“Through the Desert Goes Our Journey” – Mennonite Heritage Sunday – 10/26/08 – Genesis 21:8-21, Rev. 3:7-13

There are some stories that don’t fit neatly into the main story that we’re used to hearing.  The story in Genesis 21 about Hagar and Ishmael is one of those.  Ishmael was the oldest son of Abraham, born through his slave woman Hagar, because Sara, his wife, was not able to have children.  When Sara does miraculously conceive in her old age, she gives birth to Isaac and instantly feels a rivalry between her son and the older Ishmael.  Her solution is to have Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away, so Isaac can get the family’s full inheritance.  Abraham reluctantly agrees, gives Hagar and his young son some bread and water, and sends them away, into the desert, where they wander until they have nothing left to drink.  Hagar is unable to watch her son die, so she sets him under a shrub and then walks a ways off to where she can’t see him.  This is how Genesis describes what happens next:  “And as Hagar sat opposite Ishmael, she lifted up her voice and wept.  And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar?  Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.  Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’  Then God opened her eyes, and saw a well of water.  She went, filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.  God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness.” 

Abraham is the father of three great religions.  The Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims.  Jews and Christians trace their line back through Isaac and Muslims trace their line through Ishmael.  The rest of the Bible is mostly silent on Ishmael and his descendants.  It’s a story that doesn’t fit into the main narrative.  The rest of our scripture, the story of how Jews and Christians came to be, is told through the line of Isaac and his descendants, his son Jacob who is renamed Israel, and Jacob’s sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel and eventually the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.  Ishmael is included briefly in the tradition, but we’re left without knowing where his path leads.  We know that God cared for him and his mother, that God promised that he would be a great nation, and that he grew up and lived in the desert. 

Within our Mennonite history we also have some stories that don’t fit into the main story that we tell about ourselves.  The main story that we like to tell about our Anabaptist and Mennonite heritage could go something like this:  During the 16^th century the church in Europe had become corrupted and wrapped up in the politics of the state.  The church hierarchy sold indulgences to the people for the pardoning of sins, leading to many abuses.  The act of baptizing a child also enlisted them for the tax rolls and potential future military service.  The wealth of the church stood in sharp contrast to the poverty of the large peasant population.  Out of these conditions certain leaders sought to reform the church.  First Martin Luther posting his 95 thesis, then Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin and others calling for deep reform in how the church viewed scripture, communion, and salvation.  The Bible was translated into the common language of the people and the idea of the priesthood of all believers was popularized.  Local princes allied themselves with these leaders and whole regions would adopt these changes together.  Despite all these reforms, a small group believed that they were not going far enough.  They felt the church should be modeled on the New Testament church and that discipleship of Jesus should not be connected with allegiance to any particular governing authority.  This group became known as the Anabaptists because they would re-baptize adults who wanted to make a confession of faith in following Jesus and join their movement.  They tended to be egalitarian in their leadership, engaged in group Bible study, and emphasized living out the teachings of the gospels.  The Anabaptists weren’t aligned with the Catholic church or the reformers or any of the ruling princes and were persecuted by all groups.  Over 2000 of them were martyred for their faith and, as a tenet of their faith, they refused to return evil for evil with fighting back.  In the middle of the 16^th century many of these people started to be known as Mennonites, named after the leader Menno Simons.  Because of the persecution, Anabaptist groups sought places where they could practice their faith in safety.  Eventually this led some to migrate to the Americas and others to find refuge in Russian territory under the rule of Catherine the Great who promised them land and exemption from military service.  Mennonites stayed in Russia from the end of the 18^th century to the end of the 19^th century, with most ending up migrating to the West before the time of the Russian revolution.  Mennonites have continued to reach out in mission around the world and many have been drawn to the Mennonite faith because of its commitment to community, service, discipleship, and peacemaking.  Today there are over 100,000 members of Mennonite Church USA and over 1.5 million people around the world who associate with an Anabaptist related group.

