At-one -ment is our natural state

11 March 2012

 Last week’s sermon included a critique of the substitutionary sacrifice theory of atonement, and offered a different way of seeing the cross, not as a sacrificial offering for our sin, but as the consequence of a life of obedience to God. I received a follow-up question by e-mail the next day, asking me to say more about atonement.

The word atonement can be defined by picking it apart the way I did in the sermon title: At One Ment. Atonement means repair of something that is broken into pieces, making it whole again. Atonement in practical terms is restorative justice: like the program of the same name, that provides a way for young offenders to repair the damage they did when they broke somebody’s window or vandalized a public building. Atonement is fixing the window, and cleaning up the mess, and promising never to do anything so stupid again. But more than that, atonement is repairing the broken trust, the trust that allows people to live together in community.

Theologically, atonement is repairing the broken trust between God and people, becoming at one with God. Scripture says that we are made in the image of God, male and female. Scripture also says that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are dust animated by the spirit of God which is within us. Which means, at-one-ment with God is our natural state. We come from God and to God we return. It’s the middle part that is tricky, the part where we grow up and move out of God’s house, to make our own way in the world. It isn’t easy for us; but any parent can guess that it isn’t easy for God either.

During this season of Lent, our first scripture lessons have been the covenant stories of the Bible: The rainbow covenant after the flood, the covenant with Abraham, and today, the covenant at Sinai, also known as the ten commandments. These covenants trace the history of God reaching out to creation, like a parent reaching out to a lost or estranged child. God said to all creation: I am sorry about the flood. That was wrong, I was too harsh, I learned my lesson. I declare a unilateral disarmament. Here, I will hang up my bow: I put it in the clouds. Whenever you see my bow in the clouds remember: I am for you.

And later, God reached out to Abraham as he wandered from his home: Saying, Abraham, walk with me. I will be your God, and you will be my people, you and your descendants forever. I give you a name, and a land, and descendants, and my presence, always.

And when the people were enslaved in Egypt God called them out, and taught them how to live, so that it might go well with them. The commandments were given not so people could break them and give God a reason to retaliate. The commandments were given so that people could live, so that it would go well with them. They had been slaves, whose only rule was, do what your master says. God knows freedom isn’t easy, and God said, this is what freedom means: you have to be accountable to each other now. Here’s some guidelines. This is how you walk with me.

From time to time, God sent prophets to remind the people of the covenant on Sinai. You wonder why things aren’t going well, the prophets said, you wonder why your enemies surround you, you wonder why the people rebel? Remember the covenant. Remember the way God taught you to go. How’s that working for you? Oh, you forgot the covenant? Well, turn around! Repent!

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. Walk with me.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, sin is not original. Sin isn’t a sickness, sin isn’t an inevitable state of being. Sin is wandering from God, wandering away from the paths of righteousness that God mapped out for us at Sinai, the paths of righteousness and justice, the paths of mercy and compassion. And we make atonement by turning around, which is what repentance means, turning around. Turn back!

In the fullness of time, God sent Jesus, to be the living embodiment of God’s covenant. Jesus was the rainbow, the sign of peace. Jesus was the promise to Abraham, the one through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. Jesus was the living Word, faithfulness personified. Jesus was the way, the living map of the paths of righteousness. Jesus’ life is the map, Jesus’ resurrection is the sign of victory snatched from the jaws of death.

Jesus is the key to living the life that is truly worth living, in the meantime. From God we come, to God we will return; in the meantime life can be hell, or life can be at one with God. We, the church of Jesus, we, the followers of Christ have a mission: To keep to the paths of righteousness, as best we can, with the help of the Spirit; and to seek out and save the lost from their living hell, to help them find the way of at one ment with God. May the Spirit help us in our mission, and keep us on the right paths, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Cross and The Last Turn

4 March 2012

Mark 8:31-38

“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

            I have been reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, the distinguished professor of theology at Union Seminary in New York. James Cone, you could say, is the father of Black liberation theology, a great man, and a great voice of the church and to the church. I found the book on a table at Barnes & Noble, and I was intrigued because, frankly, I have a problem with the cross. Honestly. After all these years of study and prayer and life in the church, I find the common theology of the cross incredible, as in unbelievable, and the substitutionary theory of atonement inexcusable.

