Sunday, September 27, 2015

Not Enough Water

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September 27, 2015
Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ 3But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ 4So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ 5The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
Sermon: “Not Enough Water”

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip.  After a good meal, they layed down for the night and went to sleep.  Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.  Holmes said: “Watson, look up and tell me what you see.”

Watson said: “I see a fantastic panorama of countless stars.”

Holmes: “And what does that tell you?”

Watson pondered for a moment: “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.  Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.  Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.  Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant.  Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.”
“Why? – What does it tell you, Holmes?”

Holmes was silent for a moment then spoke: “Someone has stolen our tent.”

Camping, in my book, is either really wonderful, or really, really not.  The latter was the experience of the people of Israel in Exodus.  This group – mentioned in scripture as being 600,000 men plus women and children – had made it out of Egypt led by Moses and one fantastic walking stick.  Their last camping spot in the wilderness of Sin wasn't so great.  The name “Sin” meant…dirt, and there was no food.  But Yahweh, always keeping the covenant, took care of that and gave them some nutritional manna (which in Hebrew means literally “what is it?”). 

Now, Moses has led them to a place called Rephidim, which in Hebrew means. . . to decline, lose heart and sink down.  Wonderful.  The people are thirsty from their journey and quickly realize that there's no water to be found.  So they start fighting amongst themselves and with Moses.  Did you know the biggest cause of all wars in the world isn't oil, but water?  So the Israelites are warring with each other and demand water from Moses, who tells them not to test God, which makes them a little . . . testy. 

Moses then cries out to God – and this word is important, he's not just whining a little.  This crying out is the same word used to describe Abel's blood crying out from the ground after his brother Cain killed him.  It's used to describe Israel's cry to Yahweh for help when faced with the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptians behind them.  This is mortal crying out because the people are mortally thirsty and so angry about it they're ready to kill Moses. 

So God hears this cry of Moses and responds, saying: “Take that great staff I gave you and a few elders and head to the rock at Horeb.  I'll be there waiting for you.  You know the place, it's where I first called you from the burning bush and where I made the covenant with my people.”  (It's also where Moses would later receive the 10 Commandments.)  Moses goes and is commanded to strike the rock and water flows out of it for the people to drink. 

The place is then named Massah and Meribah, which means “quarrel and strife” (so another good name for a camping destination).  Our passage concludes with the question posed by the people of Israel in their thirst: “Is the Lord among us or not?”

It really is a provocative question.  Despite all God has done for them in the past (including the very recent past), the Israelites find themselves in their worst wilderness experience yet.  They know God made a covenant to be their God and that God liberated them from slavery and promises them a land of their own.  But today?  Today, they are tired.  Today, they are thirsty.  Today, they are not really feeling all that connected with God or this journey God has called them to. 

We might relate to this at times.  And I think the power of this text lies in actually voicing that question: Is the Lord among us . . . or not?  If we believe the answer is no, then despair can set in pretty quickly.  It seems like the suffering we see and feel is all there is.  It seems that we are powerless to make an impact.  It seems like life is nothing more than appointment after appointment, stressful moment after stressful moment. 

But IF we believe the answer to that question is yes, that God is indeed among us, we are called to see the world and our lives very differently.  We believe that what we see is not all there is – that God's Spirit is not yet done re-creating this world into a community of justice and peace and using us in the process.  We believe that even the smallest act of kindness can profoundly change a life, even ours.  We believe that life is intricately woven together by our Creator and is a gift to be cherished, on good days and bad.

As Christians, we do believe these things (perhaps some days more than others). We claim that in Jesus Christ, our Lord is indeed among us, but how can we see this?  Where is God in vitriolic politics, in habitual violence in the world, in greed, hatred and fear, in materialism, in illness?  If God is incarnate – with us – in our places of wilderness, why don't we see this reality every day?  Where's the water in the desert?  Where are all the miracles?

