The Lord’s Prayer: A View of Jesus’ Life

A sermon[1] preached at Niles Discovery Church
a new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, June 16, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Matthew 6:9-13, Isaiah 52:7-10, and Matthew 16:13-16
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

I want to add one more scripture lesson today.  Matthew 16:13-16:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Who would you say Jesus is?  I suppose most of us would check off the box that says, “The Christ.”  Probably the box that says, “Son of the Living God.”  But what else would you say?

I have this theory that says, if you say you’re a follower of Jesus, your sense of who Jesus is will impact how you do that following.  I think that makes sense.  If I thought of Jesus as a dogcatcher and I claimed to be a follower of him, I would probably spend time, energy, and money catching dogs.

Anglican theologian N.T. Wright claims – I think with validity – that one way of understanding who Jesus thought he was, is to look at the prayer he taught his disciples.  “The more I have studied Jesus in his historical setting,” Wright wrote, “the more it has become clear to me that this prayer sums up fully and accurately, albeit in a very condensed fashion, the way in which he read and responded to the signs of the times, the way in which he understood his own vocation and mission and invited his followers to share it.  This prayer, then, serves as a lens through which to see Jesus himself, and to discover something of what he was about.”^[2]

So, that’s what I want to do this morning – look at this prayer we called “the Lord’s Prayer” to help us better understand how Jesus saw himself and his vocation.  And, if you don’t mind (or even if you do, I suppose), I’ll approach it line by line.

            Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.

The first occurrence in the Hebrew Scriptures that refers to God as a parent comes when God directs Moses to appear before Pharaoh.  God tells Moses to say to Pharaoh:  “Thus says the Lord:  Israel is my firstborn son.  I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me.’  But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son” (Ex 4:22-23).  God is referred to as a parent by God, with the parenthood implied because Israel is called God’s child.

The Exodus story is the defining story of Hebrew identity.  It had to have shaped how Jesus saw himself and his vocation.  Calling God ‘Father’ echoes back to this story.  Calling God ‘Father’ holds on to the hope of liberty that is the core of the Exodus story.  In calling God ‘Father,’ Jesus was understanding his vocation to be like Moses’, to be one of liberation.  When Jesus tells his disciples to call God ‘Father,’ he is telling them to get ready for the new Exodus.

We, too, need to learn what it means to call God ‘Father.’  It’s going to shake things up.  You can’t predict what God’s going to do next.  That’s why calling God ‘Father’ is a great act of faith, of holy boldness, of risk.

It’s not just saying, “Hi, dad.”  Calling God ‘Father’ is signing on for the kin-dom of God.  Which brings us to the next line.

            Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I mentioned last week that this line is a radical prayer.  Let’s start with the word King James’ crew translated as “kingdom.”  The Greek word is the same word used to describe Rome and the Roman occupation.  In reference to Rome, we use the word “empire.”

Imagine being a Jew in occupied Palestine – occupied by Rome, being subjugated by the Roman Empire.  And then Jesus calls for God’s empire to be established on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus saw his job, his vocation, to be the establishing of God’s empire, and that means overthrowing the principalities and powers of this world.

I know Pastor Brenda will get into this more deeply in the coming weeks.  For today, let me simply say that this line of the prayer points to Jesus’ understanding of his vocation as being part of God’s continuing work of liberation, first witnessed in the Exodus story.  When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he was asking them, asking us to pray that he succeeds.

And, I think, praying this line is an RSVP to the invitation that we join with Jesus in this work.  Think of it like this:  “Jesus is the medical genius who discovered penicillin; we are doctors, ourselves being cured by this medicine, now applying it to those who need it.  Jesus is the musical genius who wrote the greatest oratorio of all time; we are the musicians, captivated by his composition ourselves, who now perform it before a world full of musak and cacophony.”^[3]  We can only pray this prayer if we are prepared to become kin-dom bearers, healed healers, players in the divine orchestra.

            Give us this day our daily bread.

One of the images that comes up for me when I pray this line of the Lord’s Prayer is of Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan.  “Hungry?” the tempter asks.  “Turn these stones into bread.”  Another image is of Jesus having dinner with a collection of people that, for one reason or another, raised the eyebrows of one judgmental group or another.  And I start thinking about all the parables that include food – wedding banquets and parties for prodigals.

Jesus’ eating and drinking, and his stories about eating and drinking, were signs of what we just prayed for.  “Thy kingdom come,” we prayed.  And there’s Jesus eating with people from all walks of life and telling stories of the “undeserving” being welcomed.  Jesus knew that a sign of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven would be when everyone has enough and no one has too much.  The picture goes back to the land flowing with milk and honey, the Psalmist imagining God preparing a table were friends and enemies can dine together, and Isaiah’s vision of God making a feast for all peoples.

Jesus understood his vocation to be the ushering in of the kin-dom of God.  As partners with Jesus in this vocation, we pray for and work for a world where no one is hungry and no one needs to worry about where tomorrow’s food will come from.  And so, when we gather around the communion table, we are enacting our prayer by welcoming everyone and making sure there’s enough for everyone.

            Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

One of the ways Jesus got into trouble was by announcing God’s forgiveness.  A man with paralysis is brought to him and Jesus says that his sins are forgiven.  “Only God can forgive sin,” the scandalized religious elites pronounce.  So Jesus heals the paralysis as a sign of the forgiveness this man has received.  Jesus’ “healings, parties, stories and symbols all said:  the forgiveness of sins is happening right under your noses.”^[4]

As much as any other line in this prayer, when we pray this line we are breathing in what Jesus is doing and are becoming alive with this vocation.  This forgiveness business is the ministry of reconciliation.  This forgiveness business is the ministry of healing broken relationships and bringing shalom – peace and justice – to the world.

One of my favorite lines in a worship bulletin says, at the time of the Lord’s Prayer, “Debtors will wait for trespassers and sinners to catch up.”[5]  Debts and trespassing are property terms, so I hear hints of the Jubilee in this prayer.

The Jubilee year was supposed to come around every 50 years.  It was a year when all debts were forgiven.  Mortgages and personal loans were forgiven.  Indentured servants were freed.  Property was returned to the tribes to whom it was originally given.  The Jubilee is about making sure everyone has enough and no one has too much.

We pray this prayer to capture Jesus’ vision and enter his vocation of reconciliation, freedom, and justice.

            Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

This line leads me back to the desert with Jesus.  There, he faced temptations, and I believe those temptations were directly related to him coming to understand his vocation.  Would he be about satisfying his own desires or would he be about something deeper?  Would he be about fame and celebrity or would he be about something deeper?  Would he be about political power or would he be about something deeper?

Jesus concluded that he would be about something deeper.  “As Albert Schweitzer once put it, Jesus was called to throw himself on the wheel of world history so that, even though it crushed him, it might start to turn in the opposite direction.”^[6]

Jesus shares this prayer with his disciples knowing what it’s like to struggle with temptation, knowing how important it is to be clear about and to stay faithful to one’s vocation.  That’s one of the gifts of this prayer.  It gives us a view of Jesus’ life and how he understood it, of Jesus’ vocation and how he understood it.  And, as we pray it, we start making that vocation our own.

Amen.

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ENDNOTES
[1] Primary source for this sermon:  N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1996).

[2] N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1996), 2.

[3] Ibid, 30.

[4] Ibid, 53.

[5] I don’t remember where I first read this line; it was long ago.

[6] Ibid, 69; Wright does not directly quote Schweitzer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Invitation to Spiritual Practice

A sermon[1] preached at Niles Discovery Church
a new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, June 9, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Matthew 6:5-15 and Luke 11:1-13
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

“Lord, teach us to pray.”  That’s what the disciple asked Jesus.  They had seen Jesus go off to pray and when he returned, a disciple said, “John taught his disciples to pray.  Teach us to pray.”

For most of the past 30 years, I have desired to be a better pray-er.  I have felt a little inadequate when it came to the practice of prayer.  I felt like my technique was off, that if I only knew a better way to pray I would be more holy or grounded or something.  I felt like I just wasn’t doing it right.  I totally get why the disciples would ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

Today, I still feel like my technique is still lacking something, but I’ve learned that the best way to pray is to … pray.  Just do it, Jeff.  Talk to God.  Listen.  Practice the awareness of the presence of God.

And so I pray.

This sermon series that we start today was born about of the Adult Sunday School class.  At some point in the recent past, they came across and talked about the version of the Lord’s Prayer[2] we used today and will use for the next three Sundays.  It’s from A New Zealand Prayer Book, the book of common prayer used in the Anglican Church in New Zealand.  Members of the class asked if we could use it in worship and, along with some ideas that came from the Ministry of Spiritual Life Team, Pastor Brenda and I decided to offer a short series on the Lord’s Prayer.  My hope is that, by the multiple ways we will explore this prayer that all of Christianity prays, you will find new, meaningful ways to pray it.

“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciple asked.  So Jesus taught them a prayer.  Here, when you pray say, …  And if you were listening closely, you noticed that the prayer Luke tell us Jesus taught is different from what Matthew tells us Jesus taught.  In fact, the whole context for teaching the prayer is different.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is about a third of the way through the Sermon on the Mount.  The subject turns to prayer and Jesus tells a bunch of dos and don’ts:  Don’t make a show of your prayer.  Do go off to a quiet place to pray.  Don’t worry about flowery language.  Do trust God to know your meaning.  And then Jesus says, “Pray this way.”

The prayer Jesus teaches in Matthew’s gospel is very similar to the one Jesus teaches in Luke’s gospel.  They both have the same five points or lines (at least the way I look at the prayer).  Matthew’s Jesus uses slightly more flowery language than Luke’s – which I think is funny, since Matthew’s Jesus just finished saying not to worry about flower language.  So, let’s walk through those five lines and think about what it means to pray this prayer and how it invites us into a deeper life of prayer.

Calling God, “Father,” is not a uniquely Jesus thing.  And “Abba” is an intimate word, closer to “Daddy” than “Father” in contemporary American English, but I don’t think Jesus offered anything new in that regard.  Jewish mystics and rabbis taught the value of intimacy with God.  In fact, “Father” may have the opposite impact for some people.  People whose earthly fathers were abusive or absent may find calling God “Father” to be a stumbling block to intimacy.

That doesn’t mean we should do away with this image for God.  Consider how, in Jesus time, fathers taught their sons a trade.  Perhaps, if the image doesn’t distance you from God, you can sometimes call God “Father” as a reminder that God calls us to God’s work in the world as our own.

