With Jesus, there seems no limit to when and where God’s kingdom might be.

As soon as Jesus and his disciples left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew.  Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her.  

He went to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up.  The fever left her and she began to serve them.

 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all thew sick and demon-possessed.  The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases.  He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.  Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also.  That is why I have come.”

 

 

 

Meditation

A number of years ago, I was given a t-shirt – I think it was a t-shirt – by Lynn Martin, our church secretary at the time.  It was that long ago, when that was still the official title for what is now the Church Administrator position. 

Anyway, I got this t-shirt as a gift, with this good news printed on the front of it: “I found Jesus … he was behind the couch the whole time.”

Isn’t that great?  I wonder if it was left over from some less-than-successful evangelistic campaign – like “Housekeeping for Jesus”, or “Spring Cleaning as Spiritual Renewal”?

Seriously, though, isn’t it great?  And true, that Jesus is as near to us as that?  Hidden close by – “in plain sight” as they say – in our day-to-day living, our home, right where we are?  We don’t have to go far to find him; just look around a bit.

That’s how Jesus works, and how God’s kingdom unfolds in the world.  The first readers of the Gospel of Mark would have heard that message loud and clear in the story today – that it’s not from the palace through the king, not through the temple from the priests, certainly not from Rome through the emperor, and really not even from the synagogue through the scribes and the teachers of the law that God’s kingdom comes, but in the villages and towns and homes of poor and ordinary people, as God’s love comes alive to them where they are, reaches out to them as they are, and raises them up to help them become who they are in God’s eyes.

In the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, we sometimes joke that Jesus heals her of her fever, so she can get up from her sick bed and make all the men their supper.   It’s good to notice that, and be aware of patriarchy that too easily is overlooked and not challenged.

But there’s two other things to notice here.  One is the way it says Jesus “took her by the hand and raised her up.”  This is not just healing language – the language of being fixed so you can go on doing the same old thing you’ve always done.  This is resurrection language – the language of a person bound and put down, being raised to new life beyond deadening limitations and killing restrictions.  Being lifted to a higher level of life.  Being given a bigger stage on which to act out who they are.

The other thing is the use of what’s called “the continuous present tense” in saying that she then “began to serve them” – awkwardly but better translated as “she began to be continuing to serve them” – maybe meaning that from that moment on Simon’s mother-in-law began being not just a housewife serving the needs of the immediate men in her life, but one of the women who in their on-going patronage and continuing support of Jesus’ mission have a hand in the revealing of God’s kingdom in the world – and some of whom follow Jesus all the way to the cross.

It seems when Jesus comes in to your house, it’s to set you free from whatever’s holding you back from being who you are in God’s eyes and God’s kingdom.

So where is Jesus for you?  Hiding – or hidden -- behind the couch?  Do you have his picture hanging on a wall?  Maybe a cross on a necklace?  A Bible on a bedside table?  Where is Jesus in your life, in your home, in your family’s life, in your routine right now?

Is he maybe in the closet, holding your hand as he helps you come out?  Or in a dark corner – that scary, secret place in your life that you’re afraid of facing or telling anyone else about; is he in there gently calling out to tell you it’s okay, it needn’t be so scary, he’ll help you face it and get you through?

Maybe he’s in your past, somewhere in your or your family’s memory.  Where will he be in your future?  Where and when and how will you make him be – or let him be, part of your home life, part of your day-to-day life in the world?

***

A word of warning, though, as you might think: once he’s there, don’t expect him just to stay there – just nice and comfy in your house for the rest of your life and his.  Because he also likes to be found somewhere else, out on the edges of your life.

The next day, after raising Simon’s mother-in-law and making her home the place to be, Jesus got up and left, and went off to a solitary place to pray.  And that’s where his friends have to go to find him – in “a deserted place”, as some translations put it.  Not really desert or wilderness.  Just somewhere beyond the circle of daily life, on the edge of where we normally are, and feel comfortable and in control.  A place where we see the bigger picture that our little circle is part of.  Where the bigger-ness of God and God’s purpose becomes more evident and clearer.  A place of real prayer.

And where is that for you?  Where is your place to go, when you need to step to the edge of your circle and start to see beyond?

In some ways, church is that.  It’s certainly deserted now.

My guess is we don’t normally think of it as a wilderness or a desert place.  Come to church long enough and it becomes like home, a family home as comfortable as an old shoe or slipper.  Which is good.

But church is also one step beyond daily life, and I’m glad to have left the comfort and convenience of home behind to be here this week.  I look forward to when we can gather here again.

Because here we are family with others who are different from us, who we don’t always like or get along with, who if they weren’t coming to the same church as us, we might not ever have reason or interest to count as friends.  Church is a step beyond home.  I like the way our Church Council puts it: that at Fifty, church is not so much a haven to settle down in, as a harbour we come to to be refreshed, and then to sail out from again, to be out on the sea with God.

The way Mark puts it, church is where we hear Jesus say, “Come on; let’s go somewhere else – to the nearby villages, to the wider community, to the world – so I can preach there as well.  ‘Cuz that’s why I’ve come.”