Walt Whitman answers this question through his poem, simply titled “Miracles.”  I'd like to share it with you.
WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or to the soiree--or to the opera,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old
woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

It might seem idealistic or disconnected from suffering in the world to embrace miracles as this poem does.  But I don't think it is.  I think we have something to learn from this Walt about changing our perspective on God's work in the world.  We can learn that maybe we're too busy fixating on our thirst, rubbing dry sand through our hands, and feeling as if our journey with God is nothing like what we expected, to see that miracles are happening all around us.  To see that we are in fact capable of bringing miracles to others.  Miracles that do not often make the news but every single day change the lives of people all over the world, like the first drop of clean water in the desert.

That even in the desert of civil war and fleeing refugees, people are looking after each other and sharing what little they have with one other.  That even in our country often defined and polarized by politics, people are radically generous with one another and able to bridge all kinds of difference to show love.  That even in illness, loss or uncertainty, people find resilience, courage and faith where they least expect them to be. 

These are miracles, God watering bitter days with holy hope. 

They remind us of God's promises that no wilderness or thirst can diminish: that we belong to God and each other, that we are created good and called to be a part of God's mission in this world, and that God will never, ever leave us. 


And so to the valid question asked by the people of Israel: Is the Lord among us or not?  I say, yes.  But that's not all.  Just as God is with us, guiding us on an unknown journey, so are we with each other.  And, like Holmes and Watson, that is exactly where we need to be.  Amen.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Too Much Water

Image Source (that one time Russell Crowe showed up in the OT)

September 20, 2015
Genesis 7:6-8:3

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. 7 And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark, 14 they and every wild animal of every kind, and all domestic animals of every kind, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every bird of every kind—every bird, every winged creature. 15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16 And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in.
17 The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20 the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; 22 everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 God blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.
1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; 2 the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, 3 and the waters gradually receded from the earth.


Sermon:  Too Much Water

What wild person picks Noah and the flood to preach on?  Ah, right, me.  Perhaps there’s a reason the PW Study left it out of their water series.  But I couldn’t, just couldn’t, preach a water sermon series with out the Lord saying to Noah “there’s gonna be a floody-floody.”

We know this as a children’s story from the Bible.  Which, honestly, is more than a little horrifying.  Sure, if you focus on that ark, on the family safe inside, on all those cute animals crammed in, on that lovely big, bright rainbow, it’s a charming story.  But what about everyone else?

What about those labeled “wicked” who perished in that flood, along with their children?  What about the animals who weren’t paired off and spared?  Surely they weren’t wicked?  Why did they deserve God wrath?

No, this is not a cute story, and I’m not sure it’s one we should teach our children until they’re much older.  It sounds to me like divine capital punishment – God killing creation for killing each other.  This God seems to have an anger management problem!  This God doesn’t seem anything like the God I know.

So, we have some choices to make, friends.  We can approach this troubling text the dualistic way, popularized in the second century by a fellow name Marcion.  We would claim that the God of the Old Testament was the Big Bad Wolf, while the God of the New Testament was a cuddly kitten.  Nope, that doesn’t fly with monotheism. 

We can approach this using traditional theological means: take the text at face value, and then draw truth from it, immediately applying that truth to our lives and the world, whether the shoe fits or not.  This is how the church has usually read this text with the simplistic meaning of “People were bad.  A few were good.  God is good.  God punished bad people, and saved good ones.”  Except of course that we are all a jumbled mix of badness and goodness, and no one is entirely one or the other.

Or we can take a third approach, one growing in popularity thanks to some fella named Francis who’s apparently kind of a big deal, who practices it publicly.  That approach is the one of liberation theology, and it grows out of Latin America, centering around the poor, oppressed and silenced.  Liberation theology doesn’t start with a Bible passage.

It starts with us.  First, we name our reality.  What’s going on with us?  With the world?  With you? 

Think for a minute: what does the world look like right now for you?  Maybe you’re feeling heavy today, trying to keep it together because you are sick.

Maybe you’re living in some past mistake or regret you can’t shake, and every day feels like a struggle to find joy and freedom.

Maybe you’re overwhelmed by mental illness in your family, and feel helpless to do something about it.

Maybe you can’t remember what you had for breakfast, or the name of your childhood pet and the world seems a scary place, the future feels threatening.

Maybe you’re heartbroken over Syrian refugees, over children orphaned, over children forced to become soldiers.