But because “Father” is a problem for some people and is a limited image for God (God is so much more than only a father), I appreciate how in the New Zealand prayer, they don’t choose just one name or image.  “Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God.”

Besides, the name we call God isn’t the part of this line that most calls me into prayer.  “Hallowed be thy name” or “… your name.”  “The hallowing of your name echo through the universe.”  This is the phrase that calls me into awe.

May I join all creation’s song of praise.  May injustice, disfigurement, sin, and death be transformed into the honoring, the hallowing of You.  As we stand in the presence of the Living God, aware of all the hardship and hurt, all the injustice and brokenness, to pray that the whole cosmos glorify God’s name is to pray for the transformation of the world.  And that very likely includes the transformation of each one of us.

The second line is “Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Luke stops with the first sentence.  All Jesus teaches in Luke’s gospel is, “Your kingdom come.”

This is a radical line, and we’ll get into the radicalness of it in the weeks ahead.  For today’s sermon, think about this.

We, each one of us, are dust and ashes – stardust and star ash at the atomic level, dust and dirt at the circle-of-life level.  Consider what it means to ask God’s will to be done on this little bit of earth, on this lump of clay.  If we really want God’s kin-dom to come, it needs to come in my body and in your body.  And not just in our individual bodies, but in our collective body – this congregation – too.

Whenever we pray, we come aware of urgent needs, or at least wants.  When we come to pray the Lord’s Prayer, it might be tempting to get to those needs and wants, to get to our agenda.  So we might rush through these first two lines.  Then it’s time to take a deep breath and say, “Now look here, God, when it comes to daily bread, there are simply some things I must have.”  And then off we go with our agenda.

To do this, of course, is to let greed get in the way of grace.  So it might be good, when we get to the third line, the middle line, perhaps the climax of the prayer, to take a deep breath not to get to our agenda, but to clear our minds.  What do we find when we do that?  A buzz of fears and hopes and wants and puzzles, perhaps.  And behind that?  Perhaps some deep sadnesses, some real anger, and (I hope) some real joy, some true delight.

For those of us who have no worries about the bread we need for today or tomorrow, this line invites us to think about what we really do need – and to distinguish those needs from our wants.  To pray that God provide our daily bread can be a request to have our deepest needs met.  Or it can be a prayer to deepen our trust in God’s abundance to provide the healing and vision and answers and joy and strength we need.

For those of us who have no worries about the bread we need for today or tomorrow, this line invites us to think about people for whom this daily need is a reality.  Can we pray this line, “Give us today the bread we need for tomorrow,” not just for those who don’t know if there will be food tomorrow, but with them?  This line invites us, at least in our prayers, to move into a deeper solidarity with people across socio-economic and cultural strata.

Finally (on this line), consider what it means to pray this prayer minutes before we celebrate communion.  Give us today the bread we need.

Forgiveness, the subject of the next line, is not easy.  When we are hurt deeply, the sting is there.  Trust betrayed is not easily forgiven.  It is natural to remain defensive, cautious.  And it’s normal to be resentful.  This is true even when the person who hurt us is us.  For me, at least, I hurt myself most by hurting others.  I do something that violates trust or is disrespectful for is just plain old mean.  And then I beat myself up for this, rather than forgive myself.  So when I pray for God to forgive my sins, my debts, my trespasses, one of the things that I’m praying for is the experience of forgiveness to help me to forgive myself.

Both Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer include the phrase “as we forgive.”  There is some wisdom here.  There is a recognition that as we forgive others, we open ourselves to the experience of forgiveness.  There is something about the act of offering forgiveness that creates a space for grace within ourselves.

The fifth line is the most challenging for me:  “Do not bring us to the time of trial,” is the translation of Luke’s version.  “But rescue us from the evil one,” Matthew’s version adds.  “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we traditionally recite, coming from older English translations.  What’s this all about?

Well, one thing might be a recognition that we’re part of a raggedy band, a group that doesn’t always do what we ought, a group that fails to fully comprehend what’s going on as we march along with Jesus.

Remember the scene at Gethsemane?  Jesus goes with a few of his disciples to pray, just hours before he’s arrested.  Jesus prays that he not have to face the trials that lay ahead, but that instead he could be delivered from the evil he would face.  The disciples can’t even keep their eyes open.

Perhaps when we pray this line, we’re asking God to keep the living out of this discipleship commitment as easy as possible.  Don’t bring us to a time of trial like Jesus had to face.  Deliver us from the evil of being killed for our faithfulness.  Perhaps.

Praying this line is certainly a recognition of the reality of evil.  This line helps keep us from wading into denial as if evil doesn’t exist.  Likewise, it helps keep us from wallowing in despair at the immensity of evil in the world.  Instead, it acknowledges the reality of evil and asks that we not get caught up in it so instead we can be part of God’s antidote to it.  It is our responsibility, as we pray this prayer, to hold God’s precious and precarious world before our gaze.

Perhaps this exposition will help you pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Certainly one way to pray it is to hold each line and consider it’s meaning for you in that moment before moving on to the next.  Praying it slowly like that works much better as an individual spiritual practice than it does in community.  So it is one way to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Another way is to use it as a sample outline.  Start by honoring God.  Then pray for God justice.  Move to your real needs and the needs of others.  Then pray for forgiveness and offer forgiveness in prayer.  Finally, pray for strength for the journey.

Another way is to take one line or even one phrase of a line and let it be your prayer for the day.  “Our Father” could be your prayer for the day.  Hold that and be aware of all the ways you encounter God and imagine God as you go through the day.  “Thy kingdom come.”  Hold that and be aware of how you see the in-breaking of God’s love and justice as you go through the day.  You get the idea.

And then there’s the mantra approach.  There is a prayer tradition, perhaps stronger in the Eastern Orthodox stream of Christianity than in others, of breath prayer.  In breath prayer, two phrases or sentences are repeated over and over, one on the inhalation and one of the exhalation.  Through the repetition, this becomes a sort of mantra as each breath becomes the prayer.  It can become an unconscious prayer, a prayer that is being offered from the depths of your brain and the simple act of breathing.  The Lord’s Prayer can be prayed in the same way, over and over until it becomes as much a part of who you are as your next breath.

By giving us this prayer, Jesus invites us to walk with God in every aspect of our lives.  We are invited to pray as we sit in the awesomeness and intimacy of God.  We are invited to pray in the struggle for justice and peace.  We are invited to pray about the needs we have and the needs others have.  We are invited to pray for forgiveness even as we offer forgiveness – and to let the work of reconciliation be a pray itself.  We are invited to pray as we walk ahead into the shadows and discover that God is there, too.

May our lives be infused with this prayer.

Amen.

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ENDNOTES
[1] Primary source for this sermon:  Wright, N. T., The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1996).

[2] This prayer has been transcribed and posted on the web in several places, including http://monasteryroad.blogspot.com/2008/07/lords-prayer-from-new-zealand-prayer.html.

Waters of Life

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
a new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Revelation 22:1-5 and Acts 2:1-21
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

In a way, today’s sermon (which concludes this sermon series on water) brings us back to the first sermon in the series.  In that sermon, I spoke about the spirituality inherent in the poetry of the first creation story in Genesis 1 and the spirituality inherent in the scientific explanations of creation.  But the major point was about the necessity of water for the creation of life as we know it.  Without a liquid of some sort, life would not have evolved, and without water, life would not have evolved as we know it.  And I concluded that therefore we have a duty to protect it.

Today we come back to the water of life, but rather than being the water that enabled life, this is the water of a renewed creation.  Have you ever heard someone described as, “So heavenly minded, he was no earthly good?”  Yeah, well this applies if you’re not careful to interpreting the book of Revelation.

Revelation is written in a style that is strange to us 21st century types – not a Gospel or a letter, but a work of “apocalyptic literature.”  Somebody suggested that we might think of Revelation’s genre as a cross between the satire of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and the scary imagery of a Stephen King novel.^[1]  Such writing is meant to pull back the veil, to expose the truth, opening life up to a new and deeper understanding.  Revelation employs symbolism and satire to expose the great power of the time: the Roman Empire.  And, as we’ll see, much of that imagery comes from the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, especially Isaiah.

What John does with this imagery is challenge the imperialist view of the world by suggesting a lamb, rather than the emperor, is on the true throne.  By chapter 21, Revelation is describing a rejuvenated, holy city – the “new Jerusalem” – which proceeds from God.  Heaven descends to earth, renewing humanity and the earth with a bustling, holy city.  Rather than God plucking us off to some magical planet far away, God comes home to earth.

Unfortunately, too often this image is missed.  Some Christians have a tendency to think, “Well, if I’m off to heaven, I shouldn’t care much about this silly earth of ours.  It’s just a temporary home, after all.”  In fact, Revelation suggests the opposite:  the earth isn’t truly “left behind,” but is being renewed, becoming the very dwelling place of God.  The images from Revelation 21 and 22 call us to care for creation as part of God’s homecoming.  They speak of a new heaven and a new earth, but it’s not a replacement heaven and a replacement earth.

John the Revelator speaks about a renewal of heaven and earth.  And water plays an important part in this renewal.

This actually isn’t a new image in the Bible.  Isaiah speaks of the power of water to renew.  “Waters shall burst forth in the desert, streams in the wilderness; torrid earth shall become a pool; parched land, fountains of water.”^[2]  And this is only one of many instances in the Hebrew Scriptures where divine salvation is articulated in terms of the renewal – not the destruction – of the earth.  With so much (dare I call it wrongheaded; I think it is) Christian theology and politics anticipating destruction, it is imperative that we recover the renewal vision.

The “streams in the desert” tradition suggests that Israel’s prophets understood that the arid climate of their Palestinian homeland was not natural.  Rather, their deep memory understood the desert to be the result of historic processes of desertification, the result of centuries of relentless economic exploitation of the land of the Middle East – much of it (probably most of it) at the hands of economic empire.  The same is true today:  desertification continues because of economic imperialism.^[3]

Consider the specific prophetic lament about the clear-cutting of the forests of highlands in Lebanon.^[4]  The mighty cedars of Lebanon were cut down by Israelite kings and the kings on conquering empires.  In one case, Isaiah railed against the king of Babylon for clear-cutting the forests.  Yet he holds out an image of Yahweh’s liberating plan portrayed in terms of reforestation, of arid lands once again hosting those cedars, “the glory of Lebanon.”^[5]  What makes this “greening” of the desert possible is that water will flow again.

