Friday, March 15, 2024

Lent 5: The New Covenant

 

It is said that when the sculptor Michelangelo was asked, 

“How did you sculpt the Statue of David?”

            He replied: “I simply chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

            And for this season of Lent I’ve been doing something similar. Chipping away at our ideas about the Creator/Creation relationship, until all that remains is the “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, 
the New Covenant we Christians describe as God’s relationship with the world, 
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

            I’ve been chipping away by saying what God’s covenant is not
so that we can see what God’s covenant is.

            In the first four weeks, I let you all know that:

-God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

-God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

-God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

-God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

            Now, finally, I want you all to know that:

-God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, 
but continually being drawn into internalizedintentionalrenewed relationship.

 

Prayer

            God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, 
but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.

 

            Jeremiah writes to a people in exile
—off in Babylon, kidnapped there
an experience not unlike the Exodus in Egypt, 
that the 10 commandments—the 10 words—addressed.

            To the Exiles, all those promises of God
—they seem empty, they seem exhausted, at an end; 
it seemed like God has betrayed God’s people! 
The people fell short and God had cut them loose.

            And like Moses before him, Jeremiah offers hope to a hopeless people
—things didn’t work out because our relationship with God depended on:
our own willpower, 
our own comprehension 
our own abilities…

            Not next time, Jeremiah writes
—it shall be a relationship upheld by God! 
God drawing people to God’s-self. 
A relationship that is inside you, 
that is not haphazard but intentional, 
a relationship that is renewed by God!

            And the big question
—at least one of you have asked me about this before
when? When will such a thing happen? 
Is this something we wait for, 
or has it already occurred? 
If this is the Christian covenant, how is it fulfilled? 
And this is my answer—though it might seem to simple… In Christ Alone!

            In Christ, there is a new relationship with God. 
In Christ, an event like escape from Egypt. 
In Christ, the Law incarnate, and the Gospel too (just look how people respond to their encounters with Jesus). 
In Christ, the Spirit within our hearts and lived out in our communities. 
In Christ, God among God’s people. 
In Christ, we know the LORD—the invisible God made visible. 
In Christ, we find forgiveness and God forgets all guilt.

 

            Remember that statue of David I’ve been telling you about… 
well, Michelangelo might have made a David, 
but what I’ve been sculpting for you all, 
this covenant of God… 
it is the image of Christ.
            If I’ve done my job, we ought to say like those Greeks in today’s Gospel, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus!”
Look to the one who dies, and is a seed, 
planted so that we might all taste of the fruit of this relationship
—we are all continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship

 

Do you wish to see Jesus?
            Lookthere on the cross
—it is like Noah and God’s Rainbow
—a war monument, to peace
An intentional shift of divinely sanctioned violence into the compassion of Christ!

Do you wish to see Jesus?
            Look, at him, his cry of dereliction somehow yet tinged with trust… 
zeal and righteousness are no longer a thing to boast about as Paul warns us, 
instead being held by hope is the only thing that matters
—a hope in the face of death on a cross, 
a hope for the impossible life that comes out of death! 
A daily dying and rising! 
God’s ongoing work with me, in me
God’s ongoing accompaniment of God’s people—to the end and beyond the end! 
That’s the only game in town! 
The only thing worth putting your trust in.

 

Do you wish to see Jesus?
            Look, the Passover Lamb, behold the Lamb of God! 
Behold this gift, freedom from death and freedom for a life with him!
The Spirit of Christ ushering us into a new and renewed life
a people, caring for community in word and deed
—called to be the Church
—a people of ongoing death and resurrection!

 

Do you wish to see Jesus?
            Look, a ripped curtain in the Holy of Holies, 
the division between the sacred and the profane itself divided, 
torn open like Baptism! God is on the loose! 
All the preparations of Lent, leading to the ultimate down story
—buried to bear fruit.
the ultimate because/therefore story
because Christ is lifted up on the cross, therefore he is drawing us all to himself.
the despairing love of the cross, 
love on the cross, 
God among us, despairing with us
—between dying thieves, longing for us, 
this God, comes alongside you and me. 

 

            Yes, peace, hope, freedom, life—that is what remains, 
that is the relationship with God and this world God so loves. 
That is the New Covenant.

 

-God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, 
but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship. Amen.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Lent 4: Our Whole Life a Gift from God



            It is said that when the sculptor Michelangelo was asked, 
“How did you sculpt the Statue of David?”