Maybe you just don’t really feel anything – and haven’t for years.

Take a minute, and to yourself, quietly name your reality today.

Now, we do the work of liberation theology – a theology meant to set the world free by God’s word.  Let’s take that place where we are, and put it in conversation with the word of God, in particular the story of Noah, until we hear the Spirit speak to us.

This type of theology means we can’t forget where we really are, what we’re really going through, what the world is going through.  We can’t find truth in this holy text unless it speaks truth into our particular context.

After lots of fighting with this text and my context this week, I’ve discovered something I think is radically true, that might just be what the Spirit has to say to where you are today.  This was guided by a professor at my seminary, Walter Brueggemann (whose words you can find in our little church library, by the way).  Are you ready for that radical truth?  Here it is:  God changed after that flood.

I told you it was a radical truth!  God changed.  Brueggemann puts it better than I ever could, so I’ll let him:

Can God change his mind?  Can God abandon the world which God has so joyously created?  That is the central question for Israel.  Many people hold a view of God as unchanging and indifferent to anything going on in the world, as though God were a plastic, fixed entity.  But Israel’s God is fully a person who hurts and celebrates, responds and acts in remarkable freedom.  God is not captive of old resolves.  God is as fresh and new in relation to creation as God calls us to be.  God can change God’s mind, so that God can abandon what he has made; and God can rescue that which he has condemned.

God resolves to punish the guilty.  But that has now been changed.  The one-to-one connection to guilt and punishment is broken.  God is postured differently.  From the perspective of this narrative, there may be death and destruction.  Evil has not been eradicated from creation.  But we are now assured that these are not rooted in the anger or rejection of God.  The relation of creator to creature is no longer in a scheme of retribution.  Because of a revolution in the heart of God, that relation is now based on unqualified grace.

The telling of the story must focus on that surprising and irreversible turn.  That is the substance of the gospel.  The God who rules over us has turned toward us in a new way.  God remembered Noah.  God remembered.

Friends, this is unbelievably good news--gospel!  It means that, yes, perhaps Noah tells the story of a God who used the suffering of creation as punishment for sin.  But more importantly, it tells the story of the last time God ever did that.  God chose to behave differently towards humanity from that day onwards! Even to the point of a cross, suffering on our behalf.  So back to our important context:

This means that illnesses, sadness, loneliness, tragedy, accidents, apathy, fear, sorrow, refugee crises, poverty and any other trial we can imagine are not rooted in the anger or rejection of God.  They happen.  The world is broken.  But that doesn’t mean God brings them upon us in anger.  Which means God doesn’t bring them upon us to teach us a lesson, either.  They happen.  Life happens.  But in the midst of it all, God whose heart changed in those flood waters, remembers us. 

If that’s not a liberating truth, I don’t know what is.  God remembers us.  We forget God, we forget our neighbor, we forget even our true selves, again and again and again.  But God remembers us – every one of us --, again and again and again.  The waters may rise, but they won’t destroy everything.  The flood may come, but it won’t be sent by an angry, vindictive God.  And eventually, finally, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, a dove of peace will return and we will be safe in the care of the God who has promised (him or herself as much as us) never, ever to forget us.    

Thanks be to the Creator who chooses grace, to the Christ who suffers with us still and to the Spirit who bears life, like a sprig of fresh hope over fearful waters.  Amen.



Sunday, September 13, 2015

Waters of Life

Image Source
September 13, 2015 -- Rally Day!
Genesis 1:1-10, 20-22, 26-28

 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

20 And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”


Sermon:

Fifteen years ago, I packed a suitcase that weighed more than I did and headed out on an adventure with people I didn’t know well to Honduras.  I found myself overwhelmed as we circled down, down, down, landing in the valley that was the city of Tegucigalpa.  We were there for a week-long mission trip, and to say it was life-changing for me would be a vast understatement. 