            Now, let me go back to what I learned about the substitutionary theory of atonement in college, in the simplest language possible. The first point of the theory is that God is great—God is so great, so perfect, so righteous. The second point is that people are sinful—people are so sinful, so foul, so irredeemable. Therefore, the third point, people cannot be at one with God, people cannot be in the presence of God unless some sort of sacrifice is made for their sins, to cancel out their sins in the balance of things. But, the problem is because people are so foul they are incapable of providing a sacrifice equal to the task. So God, according to this theory, being great and also good, created a son, his one and only son, completely perfect, without a flaw, so that this flawless son of God could be killed as a blood sacrifice for people’s sins.

            How messed up is that? A story of divine child abuse, and human sacrifice, to wipe away the sins of the people. The substitutionary sacrifice theory of atonement is more pagan than Christian. It follows from a theory of god who has more in common with the Titans or the Norse god Odin than with the God Jesus knew.

            I agree with John Dominic Crossan, that Jesus was killed because of sin; but that doesn’t mean he was killed for our sin. Jesus was killed because in this imperfect world, when someone comes along and speaks the truth to power, they will be killed. That’s what power does when it is threatened. Christ’s death was not a ritual sacrifice to appease and angry god. It was murder by a mob, with the complicity of the state.

            I think the substitutionary theory of atonement is bad theology which has been used badly to venerate violence. We keep spilling blood over and over again in war, in execution. We even use the term sacrifice to describe those who are killed in the course of war. Why do we keep spilling blood as if that will save us? As if the smell of blood were somehow pleasing to an angry god. Our God, the God we know through the scriptures, takes no delight in sacrifice. “But God has shown you, O people, what is good, and what does God require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

            What we are doing here today is deconstructing the old, common, theology of the cross—the substitutionary atonement theory—and we are going to see if we can build a new one. If we are going to have a theology of the cross it has to make sense, it has to follow from our understanding of the God whom Jesus knew.

            I believe that we are created in God’s image, as the scripture says; I believe that God is merciful and God forgives, as the scripture says, both the Hebrew and the Greek, the Old and the New Testaments. I believe that Jesus’ life is more significant than his death, and his resurrection is a declaration that death, no matter how violent or how shameful, does not win over life.

            So, in preparation for the season of Lent, I was mulling over the problem of the cross and the substitutionary theory of atonement which underlies and has inspired much of our traditional liturgy and our hymns, especially the hymns for Lent. And on one of those days before Lent, I walked into a Barnes and Noble for a coffee and I saw this book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and I knew, I knew I needed this. I need this book, I thought to myself, because if James Cone can find something redemptive in the cross from the Black American liberation perspective, then there must be something to it.

            And there is, But it isn’t easy to read about, and it is even more difficult to talk about, and this isn’t going to be easy to hear. In this book, James Cone makes a personal testimony which invites us to walk around in his shoes. He shares some of his own story of growing up in Arkansas in the 50’s and 60’s; he invites us to imagine what it was like to live every day in fear, knowing that you, your brother, your father, your uncle, your best friend could be killed by a white mob and nobody would be able to do anything about it.

            Lynching was no secret. It was a public spectacle. The dates, times and places where a lynching was to take place were sometimes even published in the newspaper. It mattered not greatly who was to be lynched, if the supposed transgressor could not be found, any black man would do. (Talk about your substitutionary sacrifice.)

