June 1, 2008
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Genesis 6:9-22, 7:24, 8:14-19 and Matthew 7:21-29
Free Cell
I’ve never been much of a card player. Nor have I spent much time with computer
games. But when I want to waste time on my laptop, I typically play solitaire. I don’t
enjoy the game that much, but in part, that’s the point. The computer card game I do like
to play is Free Cell. It is similar to solitaire in that the objective is to arrange the cards in a
particular order. But there are four open spaces in the playing layout that you can use to
help facilitate the card placement – these are the free cells. The big difference between
solitaire and Free Cell is that every hand of Free Cell is winnable. Once I learned that
fact, I became fascinated with the game. And that’s why I don’t have Free Cell installed
on my computer, because I’m afraid I would waste entirely too much time with it. If you
run into a dead end in Free Cell, you can simply restart the game, make a different choice
at a critical turn and hopefully resolve the hand. I’ll keep playing the same hand over and
over again until I figure out how to win it. So much of my work could be at risk of never
getting done. Sermons might never be finished. And since I spent the past couple of
days at the Vermont Conference annual meeting in Castleton this week, I didn’t have a
lot of time to “waste.” Even without the temptation of Free Cell, I started working on
this week’s sermon early, with the hope that I wouldn’t be up late last night finishing it.
Act of God
So I started my writing process on Monday by reading and considering the Lectionary
texts for this week, the passages we heard read aloud a few minutes ago. The story of
Noah, the Ark and the Flood is probably one of the most well known stories in the Bible.
But in some ways it is one of the most disturbing. I struggle with a God who seems to
exhibit human emotions, particularly anger. And I am averse to the idea of God
intentionally destroying what God has created in order to eradicate the “wicked,” who, in
order to merit such treatment, must be both incorrigible and unforgivable. Such a read of
the Flood story can be divisive, as readers will likely want to count themselves among the
select few righteous. But defining righteousness may prompt identifying and delineating
between some opposite and external ‘evil.’
In this very simplified understanding of how God operated in human history – what my
Old Testament professor called Iron Age theology – the relationship to action and
outcome was cause and effect. Good things happened to God people, and the corollary,
if good things happened to you then you must be following the rules. And bad things
were supposed to happen to bad people with its corollary if something bad happened to
you, then you must have done something to earn the punishment. So, if a massive flood
erased a city taking most of its inhabitants with it, it was completely understandable.
Clearly, those people deserved to die. The flood was an act of God passing judgment
and carrying out the sentence for punishment. One fascinating aspect of the Bible is the
way in which our faith tradition’s understanding of God’s involvement in human history
evolves and matures as people wrestle with these simple assumptions, when these
assumptions don’t seem to explain what the people are experiencing. Job is a great
example of bad things happening to good people. And the experience of the Hebrew
people’s exile in Babylon deepened the question, for here, the punishment seemed to far
outweigh the transgression. Maybe God’s relationship to humans and the world was
more complex that previously thought. That we continue to wrestle with the same
questions today would suggest that yes indeed it is a complex relationship that we still
don’t fully comprehend.
A World That Works
However the Hebrew prophets were operating on an assumption with which I do agree:
that God has created a world that works. But every creature, every part of creation must
do the work they were created to do in order to keep creation running smoothly. This
includes humanity. If humans are not doing our assigned job, then all of creation is
impacted. The prophet Hosea describes a time when “the land mourns, and all who live
in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the
sea are perishing” (Hosea 4:3). Why? Because the people are unfaithful to God.
Because the people are behaving badly, “swearing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery and
bloodshed” are commonplace misbehaviors that Hosea enumerates Jeremiah asks, “How
long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of
those who live in it the animals and the birds are swept away” (Jeremiah 12:4). It is all
interdependent and intertwined. What is significant about these prophetic observations is
that they are not pointing fingers at an external “other,” but calling for self-examination.