Isaiah says that these renewed streams will also quench the thirst of the “poor and needy” – those marginalized by violence and oppression.^[6]  Just as Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the Exodus story, so in Isaiah, the imperial pillaging of natural resources and the ecological side effects of the pillaging disappear under water.  These are extraordinary visions of social and ecological redemption as rehydration.

Israel during the biblical period was indeed a dry place, with few perennial streams, inconsistent springs,^[7] and just a handful of actual rivers, most of which were relatively far from populated areas like Jerusalem.  Those living in this arid climate were primarily familiar only with the stagnant water found in small ponds, seasonal wells, catchment tanks, ritual baths, or clay pots.  Domestic water quality was often poor (hence the advice of 1 Timothy 5:23 to stop drinking only water, and use a little wine to offset stomach illnesses).  In Palestine, water was – and is today – an issue of environmental sustainability and social justice.

John’s vision of the River of the Waters of Life that we hear about in today’s reading stands in stark contrast to the realities of his readers at the time.  It “shines like crystal.”  This is not a supernatural claim, but a poetic observation:  pure water indeed appears crystalline when it is flowing freely from its earth source.  Who hasn’t been mesmerized by the dancing silver strands of a mountain stream?

His phrase “river of the water of life” connotes exactly that – the running, bubbling, lively water of a spring or brook.   We hear echoes of the image Jesus used to describe himself in the Gospel of John, chapter 4 – “living water.”  It is a strong image precisely because experiences of living water were rare indeed for this desert people.  This river signals a dramatic restoration that brings life to the land and those dwelling on it.

John the Revelator acknowledges this ecology of grace: water is a divine “gift.”  “Let the one who thirsts come forward, and … receive the gift of living water,” he writes later in chapter 22.^[8]  Here he appropriates another subversive promise of Isaiah, which envisioned an end to the commodification and privatization of water by the powerful.   As Isaiah put it, “All who are thirsty, come for water, even if you have no money.”^[9]

The Revelator’s River of the Waters of Life runs “through the middle of the great street of the city.”  The Greek word used here connotes the main thoroughfare of a Hellenistic metropolis.  It’s used earlier in the book, but in this earlier case it is a space of political violence, where the bodies of two prophets murdered by the imperial Beast lay in public view for three and a half days as a spectacle of state terror.^[10]  Here at the end of the Revelation, this street becomes “transparent as glass.”^[11]  It is as if New Jerusalem’s Main Street dissolves into a purifying river that washes away the blood of empire.

These living waters of life “proceed from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”  Elsewhere in Revelation they are depicted as a spring.  The martyrs “will not thirst anymore” because they are led to God’s throne, from which flow “springs of living water.”^[12]  This echoes Isaiah’s vision of liberation from empire in which prisoners are led to water.[13]

The notion of Yahweh as a cosmic fount is found in several places in the Hebrew Bible.   “With you is the spring of life,” sings the psalmist.^[14]  Jeremiah laments that his people have abandoned “the fountain of living water” for their own stagnant and leaky cisterns.^[15]  And there are others.

These biblical metaphors identify water tightly with God, so consider what water can teach us about the character of God.

• As I talked about in my first sermon in this series, there can be no life without water.  Likewise, there can be no life without God.
• Water exists in three forms – liquid, solid, and gas – and these forms may help us start to wrap our minds around the concept of the Trinity.  But more important than that, these different forms are part of a great cycle that may help us understand the renewing nature of God.  Water moves from the heavens (condensation, precipitation) to earth and beneath (infiltration), to the sea and other large bodies of water (surface runoff, groundwater discharge), and finally back to the heavens (evaporation).   The analogy is not exact, but there is something in that cycle and movement that connects with how God moves to renew all of the planet, including us.
• Water can be patient and accommodating, flowing around obstacles.  Yeah, that’s God, patient and accommodating, flowing around me when I’m an obstacle.
• Yet water also has the power to wear down the greatest physical structures (or burst them apart through expanding ice); it thus makes hard things smooth over time.  When I need busting open, God will do it.  And God smooths my rough edges.
• Water is a symbol of justice.  When a fluid, it flows downward, seeking the level.  This is a poignant metaphor of God’s concern for the “lowest.”  No wonder Amos appeals for justice and righteousness to flow down like an every-flowing stream.^[16]

Today is Pentecost, the day we remember God crashing down on a group of scared followers of Jesus.  Luke uses the metaphor of God coming as the rush of wind and as tongues of fire.  This was, I believe, the beginning of God’s new river, the beginning of the River of the Waters of Life.  The time for the new creation is now, both in our lives and in the whole created order.  The Spirit comes to transform our lives so that we can be part of the transforming of the world.

The time has come for the old ways of using up the earth, of treating creation as a trash can for waste, of trashing the atmosphere with carbon dioxide to end.  The time has come for a river flowing with the waters of life – waters that renew creation, that bring justice, that offer healing – to flow freely.

We can no long think that how we treat our fellow human beings is one matter, and how we treat our environment is another.  We can no longer consider right behavior toward a neighbor apart from the land, water, vineyard, crops – in short, the fruitfulness of creation which ensures our neighbor’s life.  And biblically, the definition of neighbor expands not only across geographical and racial boundaries, but through the boundaries of time, from the present into future generations.

The prophetic visions in scripture call us to be part of God’s restorative justice for society and for the environment.  Our lands are parched.  Our lands are parched by imperial hubris.  Let the waters of life flow, bringing redemptive rehydration, a quenching of every thirst.

Just as the Holy Spirit calls us into the church, the Spirit calls the church to be a river of life for the healing of the nations and the earth.

Amen.

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ENDNOTES
^[1] Adam Copeland was the one who suggested this.

[2] Isaiah 35:6-7.  This and the other quotes from scriptures are, I believe, Ched Myers’ own translations.

[3] See for instance, the documentary “Blue Gold: World Water Wars.” The documentary is available on DVD and has been posted on line in a few places, including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjOn2THsQZg (14 May 2013).

[4] See, for instance, 1 King 5:6ff; Zechariah 11:1ff; Isaiah 14:3-8, 37:22-24.

[5] Isaiah 35:1ff.

[6] Isaiah 41:17ff.

[7] For examples, see James 3:12 and 2 Peter 2:17.

[8] Revelation 22:17.

[9] Isaiah 55:1.

[10] Revelation 11:8-9.

[11] Revelation 21:21.

[12] Revelation 7:16ff.

^[13] Isaiah 49:9-10

[14] Psalm 36:9.

[15] Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13.

[16] Amos 5:24.

This sermon relies very heavily on Ched Meyers, “Everything Will Live Where the Water Goes,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/preaching-the-word/everything-will-live-where-water-goes, posted 26 April 2013 (downloaded 14 May 2013).  Also used as resources for this sermon:
Adam J. Copeland, “On Scripture: Earth Day, God, and the Apocalypse,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/04/24/scripture-earth-day-god-and-apocalypse, posted 24 April 2013 (downloaded 14 May 2013).
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, “Earthkeeping,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/preaching-the-word/earthkeeping, posted 15 April 2013 (downloaded 14 May 2013).

Waters of Baptism

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, May 12, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 1:19-34 and Acts 8:26-39
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

Do you desire to be baptized into the faith and family of Jesus Christ?  That’s the first question a candidate for baptism is asked in the United Church of Christ’s Book of Worship liturgy for baptism.  In Chalice Worship, the Disciples of Christ worship book, there seems to be an assumption that the answer to this question is “yes,” since the person is standing there.

Do you desire to be baptized into the faith and family of Jesus Christ?

The Reformed tradition of Protestantism – the tradition out of which both the UCC and the DOC emerged – recognizes two sacraments.  The Roman Catholic, the Anglican, most if not all of the Lutheran, and the Easter Orthodox traditions all recognize seven:  Baptism, Eucharist (aka communion), Confession, Confirmation, Marriage, Anointing the sick, and Holy Orders/Ordination.

The Reformed tradition concluded that, as far as we know, Jesus never made a confession of sin; he was never confirmed; he was never married; though he healed the sick, he didn’t use anointing oil; and he was never ordained.  He was, however, baptized and he instituted the Eucharist.  So, in the Reformed tradition, only those two rites of the church are recognized as sacraments.  And baptism is administered to a person only once.

Baptism can be renewed.  The act of confirmation is a renewal of baptism.  The act of joining a congregation is a renewal of baptism.  Occasionally we might even celebrate a renewal of baptism that is strictly and directly that a renewal of baptism, but it’s not a re-baptism, no matter how much water is used.  The sacrament itself is celebrated only once in a lifetime.

So it was a pretty big deal when, in January of this year, representatives of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and [wait for it] the Roman Catholic Church signed a carefully worded, one-page agreement to mutually recognize the sacrament of baptism as it is practiced in each other’s churches.^[i]  This agreement means that a baptism performed in a tiny UCC congregation is seen as equally valid as a baptism performed in a Catholic cathedral.

The baptismal question, “Do you desire to be baptized into the faith and family of Jesus Christ?” has a new ring to it.  This agreement between these four Reformed tradition denominations and the Roman Catholic Church is a powerful and simple act of hospitality because it provides a deep, mutual understanding of what is fundamental to being received into the faith and family of Jesus Christ.  And how appropriate for such an agreement to be about baptism, for baptism is, from the church’s point of view, an act of hospitality, of welcome.

For the newly baptized, baptism is also an act of welcome – and it is much, much more.  To wade in the waters of baptism is to be immersed in Jesus’ perverse ethic of gain through loss.  When we say, “Yes,” to the question, “Do you desire to be baptized into the faith and family of Jesus Christ?” we are saying “yes” to a life based on values that are radically different from the values of society.

The positioning of the baptismal font at Christ the Light Cathedral is Oakland signifies this.  The main way into the cathedral involves walking up a ramp from 21st Street, straight into the front doors.  As you step inside, you run right into the baptistry.  It is a large, maybe 10 feet across; big enough and deep enough to be immersed in.  It is also the point at which the path changes.  Up the ramp, into the door, and up to the font, the path is straight, but it turns to the left at the baptistry and straight down the main aisle of the nave of the church.

The waters of baptism call us to change directions.  They call us to a new way of life.

I don’t know how much thought the average parent takes before presenting a young child for baptism.  I was impressed and deeply moved by this mother’s reflection on baptism as she struggled whether to baptize her eldest child, recognizing the claim that baptism puts on a person and, in the case when a child is baptized, on the parents, too.