They say smell is the strongest sense of memory we have, and I believe it, because when I think back of my time in Honduras, I remember the smell of sweet pineapple, the smell of dirt as we played duck-duck goose with laughing children, kicking up dust as we ran.  I remember the smell of warm tortillas, fresh off a grill by expert hands.  But mostly, I remember the smell of the rain.  Every evening like clockwork, it started raining at 9 p.m.  As that rain pounded the tin roof of our cabin, the world surrendered to it.  Generators went quiet, so the lights went out.  All there was to do was lay on your bunk, smelling the meeting of water and earth, listening to the cadence of life.

Because water is life, of course.  I studied Bioenvironmental Science in college because a priest in Honduras on that trip reminded us of that, saying it wasn’t enough to meet people’s spiritual needs, we had to also meet their physical needs, like ensuring that every child on this planet has clean water to drink.  I learned in my studies that most fundamental truth: water is the only thing necessary for any life to exist.  Not air (not pulled pork), but water. 

Perhaps that’s why in Genesis it all begins with water.  Before God created anything, there was chaos and darkness.  But there was also water, and the Spirit or Breath or Wind of God danced over that surface.  So you see, Creation in Genesis and scientific accounts might not compete as we often assume: life begins with water. 
Debie Thomas reminds us of what this creation account in Genesis was designed to do, saying,

“Genesis is…an origin story — the origin story of humankind — and as such, it offers us surprisingly rich soil in which to root our identities.  Neither history nor science as today's scholars understand those disciplines, the first chapter of Genesis is poetry, hymn, doxology, and myth. If we in the postmodern world struggle to see truth in those art forms, it is not because Scripture is lying. It is because our post-Enlightenment imaginations are impoverished. To call the creation story true is not to quibble with science; it is to probe deeper than any scientific endeavor can take us. It is to acknowledge who we truly are and where we really come from. It is to affirm, by faith, the reality of a good God, a good world, and a beloved humanity.”

We learn from Genesis who we are, and where we come from.   Who we are is a good creation.  We come from os a good God, the One who wove creation together by first hovering over waters.  Perhaps that’s why we have such a connection to water, being about 60% water ourselves. 

I wonder, can you remember your most significant encounter with water?  Perhaps, like me, it was the comfort of rain, making you feel at home in a strange place.  Perhaps it was water, sweetened with sugar and spritzed with lemons, enjoyed on your grandmother’s porch as a child.  Perhaps it was the salty tears that flowed, unbidden, when you lost the most precious person you know.  Perhaps it was the horror of water, when floods came, or a wave threatened to overtake you as a child, or a boat capsized.  As Norman McLean wrote in that wonderful story of fly-fishing in Montana, A River Runs Through It, we are “haunted by waters.”

Water is life.  In God’s wisdom, it turns out water also tells us the story of life with God in scripture.  For the next seven weeks, we enter into that story.  We find it begins and ends with waters of life in Genesis and Revelation.  We travel waters of fear and sorrow with Noah, we feel the sand in our throats with those thirsty Israelites in the desert, demanding a drop of hope from Moses.  We dare to dream the wild vision of Amos, where justice flows down like waters, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.  We gather in the crowd by the River Jordan as Jesus is baptized with water and flame, opposites that are in perfect harmony, like divinity and humanity.  Our deepest doubts tip-toe on troubled waters with Peter, fearful that we might be consumed by them at any moment, and sinking, only to have Jesus lift our head above the surface once more. 

We who have come from water, who are made of water, journey together, searching the seas and the puddles for signs of life.  We will be troubled.  We will be refreshed.  We will remember the simplicity of this life, and we will trust God it its complexity.

Wendell Barry, that great poet of nature, captures our relationship with water so well, in his poem of that name.

I was born in a drouth year.  That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy’s soul. 
Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Our souls are thirsty, friends.  We have the fear of dust in our mouths.  We are tired, we have cancer, we have anxieties, we have pressure and criticism, we have doubt and we have anger, we have financial worries, we have racial tension and political bullying, we have too little rest, too little refreshment.  We are dry people, whose thirst is praise. 

So, let’s journey together through the waters of scripture, remembering from where we come and where the currents of God’s grace are flowing, guiding us further downstream, on a path not of our own making.  Let’s turn off the lights, quiet our worried minds, lay down in the care of a good Creator, and listen to the rain, until our cup runneth over.  Amen.