            Lynching is distinguished from hanging, you understand: Execution by hanging was a sentence carried out under the law after a trial by a jury of peers. Lynching was mob violence. And, blacks weren’t the only victims of lynching in America. We have our own horrible history of a lynching that took place in Brainerd in the summer of 1872, by The Last Turn Saloon. Two Ojibwe brothers were hung together from the tall pine tree that stood across the street from the Last Turn.

            The brothers had been arrested and jailed in the disappearance of a white girl in Crow Wing, but before evidence could be presented in the case, a mob of white citizens took them from the jail, marched them to the tree, and hung them there one at a time, until they were nearly dead. Then someone grew impatient and a shot rang out. When the bodies were removed from the tree the next day, they were riddled with fifty bullets. Inquiries were made, as inquiries are, but no one could be found who was present at the lynching, except, as the newspaper put it, one person who offered up a prayer for “the poor devils” before they were hung.

            The cross has power for victims of violence because crucifixion was the Roman way of lynching. It was the most shameful, most degrading, most torturous death imaginable; a form of killing reserved for the most despised and rejected people. And despised and rejected people get it. They get it that God takes no delight n the blood of the innocent, but that God is with the man who hangs on the tree. Despised and rejected people get it, that the man who hangs on the tree emulates Jesus. And they get the tragic irony that the crowds, who think they are doing “God’s work” by lynching the black man, have more in common with the Romans and the religious and civil authorities who thought they were in the right when they crucified Jesus. But, in fact, those Christians who did nothing to prevent the deaths of innocent men and women were crucifying Christ all over again.

            So, here is where we begin to create a new theology of the cross. We should bear the shame of the cross, not because we crucified Jesus all those years ago in Jerusalem, but because we continue to crucify Jesus, or we stand complicit while others crucify him.

            We should see Jesus on the lynching tree by The Last Turn, and Jesus in the face of Matthew Shepherd, left for dead on a fence post outside of Laramie. And we should see Jesus in prison in Guantanamo, and Jesus wherever and whenever people are despised and rejected by scribes and elders and statesmen. If we can begin to see Jesus crucified wherever and whenever people suffer violence unjustly, than we can, perhaps, redeem the theology of the cross.

            The cross is worthy of reverence when it shows us where we should stand while we live. What are we willing to live for? What are we willing to live and perhaps even die for? What are we willing to live until we die for?

            Let us consider what the Spirit is saying to the church, through the image of the cross and the lynching tree.

About the lynching: The story is told on brainerdhistory.com., a reprint of an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The original publication explains that the author, H.L. Bridgman, was commissioned by President Grant to inspect the first section of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1872.

Mr. Bridgman supposed that “The Last Turn Saloon” was named for the lynching tree. Local sources suggest that the establishment’s name predates the lynching, that the saloon was the last on a long block full of drinking establishments (not much has changed) and it was therefore, the last turn before you left town.