That’s the story told in very broad strokes of how Mennonites came to be.  Within this story there are countless others that do or don’t fit so neatly into this narrative.  It’s been interesting for me to see in the last half year or so the retelling of one particular sliver of the Mennonite experience that is one of those stories that just doesn’t fit.  Or it seems to not fit.  In the last four months some version of this story has been retold in the Mennonite Weekly Review, July 14, The Menno-Hof historical museum newsletter, Summer 2008, Sojourners magazine, July 2008, and hot off the press, this film that was just released this month – Through the Desert Goes Our Journey (the newest addition to our video library).  It’s a story that has been a source of shame in some Mennonite circles for over a century, but further exploration is leading to a new understanding of what the story could mean today.    

Before looking into it I want to reread parts of this passage from Revelation that Caroline read because it plays a prominent role in the story.  In the opening chapters of Revelation the writer, John, is instructed to write seven letters to the angels of seven different churches in Asia Minor.  Each of the letters addresses the church in its own context and gives them instruction of how to live faithfully through the hardships they were facing.  This is the sixth of those seven letters: 

“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens: ‘I know your works.  Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.  I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name….Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.  I am coming soon.”

The story that has been called the Great Trek begins in Russia in the year 1880.  While most of the Mennonite communities were responding to the new forced military conscription by moving to the Americas, there was a group of Mennonite families and leaders who felt it was a mistake to go West.  Their ancestors had always kept moving East to escape persecution and they believed that there was significance in heading toward the rising sun.  So from Ukraine, five wagon trains, about 200 families, headed out together east into territory that the Russian military had recently conquered, and beyond the reach of the Russian empire into Muslim ruled territory in Central Asia. The trek would ultimately cover 2000 miles and land them in Uzbekistan.  Because of their unfamiliarity with the land and the large percentage of desert that they traveled, they faced incredible difficulties.  Eventually they abandoned their wagons and mounted all that they had on camels to make it through the desert.  They often relied on the hospitality and knowledge of the Muslim leaders that they encountered and the villages where they would stay for winters. 

Two years into the Trek, the largest wagon train settled and established four different farming villages.  Among those who kept traveling there were strong apocalyptic beliefs.  One of the leaders in particular, Claas Epp, believed that Christ’s return to earth was immanent and that it was the mission of this community to travel to the site where he would return to present itself to Christ as the bride, and to rule with Christ in the millennial kingdom on earth, images of the church from the book of Revelation.  Claas Epp saw their community as being similar to the 1^st century church in Philadelphia and often quoted the line “see, I have set before you an open door.”  He believed a door was being opened for them to trek toward the place where they would meet Christ.  They wandered in Uzbekistan for four years, looking for the proper site.  Claas Epp declared that March 8, 1889 would be the day of the Lord’s return.  When the day arrived the community waited and when nothing happened, Epp extended the time to 1891.  The Mennonites settled in the region, and when Christ didn’t return, they continued to live there until fleeing Stalin’s forces 50 years later.

So what do you do with a story like that?  One that doesn’t fit so neatly into the one we like to tell about who we are?  Up until recently little more was known about the story than this sketchy outline.  But the reason that it is being retold now is that in the last year, a group of scholars, writers, filmmakers, and descendants of those involved have retraced this journey, looking for more details about what the trip was like and what may be learned from the experience.  Part of what made them especially interested in this was that there are aspects of the Great Trek that have particular relevance in our own setting today.  One of the writers who went on the trip, Jesse Nathan, says this, “How then does revisiting the century-old story of an apocalyptic Mennonite community in Uzbekistan engage Christians – and not just Mennonites – today?  As history, it offers inspiration for Christian relationship with Muslims.  As theology, it offers caution again runaway millennialism.  As a tale of shame and communal repression, the retelling counters 100 years of silence” (Jesse Nathan, Sojourners, July 2008).

What this group discovered and experienced is rather remarkable.  From diaries that have surfaced in the last 20 years they knew that one of the wagon trains set up camp for nine months in the village of Serabulak.  Trying to escape notice from the Russians, these German-Russian Mennonites were greeted and taken in by local Muslim leaders.  Five of the Mennonite families were given sanctuary within the mosque courtyard.  The locals also offered their mosque as a place of worship for the Mennonites while they were there, the Muslims using it on their holy day, Friday, and the Mennonites using it on Sunday.  Several weddings and funerals were held in the mosque and 21 youth were baptized there.  During the time that this investigative tour group was exploring Serabulak, they had a fresh encounter with the hospitality of the village.  They met with the local imam who allowed them to pray and sing inside the mosque, they offered a gift to the imam so he would remember them and in turn he offered them a blessing.  Jesse Nathan wrote this: “Astounding as this experience feels, it fits with what we’ve been discovering as we retrace.  These peaceful Christians built friendships with Muslims – Muslims, who in turn, shepherded the Mennonites through difficulty.  In exchange, Mennonites introduced tomatoes, potatoes, dairy cattle, butter, and cheese to Uzbekistan.”