“Water, words, community.  Offering our child back to God.  We would stand with Abraham at the sacrifice.  We would give her to a God who models the cross.  We would invite her to listen for a voice calling in the night, to vigil, to put herself at risk, to leave family and friends, to speak clearly a truth for which one can be executed.  We would thereby invite her into the risks we have already elected and, by God’s grace, still will elect to take with our own lives.  In the act of baptism we would wash away the possibility that our concern for her might justify a diminishing of our own obedience to our Lord’s perverse ethic of vulnerability and gain through loss.”^[ii]

In this sermon series, we have looked at water.  I have reflected on the waters of creation in Genesis’ first creation story, the waters of destruction in the Noah saga, the waters of freedom in the Exodus story, and the waters of renewal in Psalm 23 and John 4.  Next week, we will look at the waters in Revelation 22.  Today, we look at the waters of baptism.

These waters, the waters of baptism, are the most quintessentially and uniquely Christian of waters.  These are the waters connected to the Jordan River.  At these waters we see John the baptizer speaking truth to power, putting his own life at risk.  These waters are wilderness waters.  People came from the centers of society to meet John at the margins.  Here, we encounter God, undomesticated, outside civilization, not in the vortex of power, but in the void.  And here, John points to Jesus, who baptizes us not with water, but with the power of the Holy Spirit.  The waters of baptism call us to the excruciating fire and exhilarating life of discipleship.

The stories of Jesus’ baptism are powerful, moving stories.  The story of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch is almost comical in comparison.  But I also find it to be more approachable, more human in some ways.  An Ethiopian rides down the road.  He’s been in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage.  He’s an Ethiopian, so there are two possibilities:  either he’s a Gentile who is curious about religion, or he’s a Jewish convert.

If he is the former, a Gentile, it is interesting that Philip gives him the time of day, let alone that Philip engages him in a theological discussion.  If he is the latter, a Jewish convert, then it would have been discovered that he was a eunuch when he was circumcised.  This fact is important because eunuchs were a sexual minority in Judaism.  Like women as a whole, eunuchs were not permitted to enter “the Israelite assembly,”^[iii] there were sections of the Temple where they were not permitted to go.

And yet, after being schooled by Philip in the story of Jesus and what it means to be a follower, the Ethiopian asks that he be baptized into this community of disciples.  “Why can’t I be baptized?” he asks.

Philip could have said, “I have two reasons, one of which applies.  Either you’re not a Jew and Jesus’ disciples are Jews, or you’re not a whole Jew, and we can’t let sexual minorities be part of the Jesus movement.”  But Philip doesn’t give either of these reasons as to why the Ethiopian should be excluded.  They stop the chariot and Philip baptizes this surprising convert on the spot.  The circle that Philip drew was wider than the circle conventional wisdom, tradition, and understanding would have advised.

The waters of baptism call us to be a radically inclusive community.  The waters of baptism call us to see in each person, not matter who, not matter what, a sister or a brother in Christ.  And the waters of baptism immerse us in Jesus perverse ethic of gain through loss, calling us to speak truth to power.

So, when I look at the Israel/Palestine conflict (which, to some extent is a water conflict), I see it through the waters of baptism.  I see each Israeli and each Palestinian as my brother or sister (or at least I try to).  And I see the suffering of people caused by injustice and cannot remain silent.

And I look at the so-called “immigration problem” through the waters of baptism.  So I see undocumented people as sisters and brothers.  And I see the injustice of our global economic system that at least in part creates this so-called “problem,” and I seek God’s word of truth that needs to be spoken to the powers that be.

And I see climate chaos – with all the thirst and hunger and suffering it is causing and will continue to cause – through the waters of baptism.  And I need to care because those displaced by Superstorm Sandy from their homes on the Jersey Shore and those displaced by the flooding in Bangladesh from their homes along the rivers are my brothers and sisters.

Yesterday’s “Second Saturday Documentary”^[iv] focused on how water could easily become and may in fact be turning into the next big commodity.  Bottled water sales in the United States alone are on the order of $15 billion per year.^[v]  In the past decade, indexed funds focusing solely on water have appeared on Wall Street.^[vi]

Corporations are trying to – and succeeding at – owning the water.  All too often, this is happening in developing countries when public water works are privatized as a condition of a country receiving a World Bank loan.  These corporations are actually owned by U.S. and European stockholders.  Wanting to please their stockholders, the companies aim to sell the water for the greatest possible profit.  This means that those who are poor and cannot afford clean water become ill from drinking contaminated water.  Through the waters of baptism, I see that these are my brothers and sisters who are suffering and sometimes dying.

If you can remember your baptism, I invite you to really remember it.  Remember where you were, what it smelled like, what it felt like for the water to soak your skin.  And remember the commitments you made.

If you were baptized too young to remember it, remember nonetheless that you are baptized.  Think about what it means, what the call and commitment of baptism is all about.

(If you haven’t been baptized and want to be – let’s talk.)

Consider how these waters claim you and change you like no other waters.

The waters of baptism are not just the waters of a church ritual.  They are the waters we immerse ourselves in if we want to take on this amazing, troubling, powerful, dangerous calling from Jesus.

This question haunts me today:  Are we living as if we’re really taken the plunge into the waters of baptism?

---

ENDNOTES
[i] Adelle M. Banks, “Catholic, Reformed churches agree on baptism,” Religion News Service, http://www.religionnews.com/2013/01/31/catholic-reformed-churches-agree-on-baptism/ (posted 31 January 2013; downloaded 12 May 2013).

[ii] Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann, in The Detroit Catholic Worker, quoted by Ched Myers in “Baptism’s True Claim,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/preaching-the-word/baptisms-true-claim (9 May 2013).

[iii] Deuteronomy 23:1

[iv] We screened “Blue Gold: World Water Wars.”  See http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com for more information.

[v] “Bottle Water Statistics,” Statistics Brain, http://www.statisticbrain.com/bottled-water-statistics/ (verified 24 February 2012; downloaded 12 May 2013).

[vi] Cited in “Blue Gold.”

OTHER RESOURCES USED:

Suzanne MacNevin and Charles Moffat, “The Right to Water,” Earth Letter, Summer 2012, p. 12-13.

John Klassen, “One Baptism, One Faith,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/05/one-baptism-one-faith (9 May 2013).

Edmond L. Browning, “Marked By Baptism,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/preaching-the-word/marked-baptism (9 May 2013).

Waters of Safety

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 28, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Psalm 23 and John 4:1-30
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

My earliest memory is of water.  At least I think it is.  I think it is my earliest memory and I think it’s of water.  The memory is really more of a feeling, the feeling of swirling around under water and not popping up to the surface – and of being surprised and confused by this.  Because this is more a memory of a feeling than of an event, I realize it may not be what I think it is.

The summer when I was two, we lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  My father had finished graduate school, started his new job (which meant moving to Massachusetts), and my parents decided to spend the house-hunting summer on the beach.

My mother told me that one day during that summer, when she had taken us kids to the beach, I went wading.  A wave came in and knocked my off my feet.  I’ve always imagined this to be a huge wave, at least half as high again as me – which, since I was two-years-old, meant it would have been maybe three feet high.  I suppose it could have been a chest-high wave that knocked me over, or simply the undertow that pulled my feet out from under me.  In any event, I was under water and it took me long enough to get back on my feet that my mother did get up off her towel.

I assume that my memory of being suspended in the water is of this incident.  I have imagined the wave mixing enough air into the water that I had zero buoyancy for a moment.  Eventually the air bubbled out and I came to the surface.  I’m grateful that this memory and this incident didn’t make me afraid of the water.

When I read Psalm 23, one of the strongest images for me is the “still water.”  “He leads me beside still waters.”  I see a stream trickling down a mountain.  The grass is rich, soft, and green, growing out of the soil and rocks.  The water has pooled in a shallow, flat area.  The surface is perfectly smooth, reflecting the blue sky, white clouds, and green and gray slopes.  I suppose the image is more Switzerland than Palestine.  And when the sheep show up, they pretty much ruin it.

So the Psalm invites me to think about real-life still waters.  It invites me to think about the still waters that restore my soul.  Only it turns out that “still waters” is an incomplete translation.  The Hebrew literally means “waters of rest,” and this expands the number of places we can go.  I suppose experience and context makes all the difference as to where you waters of rest are.

I know a guy who has a spot in Carmel that looks out over the Pacific.  He goes there to sit and breathe, to connect with God and renew his soul.  I have a friend in Washington who will sometime hike to the bottom of Snoqualmie Falls when she needs renewal.  It is not exactly “still waters,” but it is in the power and sound and insistence of the water thundering over and down the 267 feet (100 feet taller than Niagara Falls) that she finds her renewal.  I imagine that for the farmer in the midst of a drought, renewal can come in a rainstorm.

For me, it’s a lake in New Hampshire.  On a hot summer day after a sweaty hike, my soul is restored by plunging in.  On a cool autumn day, quietly paddling around the lake in the old Grumman aluminum canoe, listening to the small waves beat out a rhythm on the metal hull, renews me.

There is something about connecting with water – sitting beside it, riding on it, plunging into it, dancing under it as it falls from the sky – that renews the soul.  It is so elemental to our being, so elemental to life, that water renews us like nothing else.  For the thirsty person, this is especially true.

Have you ever been really, really thirsty?  You grab a cup, turn on the kitchen faucet, fill the cup, and drink it down.  You can feel the water slide down your throat and fill your stomach.  You can feel it relieve the thirst and renew your body.  It’s amazing how easy that was.

“Water used to be part of the rhythm and motivation of daily life …  But in the United States and the developed world, we’ve spent the last hundred years in a kind of aquatic paradise:  our water has been abundant, safe, and cheap.  The twentieth century was really the first time when all of those things were true.  It has created a kind of golden age of water, when we could use as much as we wanted, whenever we wanted, for almost no cost.