            He replied: “I simply chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

            And for this season of Lent I’m doing something similar. I’m chipping away at our ideas about the Creator/Creation relationship, until all that remains is the “New Covenant”that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, 
the New Covenant we Christians describe as God’s relationship with the world, 
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

            I’ll be chipping away by saying what God’s covenant is not
so that we can see what God’s covenant is.

 

            In the first three weeks, I let you all know that:

1.            -God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

2.            -God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

3.            -God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

            And today I’ll be preaching on the subject:

-God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.
            Then next week I’ll put it all together by insisting that:

-God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, 
but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.

 

Let us pray

            God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

            There are all kinds of stories we tell about ourselves and about God…
 and they have consequences.

            Sometimes we see ourselves as employees of heaven
—we do the will of God, and God gives us our just payment—our wages.

            We tell the tale of “up religion.” 
That life, is a sort of ladder 
and that the goal is the storming of heaven
—or perhaps just getting there by and by.

            We take our cues from how much of the world around us works, 
and sing an if/then song. 
“If I do X, Y, or Z, then God will surely love me!”

            Or perhaps we understand the faith as a behavior management program
—I take my child to church so he’ll behave, 
this is where we learn morals.

            But all these metaphors for the divine human relationship start off on the wrong foot,
they make the assumption that the faith is all about us… 
when it’s all about Jes-us.

            Our faith in Jesus, not Jesus’ faithfulness.

            When Righteousness belly button gazes, 
it becomes self-righteousness… 
And self-righteousness is the enemy of love.
            There is a reason Paul is always warning about Boasting,
If you boast, you need to be better than someone else
—need to put yourself ahead of another, 
either by pushing yourself beyond your own capacity,
or by tripping other people up… 
putting them on pedestals and then chipping away at the base.

             As religious story teller Brene Brown writes, “Self-righteousness starts with the belief that I’m better than other people and it always ends with me being my very worst and thinking, I’m not enough.”

 

            Yes, Up religion and If/Then thinking
they leads to inflated expectations and broken relationships… 
Thank God God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

            Up religion is wrong religion
—if we study our scriptures you’ll notice God is always coming down
            Jacob doesn’t climb up his famed ladder, 
angels come down
            The up oriented heaven storming tower of Babel falls
but the Holy Spirit falling upon the people at Pentecost was a celebrated event. 

            John’s Gospel continually affirms that the invisible God made Visible comes down,
so that we might be lifted up
drawn into relationship with the God who meets us in Jesus Christ.

 

            If/Then ain’t our song, 
ours is a Because/Therefore melody
—Because God loves the world, 
therefore he gave his son, 
because he gave his son, 
therefore we may have eternal life!

 

            For some people, the Christian faith as a moral program (finally a little control in an uncontrollable world) feels like hope… until it doesn’t. That’s just asking for religious burn-out, or sky high hypocrisy.
            Ongoing self-improvement isn’t a matter of will-power, otherwise everyone would be angels. 
            Real change tends to come through the depths of despair
—hitting rock bottom, 
or by being struck by love, 
that holy aha! 
Aha! I’m loved… what do I get to do now? 
            That’s not our doing
—that’s the Spirit at work!

 

            This gift from God, that we read about in Ephesians, 
is something beyond morality
it is about mortality
—our whole life, 
saved all the way through
a way of life
—a disposition of awe! 
Life lived in response to God’s grace.

            As Luther writes: 
“God receives none but those who are forsaken, 
restores health to none but those who are sick, 
gives sight to none but the blind, 
and life to none but the dead. 
He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, 
nor wisdom to any but fools. 
In short: He has mercy on none but the wretched 
and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”

 

            In some ways I’m lucky, I have a really solid personal experience of what it means that all of this is a gift from God! 
I have a story truly close to my heart to remind myself (and believe me there are plenty of times where I have to remind myself), a story that reminds me of God’s goodness and mercy.

When I was first born, I turned blue. It turned out I had a hole between two of the chambers of my heart, and the main valve wasn’t working right, (not too long ago this was a death sentence). 
So they needed to operate, and beforehand, my parents handed me over to a chaplain to baptized me, just in case.

Just in case, turned, for me, into something amazing. 
I received an experience of radical grace, 
my whole life a gift, 
just as the doctors fixing my heart and saving my life is a gift.

get to live a life in response to God’s goodness, 
assured that God is loving, I can love. 
I get to live into the life of the Spirit given to me that day 40 some years ago. 
And not only that, 
there is a whole community dedicated to just such a life, the Church, the Body of Christ. 
I am, on account of my baptism, a member of the body of Christ! 