As they kept traveling and retracing the steps of the Trek they continued to  discover that not only were the Mennonites remembered in the region, but they were remembered with respect .    In another of the villages where the Mennonites stayed the imam still does the annual springtime blessing of the crops on the land where the Mennonites lived because of the fruitful agriculture that thrived while they cared for it.    

Maybe most remarkable was that the people of Uzbekistan had no associations with the Mennonites as being a group getting ready for the end of the world.  We know that they were a group getting ready for the end of the world, but the way that they related with their Muslim neighbors was one of making an investment in this world.  Mennonites are remembered for their nonviolent practices, frugal economics, and generous wages that they gave to those who worked for them (MWR, July 14, 2008).

What all this means I don’t really know.  Different people who went on the trip are beginning to give their interpretation of what these discoveries could mean.  One scholar, James Junke, who is a history professor at Bethel College, said that whenever he used to tell this story in class it always ended in 1891 with the community being disgraced and Claas Epp fading away into shame.  He has reflected on the importance of recasting this story, by including what happened beyond 1891 and how it is remembered by the current residents of Uzbekistan.  Another person, a direct descendant of Claas Epp, felt her travels offered a reinterpretation of the open door.  She commented that this history could provide an open door to thinking about how Christians and Muslims relate to each other across differences and how the mutual respect and neighborliness that these group showed to each other 100 years ago could be a model for us.  (Both in Through the Desert Goes Our Journey)  Another person reflected specifically on the hospitality shown at Serabulak and wondered whether our church communities would be as open and welcoming to Muslims as they were to us.  If a large group of Muslim immigrants moved into our neighborhood would we be willing to offer our building as a place of worship and prayer?  (Mennohof newsletter, Summer 2008).         

My feeling is that this is a story that will take on new significance for Mennonites, and hopefully others who hear about it.  It may go from being one of those stories that doesn’t quite fit into one that helps tell us more about who we are and who we can be.  In a time when many religious leaders are telling end of the world scenarios, we can caution against getting caught up in any of the hype.  In a time when the children of Ishmael and the children of Isaac continue to be suspicious of each other and commit acts of violence against each other, we can remember that we are all children of Abraham and that there are times in our life together when we have been friends and a blessing to each other.  We can believe that God has set before us an open door, to live out the story of God’s reconciling love that is meant for all people.  Ultimately that is the main story that we are invited to be a part of.   

 

Recipe for Good Eating: Open Eyes, Open Mouths, Open Hands – 6/01/08 – Genesis 1:29-31, Leviticus 19:9-10

(Pass out bread and fruit)

Eat.  Work.  Play.  Pray.  Rest.  This summer our worship times will be shaped by these five themes.  They are common things that we do every day and week.  Things that involve our bodies.  And the question that we’ll explore together over the next while is simply, “How do we do these things well?”

So we start with eating.  And while we’re talking about eating, we might as well do some eating, so please enjoy whatever fruit and breads and dip you’d like from the plates that are coming around, and take your time is selecting what you want.  And don’t worry about dropping anything on the floor or grinding it into the rug.  Just so we could have a stress free morning passing food around, we have made special arrangements to have completely new carpet installed by next Sunday.      

So while we’re getting into food mode, here’s a recipe for good eating:  open eyes, open mouths, and open hands.

First ingredient: Open Eyes

Before the food is in our mouths and stomachs, we take it in with our eyes.  Before you eat the bread or fruit passed around to you, you see it, give it a lookover, and start anticipating the taste from what you know of what you are seeing.

The first verb in scripture associated with food is not chewing, tasting, or even eating.  It is seeing.  Genesis 1:29 “God said, “See, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.”  This is immediately followed by God declaring all of creation very good.           