The prophet asks, “Is there anything we could be doing differently?” The answer to the
question is relational. In order to spare the land, the birds, the wild animals, humans must
return to right relationship with God and with each other. Humans must return to doing
the work humanity was created to do as part of the working order of the whole of
creation.
We heard excerpts from the Book of Genesis this morning. The Book of Genesis of
course begins with the story of creation. What we missed between this morning’s
passages was the unraveling of creation that occurred as a result of the Flood. Just as
Genesis began with order emerging from the chaos of the “deep,” waters pulled back and
contained to reveal dry land; night and day, and a sequence of living plants and animals
emerging on that land, the flood story releases those chaotic waters to reclaim creation.
But not all of creation was consumed in the waters, only those parts that were not
functioning properly.
Gift of Life
And so a different read of the Flood story could focus on saving or preserving life. It
could be read as a story about stopping human behavior before that behavior completely
ruins creation. Through this lens, the Flood is an act of saving grace, not one of divine
punishment. Chaos is unleashed temporarily, but then God puts it back into containment.
This Flood story is about saving humanity not only from self-destruction, but also from
destroying the Earth along with itself. So rather than a lesson about being sure I am
counted among the righteous, about my individual salvation, the story suggests to me that
ours is a collective salvation. It suggests that we are in a co-creative partnership with
God, not because God needs us, but because God chooses to be in relationship with
humanity.
The Gospel lesson from Matthew also evokes imagery of torrential rain and rising water.
Jesus cautions those who would be nominal followers. Hearing the word is not enough,
action is required. Jesus challenges, “You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”
These are among the concluding remarks of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is telling his
listeners that if our actions are based on a firm foundation, then what we build will
weather the storm because we will be co-creating these structures with God. Later in his
gospel Matthew (22:37-40) records Jesus telling his listeners that the greatest
commandment that they are called to follow is to love God and that second, which is
related to loving God is the love of neighbor. Everything else, he says, hangs on these
two. In other words, these two instructions are foundational. Anything built on
something other than these will not stand forever. You may recall that last week we were
encouraged by Matthew’s gospel to focus our energy on seeking God’s realm and to trust
God to take care of the rest of life’s concerns. Remember that God created a world that
works IF everybody does their assigned part and humanity’s part; our assigned part is to
love God, and to love each other. If all our actions were based on this love, the world
would function as it was designed to. There would be no need for the land to mourn or
the birds of the air to languish.
The Waters of the World
Historically, bodies of water – rivers, lakes, oceans - have been used as boundaries to
divide property, nations, continents. But the waters of the world also connect us. On
September 11, 2001, following the destruction of the World Trade Center I got a phone
call from a friend of mine who has a very Earth based spirituality and she told me to go to
the water because she said, “the waters of the world connect us.” She meant everybody
in the world was connected, and what she asked me to do was to take my prayers for
peace to a place where they could be distributed around the planet. I am a mystic at
heart, so I didn’t hesitate to join in her sacred plan. I went to Caspian Lake, prayed over
a pebble and tossed it in. I watched the ripples radiate outward from the point where the
rock splashed and sank and I visualized them continuing to radiate beyond the edge of
the lake, over the spillway and into the stream that flows to the Lamoille River and into
Lake Champlain and beyond. When I got home I wrote these words in my journal:
The waters of the world connect us
What will you bring to the shore?
A smile
An embrace
A gift from the heart?
A thought
An intention
A selfless act?
Toss your pebble in
Circles of strangers become
Circles of caring
Then circles of friends
Sending concentric circles
Across the waters of the world
In the flow of a stream
Or the pull of the tide
In a cloud overhead
And the tears in our eyes
No one is left untouched
The waters of the world connect us
On this round rock spinning through
The vastness of space
Science Report
Many of you had a chance to read my short biographical overview that was included in
the bulletin a couple of weeks ago so you know that I have a master’s degree in geology.