I thank God for that chain-smoking chaplain my parents passed their little blue newborn to. 
I thank God for both the physical and spiritual life I’ve received, sort of in tandem, 
baptism and surgery, 
both immeasurably precious gifts. 
I thank God for each day I get to live, in light of grace and through the power of the Spirit. 
I thank God that I have a community of faith, born out of this baptized life, 
living into it together as best we all can. 

 

God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God. 

Thanks be to God! Amen.


Thursday, February 29, 2024

Lent 3: Freedom in Community


             We’re in the middle of a sermon series, so at this point you’re probably getting tired of me telling the story, but here we go…

It is said that when the sculptor Michelangelo was asked, 
“How did you sculpt such a magnificent masterpiece?” regarding his statue of David, 
he replied: “I chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

            And for this season of Lent I’m doing something of the same
—chipping away at our conceptions of the Creator/Creation relationship, 
until all that remains is the “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, 
the New Covenant we Christians describe as God’s relationship with the world, 
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

            I’ll be doing this by describing what God’s covenant is not, and what God’s covenant is.

 

            In the first two weeks, I let you all know that:

1.              God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

2.              God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

 

            And today, I want you all to know that:

3.              God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

            Then the final two weeks we’ll see how:

4.         God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

5.         God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.

 

Prayer

            God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

 

            Imagine, if Pharaoh had won! If he had withstood the plagues and recaptured the Israelites.

            Imagine the harsh terms of surrender... as it was, his relationship to the Israelites was excessively cruel. 

 

            Pharaoh would elevate himself above them to an even greater extent than he already had, he would be a self-styled god-king.

            As the beginning of Exodus tells us, he did not know them, nor did he desire to… 
they were at best nameless people
—numbers nothing more. 

            Slaves—forced to work non-stop, 
providing daily quotas under worse and worse conditions, no moment for rest.

            The innumerable enslaved, tossed aside when used up
“kill the baby boys so they don’t become too numerous
,” he had already ordered.

            Lead them along with lies
—sure we’ll let you go worship… 
sure we’ll let you go… surely not! 
His promises were continually repealed.

            Repealed because of his suspicions… he just knew their intentions
—he knew that if he gave them an inch, they would desert, or turn traitor.

 

            Now here’s the weird thing—there is a tendency to confuse Pharaoh’s character, as I’ve laid out, with God’s… 
When many people describe God
—especially the God who provided the 10 commandments
—they often describe God as a: 
haughty, disinterested, relentlessly vengeful, lying, suspicious sovereign… 
it’s almost like Pharaoh actually won!

            But I know that’s not the case, 
because God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

 

            Like all good tyrants, Pharaoh would impose commands, stiffly enforced… 
but, as our Jewish siblings remind us from time to time, God offers the 10 Words
not as Commandments, but as a gift, a blessing even… 

            A blessing of relationship
—aids to assist in loving God and Neighbor
—a gift from “the LORD Your God.” 
An assumption of a prior and ongoing relationship between God and you all... us all.

            

            A tyrant would create statues and monuments to self
—idols little and big strewn throughout their empire as means of control, 
-instead, a Word protecting against such things, the absolute relativizing of Idols
shrinking them all down to size, 
releasing them back into the wild, as just another thing in creation
—redeemed from their enslaving power.

 

            A tyrant would hide their name behind pomp, and not acknowledge their subjects, 
-instead, we are called by name and invited to lift up pleas and praise to the LORD our God, who is our loving parent.

 

            A tyrant would warp time itself to their advantage
—take an example from the Soviet Union
—early on, they created a 5-day week and gave each citizen one of 5 days as a day of rest, 
in order to ensure people could not gather together
—it weakened social cohesion and fostered exploitable divisions
(in fact, some have suggested that AI generated scheduling of work in many sectors is having similar effects here in America)…

-Instead God invites the Israelites into a day free from work for all
—where divisions might lessen and understanding might increase, 
as Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book, “The Practice of Saying No”:

“Sabbath suspends our subtle and not so subtle ways of dominating one another—when a Walmart cashier and a bank president are both lying on a picnic blanket at the park, you can’t tell them apart.”
…Sabbath must be for everyone, or it is for no one.

            

            A tyrant would turn child against parent and parent against child
—think of the Hitler-Youth in Germany or the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution…

-Not so, God’s Word to family: instead honor
after all, it is from our parents and all those who raise us,
 that we learn what is dangerous and what is safe. 
It is from them that we establish, or don’t establish, a sense of love and trust.