When we look, and behold, we see that the world is made for eating and that it is a blessing, very good, something that inspires gratitude and worship.  Without good, grateful looking at our food, eating becomes one dimensional and mechanical.  We forget that it is a gift and cut ourselves off from a complete eating experience.  Food fills the body but not the spirit.  And both suffer as a result.

Having open eyes as we eat has become much more complex in the world of industrialized food production.  Well before the food reaches our mouths, there are many levels to be seen.  We usually look at labels.  What is the price?  What are the ingredients? What is the nutrition value?  Does it contain anything that we’re trying to avoid?  At a deeper level of looking one might ask Where does this item come from?  How far has it traveled to get to me and how much energy and pollution has been required in its production?  At another level one may ask How were the people treated who helped grow and pick certain ingredients in this item?  Were they paid fairly?  Were they treated with dignity?  Did they have safe working conditions?  At another level one may look for how the land was treated that helped grow this item.  Was this farmed in a sustainable way?  Sometimes trying to have eyes open to all these factors can be rather exhausting.  It’s hard work.  Sometimes it helps us slowly change our buying and eating habits as we learn to see what’s going on at all these levels.       

Mennonite Central Committee has produced a cookbook called “Simply in Season” with the recipes divided up into the four different seasons, each season having its own color of border for that section, each dish using food grown in that season.  The cookbook helps us see something important.  That the foods that we eat have a natural growing cycle and that eating things in season can be healthier for us and for the environment. 

Ultimately, our looking should lead us toward greater gratitude and mindfulness for the gifts of creation.

The deeper we look, the more we are aware that in our eating we are connected with the entire economy of creation, and dependent on a healthy creation to be healthy people.  Open eyes make for good eating and help us connect this every day activity with our spirituality.  

Second Ingredient in the recipe for eating well: Open Mouths

This is the fun part of eating.  Where the rubber meets the road, or where the tortilla meets the taste buds.  It would have been possible for God to create us without these little sensors all over our tongues.  Eating could be one of those things that we just have to do to survive.  Another chore for the day like sweeping the floor and doing the laundry.  Necessary, but not all that enjoyable, even burdensome.  But this isn’t the case.  Eating is enjoyable, pleasurable, something we look forward to and something that can be a unique experience each time because of the different spices and flavors that different foods have.   Nobody has to convince us that food is good.  We can smell it, we can taste it, we can feel it satisfying our hunger.  That fruit or bread and dip in your mouth tastes good.  To quote today’s call to worship — Jam that’s sticky, toast that’s crumby,  Everything that’s scrummy yummy,  All this given for our pleasure,  God is good beyond good measure. 

It’s no coincidence that the instruction in Genesis to eat from all the fruit of the earth comes right after the instruction to be fruitful and multiply and that they are followed by the words “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  Sex and eating are closely related in that they are both needed for the survival of the species – they’re necessary — and they are both pleasurable, exciting gifts meant to be enjoyed.  Didn’t have to be that way, but it is.  We feel God’s goodness in our bodies.

Here’s another connection between sex and food.  Guilt.  Shame.  This one is our creation.  For all sorts of reasons, we attach guilt with pleasure or with our bodies.  If it feels good or if it tastes good, God doesn’t like it, and neither should we.  There’s a lot we don’t know about God, but this much we’re sure of.  Where did we get this idea from?  Wherever it came from, its embedded deep in our collective consciousness and we all have to confront it at some point.

Scripture does bring out another aspect of eating that comes into play here.  Feasting and pleasure aren’t the only things associated with food.  There is also fasting, simplifying, refraining from eating certain things in order to be more spiritually aware and physically healthy.  Maybe we don’t know how to really enjoy feasting because we’ve never learned how to fast.  Or maybe feasting brings guilt because there’s not the discipline of fasting.  When Daniel was exiled to Babylon along with his friends Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego, they were brought into the royal palace for their re-education to serve in the Babylonian court and were given a daily portion of the royal rations of food and wine.  To serve with the king meant they got to eat like a king.  Rather than digging in to the rich food, Daniel and company resolved not to eat any of it and requested a diet of vegetables and water.  Here’s what happened, from Daniel chapter 1: “At the end of ten days it was observed that they appeared better and healthier than all the young men who had been eating the royal rations.  So the guard continued to withdraw their royal rations and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.  To these four young men God gave knowledge and skill in every aspect of literature and wisdom.” (Daniel 1:14-17a) 

Eating well will involve knowing when to close our mouths and knowing when to open them – when to fast and when to feast.  And feasting becomes all the more pleasurable when it is combined with fasting.      