Holy Moments

Mark 9:2-9; 2 Kings 2:1-12

Every year at about this time we read of Peter, James and John on the mountain with Jesus. This gospel story is called “the transfiguration,” which is a 15-letter word for that holy moment, that awesome mountaintop experience. They went up the mountain to pray and while they were praying they had a vision of Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets, standing with Jesus, while the face of Jesus glowed with the image of the glory of God.
And this text is paired with the story of Elijah’s sweet chariot of fire (the passage that inspired that beautiful gospel hymn), which swept down from the heavens to carry him home to God, while Elijah’s disciple, Elisha, stood watching. These holy moments, recorded in scripture, are brief, as are all holy moments. The moments themselves were probably briefer than the time it takes to read about them. Before Elisha can blink, and before Peter can speak of building monuments, the moment is passed. Elisha picks up Elijah’s mantle and returns the way he came, across the Jordan. Jesus led the disciples down the mountain, and life went on, for all appearances much as before the holy moment.
The holiest moments in life catch us by surprise. The moment the infant, who has been screaming all night, settles into heavy sleep on your chest, and you know you should put her in her crib and go back to bed (and finally get some sleep), but you just don't want to lose that holy moment.
       Or the moment after you've cried all the tears your eyes can produce, after learning of the death of your beloved, when a snippet of truth comes to your inner ear: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."  And you know that you will not die with your beloved.
       Or the moment of exquisite joy when all your family is gathered around the table and you realize that this is as good as it gets, and it's so much better than you ever imagined. So much better than you could ever ask or imagine.
        What is your holy moment? I invite you to call it to mind.
Was it a night of wonder, under the stars at a campsite in the Boundary Waters?
Was it love at first sight, when you saw your beloved across the crowded college cafeteria?
Perhaps you never thought of it this way before, but I invite you to christen the moment, declare it holy. I believe we are all given holy moments in life that we may know the ecstasy of intimacy with God. Holy moments are a gift, a grace of God.
I suppose that after your holy moment, life continued, much as before. You returned from the wilderness, back to work, back to class, back to laundry and lawn mowing. For all appearances, life goes on. Or does it? In my experience, the holy moments make a difference. They become our touchstone, our treasure buried in a field, our well of living water. We return from these holy moments with strength renewed, well-supplied for the journey of faith that is our life.
How can worship in a sanctuary such as this compare to life’s genuine holy moments? Even the most awesome Christmas Eve service cannot hold a celebratory candle to your personal transfiguration, your mountaintop experience. But worship is what we do to prepare ourselves for those holy moments.
Worship is a reenactment of a history of momentous holiness. Ideally, worship fosters our intimacy with God.
        Ideally. Truthfully, not always. Sometimes worship may feel like one of those weekly chores, like laundry, like shoveling snow, like mowing the lawn. Yes, worship can feel like drudgery. But practice moves us closer to perfection.
        As we enter the season of Lent our order of worship will change, as it does seasonally. The new style of worship may be uncomfortable for you or it may be exactly what you have always wanted worship to be, but whether the one or the other, I encourage you to participate with your heart and mind and soul. Remember that what you may find uncomfortable might just be what one of your brothers or sisters here most needs, to feel closer to God. And remember, that God is full of surprising grace, you might even have a holy moment in church!
        May your life be blessed with these holy moments.

A Journey Toward Healing

12 Feb 2012

2 Kings 5:1-14

    Naaman, the Syrian general, traveled from Damascus to Samaria in search of healing. It was a great distance traveled at great risk and great expense. But he was a great general, and the king that he served was eager to reward his servant with the best medical care that money could buy. Even if it meant sending him into enemy territory.

    Diplomacy is the art of observing ceremony which allows proud and powerful enemies to meet together to achieve some desired end, without either party seeming to compromise. Naaman and his king observed careful diplomacy-- that is what we may gather from the mention of silver and gold and suits of clothing. It is an ostentatious display of wealth to indicate Naaman’s status, and an indication that something equally valuable is expected in exchange.

    The king of Israel is unprepared for the visit, and suspects that Syria’s hidden agenda is war-mongering. Apparently, the king of Israel was completely unaware of the treasure that was his in the person of the prophet Elisha.

    These are the players in the drama: Two kings and a mighty general, men of wealth and power and status, who have everything that money can buy but are powerless to relieve Namaan’s suffering, poor in spirit and ignorant of the man of God, the prophet in Israel. In that beautiful paradoxical way of scripture, it is the slave girl and the other nameless servants who provide what is needed.

    Pride and expectations nearly scuttle the mission. Because Naaman is a commander, a favorite, a victor, a hero—he is used to being treated in a particular way. When the prophet doesn’t even bother to come out of his house—that is simply not the done thing. Enraged, incensed, indignant! Naaman is ready to take his leprosy home to Damascus. It is his servants who stop him.

     If the prophet asked you to do something difficult, you would do it, right? All he said was wash and be clean. How easy is that? Why not try.

     I say the miracle didn’t happen in the Jordan River.