         We’re like little sponges and what we sop up will enter into our lifeblood for the rest of our lives
—our basis for fear, love, and trust, are established in childhood.

         For good and ill, all authority figures shape our views of God
—thus we ought to not only honor them, but also pray that they, while filled with foibles and folly, might reflect, on occasion at least, the one true authority, the one true parent of us all
—that they might reflect at least a little of God’s authority, 
which is found in humility and weakness.

 

            A tyrant creates arbitrary, inconsistent, and abstract rules designed to ding you, 
so you are always on the alert, always owe them something, 
because you messed up, and they can now hold it over you, forever

-Not so these Words about everything from Murder to False Witness… 
no, they are words to help order life for these folks now freed, 
caught in the tension between community and autonomy, 
responsibility and freedom,
freedom from and freedom for…

            These words etch out the contours a community 
where people are life-giving and build each other up, 
are faithful and truthful.

 

            Finally, as Orwell warned us, a tyrant does not stop with our body, 
but seeks to stifle our soul as well, “Thought Crime” the phrase he coined in his book 1984.

-Not so God, these words about coveting—these matters of the heart, 
they free us from jealousy and resentment, for contentment and harmony.

 

            This might feel a little melodramatic or a bit belabored, 
comparing Tyranny to Divinity, 
but I assure you it is for our good, 
and that of our neighbors, as well
—after all, how we think about God shapes how we act toward other people, 
and if we replace God with Pharaoh… 
God help us... God help them.

            But, if we let God’s Words capture our hearts
—then we can imagine a community released from its idols, 
knowing God by name, 
abiding in rest, liberation and holiness, 
caring for one another in deed and intentions of the heart.

 

            Dear faithful siblings, God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community. Amen.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Lent 2: God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope



                 
 As I told you all last week, there is a story that the sculptor Michelangelo presented his statue of David and was asked, “How did you ever sculpt such a magnificent masterpiece?”

                  He replied, “I just chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

                  And I’m doing something similar for this season of Lent
—I’m chipping away ways of understanding the Creator’s relationship with the Creation, 
until all that remains is the “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, 
the New Covenant we Christians describe as God’s relationship with the world, 
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

                  I’ll be doing this by describing what God’s covenant is not, and what God’s covenant is.

                  Last week I let you all know that:

1.              God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

Today I’ll be preaching about how:

2.              God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

From there I’ll show you how:

3.              God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

4.              God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

5.              God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.

Prayer

 

                  God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

                  Whenever we read an Epistle of Paul
—one of his letters
—we need to remember who he is, and who he was.

                  Paul was a Zealot. When it came to questions of “Righteousness” being in continual community with God and God’s people
—Paul had a proof text. 
In fact, folk who called themselves Zealots named themselves after this particular verse in the bible.

                  In Numbers 25 there is an awful scene where one of Aaron’s grandkids, Phineas, sees an Israelite and a non-Israelite together as a couple, 
and he rushes them with a spear and stabs them both through, 
like a kabab
This action is commended as being Zealous for the Lord.

                  For Paul and his fellow Zealots, there was a righteousness to separation. There is what we might call, a church-within-a-church phenomena, going on.
—are you righteous enough
Separate enough
Who is abiding by the rules in a way that we know they are insiders?

                  So, when Paul hears of the People of the Way
—communities of Jews and non-Jews jointly proclaiming that Jesus, who died upon a cross, is Lord, the anointed, the centerpiece of how God is in relationship with the world
—and he is incensed!

                  It is all wrong. 
Messiahs don’t get crucified
—there is literally a proof text in scripture that says those who die upon a tree are accursed…

                  God certainly doesn’t work outside the rules; 
God doesn’t color outside the lines! 
Lines of separation, 
clear boundaries and impermeable community.
A hard and fast definition of who is in and who is out, and mechanisms to regulate that, are necessary.

                  And even if there is some permeability, people can come in, 
they must do so as second class citizens
—Godfearers in the New Testament,
unless and until they conform in total.

                  After all, it’s a family, and there are clear lines in family trees
—who is in and who is out is easy to determine! 
There ought not be cousins who aren’t ACTUALLY cousins, 
surely you wouldn’t dream of calling family friends who care for your kids sometimes, aunts or uncles, unless they’re blood relatives.

                  Yes, clear lines, 
back to Phineas, Aaron, Moses, 
Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham
—all the way back, Noah, Adam
—a clear cut line of who is in and who is out.