Open eyes.  Open Mouths.       

Third Ingredient: Open Hands

Eating is not good eating without open hands.  It’s incomplete.  The relationship between us and the world is lacking if we look and gather and eat and enjoy without sharing.  We cut ourselves off from the big economy of creation that always receives and gives.

After coming out of slavery in Egypt, after trekking through the food scarce wilderness and depending on manna from heaven for daily bread, the Israelites settle in the land of milk and honey and experience, for the first time in generations, an abundance of food – food security.  They have what they need.  No more dependency on Pharaoh, no more uncertainty of whether manna will be around the following day.  There is land to till and fruit to eat. 

And at the heart of the law that they were to live by are commandments to live with open hands.

Suzanne Marie read one example of this from the law code:

Leviticus 19:9-10 — “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.”

The law assumes that there are those who have land in their family that they farm and those who do not.  It is addressed to those with the resources, commanding them how to live in such a way that they can remain free from being over possessive of what they have and so that those who are poor, unable to work, immigrants who haven’t established themselves yet, can remain free from grinding poverty and starvation.  So, when you’re harvesting, don’t worry about collecting and gathering every single piece of grain or fruit in the field.  Because it’s not just your field.  It belongs to God and the universe and there are poor people whom God loves who are going to need to come in and do some gleaning in order to have their daily bread.

This winter I attended a several week class at Hebrew Union College right by UC taught by a rabbinical student.  At one point in the class this text was brought up and the instructor mentioned how the gleaning law is still observed in parts of Israel and how when she had last been there she and her group had actually done some gleaning.  They were out on the road, were hungry, happened to be by a field, and went and ate some of grapes or figs or whatever it was that was growing there.  She said this was an accepted practice and that it is understood that a hungry person has a right to eat and that no rules of private property should be able to keep them from getting some sustenance.

Gleaning is still a common practice in the US, it’s just gone more underground.  One form of this is known as dumpster diving.  It looks a little different, but it’s the same basic reality of gathering from the leftovers of the fields of the plentiful.  Some middle class people have chosen to dumpster dive as a way of reducing society’s waste and as a way of saving money on food costs.  You can dumpster dive for furniture or appliances left on the curb for trash or in a literal dumpster by a market that is discarding unused or day old goods. 

We have some gleaners here at CMF.  Once a month Elaine and Kevin go to Panera Bread after the store has closed in order to gather the bags and bags of unsold bread from the day which Panera is gracious enough to donate.  They make it available at Community Meal for those who need and want bread.  The breads on the trays this morning are from some recent gleanings, and there’s more available this morning in the bread spread, so if you ate a piece or take some home you are officially a gleaner yourself.  

Some continue in the ancient tradition of gleaning out of necessity.  Every Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the gleaners of Oakley come out in our neighborhood.  It’s not food that they glean for, but it is something that can easily be sold for money which in turn can buy food or whatever else is needed.  Wednesday is recycling day and before the truck comes for the contents of the green bins, the gleaners do their rounds to collect the aluminum cans.  They’ll walk up and down the streets, searching through each little field of recyclable items placed out on the curb in front of people’s houses, carrying large bags or pushing carts that hold their harvest.  They take their gleanings to the Oakley Recycling Station just a couple blocks from here by the railroad tracks and cash them in for some supplemental income. 

It’s interesting that just a few verses after the gleaning laws is the well-known law, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus 19:18.  In the Levitical Code loving one’s neighbor includes allowing them to glean from the bounty of one’s field.  I’m struck by how minimal of a demand this is on the person with resources, but how much it can change an entire attitude toward living with open hands.  This law doesn’t ask for major sacrifices, although there are plenty of teachings that do call for sacrifice.  It asks that those with resources live with open hands, open fields, open houses, open recycling bins, in the spirit of keeping the circle of giving and receiving open.        