“Water service is so reliable that it has become completely inconspicuous.  It is possible for a typical American to go a whole lifetime and never turn on the kitchen faucet and have no water come out.”^[1]

This “golden age of water” matters.  In 2005, Harvard economist David Cutler and Stanford professor of medicine Grant Miller published a study that teased out the impact of treatment methods on the most dramatic reduction in death rates in U.S. history.  “By 1936, they conclude, simple filtration and chlorination of city water supplies reduced overall mortality in U.S. cities by 13 percent.  Clean water cut child mortality in half.”^[2]

Access to clean, safe water remains a problem in the developing world.  We all know this.  We all know that the lack of good water is the biggest single factor in disease and ill health in the developing world, and without it people cannot grow crops to support themselves.  We know that pollution of water sources or over-extraction has a very damaging environmental impact.  We know that Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) programs are among the most efficient and effective efforts contributing to international development.  We know that for every $1.00 spent on water and sanitation, roughly $4.00 to $8.00 is returned in reduced health care costs and increased productivity.^[3]  We know that children, girls especially, are trapped by having to walk miles each day to fetch water.  As a result, they don’t go to school, and this denies these countries a huge pool of labor, energy, creativity, and talent – just so these children can walk to fetch water.

And we know that we can make a difference.  We know that we can help bring these waters of safety to thirsty people around the globe.

It was thirst, it seems, that opened the discussion between Jesus and the unnamed woman at the Samaritan well.^[4]  Do you know the beer commercials starring actor Jonathan Goldsmith as “the most interesting man in the world”?  “People hang on his every word,” the narrator intones, “even the prepositions.”  “His mother has a tattoo that read, ‘Son.’”

The ad is clever and funny, though I wonder about the tagline:  “Stay thirsty, my friends.”  Doesn’t that imply that drinking this beer won’t quench your thirst?  Or perhaps there’s some theological integrity to it, that when we drink beer or water, we will thirst again.

Contrast this with the exchange between the Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus.  What’s on offer in John 4 is “living water.”  And obtaining it requires a more daring leap than the short-term gains of “Interesting Man’s” carpe diem philosophy.

The Samaritan woman – with whom Jesus holds his longest discussion in the gospels – is not promiscuous.  She is not a prostitute.  She’s not spiritually dead or “hopelessly carnal.”

She is a spiritual seeker.

When we read this section of John 4 in its context, we see it is part of a Cana-to-Cana framework that places the woman at the well between the Pharisee Nicodemus (3:1-21), who has religious power, and the royal official (4:46-54), who has political power.  Nicodemus, has his theological debate with Jesus under the cover of darkness.  Jesus response can easily be seen as sarcastic (3:10) and condemnatory (3:18).  The royal official begs Jesus to heal is son, but there isn’t any sign of theological depth in his conversation with Jesus.

The Samaritan woman is his mirror opposite.  She also engages Jesus in a sophisticated theological exchange – under the noonday sun – and comes to believe.  To her, Jesus reveals his true nature.  With strength and savvy, she accepts it and witnesses to others.  Take a closer look at their discussion.

The woman systematically grills Jesus on the different beliefs held by Jews and Samaritans.   Why is he breaking custom by asking her for a drink (4:9)?  Why does he elevate himself to the status of the Samaritan patriarch Jacob (4:12)?

In response, he tests her:  You have had five husbands and the one you have now isn’t your own (4:16-19).  In John’s highly charged symbolism, this isn’t a sudden diversion into the personal.  The meaning is much clearer when “husbands” is understood as “lords” or “gods.”  Samaria has had five foreign gods since the Assyrians invaded (see 2 Kings 17:30-31) and the god Samaria worships at the time of this encounter is not Yahweh, but a god from Rome.

Finally, she challenges him on the last major hurdle in the Jewish/Samaritan theological divide:  Worship on Mount Gerizim or on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount?  Jesus’ answer astounds her.   He makes a claim for neither.   Instead, in his New Israel, all will worship in “spirit and truth” (verse 24).

Still sizing him up, she proclaims, “I know that the Messiah is coming … When he comes, he will tell us everything.”  Jesus replies: “I am.”

At this, she leaves her water jar behind (4:28).  This is an act reminiscent of the fishermen leaving their nets to follow Jesus, as reported in other gospels.  She goes to her people and says, “Come see.”

This woman has drunk from the well of Living Water.

The simple fact of the matter is we need all three kinds of water.  We need the water that restores our souls.  We need the water that quenches our thirst.  And we need the living water that is Jesus.  Combined, they become the waters of safety that allow us risk going forth to invite others to taste and see.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

ENDNOTES
[1] Charles Fishman, The Big Thirst, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), from the iBook version, so I don’t know how to accredit the page number.

[2] Ibid.

[3] A United Church of Christ website that I can’t find now claimed the 1:4 ratio.  InterAction (http://www.interaction.org/work/wash) claims the 1:8 ratio.

[4] This discussion of John 4:5-30 is based on the exciting work of Rose Marie Berger, “The Most Interesting Woman in the World,” Sojourners, http://sojo.net/preaching-the-word/most-interesting-woman-world (27 April 2013).

Waters of Freedom

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 21, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Exodus 14:10-31 and Amos 5:18-24
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere set out on his now famous midnight ride.  He traveled across the Charles River to Charlestown, so he could mount a horse and ride to Concord, stopping in Lexington, to warn the people that the British were sending troops through Lexington to Concord.  The assumed goals of the British troops were the capture of members of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress (a congress not sanctioned by the crown), especially the leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams, and to secure ammunitions that had been collected and stored in Concord.  Hancock and Adams were staying in Lexington, at the town parsonage – a building that still stands, two doors down from the house I grew up in.

Getting the message out was so important that a second messenger was sent, William Dawes.  He went via a land route.  The two met up in the early morning of April 19 at the Lexington parsonage and started traveling to Concord, meeting up with a third confederate, Samuel Prescott.  And it was a good thing, too.  As they crossed through a corner of Lincoln (a town between Lexington and Concord), they met up with a British patrol.  Revere was captured; Dawes got away, but got lost.  It was Dr. Prescott who made it to Concord to warn the Provincial Congress to flee and for the Minutemen to assemble to defend the town from the British troops.

As I said, I grew up in Lexington.  April 19 was a state holiday – Patriots’ Day.  Every year, early in the morning, Paul Revere and William Dawes reenactors would ride into town.  Kids were allowed to climb belfry hill and ring the bell, calling the reenactor Minutemen to the town green.  British reenactors would march up Massachusetts Avenue, meet the Minutemen on the Green, and together they would reenact the first battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of Lexington.  Really not much more than a skirmish, it lasted minutes.

In history, the British troops regrouped and marched on to Concord where, thanks to earlier warnings about the possibilities and the arrival of Dr. Prescott, the munitions and leaders had been moved and their mission ended up being pretty much a bust.  The British did manage to find some things to burn, which caused enough smoke that the Minutemen who had assembled outside of town thought the British were burning the town down.  They stormed the North Bridge, and the fighting began in earnest, continuing through the day in Concord and along the march back to Boston.

In my childhood, the day was all about the horses riding into town, ringing the belfry, and the reenactment on the Lexington Battle Green.  It turns out that other things were happening in Massachusetts on that holiday, the most famous of which is most assuredly the Boston Marathon.  Eventually, the holiday got moved to a Monday, and the Boston Marathon and the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington with it.

When I learned about the bombing at the finish line of this year’s Marathon, I was, like many of you, horrified.  I was horrified by the carnage, horrified by the death, horrified by the callousness and coldheartedness.  I had been in a meeting with a DOC Regional committee and was granted Ordained Ministerial Partner Standing.  I was rejoicing, not just for me, but for our congregation because I think having standing in both of our denominations will help our church stay connected to both denominations.  I stopped for lunch and checked Facebook on my phone.  I learned the news.  I turned to Twitter to learn more.

Then I turned to prayer.

Like so many of you, even as I sought to learn what had happened, even as I was reading updates, I found myself praying.  The Boston Marathon finish line is at Copley Square.  That’s right by Old South Church, a United Church of Christ and one of Boston’s most famous churches, and the Boston Public Library, a place I had been to many times in Junior High and High School to do research, you know, in the days before the Internet.  It is so easy for me to picture the place:  the bricks on the square, the pillars of the library, the bell tower of the church.  And I kept thinking about the families who would be there.  My brother-in-law ran in the Boston Marathon two years ago, and my sister and their kids went to cheer him on.

So many emotions – especially anxiety, grief, anger, and fear.  I was okay with the grief; the loss was real so the grief is real.  I was even okay with the anxiety and anger and fear.  They are emotions and emotions are fine to feel.  But I was also cautious of them, because I also know where those three emotions can so easily take me:  hatred and revenge-seeking.

And I know that the way of hatred and revenge-seeking are not the way of Jesus Christ.

As an antidote, I wasn’t ready for Jesus’ words about loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us.  So I turned to the words of Fred Rogers (better known as Mister Rogers):  “When I was a boy, and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”

And I turned to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”  And these words that I choose to hear with inclusive ears, “When evil men plot, good men must plan.  When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.  When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”

Holding on to these words became all the more important to me as the news broke late Thursday night and early Friday morning of the shootout in Watertown.  Watertown is just two towns away from Lexington and it is the home of one of my oldest friends and his family.  So much of the action of the next 24 hours took place within Steve’s neighborhood.  It would have been so easy for me to drift into hatred and revenge-seeking.  Those words of light and planning and building and binding and committing to love kept me grounded and helped me to pray.  That and Steve’s regular updates on Facebook, letting me and the rest of his friends know that he and his family were okay.

There are some other words I’ve been living with this week, words from Amos and Exodus.  The story from Exodus tells about the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea to safety.  It’s a story about an oppressed, enslaved people being freed.  We hear it and cheer for the good guys, for the underdog.  The great might of Pharaoh washed away as the Hebrews pass through the waters of freedom.

And I can’t help but wonder how the Egyptians would have told the story.  I image the headlines.  “Slaves revolt, demanding an end to society as we know it.”  “Fleeing slaves hunted by noble army.”  “Our brave armies drowned by capricious Hebrew God.”

Amos tells us that God wants not our piety, but justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  Does the definition of justice and righteousness really depend on which side of the Red Sea you’re left on?  The Hebrews’ tale speaks of God creating justice, of God wielding righteousness by killing of Egyptian soldiers.  And that’s not the God I know and love.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe about this story.  Whether based on some historical event or simply a story spun around a campfire, the story became an attempt to speak about God’s love for this particular people and an attempt to speak of God’s desire that they be free and whole.  In other words, the story is incomplete because it limits God’s love to one people.

Assuming that it is based on some historical event, the original storytellers saw God acting on their behalf and gave thanks to God for it.  That’s nice.  In fact, it’s a very human thing to do.  No doubt some people are looking at some of the events that unfolded in the Boston Metro Area this week and are seeing God at work on their behalf.  But to do this limits God and to do this limits God’s love.