 

                  Except… God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

                  If you’ve read your bible, 
or just been a human in the world and in community, 
you know life is always a kind of holy blend of many things… 
                  For example, Moses’ family is a mixed-race family, and when Aaron condemns him for it, 
God responds by giving Aaron leprosy. 
                  Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, Noah, Adam
—all have winding and strange family trees… 
not clear cut the way Paul once envisioned in his Zealous simplicity.

                  Those rules of who is in and who is out
—they are only ever true, until they’re not
                  Moabites are abominations before God
—then Ruth comes along.
                  Samaritans are right out… 
until Jesus uplifts them with his holy story.
                  Eunuchs are uniquely excluded from the community of God…
then Phillip goes and baptizes one of ‘em!

 

                  Paul, when he is confronted by the risen Christ on the Road to Damascus, 
has to re-think everything
—the curse of the cross being a blessing, 
And his understanding of zeal and righteousness is rejected…

                  He goes back to scripture, and sees that back in chapter 15 of Genesis 
God had already formalized his relationship with Abraham… 
not after he was circumcised… 
Faith preceded the boundary marking rule about of circumcision 
and his descendants are of many nations. 
                  Abraham believes God and it is reckoned to him as righteousness… 
Not stabbing people through who were of different nationalities, ethnicities, and religions… no! 
Paul realizes—before that kind of zeal ever existed, 
Abraham was made right with God and in community via faith!

                  To spell Paul’s whole formula out plainly to you all, here it is:

God covers our sin, not with cultural markers, 
but based on trust in God’s promises of life
—we’re included because we trust Christ’s resurrection.

                  Did you hear that? Trust!
—there are a few ways to translate the Greek word Pisteo
—Faith (which we tend to lodge in our heart) 
or Belief (which is firmly a head game) 
or Trust (which holds the previous two in tension, and points to the relational nature of what Paul is getting at).

                  We trust in a hope that is both beyond and upon hope, as we normally would mean it… 
Beyond hope… like Abram and Sarai
—barren and sterile, the first and last of a new nation, 
a branch upshot and withered, 
an inheritance passed on to a nameless servant.
Upon hope… Abraham and Sarah
—new names, for ancestors and multitudes. 
A new nation… many of them…
—laugh if you want to, that which is withered will be fruitful!

                  If you’ve ever read any Charles Dickens you know he’s downright obsessed with inheritance
—there is always some orphan or another utterly abandoned, beyond hope… 
only to find, in the most pitiable hopeless moment, 
she is the heir, 
he has a generous benefactor
upon hope they can continue in a new and wonderful relationship, 
there is “not so much as a shadow of another parting” looming in the future!

 

                  Who is the heir of Abraham—only a well curated line, zealously guarded? No! 
Those who hope beyond hope, 
and that hope is built upon hope
—upon God’s gracious acts for us… 
upon the God who creates out of Nothing and Chaos, 
the God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead!
                  Truly those who trust God with a hope like that… 
truly they too are heirs!

God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.
Amen.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Not a Weapon of War, but Proclamation of Peace



          There is an apocryphal story about the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo; when he first presented the statue of David to a group, they asked him, “How did you ever sculpt such a magnificent masterpiece?”

         To which he replied, “All I did was chip away everything that didn’t look like David.”

         And our lessons this Lent having to do with Covenants, do something of the same
—they chip away at everything that has to do with God’s relationship with Humanity, the Earth, and all of Creation
—until all that remains is that famed “New Covenant” that the Prophet Jeremiah writes about, that we Christians describe as the magnificent relationship between Creator and Creature, 
established by God through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

         For these five Sundays in Lent, we’ll be chipping away at assumptions and affirming right imaginings, 
until we can see this Good News of God from many angles
see what our Relationship with God is, and isn’t. 
What God’s Covenant is not… and is… 
(So here’s what we’re going to be doing for the next five Sundays)

1.      God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

2.      God’s Covenant is not exclusionary rules, but trust permeated by hope.

3.      God’s Covenant is not Diktats to the Enslaved, but Freedom in Community.

4.      God’s Covenant is not Wages for Human Work, but Our Whole Life, a Gift from God.

5.      God’s Covenant is not a fragile, scattered, shattered relationship, but continually being drawn into internalized, intentional, renewed relationship.

         Let us pray

 

         God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

         A surface level reading of Genesis points us to an awful story, echoing Pagan Myths (Gilgamesh and the like) that this story is told in order to neutralize and relativize—stories of a war against humanity—an attempt to kill us all.