***

And isn’t that the third place Jesus is found – out there? 

One place, is in our homes right where we are, raising us up to be who we are in God’s eyes.  A second, out on the edge of the familiar and comfortable, calling us to find him there.  And a third place, out in the world where we haven’t yet been, and where he wants to lead us.

Because his gift is not just to come to our homes and raise us up to be who we are, but to bring this same gift and the same message to all the world – to all homes, all villages, all families and people like us, of day-to-day need and fear and brokenness.

Jesus is with them too – wherever, whoever and however they are.  Maybe behind their couch.  In their closet as they come out of it, and in their scary places that they’re afraid to enter.  In the midst of their pain and sorrow, on their sickbed or deathbed.  Ready to raise them up to new life, if only someone might open the door, make an introduction, and help the miracle of the kingdom of God happen there, too.

***

When Jesus came to Simon’s house, took his mother-in-law’s hand and raised her up, she began to be serving him continually in the unfolding of the kingdom of God.  The story doesn’t say exactly what that means, except that it’s a continuous present. 

But we don’t really need to know what Simon’s mother-in-law did, do we?  The question for us is how, when God’s love comes to us where we are, as we are, to help us be who we are, each of us will begin being, and continue being, of service to him and to the miracle of God’s love for all around us. 

This is why he’s come to us.  It’s the same reason he comes to everyone.  To raise us all, where we are and as we are able, into the life and the living of God’s kingdom.

Stirred ... AND shaken (sermon from Sun, Jan 31, 2021)

 Reading: Mark 1:21-28

 

Each of the four Gospels starts the story of Jesus’ ministry in their own way.  In Matthew, Jesus’ first public act is the Sermon on the Mount, because for Matthew, Jesus is the teacher extraordinaire, the new Moses. 

 

In Luke, Jesus starts with a sermon in his home town of Nazareth, where people are happy to hear what he has to say, until they realize he’s telling them God especially loves the poor and oppressed, and not just them – a theme close to Luke’s heart.

 

In John’s Gospel, the first noteworthy thing Jesus does is turn water into wine at a wedding.  For John, Jesus is the giver of abundant life.

 

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus first gains attention as an exorcist – not an outlandish one like in the movie of that name, but more simply as a servant of God who brings out into the open the kinds of spirits that inhabit the lives of ordinary good people, and who helps set the people free from their influence.

 

 

[Jesus and the disciples he had gathered] went to Capernaum, and when the sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.  The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught then as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

 

 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are – the Holy One of God!”

 

“Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly.  “Come out of him!”  The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

 

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this?  A new teaching – and with authority!  He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.”  News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation  

“The people were all amazed … and news about Jesus spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.”  Not surprising!

I wonder what you say after a synagogue service like that, as you’re walking out the door and shaking the guest preacher’s hand?

Maybe ... Good message, Jesus.

Nice exorcism; is the man okay.

Maybe ... I hear we'll be looking for a second rabbi soon; I hope you'll consider applying for the job.

Or maybe, from some others ... Please don't came back.  Don't get me wrong, it was all good.  But please, don't ever come back and do that again.

Because sometimes instead of getting just what we want, we also get what we need.  And sometimes what we need, turns out to be more than we bargained for.

In Capernaum, for instance, the people went to synagogue every sabbath to get what they wanted – good Scripture reading and teaching by the scribes.  They wanted to hear the ancient stories and teachings, and be reminded of God’s presence, God’s good purpose and the promise of God’s kingdom coming to be in their land some day.  And they got what they wanted, week after week.

The day Jesus showed up, they also got something they needed and probably didn’t even think of as possible until Jesus offered it to them – the presence of God not only in books and teaching, but gathered up and charismatically present in one person, shining in his face like the Presence shone in the face of Moses so long ago.  They were living in a dark time in their nation’s history, and more than they knew they needed to know God was alive and at work with them in a close and personal way in the midst of their darkness.  When Jesus spoke from his heart to theirs, they knew the close stirring and warming of the presence of God they really needed.

And then…something more than they bargained for: the invitation from Jesus not just to know the present power of God in him, but to find their part in it and start living it themselves  Not only to pray for God’s kingdom to come some day, but to be among those who live it into the life of the world right now and where they are … without waiting for Herod to agree, without asking Caesar to allow it, without expecting the governor to make it legal or give them funding for it, without needing the priests to give their blessing to it.  Just to do it in the power of the same spirit of God that was in Jesus.  What a holy and wholly transforming moment!

And that’s about the time someone at the back began to raise some objections.  He was possessed by “an impure spirit” and what Jesus was offering didn’t fit the spirit of his life.

How are we to understand this? 

Apparently, the Gospels and New Testament are unique in Jewish literature in the way they talk about spirits not as attacking people from time to time, causing odd or evil things, but as possessing people – coming to dwell within them, to reside in the heart, and over time, to give a certain shape and direction to a person’s life, become part and parcel of who they are, how they act, and how they are known by others in the world.  Become their persona – their image or reputation, you might say.