    The miracle happened right there, in front of Elisha’s house. The miracle happened in Naaman’s heart. A proud man, a mighty warrior, the King’s favorite, the victorious hero, humbled himself and took the advice of a servant, and was made new again.

Power and Authority: The Peter Parker Challenge

Mark 1:21-28

Sunday, January 29 

                When Peter Parker woke up the morning after he was bitten by a super-spider, he noticed something had changed. When he became more fully aware of the power he suddenly had, he instinctively used it to do what most teenage boys would do with sudden wealth or strength: get the girl. If you haven’t read the comic or seen the movie, I’m talking about Spiderman, before he became a superhero was a super dweeb. He tried to impress Mary Jane by beating up the school bullies, but she was disgusted. He figured she would respect him if he had a muscle car, so he looked for a way to earn some quick cash as a cage fighter “the Human Spider,” and buy the car of his dreams for the girl of his dreams. But it all went badly wrong.

                The last words his uncle Ben said to him were, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And after Uncle Ben’s death (in the formula typical of super-heroes) he dedicated himself to using his power to benefit the downtrodden and defeated victims of crime in the city.

                In the gospel lesson for today we read of a new power and authority. As the story goes, the people around Jesus are just waking up to the power in their midst. He teaches as one who has authority, not as one of the scribes who just quote the commentaries on the scripture. He teaches as if he has the authority to communicate the will of God. And besides that, he demonstrates a power we have never seen before.

                The gospel is teaching us to be aware of the power in our midst. Annie Dillard once wrote:

                “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” 

 Are we aware of the power? I think we are. I think we know full well the power of the gospel and the challenge of discipleship. I think it frightens us. Because we are, as a generation, suspicious of power. “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This we believe as if it were gospel, but it isn’t. It’s Lord Acton, a British historian. We witnessed the truth of the truism in the 20^th century, in the first great war to end all wars, and the second great war to end all wars, and all the wars after that. We witnessed it in politics local and global. We have been trained to challenge authority and beware of power.

                But we must remember that we have seen a different kind of power at work in the world as well. The power of nonviolent resistance to violence. The power the united behind Gandhi in India and King in Selma and Birmingham. It’s the same power we see at work in the gospel. The power to cast out the demons of colonial subjugation and racial segregation, the power to cast out the demon of economic, legal and social injustice.

                This is the power in our midst and with great power comes great responsibility.

How God’s Mind Changed

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (but you should read the whole story)

22 January 2012

                 “I believe in the New Testament God,” one of our legislators said to a Jewish friend of mine. Would he have said that, had he known she was Jewish? I don’t know. But his statement reflects one of the ridiculous things people say about God. The faith formation class heard me get all hot and bothered about this one a few weeks ago when somebody said, “Why is the God in the Old Testament all mean?”

“Where did you hear that?” I snapped.

“From my history teacher”

“Well your history teacher is an id—I mean your history teacher is sadly misinformed.”

The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- that's the bible that Jesus studied. That’s the bible from which Rabbi Jesus taught. That’s where he got all of his best material! So how can anyone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of vengeance and the God of the New Testament a God of grace—that’s just messed up, and I won’t stand for it and neither should you and what’s a history teacher doing talking about the bible anyway—doesn’t he (or she) have enough material to cover? And furthermore, we know Jewish people who know that God is compassionate. Saying that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous God as if that were the whole story is not just a slander against God, but a slander against a whole faith community!

And here we have a case in point: the story of Jonah, from what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, one of the books of the prophets. Jonah is distinguished among the prophets by his reluctance, to put it mildly. The story of Jonah is a parody, a send up, a spoof, a comic satire of a prophet’s story. Last week, we read about the call of the prophet Samuel. When Samuel was called, he replied “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” When God called Jonah, he ran away! As if a person could outrun the presence of God! Jonah ran for the coast, and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, which I believe is Hebrew[1] for “the back of beyond,” or “far, far away.” When a storm came up Jonah hid in the hold, the belly of the ship, and you know how he got from there to the belly of the whale and was spit up on the beach, and there our reading for today took up the story.