         It is a war like any war—Regional, worldwide, cold, civil, or otherwise, fought not daintily, but viciously.
A war in which Divinity drowns all of creation.
         It is the massacre of the wicked to smother the spread of wickedness
—a war against humankind. 
         Not only that, it is a culling of “the sons of god” from three chapters earlier, who brought corruption to these befuddled humans
—a containment operation to save creation from contamination by evil angels.

 

         I know I once encouraged our Sunday School to make Origami Ark animals, 
but Genesis 9 isn’t really a story for kids
—it’s almost a horror story!

         Imagine Noah, terrified, body unbearably clenched, holding his breath after the first storm after THE STORM—The Flood. 
He wonders, was it just a truce? a Cease Fire? Is the DMZ between Divinity and us about to explode?

 

         He looks in the air and sees the bow! The awful bow! A weapon of war.

         If you’ve seen any coverage of the Super Bowl Parade shooting, you’ve heard the interview with the guy that tackled one of the shooters, he was shocked when he saw the gun sort of tumble out into the air. 

         And I think we were all shocked when we found that the two shooters were kids with guns! 
21 shot, 11 of them children, 1 person dead
—because of two kids with guns.

         That’s the kind of horror Noah feel when the bow appears in the sky… 
but he looks up and sees that this bow is not taught, 
it is not strung, 
it isn’t at the ready to kill and to slaughter
—no! Remember! It’s a sign of peace.

         

         When I was a little guy living in Brussels, we’d travel all over Europe
—I’ve been to every continental country that wasn’t communist before the fall of the Berlin Wall, save Greece. 
But of all the things I saw, I remember best this giant statue of a Lion. It was made out of cannonballs, and it commemorated the end of the Napoleonic Wars
—these wars, it is argued, were the first experiences of total war in Europe
—not just professional soldiers skirmishing in fields, 
but everyone was part of these wars.

         Cannonballs transformed into a sign of peace—the wars are done!

         God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace.

 

         Peace between God and God’s Good Creation! 
Peace an eternal promise—not a temporary cease fire. 
Peace an unconditional offer—never again shall I flood the earth.
Peace between God and every living thing that resides upon the earth. The earth itself at peace with God.

 

         And not only the earth itself, we see, the whole world and beyond! All flesh, and all spirit as well! That’s 1st Peter’s message.

         If the author is thinking of the Genesis 6 crew—rebel angels turned rebel spirits
—Christ is then in process of redeeming the powers and the principalities, 
taming and transforming them… 

(Because we are in the year of Mark, and Mark is all about Exorcisms, 
and we just finished up a Bible Study on Revelation, and Revelation is all about worship in little congregations scattered here and there echoing in Heaven and impacting every power on earth
—we’ve talked about this type of stuff before)

         Everything that is bigger than an individual: 
be it an addiction, a corporation, a nation, social structures like Apartheid or Segregation
—they have a Spiritual impact… 
and need to be opened to the love of God, 
they need to be ministered to, 
and the primary way the Church does this, is by our witness to collective possibility and love. 
Our Spiritual heft as the Body of Christ is to be a role model for their redemption. 
When “angels, authorities, and powers” know that we are Christians by our Love, they can find themselves joining in the song of all of creation!

 

         If the author is thinking these spirits in prison are all those who died in the flood
—then we are seeing God’s unconditional promise to all the earth overflowing!
The seeming Human O’ so Human impulse to wiping everything out in disgust
—severing every relationship to reboot, to start again… 
that too is redeemed. 
Even Divine violence, is vanquished by the compassion of the God we find in Christ. 
         
Christ’s appeal to God for all flesh and all spirit proclaimed to us all!

Truly, there is an unimaginable wideness to God’s mercy!

 

         So there you have it, the first hammer blow as we chip away at this marble block, 
and eventually find the statue within
—the New Covenant, 
the way God is in relationship with us.

God’s Covenant is not a weapon of war, but the proclamation of peace. Amen.

The Devotional So Far

 Hey all.

I just wanted to start of by saying it is not too late to start reading the 7 Central Things Lenten Devotional Blog. At this point it is all preface, all building blocks and road maps. Starting Sunday it’ll begin to follow its pattern.

So far, I’ve introduced the blog in a broad sense, then pointed to two pieces of scripture that point to the 7 Central Things, and then shared my big idea of what the church is wrestling with these days—7Cs, 3Ds, and a Small Catechism, which I’ve shared with long time readers of this blog before. Starting Sunday I’ll be looking at what it means to Gather with a few different lenses. If you read this blog, I’d encourage you to migrate over to 7 Center for Lent.