The justice and righteousness we are called to bring forth like a gushing, never-ending stream of water should be for all people.  The scandalous truth is that, while I find it difficult to do so, God loves Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan.  The scandalous truth is that God loves not just you and me but also each prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, even the ones who wanted nothing more than to see each one of us dead, and God loves each person who committed torture in the name of the United States of America.

When I was planning this sermon series, my thoughts about this sermon where headed in a very different direction.  I hope you’ll come to the Second Saturday Documentary in May.[*]  If you do, you’ll get enough of what I was planning on talking about today.  Events have taken this sermon in a different direction, and

I have found myself reflecting on the image of the waters of freedom, but have noticed that they are transformed.  They are not the violent waters of the Red Sea crashing in on Pharaoh’s army.  They are the waters that we pass through to bring us – all of us – to freedom.

For some reason, perhaps it was the Holy Spirit, I started thinking about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  For Huck and for Jim, the waters of the Mississippi were waters of freedom.  For Huck, it was freedom from an abusive, alcoholic father.  For Jim, it was freedom from slavery and dehumanization.  Yes, this freedom was founded on escapism, and, yes, it turns out that Jim had been “free” for most of the journey because his owner died, freeing him in her will.  But on the River, Huck and Jim were their own men.  On these waters of freedom they found their own wholeness.

And that’s one of the things God offers us in the waters of baptism.  In baptism, we pass through the waters of freedom into a new life, transformed and freed for love and holy work.  In baptism, we pass through the waters of freedom into a disciple’s life of calling forth and bringing forth the waters of justice and righteousness.

This has been an emotionally draining week for me, and perhaps for you, too.  So, today, I want to wade in the waters of freedom.  Today, I want to let the currents of justice and righteous flow around my ankles.  Today, I want to splash around in the joy of life, to remember by baptism, and to remember God’s call to a life that is more than piety, to a life that seeks justice and righteousness and freedom for all God’s children.

Amen.

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[*] We plan to show Blue Gold: World Water Wars on Saturday, May 11, at 1:30 p.m. at the church.  A discussion will follow the screening.  You can see the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJSZfGnDHw

Waters of Destruction

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 14, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  Genesis 7:1-24
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

I can’t hear the Noah story without hearing Bill Cosby.^[i]

There’s fella by the name of Noah; he built an ark.  Everybody knows he built an ark.  You say, “What Noah do?”
“Well he built an ark.”
But very few people know about the conversation that went on between the Lord and Noah.
You see Noah was in his rec room, sawing away, he was making a few things for the home there.  He was a good carpenter.
Zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa
“Noah!”
“Somebody call?”
Zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa, zwoopa
“Noah!”
“Who is that?”
“It’s the Lord, Noah.”
“Right!”

If you’ve never heard the recording, track it down.  It’s good and, even though it was recorded 50 years ago, it still works.

I think it works because the story of Noah and the flood is part of our collective mythos.  It’s influenced literature (like Old Man and the Sea and Life of Pi) and movies (like Evan Almighty and Titan, A.E.).  It’s been turned into comedy sketches.  It’s one of those stories that we learn at an early age.  As Cosby says, “Everybody knows Noah built an ark.”

But I’ve got to tell you that I’ve long thought it strange that we teach this story to our children.  I mean, this story is at least PG-13.  It starts off with God having a conversation with Noah and the first thing that God says is, I’ve had it.  “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.” (Genesis 6:13)  It starts off with God saying, “I’m going to commit the greatest genocide of all time and destroy not just a culture, but every culture and every air-breathing animal species, too.  Well, not every animal, but almost all of them – and that’s where you come in, Noah.”

Yes, the story has all the animals in it.  Yes, it’s like a trip to the zoo and it makes for great illustrations for the children’s book.  But we seem to gloss over the destruction.

It is interesting that many cultures tell stories about a great flood.  Some have suggested that the existence of these similarly themed stories in such diverse cultures might suggest that there really was an earth-wide catastrophic flood.  Some have posited theories of some sort of eruption on earth or the collision of some space debris causing sea levels to rise sufficiently to cause worldwide flooding.  I think it more likely that cultures around the globe have experienced catastrophic floods that seemed “worldwide,” even though on a global scale they could be considered “local.”

For instance, there is, apparently, evidence of major flooding of the Mesopotamian valley sometime near the transition between prehistory and history.  One can assume that major river system in other places around the globe experienced similar flooding, which may have been part of the basis of these similar stories.

You probably know that many scholars see the Noah story as having roots in other flood stories from Babylon.  For instance, there are three surviving Babylonian flood stories, the most famous of which is probably the Epic of Gilgamesh.  There’s another epic where the hero is Atrahasis.  They involve boats and collecting animals and floods.  There are definite parallels between the Noah story and these Babylonian stories.  Not just the ark, but the raven and the dove show up in other Near Eastern flood stories.

But there are also differences, the biggest of which may be the approach.  “In the Bible, it is human sin that causes [or moves God to cause] the Flood; in the Babylonian-Akkadian epic of ‘Atrahasis,’ human boisterousness and noise disturb the sleep of the gods and cause them to react.  In the Bible, Noah is saved so that he might begin the human voyage over again; in ‘Gilgamesh,’ the flood hero is elevated to immortal status and thereby is removed from human history.”^[ii]

So our Biblical story of the flood is much more than a prehistoric memory.  It is different from a mere retelling of some ancient folk tale.  It is a story with a moral.  The themes are sin, righteousness, and a second opportunity to live in accordance with, rather than opposed to, the will of God.^[iii]

Perhaps the most important difference between the flood story in the Torah and the other Near Eastern traditions is that, in the Torah, “God institutes law as the counteragent of human wickedness, while in other Near Eastern traditions such a divine response is absent.”^[iv]  You see, this is the story that introduces covenant.  Up until now in Genesis, things have happened, but none of it has been based on covenant.  God has chosen to act.  Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel, have made choices – some of them pretty bad – but none of it has been based on covenant.

But in chapter 6, God makes the first covenant, and it’s with Noah.  The details of the covenant are not expressed in chapter 6.  Perhaps the implication is that God will help Noah and his family survive the great flood that’s coming, but Noah has this work he needs to do.  He needs to build a big boat and he needs to gather his family and representative animals and food.  And if Noah does all this, God will protect them.  Or, perhaps God is only saying that after the flood, God will make a covenant with Noah.  In chapter 6, maybe the only thing that’s happening is the promise of a promise.  Either way, the flood comes and everything except what’s on the ark dies.

And then the flood subsides, and God does make a covenant.  But it’s not just with Noah.  It’s with all of creation.  And the promise is that never again will all the world be destroyed with a flood.  And the sign of this promise is that God hangs up the bow (as in bow and arrow) in the sky.  The rainbow is God choosing to unilaterally disarm.

In the documentary, Bitter Seeds, which we showed here yesterday, we learned about the plight of farmers in central India.  For generations, they planted cotton, fertilized it with cow dung, waited for the rainy season, harvested the cotton, and kept seeds from the crop for the next year’s planting.  Then Monsanto moved in with genetically modified seeds, Bt seeds that are supposed to grow into plants that resist insect infestations.

The problem is – well, there are several problems:
First of all, Bt cotton doesn’t resist all insects.  While it might resist some insects and reduce the need for pesticides for those insects, there are other pests that are happy to eat the plants.  So pesticide applications are still necessary.
Second, after a few insect generations, they develop a resistance to the Bt toxicity.
Third, Bt seeds produce sterile plants, so the farmers have to purchase seeds each year.  They can’t just save seeds from this year’s harvest for next year.
Fourth, Bt cotton is much more persnickety that the traditional varieties of cotton planted in central India.  Bt requires irrigation and these small farmers don’t have irrigation; they rely on the rains.  Bt requires fertilization at specific times and cow dung is not the right fertilizer.
So, fifth, farmers borrow money to buy the seeds and fertilizers and pesticides, don’t get the promised yields, and end up in cycles of debt that they can’t get out of.  The suicide rate among farmers in central India rose to the level of one every half-hour.

As I watched the movie, I thought about the rains.  We listened to farmers praying for rain.  We listened to children singing songs about waiting for the rains.  For generations, the farmers have been dependent on the rains, and the rains, more often than not have come at the about right times in about the right quantities.  But that’s changing now.  And it’s not just changing in central India.  It’s changing globally.

One of the primary ways climate change is manifesting itself is by changes in precipitation patterns.  As the planet warms due to releases of CO₂ (and other greenhouse gasses) from the burning of fossil fuels, that warmer air holds more moisture.  So dry places have become drier as that warmer air sucks away the moisture; and dry seasons have become drier.  Wet places have become wetter, because that moisture will eventually come out of the air; and wet seasons have become wetter.

The culprit really is the burning of fossil fuels.  A tree in the Amazon jungle, takes carbon out of the air, but that tree will eventually die and release that carbon back into the ecosystem.  The burning of the tree only releases that carbon quicker than if the tree were allowed to die naturally.  But the carbon that’s in fossil fuels has spent millennia safely sequestered underground.  Then we’ve come along, dug (or pumped) it up to the surface, and burned it, releasing it into the atmosphere.  That’s what’s caused the spike in the levels of atmospheric CO₂ – and the spike in the levels of CO₂ has caused the warming that’s causing the climate change.