So let’s live well, cooking up a recipe for joyful eating.  Take two open eyes, add one open mouth, mix in two open hands.  Stir together, bake until done, and eat with gratitude and thanksgiving.     

 

 

 

The Garden and the Wilderness – 2/10/08 – Genesis 3:1-13, Matthew 4:1-11

Since we are now into Lent, I begin with a confession: My first impressions of the Genesis 3 Garden of Eden story this week were not all that serious or reverent:  On Tuesday I’m starting to do some study on the passage during the last half hour or so that I have in the office.  I leave Peace House and on my commute home already have my mind on other things.  So you can imagine my surprise when I walk into our house and find Eve completely naked playing quietly on the floor.  This is the first time this has ever happened and her timing is perfect.  She looks up at me and smiles, and I’m thinking, girl, you’re such a wonderful creature you can stay in this garden as long as you want no matter what.

Other first impressions were mainly questions that don’t resolve themselves all that easily.  If the serpent is such a negative character here, being the most shrewd of all the animals, then why did Jesus teach us to be shrewd as serpents?  Since when is it a bad thing to be like God, knowing good from evil?  When God said to the man ‘Have you eaten from the forbidden tree’ and the man pointed to the woman and said “she made me do it” and the woman pointed to the serpent and said, “It tricked me into it,” if the serpent was so shrewd then why didn’t it point back to God and say, “Hey, you’re the one who put the tree here in the first place.” 

For whatever reason, these were some initial thoughts I found myself thinking in going through this story.  Maybe my brain was still fresh off hearing some of the poetry of Jeff Gundy from Mennonite Arts Weekend and his willingness raise the kinds of thoughts some people think but don’t actually say.  Or, really, any of the artists’ commitment to being completely honest with their medium.  To ask it questions and see what kind of shape the responses take when it speaks back to you.  Or maybe I have a built in defensiveness about this particular text since we did name our daughter Eve, which has the beautiful meaning of ‘mother of all the living’, and this passage has so often been misused to blame her for the problems of the world.  This is part of my own personal context for approaching this scripture and each of us bring our own questions, issues, and curiosities to the scripture as well.

Along with our personal contexts is this larger context that we are now entering into together, the season of Lent.  The next seven weeks involve an invitation to place our own journey alongside the journey of Jesus as he moves toward the cross — when we become more aware of the suffering within us as well as the suffering of the world, and consider Christ’s suffering as an expression of God’s identifying with the most troubled parts of our humanity.  And if the garden story is about anything, it’s about beginning to shed some light into the troubled parts of our humanity. 

I would like to offer that the season of Lent is a time when we explore what it means to be human.  Every year the liturgical cycle allows us to recognize that human is something we forget how to be, or at the very least, that over the course of time we have the tendency to let our humanity get twisted out of shape.  We lose touch with what is most essential in life and get caught up in mindsets and habits that cause our spirits to shrivel rather than thrive.  We become a smaller version of ourselves.  Less able to be in healthy relationship with others, less able to sense how our own lives intersect with the Divine life.  Lent is an opportunity to contemplate, to fast, and to experiment with new habits.  Being human takes work and intentionality and grace.  And we don’t always do such a good job at it.  And so we keep coming back to this season, this place, that has been carved out for us in our calendar.  And there are two places where the scriptures for the week ask us to enter.  The first is the garden.  And the second is the wilderness.  We enter with ourselves – our questions, our hang-ups, and our longings for insight into who we are, in the light of God’s grace. 

In the biblical imagination, the garden is the place where the human drama begins.    Although the garden is often thought of as the place of original sin, it is better thought of as the place of original blessing.  The first, and most original characteristic of our humanity is that we are created male and female in the image of Elohim, God, the creative spirit of the world.  Well before any of the curses in the garden in chapter three of Genesis, chapter one notes that “Elohim blessed them.”  And Elohim declared it all very good indeed.  The original vocation of humanity is to bear a resemblance to the creative spirit of the cosmos. 