Does it make sense to say that in our lives we all accumulate a particular cluster of personal habits, practices, defences, priorities, values, assumptions and expectations of life and of others and even of God, that become our persona, our spirit?  A spirit that at best is aligned with the way God desires we live.  But that almost always, at some point also gets in the way and starts restricting, limiting, opposing and undermining our freedom to live in the way God intends, and in the way that God’s kingdom, if we are to be part of its coming, calls us to live.

And that’s when the struggle – the conflict – the really interesting part of our journey with God, begins.

*  *  *

Six or seven years ago I got something I wanted, when I was accepted into a two-year program of training and discernment to be certified as a spiritual director.  The program included a residential component of several week-long gatherings of all the participants at Five Oaks, and a lot of distance work done individually from home, in conversation with a mentor.

From the start, I also got something I needed.  At the first gathering, through the shared activities and private prayer times I found myself immersed in an awareness of God’s forgiving love like nothing I had experienced before – a gracious love that opened up and emptied out bucketsfull of guilt, remorse and shame I’d been carrying for years.  Then as the at-home work began and we explored human wholeness, healthy development, and true spiritual openness I began to catch a glimpse of full and free human living that is truly glorious.

Then came the “more than I bargained for” part, when I began to realize how far I was from that fullness and freedom, how impure the spirit of my life was, and the dark pathways my spirit led me into.  That’s when the struggle and the important choices really began.

I was shaken by it, and it brought on a major shake-up – a kind of convulsion you might say, as I withdrew from the directors’ program, and entered instead a program of treatment for some of my issues, and a support program for on-going spiritual transformation.

Sometimes when we get what we want, we also find what we need.  And when it turns out to be more than we bargained for, the really interesting stuff begins.

*  *  *

In 1986 the United Church of Canada General Council knew what they wanted.  For years the church had studied the issues and sorrows around the history of residential schools, and the larger question of the Christian church’s historical devaluation and destruction of First Nations’ spirituality and identity.  The church wanted to do the right thing; at the 1986 General Council meeting in Sudbury they wanted to make an apology.

In the way it was done, they also got what they needed – not only a passing of the resolution and communication of the apology, but a chance to offer it face-to-face to a gathering of First Nations’ elders encamped just outside the grounds of the General Council meeting, for the sole purpose of receiving the apology.  It was an historic occasion – exactly the kind of deep-down, acted-out, public cathartic experience the church needed.

And then the something more than they bargained for – the response that the First Nations elders came to, and that they sent back to the floor of General Council: they were grateful for the apology, and before they could accept it, they would wait to see how serious the church was about living it out, and about living into a new relationship with the First Nations.

That’s when the interesting work began.

On one hand the spirit of our church – which includes trust in our own rightness, reliance on paper resolutions and Council motions to change the world, belief in our self-evident goodness of heart, and a sense of ourselves as the good guys – was probably yelling out from the back of the room, “What’s going on here?  We did what we wanted to do, even got what we needed.  Now why not go home and just leave well enough alone?”

On the other hand, up at the front with nothing but God’s love for all people in his eyes and in his heart, Jesus says, “Be quiet!  Come out of them, you ungodly spirit, and be gone!  Let these people be free to follow the new and more godly ways being opened up for them.”

And in the midst of that spiritual struggle, the choice is ours – whether to let the unclean spirit go, and let ourselves be free of it, or not.

For thirty-five years the United Church has been living into its choice to be free to follow the way of God, and to start living the kingdom of God into the life of the world.  And this year our Church Council, after a few years of talking about it, is choosing to include in our church’s program, some learning around First Nations’ identity and history, our historical relations with First Nations in our area, current attitudes we might be living out, and what this might mean for our life as a church.

It’s a matter of welcoming Jesus into our midst, and opening ourselves to what he shows about God’s way of being in the world today, and what it means to be God’s people.  And if it’s more than we bargained for, that’s when things get interesting, and especially life-giving.

*  *  *

Have you ever found in your life that more than giving you what want, God sometimes gives you what you need ... and that what you need sometimes is more than you bargained for?  

If so, give thanks.  It may be that you're on the cusp of the kingdom of God.

 

Hymn:  Silence, Frenzied, Unclean Spirit (lyrics by Thomas H. Troeger, 1984)

 

“Silence, frenzied, unclean spirit!” cried God’s healing Holy One.

“Cease your ranting!  Flesh can’t bear it.  Flee as night before the sun.”

At Christ’s words the demon trembled, from its victim madly rushed,

while the crowd that was assembled stood in wonder, stunned and hushed.

 

Lord, the demons still are thriving in the gray cells of our mind:

tyrant voices, shrill and driving, twisted thoughts that grip and bind,

doubts that stir the heart to panic, fears distorting reason’s sight,

guilt that makes our loving frantic, dreams that cloud the soul with fright.

 

Silence, Lord, the unclean spirit in our mind and heart;

speak your word that when we hear it, all our demons shall depart.

Clear our thought and calm our feeling; still the fractures, warring soul.

By the power of your healing, make us faithful, true and whole.