Just think about what happened last year.  In Australia, summer is coming to a close, a summer that was so hot they had to come up with two new colors for the weather maps, indicating temperatures above 122^oF.^[v]  Last summer in the U.S., heat and drought crippled farming across the Midwest and South and closed sections of the Mississippi River to shipping.^[vi]  Meanwhile in the American West, the 2012 wildfire season had already burned 30 percent more area than in an average year by September, with nearly two months still to go in the fire season.^[vii]

More than a thousand people were killed in the destruction left by Typhoon Bopha in Mindanao, the southern island of the Philippines.^[viii]  In June, flooding in Bangladesh left at least 70 dead and close to a quarter million people stranded or displaced.^[ix]

And let’s not forget hurricane Sandy.  After pounding the Caribbean, it moved up the east coast of the U.S., only to meet up with North Atlantic weather that moved it ashore with ferocious strength.  The storm became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record (as measured by diameter, with winds spanning 1,100 miles).^[x]  “Hurricane Sandy affected 24 states, including the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine and west across the Appalachian Mountains to Michigan and Wisconsin, with particularly severe damage in New Jersey and New York.  Its storm surge hit New York City … flooding streets, tunnels and subway lines and cutting power in and around the city.”^[xi]  If I read the chart on the NOAA website^[xii]correctly, Sandy left 131 people dead in the U.S., after killing at least 70 in the Caribbean.^[xiii]

Now, each of these severe events is weather, and one year of weather does not a climate make.  But the scientists are blaming these extreme weather events on climate change.  According to Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Human-driven climate change is in fact driving changes in severe weather, and that leads to a lot of potential impacts in both humans and wildlife that end up being costly in many different ways.”^[xiv]

His findings are backed up by the insurance industry, whose job it is to make money – and they do that by reducing their losses, so they study things like weather patterns and climate chaos.  Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase in severe weather and predicts those influences will continue in the years ahead.^[xv]

The story of Noah, our faith story about the waters of destruction, is a story about sin, righteousness, and a second opportunity to live in accordance with, rather than opposed to, the will of God.  Science tells us that our continued burning of fossil fuels is bringing back the waters of destruction – despite God’s promises.  We need to return to this story with fresh ears to hear its witness.  We are the people who are not living righteously, at least not righteously enough when it comes to climate change.  But the reality is, we – not just individually, not just as a people in one nation – but we as a people of the earth have a second chance.  If we act quickly, we have a second opportunity to live in accordance with, rather than opposed to, the will of God.

I pray to God we take it.  Amen.

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ENDNOTES

[i] Bill Cosby recorded this sketch on the Album Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow … Right! in 1963.  You can hear the sketch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlmIeH7DT_w.

[ii] W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, (New York: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), page 56.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Brooke Jarvis, “Australia Adds New Weather Map Colors for Extreme Heat,” Rolling Stone Magazine, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/australia-adds-new-weather-map-colors-for-extreme-heat-20130108 (13 April 2013).

[vi] “Mississippi River commerce imperiled by low water,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/22/mississippi-river-commerce-imperiled-by-low-water/1721817/ (13 April 2013).

[vii] “Worst Natural Disasters Of 2012,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/worst-natural-disasters-of-2012_n_2349311.html#slide=1898698 (13 April 2013).

[viii] Caroline Gluck, “Typhoon Bopha: Families Struggle to Revocer,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-gluck/typhoon-bopha—families_b_2335505.html (13 April 2013).

[ix] Anis Ahmed, “Seventy dead, 200,000 stranded in Bangladesh floods,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/us-bangladesh-floods-idUSBRE85Q07A20120627 (13 April 2013).

[x] “Hurricane Sandy,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy (13 April 2013).

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] “Billion Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters,” NOAA, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events (13 April 2013).

[xiii] “Hurricane Sandy,” op. cit.

[xiv] “Relationship Explored Between Climate Change And Severe Weather,” redOrbit, http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112785320/climate-change-cause-severe-weather-relationship-021513/ (13 April 2013).

[xv] Doyle S. Rice, “Report: Climate change behind rise in weather disasters,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/10/weather-disasters-climate-change-munich-re-report/1622845/ (13 April 2013).

Waters of Creation

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 7, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scriptures:  Genesis 1:1–2:3 and Luke 1:26-38
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

I wish I had taken a physics class in high school.  I wish I had learned the bas of at least classical physics.  I don’t feel the need to master quantum field theory (I’m not even sure what those words mean).  But it would be nice to have a formal way to organize what I do know about mechanics, acoustics, optics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism.  I mean, I have this bits and pieces of information floating around between my ears, and I think I understand them a little, but …

For instance, there are four laws of thermodynamics – the field of science that looks at the connections of heat, work, and energy – the zeroeth, first, second, and third.  I love that numbering system.  I wish I understood them better.

The scientists in the congregation can correct me if I’m wrong, but (as I understand it) the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, says that the general tendency of the universe is to go from order and structure to lack of order and lack of structure.  Yet look around us.  Our species is staggeringly complex.  And the ecosystems that we live in are staggeringly complex.  And the diversity of species that exist on this planet is staggeringly complex.  In a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics, how can we have this amazing complexity?

Evolution tells us that the first species of life on this planet were simple single-celled organisms  and that over the eons, the species became more and more complex and more and more diverse.  This seem directly contradictory to the second law of thermodynamics.

As I worked on this sermon series and decided that this first sermon would be based on the first creation story, told in Genesis 1 (and dribbling into the beginning of Genesis 2), I remembered a TED talk I heard months ago.^[1]  A professor named David Christian gave the talk titled, “The History of our World in 18 Minutes.”  He starts out with the very questions I just asked:  In a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics, how can we have this amazing complexity?  He goes on to explain that the universe can create great complexity, but that it’s really, really hard.

The way the universe developed, there are pockets with “Goldilocks conditions” – you know, not too hard or too soft, but just right, or more importantly, not to cold or to hot, but just right for the creation of slightly more complex things.  And when there are complex things, slightly more complex things can come into being.  So complexity builds, stage by stage, and each stage is magical because it creates the impression of something utterly new appearing almost out of nowhere in the universe.  Now, as things get more complex they become more fragile and vulnerable, and the Goldilocks conditions become more stringent, and the creation of more complex things becomes even more difficult.

If you go back 13.7 billion years, to the beginning of time.  There’s nothing.  There’s not even vacuum.  Not even time.  Then suddenly – BAM – a universe appears.  And scientist theorize that it is tiny, smaller than an atom, but it contains all the energy that’s in the universe, so it’s expanding really, really fast, and within a second the energy starts to congeal into matter – and about 380,000 years after the Big Bang (that’s twice as long as humans have been on this planet), hydrogen and helium nuclei capture electrons and form stable atoms.

Now, thanks to telescopes, we can look back into time.  Because light travels at the speed of light, the light from 13 billion light years away that we see now is actually a picture of what was going on 13 billion years ago.  And scientists have looked back to this early time in the history of the universe, they’ve looked back into this simple, unstructured cosmic mush.  And they’ve found that there are slight variations in this cosmic mush, just enough for the universe to move to the next level of complexity.

Gravity is more powerful where there’s more stuff, so where you have slightly denser areas of hydrogen and helium, they start compacting.  So the universe starts dividing up into clouds.  And as the clouds get more dense, gravity increases, which makes the clouds get more dense, which caused gravity to increase, …  The temperature rises in the center of each cloud, and when the temperature increases past the threshold of 10,000,000 degrees, protons start to fuse, there’s a huge release of energy, and – bam – we have our first stars.

It’s as if God said, “Let there be light.”

David Christian goes on to explain who when stars die, they get so hot that more complex elements are created, leading to a chemically more complex universe.  These chemicals swirl around young stars and start to coalesce into rocks and asteroids and planets and moons, and that’s how our solar system was created some four and a half billion years ago.  Rocky planets like the earth are far more complex than stars because they contain a much more diverse collection of materials.  But with this more diverse collection of materials – and the right conditions – the next stage of things can happen.

Given the right amount of energy – not too much and not too little, given a great diversity of chemical elements, and given liquids like water, you can have living organisms.  Why is water so important?  In gasses, atoms move past each other so quickly than can’t hitch up.  In solids, atoms are stuck where they are and can’t combine in new ways.  In liquids, they can cruise and cuddle and link up to form molecules.

Where do you find these Goldilocks conditions?  Planets are great and our early earth was just about as good as it gets.  It was just the right distance from its sun to contain huge oceans of liquid water.  And deep beneath those oceans were cracks in the earth’s crust where you’ve got heat seeping up from inside the earth’s crust and you’ve got a great diversity of elements.  And so wonderful chemistry takes place and molecules get formed and eventually you get this wonderful molecule that can replicate itself called DNA.

And one of the beauties of DNA is its imperfection.  Every now and again, one of the rungs on the DNA ladder copies itself incorrectly.  And sometimes that mistake works and something new is created.  So DNA itself starts introducing more diversity, more complexity.  And eventually we get single celled organisms and then multi-celled organisms and then fungi and fish and plants and insects and amphibians and dinosaurs and mammals and human beings.  All of this was possible because of the energy and chemistry and water that exist on this planet circling that star we call the sun.

As a Christian, I find this scientific explanation fascinating and deeply spiritual.  Yes, I can turn to the creation stories in Genesis to reflect on creation.  And, yes, one of the reasons for the original telling of those stories was probably to answer the question of how the universe came to be.  But thanks to science, I have a much better answer to that “how” question.  So I find the scientific explanation dancing with the biblical stories, especially the first one in Genesis.

And as I reflect on the biblical creation stories to wrestle with those deeper “why” questions and the relational questions – Why is there creation?  Why was I created?  Who am I in relationship to creation?  Who am I in relationship to the creator?

I find the scientific story helping to fill me with awe.  You see, when I contemplate both the biblical stories and the scientific story, I find myself returning to the understanding of God as the Creator.  I believe that God is responsible for creating this wonderfully simple universe that allows for such complexity, that wants to move simultaneously toward entropy and diversity.  I have no science to back that belief up and I don’t think it should be taught in science classes, but I don’t find it contradictory to the scientific story.  I believe that God created and creates and is in and through this creation.

So I read that first creation story – the first verses of the creation story – and I am struck by its poetic description dances with the science.  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 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.”  I think about the chaos it describes – a formless void of darkness – out of which God creates.  I hear echoes of the first half a billion years after the Big Bang.  I think about the wind/spirit (the Hebrew word has that double meaning) from God sweeping over the water, and I think of the chemistry that was going on in the depths of earth’s oceans.

Our scriptures tell us the God creates out of the waters.  Science tells us that life on earth was created out of the waters.  Our own experience of birth tells us that life is created out of the waters of the womb.  Jesus himself walked among us thanks to the waters of Mary’s womb.

Our scriptures also tell us that this creation is very good and that we have a responsibility to care for this creation.  That word, “dominion,” may not be the best contemporary American English word to use as a translation of the Hebrew.  That word has too much of a connotation of ownership of and power over, and not enough of responsibility for.  Perhaps “stewardship” is a better word.  And, to be honest, we’re not being good stewards of the oceans, our planet’s waters of creation.

According to National Geographic,^[2] for tens of millions of years, earth’s oceans have maintained a relatively stable pH level – that’s the measure of how acidic or basic they are.  “It’s within this steady environment that the rich and varied web of life in today’s seas has arisen and flourished.   But research shows that this ancient balance is being undone by a recent and rapid drop in surface pH that could,” National Geographic says, “have devastating global consequences.”