Chapter two of Genesis, which is a follow up telling of how humanity came to be, imagines the first human, the adam creature, being formed from the dust of the ground, Adamah.  As glorious as humanity is, we’re made from the same stuff as the rest of the earth and the other creatures.  And, in a rather literal way, astrophysics is now teaching us that we are indeed made from the same dust that has been a part of different stars throughout the universe.  The dust creature comes to life when God fills it full of breath, spirit.  And The adam is set in a garden and blessed with the work of gardening.  

I find it interesting how the first 11 chapters of Genesis portray God as one who is learning right along with creation about what is needed for things to go right.  The first sign of unease with the human creature doesn’t have anything to do with a serpent or a fruit, but has to do with aloneness and the need for partnership.  After declaring creation to be good and very good, for the first time God sees something that is not good.  Genesis 2:18 – “Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the adam should be alone; I will make a partner.”  The human creatures, now male and female, are relational by nature.  The humans need the companionship of each other for meaning, the fruit of the soil for food, and the breath of God for life.

So, in entering chapter 3 a significant question that the story speaks to is How will the human dust creatures live in healthy relationship with each other, the other dust creatures, and the rest of creation?   Poet Scott Cairns sees relational fracturing as the real tragedy of the human story.  Here’s what he says in his poem titled “The Entrance of Sin:” 

“Yes, there was a tree, and upon it, among the wax leaves, an order of fruit which hung plentifully, glazed with dew of a given morning. And there had been some talk off and on—nothing specific—about forgiving the inclination to eat of it. But sin had very little to do with this or with any outright prohibition.  For sin had made its entrance long before the serpent spoke, long before the woman and the man had set their teeth to the pale, stringy flesh, which was, it turns out, also quite without flavor. Rather, sin had come in the midst of an evening stroll, when the woman had reached to take the man’s hand and he withheld it.” (Online reference here.) 

I don’t know.  Maybe this is how sin finds its way into the story and our story.  A tiny act of withholding love leads to a widening chasm between the one and the other.  Eventually the serpent slides its way in between them, they both take the fruit without any discussion over the meal, and soon they’re both scared of their previous vulnerability to each other in their nakedness, afraid of God finding out, and shifting the blame around for whose fault it is that they’re so fearful and alone.  At the end of chapter three, the blessed, image-of-God, human dust creatures are just a shadow of themselves.  They’d pretty well forgotten how to enjoy the garden, so God says they might as well leave and not come back.       

Part of me is still a little unsatisfied with those unanswered questions I have for the text, but another part recognizes that the text has plenty of questions for me that are the more important ones to consider.  Questions about ways that my own humanity gets twisted out of shape and ways that my own relationships are fractured.  Questions about what it means to be a healthy human being in a world that has generation upon generation of broken relationships adding up to broken individuals, broken families, and broken political and economic systems.  Questions about how to be a part of the blessings of creation rather than the curses.  The garden poses these questions back to us, and is probably still a little unsatisfied with the answers we try and offer it.

There is a place where the search for answers for the garden’s questions begins.  This is the second and quite crucial place that Lent asks us to enter.  The wilderness.  If the garden is where things went wrong, then the wilderness is where we become aware of our brokenness and begin something new.  The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness.  Jesus spent 40 days.  The Matthew text notes that Jesus is led there by the Spirit.  The creative spirit that is the very breath of life, is at work here.  And Jesus’ time in the wilderness is something like a “recovery of humanity” project.

The wilderness is desert really, a fairly inhumane place to be.  And Jesus doesn’t take much of anything with him to make it a whole lot easier.  The availability of all kinds of food for eating in the garden is here reversed.  He fasts for forty days.  This is Jesus taking the voluntary path of slowly stripping away all the extras of his existence until he is left with nothing but what’s really necessary.  Temporarily separating himself from all his relationships in order to live fully and gratefully within each of his relationships. 

Over the course of this time, he faces down those forces that have magnetically drawn humanity toward themselves over the years.  Physical comfort, reputation, and power.  All things good in themselves, but easily idolized and pursued for their own sakes in a way that deforms our humanity.  The devil would have Jesus and us have all these things in a way similar to how the serpent offered pleasant fruit to the man and the woman.  To possess them in a way that benefits us personally, but puts a wedge in our relationships with others.     