The story of Jonah is a story of a man who went to ridiculous lengths to avoid the prophetic call of God. That makes him a sympathetic character, somebody we recognize, somebody we can relate to. He’s not a hero, Jonah is definitely not the hero of this story, he’s just a sympathetic character. We can sympathize with Jonah because honestly, who wants to be a prophet? Oh, we would all like to think we might be like Samuel or like Isaiah, and say “Here I am, Lord, send me.” But we know what happens to prophets. Prophets get to speak the truth to power, and power takes offense. Who wants to be exiled and outlawed, like Elijah, or thrown down a well, like Jeremiah?

The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that once God has set God’s eye on you, you can’t run and you can’t hide. God will continue to pursue and win the game of hide and seek. There’s no evading God’s attentions. God is a persistent suitor.

When Jonah finally acquiesced, and obeyed God’s summons, we can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He went to Nineveh—that great city. He didn’t even get to the center of the city, he walked one-third of the distance and he said, “Four days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And then, I suppose, he went out to find a safe place to watch the destruction of the city.

But here’s the strangest part of the story: you know how no one ever believes the prophet? You know how Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “You better let my people go or God will smite your firstborn,” and Pharaoh said, “Yeah, right. I’ll take my chances.” You know how Jeremiah said, if you go making deals with the devil the city will be overrun, and the royal family and all their supporters said, “Oh you be quiet, Jeremiah, you’re upsetting people,” and “Into the mud, prophet!”

Yes, the paradox of Jonah is that the most reluctant prophet ever also proved to be the most effective! The people actually listened, and repented, and when God saw that the people repented, then God repented of the destruction that God had planned—which is how prophecy is supposed to work. The job of the prophet is not to predict the future. That’s not prophecy, that’s fortune telling, a completely different business and not one that God is in. The job of the prophet is to tell the truth about what is happening now, and to show people where it might lead, if things keep on going the way they have been going. The goal of prophetic preaching is repentance.

Maybe the reason people get the idea that God, in the Old Testament, is all about punishment, is because they don’t read the whole story. The whole story is that God is—in Jonah’s own words, where he paraphrases a psalm[2]—merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Whenever and wherever people turn their hearts to God and emulate God’s mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, there is life. That is the whole of the law and the prophets, said Jesus, and so said Rabbi Hillel.

The Hebrew bible does not teach that God is vengeful. The Hebrew bible teaches us that God is mutable. God can change God’s mind. The mind of God is influenced by people, by who we are, by what we do and what we say. God listens, God learns, and God changes. Wherever and whenever people emulate God’s ability to listen and learn and change, there is life.

The gospel of Jonah and the gospel of Jesus is the same gospel, the good news of God’s compassion and mercy. The challenge of Jonah and the challenge of Jesus is the same challenge. We are challenged to respond to God’s call, even if our response is reluctant. We are called to speak the truth to power, even if we are afraid. Power might just surprise us, and respond with repentance, mercy and compassion.

One traditional interpretation of the story of Jonah is that Jonah is Israel. Jonah is a parable about Israel. God made a covenant with Abraham, in the early days, God made a covenant that through Abraham’s children, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Sometimes, Israel, like Jonah, avoided the call to be a blessing to all nations, or fulfilled that call only begrudgingly. Because Israel in the time of exile was so used to being disparaged among nations, Israel returned disparagement in kind. The book of Jonah challenges Israel to entertain the possibility that faithful people can be found in foreign lands. The exaggerated response of the people of Nineveh, who repent on a scale unheard of in Israel, emphasizes the possibility.

Jonah could also be interpreted as a parable about the church. We are called to carry the message of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and God’s abundant mercy, to all the world. We have a message to deliver. A message about justice for the poor and marginalized. A message about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. We have a message about the God who is still speaking and about people needing to listen and learn and change.