In particular, I studied sedimentary geology so I know something about rivers and how
they work. Our planet Earth is pretty much a closed system, which means that all of
Earth’s materials are constantly being rearranged by a variety of processes working on
and below the surface. There’s nothing coming into the system except for the occasional
meteorite, and nothing going out besides the satellites and space probes we launch.
Earth’s surface features are largely produced and shaped by running water. This is an
ongoing process of reshaping and renewal, and there are three basic things that are
happening: material is being removed from one location, material is being transported,
and material is being deposited somewhere else. Moving water carries both dissolved
substances and solid particles. And most of the work done by running water occurs
during seasonal flooding. The more water moving through the channel the higher the
energy available and the higher the volume of material, and the larger the size of the
material that can be moved. Material is being lifted out of its resting place, mixed up
with lots of other stuff, resorted and rearranged, and then deposited in a different
configuration downstream. I don’t want to trivialize the real loss of property and loss of
life that can and do occur during seasons of flooding.
But I want to suggest that the story about Noah, the Flood and the Ark is about gathering
together the diversity of creation in order to preserve what is best about creation. I want
to suggest that this Biblical Flood is not so much an act of destruction as it is a way to
rearrange the pieces, as if God started a game of Free Cell, but decided to click “restart
game” when it was apparent that the cards in play weren’t falling in the best possible
arrangement. But by restarting with the same deck of cards even this game that had
somehow gotten way off track was still winnable, still worth playing.
Multiple Imagery
The first chapter of Genesis teaches us that humankind was created in God’s image, not
as a set of identical beings but with at least two distinct varieties from the very start (Gen
1:27). We can’t fully see the whole image of God unless the full diversity of human
beings is included in that imaging. We can’t see the full image of God if we segregate
ourselves on Sunday mornings into gatherings of people who look pretty much the same.
At it’s annual meeting the other day, the Vermont Conference unanimously voted in
favor of a resolution calling for it to become a more multicultural and multiracial
conference of the United Church of Christ. One member of the Uprooting Racism Task
Force reminded delegates during the discussion that passing the resolution would be
meaningless unless churches were willing to follow through and walk the walk.
Wade In the Water
I believe that if we are going to “walk the walk,” that is, be more than nominal Christians,
then we will have to respond to God’s invitation to not only approach the rising water in
the river, but we will have to wade in the water. And when we do wade in, we can be
assured that God is going to trouble the water. Not to destroy us, but to tear down those
faulty structures built on sand, to rearrange us in the chaotic floodwaters and to deposit
us in new, more durable structures when the waters subside. What is of value will be
preserved. What is no longer useful will wash away. And if we find ourselves afloat like
Noah, our work is to gather up those who are adrift. If we find our solid foundation has
served to keep us safe as Jesus advises in Matthew, then we must reach out from our
safety to those who struggle to keep their heads above water. The point is that we all
have to come through the chaotic floodwaters together. If we can hang on to each other,
even those who may not look or talk or think like us, if we can hang onto each other as if
our lives depended on it, God promises that we will survive to be a part of the re-creation
when those chaotic and troubled waters subside. We can then begin to establish the
beachhead of a Beloved Community. This is the promise of our baptism.
Throughout the scriptural record of our evolving relationship with God, there have been
times when lived experience differed from accepted understanding. The peoples’ faith
was challenged, and a deeper understanding of God’s relationship to humanity, to God’s
chosen co-creative partners, developed. Clearly, there is still a gap between the world we
live in and the “world that works,” that world as God created it to be. There is always a
gap between what is and the ideal; this is the human condition. The sacraments of
baptism and communion are bridges between the world as we experience it now and the
reality that will one day be. As we die with Christ in baptism and are reborn, we allow
the waters to dismantle our parts and reconfigure us into a new life form. And as we
gather at Christ’s table for communion, the diversity of all of us who are in our unique
way expressions of God’s image are reunited into the one body of Christ and we become
the foretaste of our promised unity with each other and with God.
So let us be thankful for the grace through which God offers these precious gifts of life.
And let the people of God say, Amen.
Sermon 06/01/2008