They trace the change to the beginning of the industrial revolution in the early 1800s.  Now, I know that the industrial revolution did some amazing things.  It is largely viewed as being a vital factor in the blossoming of middle class lifestyles in America.  But it was powered by fossil fuels.  The unfortunate consequence, however, has been the emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases that had been safely locked away underground in those fossil fuels into Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists now know that about half of the CO₂ coming from the burning of these fossil fuels has been absorbed over time by the oceans.  This has benefited us by slowing the climate change these emissions would have caused if they had remained in the atmosphere, but the introduction of these massive amounts of CO₂ into the seas is altering water chemistry and affecting the life cycles of many marine organisms, particularly those at the lower end of the food chain.

When CO₂ dissolves in this ocean, carbonic acid is formed.  “This leads to higher acidity, mainly near the surface, which has been proven to inhibit shell growth in marine animals and is suspected as a cause of reproductive disorders in some fish.”

National Geographic explains what’s going on.  “On the pH scale, which runs from 0 to 14, solutions with low numbers are considered acidic and those with higher numbers are basic.  Seven is neutral.  Over the past 300 million years, ocean pH has been slightly basic, averaging about 8.2.  Today, it is around 8.1, a drop of 0.1 pH units, representing a 25-percent increase in acidity over the past two centuries.

“The oceans currently absorb about a third of human-created CO2 emissions, roughly 22 million tons a day.  Projections based on these numbers show that by the end of this century, continued emissions could reduce ocean pH by another 0.5 units.  Shell-forming animals including corals, oysters, shrimp, lobster, many planktonic organisms, and even some fish species could be gravely affected.”

In other words, we are burning fossil fuels at a rate that is undermining the Goldilocks conditions that enabled life to evolve over the eons and for human civilization to flourish for the last 10,000 years.

Our stewardship of the waters of creation remains on our shoulders.  As we consider the moon and the stars, the sun and the oceans, and wonder at how among of all the trillions of stars and planets in the universe that God cares for us human beings, let us remember our responsibility as we give God thanks.

Amen.

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ENDNOTES
[1] David Christian, “The History of our World in 18 Minutes,” TEDTalks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqc9zX04DXs, uploaded 11 April 2011 (6 April 2013).

[2] “The Ocean: Ocean Acidification,” National Geographic, http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/ (6 April 2013).

Reflections on picking up trash

Today, members of my congregation and several other United Church of Christ congregations in Fremont, California, gathered in Fremont’s Central Park to pick up trash.  This is part of the UCC’s “Mission 4/1 Earth” project.  Being the pastor of one of the participating churches, I couldn’t get away right after worship, get changed, and get to the marshalling point – so I arrived late and missed the orientation.  But I figured that picking up trash wouldn’t be too hard to figure out on my own.

Because I was not with the group, I ended up doing most of my hour of picking up trash by myself.  I had a plastic bag from a loaf of bread as my trash bag, which caused a bit of a commotion with I got to an area by Lake Elizabeth that was inhabited by a bunch of some fowl I can’t identify (maybe you can?).  Amazingly, they saw the bag and assumed that it was filled with stale bread, because I turned around to see a bunch of them following me.  It was not the greeting I expected.

I noticed two other things.  One was that about two-thirds to three-quarters of the items I picked up were cigarette butts.  It amazes me that people still think it’s okay to just toss their cigarette butts onto the grass.  The other thing I noticed was that after just an hour of bending over to pick up trash, my back and hips were aching.  It made me very appreciative of the people who do stoop labor to harvest food for me to eat.

Unnatural Event

A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, in Fremont, California,
on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture:  John 20:1-18
Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

Earlier this week, an older couple received a phone call from their son who lives far away.^[1]  The son said he was sorry, but he wouldn’t be able to come for a visit over spring break after all.  “The grandkids say hello,” he said.  The couple assured him that they understood, but when they hung up the phone they didn’t dare look at each other.

Earlier this week, a woman was called into her supervisor’s office to hear that times are hard for the company and they had to let her go.  “So sorry,” the supervisor said.  She cleaned out her desk, packed away her hopes for getting ahead, and wondered what she would tell her kids.

Earlier this week, someone received terrible news from a physician.

Earlier this week, someone heard the words, “I don’t love you any more.”

Earlier this week, someone’s hope was crucified.  And the darkness is overwhelming.  It seems as if it is all over.  That is the natural thing to assume.

It sure seemed like it was all over to the disciples.^[2]  By some political maneuvering, they’d managed to prevent the soldiers from feeding his broken body to the wild dogs.  With pain filled faces they took him down from the cross, maybe they washed him, but they probably didn’t have time to anoint the body before they wrapped him in a shroud, and laid him in a borrowed tomb.  It was a better fate than being fed to the dogs.  But not by much.

The One who’d told them he had no place to lay his head, was still far away from home.  When his flesh had decayed, would his bones be gathered to those of his ancestors?  Over the coming generations, would anyone remember him?  I imagine that all that day and the next, a stillness hung over his disciples.  Occasionally, the stillness was broken by the fear filled sobbing of his disciples … and the glad cries of those who had sought his life.

Then, something happened, something that is so hard to explain, perhaps the only way to explain it is with stories.  Matthew tells the story this way.

In the last moments before the sun rose on the third day, there came a noise.  At first the soldiers who guarded the tomb listened to it in amazement.  Then they covered their ears and fell to the ground in terror.  For angel voices, the ones who sang a wondrous pianissimo of beauty over the stable of Bethlehem, burst into a fortissimo of sheer, raw, unadulterated power.  Blinding light sprang forth, not from the sun, but from the rocks themselves as the earth heaved and pushed the stone away.  And in a roar never before heard on earth, the bonds of death were shattered forever.

Death became a joke in that moment.  It can no longer win.  Evil can no longer win.  Darkness can no longer defeat light.  Seemingly powerless love has triumphed over loveless power.  And for all eternity the angels’ song rings through the heavens and in the hearts of those who open them to hear.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Easter, the Sunday of the Resurrection is not only the greatest day of the church year; it is also the only one that is set by the moon.^[3]  Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox.  As complicated as that sounds, it makes ancient sense, since it means (at least in the northern hemisphere, where this dating scheme was created) Easter coincides with the greening of the earth.

Christ is risen and the whole world comes to life.  Sap rises in dormant trees, spring peepers start their peeping, and trumpet lilies spill their sweet smell on the air – causing people like me to reach for the Zyrtec.  The connection is a happy one, guaranteed to renew our faith in the creative power of God.

But it is also a misleading one, because spring is entirely natural.  Buy a daffodil bulb in the winter and it looks like nothing in your hands – a small onion, maybe, with its thin skin and scraggy roots.  If you have had any experience with bulbs, however that does not worry you.  You know that all you have to do it wait.  Come springtime it will escape the earth and explode with color, a yellow butterfly of a blossom shedding its cocoon.  As miraculous as it is, it is completely natural.

Resurrection, on the other hand, is entirely unnatural.  When a human being goes into the ground, that is that.  You don’t wait around for the person to reappear so you can pick up where you left off – not this side of the grave, anyway.  You say good-bye.  You pay your respects and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them.

That is all Mary Magdalene was doing that morning – paying her respects, going to his tomb to convince herself it was all true, John tells us as he tries to explain what happened.  It was still dark, but even from a distance she knew something was wrong.  She could smell damp earth, cold rock from inside.  Someone had moved the stone!

The conclusion was obvious.  Afraid he would become a saint, afraid his tomb would become a shrine, someone had taken him away – God knew where.  To a steep cliff?  To the town dump?  Allowed his body to be fed to the dogs?

His body was all she had left and now it too was gone.  So she ran and brought two of the others back with her, but once they had satisfied themselves that what she said was true, they left her there weeping.  If they tried to lead her away, she refused them.  She was like an abandoned pup who had lost her master, staying rooted to the last place he had been, without the least idea of what to do next.

Even angels could not soften her resolve.  They were there when she worked up her nerve to look inside the tomb, sitting where the body had lain.  “Why are you weeping?” they asked her.

“They have taken away my lord,” she answered them, “and I do not know where they have laid him.”  It never occurred to her they might be the culprits, apparently, but it was not as if she were thinking clearly.

She was operating on automatic pilot, so that when she left the tomb she bumped into the gardener without even seeing him.  His only value to her was that he might know the answer to her question.  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  What did she think she would do – have the gardener lay the body over her shoulders, or pick it up all by herself?

It was not a reasonable request, but the gardener did not seem to mind.  Perhaps he was even a bit amused.  “Mary,” he said to her, and she turned to stare at him.

“Rabbouni!” she cried out.  “My Teacher!”

“Do not hold on to me,” he cautioned her, “because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  What peculiar thing for him to say since there is no evidence she was holding on to him in any way.  Unless it was by what she called him – my Teacher, the old name she used to call him.  Maybe he could hear it in her voice, how she wanted him back the way he was so they could go back to the way they were, back to the old life where everything was familiar and not frightening like it was now.

“Rabbouni!” she called him, but that was his Friday name, and here it was Sunday – an entirely new day in an entirely new life.  He was not on his way back to her and the others.  He was on his way to God, and he was taking the whole world with him.  This may be why all the other gospel accounts of the resurrection tell us not to be afraid – because new life is frightening.  It is unnatural.

To expect a sealed tomb and find one filled with angels, to hunt the past and discover the future, to seek a corpse and find the risen Lord – none of this is natural.

Death is natural.  Loss is natural.  Grief is natural.  The good news is this:  the story does not end with death and loss and grief.  Our stories, our lives are changed by this highly unnatural truth:  those stones have been rolled away.  By the light of this day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be killed, and if we can remember that then there is nothing we cannot do.  We can move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world.

The only thing we cannot do is hold on to him.  He has asked us please not to do that, because he knows that, all things considered, we would rather keep him with us where we are than let him take us where he is going.  Better we should let him hold on to us, perhaps.  Better we should let him take us into the white-hot presence of God, who is not behind us but ahead of us, every step of the way.

Amen

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ENDNOTES
[1] Adapted from Craig Barnes, “Savior at Large,” published in the March 13-20, 2002, edition of The Christian Century, quoted in an email from sermons.com dated 26 March 2013.

[2] This next section of the sermon (through Matthew’s telling of the Easter story) is adapted from an email Frank Fisher sent to Sermonshop_Sermons on Ecunet on April 11, 2004.

[3] The rest of this sermon is almost a direct quote from a sermon “The Unnatural Truth” by Barbara Brown Taylor, printed in one of her books, Home By Another Way (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), 109-112.