But, like Jonah, sometimes we would rather run away from the call. Because, we know that no one is going to listen, that people have already made up their minds—that’s what we think we know, anyway. We’ll just tweet the message and run away. People have already made up their minds they aren’t going to change.

Truth is, it is we who have made up our minds about “those people,” the Ninevites, the fundamentalists, whoever we think “they” are. “They” will never change. Except, in the story, they do, they change. People can and do, sometimes, respond and repent. However reluctant, meek, or indifferent the messenger may be, people respond to the message.

Let us listen, and hear what the spirit is saying to the church, to us, today.

---

[1] Not really. Might have been Tarsus, in what we now call Turkey; or it might have been in Spain. Either one is far, far away.

[2] Several psalms, actually, and the torah. Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18.

The Voice

January 8, 2012

Mark 1:4-11; Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5

The power of the voice is celebrated in today’s scriptures-- the power of the voice of God to create, destroy, and re-create. It is the voice of God that calls creation into being, the voice of God that strips the forest bare, the voice of God that claims Jesus as “my beloved,” and calls him good.
Before the earth had shape and form the wind of God moved over the waters and God said… and it was so.
When Jesus came up out of the water he saw the Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove and he heard a voice from heaven call out, you are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. In Mark’s gospel, no one else hears or sees what Jesus hears and sees. Jesus alone hears the voice. It is no wonder that immediately afterward he went into the wilderness for a 40 day retreat. He probably needed some alone time to think about what had just happened to him.
In our faith tradition, we proclaim that God is still speaking. We listen for the voice of God speaking not only through the scriptures, not only through tradition, but also through the world that God created. We listen for the still speaking God when we take our morning walk, and hear God in the silence of snow falling; we listen for God in the dark cold night and hear God in the boom of the ice cracking. We listen for God when we read and we hear God speaking through careful study of the world. We listen for God and hear God speaking in the world in many ways, in many languages, including the languages of mathematics and science. We hear God speaking from the Hubble telescope and we hear God speaking from the depths of the earth at CERN; we hear God speaking from the first spark of creation and we hear God speaking at the forward edge of the universe.
God is still speaking, and the voice of God continues to call the world into being. The voice shouts and the voice whispers in the ear, the voice is universal and intimately personal. The voice of God continues to create and destroy and re-create.
The power to destroy is not a power we like to ascribe to God, not as much as the ancients did anyway. Remember the last time a tornado ripped through the south end of town? The psalm seems to have been written in response to an event like that, the psalmist was awed by the power of the wind. It’s not in the destruction of barns and cattle that we see God at work. But what about the power to remove what needs to be removed, to make way for something better? The power to remove old prejudices, the power to remove accepted customs that we now see as barriers, these are the walls that the voice of God can knock down.
We perceive that God is still speaking. But not everyone seems to hear what we hear. And, other Christians seem to hear things that we don’t hear. What do we do when others don’t seem to hear what we hear? How do we know we aren’t just hearing what we want to hear? What’s the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing voices?
Part of the work of the church is to discern the voice of God, to discern where God is at work in the world for good. We meet together as the church to help one another discern God’s loving Spirit. We meet together to listen for the voice of God, and to test every revelation through the measure of Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. We test every revelation—the new ones and the old standards—by asking if they measure up to Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. Which sounds simple when put so succinctly, but it gets complicated, we know it does. That is why it is vital that the congregation come together for worship, every week.
We know that “being the church” isn’t just about “going to church.” We know that the mission of the church begins at the doorstep. But it is here, in worship together, that we get our marching orders. It is here that we hear and discern the voice that calls us, and here that we get the inspiration and the power and the energy to be the church in the world. Ideally, that’s what worship is. Worship generates the power and light that fuels the mission.
We meet together to share with one another what we hear the voice of God calling us to do, to encourage one another, and to hold one another accountable.
God calls to you, God calls to each of us, “You are my beloved.” God calls to us as a congregation, “You are my beloved.” How then shall we live?