I sometimes glance through reflections by Episcopal priest Barbara Crafton.  This is a quote from her that is a good summary of the wilderness experience:  “Jesus sits in the wilderness and wants the things we all want. He sits there until he knows he can live life without any of them, because he knows, as we all must know, that we all will lose everything. And then he arises and returns to his world, as we return daily to ours.” (Barbara Crafton, Wed. Feb 6^th eMo, Online reference here) 

How has our humanity been twisted out of shape?  In what ways do we grasp to possess things that bring harm to our relationships with our household family and our global family?  How have we been   unwittingly drawn into the magnetism of materialism, greed, and domination?  In what small and large ways have we withdrawn love from others?  How have we become alienated from ourselves and filled with fear toward God?  What does it mean to be human in light of Christ’s example and God’s boundless grace toward us that offers us that creative Spirit breath of life?

Over the course of this season we will have the opportunity to dwell on these questions together.  And as we walk through this wilderness, God promises to meet us and lead us into the way of life. 

 

Blessings and Bruises from Wrestling with God – 10/14/07 – Genesis 32:22-31

Jacob wrestled the angel of God, and Jacob won.  I find myself drawn into this scene.  Part of the attraction might be the same thing that happens when there’s a fight on the playground and everyone quickly gathers around to watch.  I want to see what happens here, and already knowing that Jacob wins, I want to see how he does it and what happens afterward.  But stronger than that is the draw of seeing a picture that I recognize well.  There is something familiar here and something I find refreshingly honest and true to life.  Jacob is wrestling with God.  Not Jacob sitting quietly with God, not Jacob walking faithfully alongside God, not Jacob on his knees speaking and listening to God, but Jacob, a real live human being, wrestling, grappling, struggling with God from dusk till dawn.  It’s a scene that resonates with my own experience, and I would imagine many others’ experience as well.   

It’s a picture that has sparked the imagination of artists.  It has been used in a political sense.  It shows up in U2’s song “Bullet the Blue Sky” about the poor El Salvadorans struggle against the US military’s influence there in the 80’s.  Bono sings, “Jacob wrestled the angel, and the angel was overcome,” implying that the gritty spiritedness of the poor could prevail against the stronger, overpowering god-like force of weapons.   

It’s also been portrayed in a psychological-spiritual sense.  At the end of the 19^th century Paul Gauguin painted “Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.”  The bottom and left hand side of the painting shows women, wearing their church attire of bonnets and dresses.  Many have their heads bowed, one woman has her hands folded in a praying position, one is looking off in the distance in a state of meditation.  Overall they give off a sense of piety and reverence.  And then, in the upper right hand corner, against a red background, is an angel and a human, engaged in a wrestling match.  If you were to just look at that part of the painting you would get a sense of confrontation and strife, and maybe even anger.  So it’s the “real” world, and the “imagined world” side by side, and it raises the question of which of these more accurately portrays what’s going on with these church goers.  Is all calm and reverent as it appears, or is there a great struggle going on?

The Jacob story brings out into the open what is often experienced as hidden.  It makes public and visible what can often be private and invisible — The human experience of wrestling with that whom we do not know, can’t understand, and can’t control.    It’s quite common, and quite human, for us to do battle with those mysterious angels…and to come out on the other side with a blessing, and some bruises.  We are engaged in what Sr. Joan Chittister calls “a spirituality of struggle.”  She says, “God is not a puppeteer and God is not a magic act.  God is the ground of our being, the energy of life, the goodness out of which all things are intended to grow to fullness.  Yet it is a struggle…How can we possibly deal with the great erupting changes of life and come away more whole because of having been through them than we would possibly have been without them?  To do that takes a spirituality of struggle.”  (Sr. Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, p. 16)

                This scene of struggle happens at an important transition in Jacob’s life.  He is on a journey, in between the land of Laban, his uncle, where he had lived his adult life, married and had children; and the land of Canaan where he is now headed, his place of birth.  Jacob’s time with Laban had been productive.  He came with nothing and had acquired wives, children, servants, flocks and herds, all the signs of wealth and prosperity of that time.  But he and Laban were almost always at odds with each other, each trying to trick and deceive the other for personal gain.  So Jacob is leaving and heading back home.  To get home he will have to cross paths with his brother Esau.  On this particular night Jacob is camping by the river Jabbok.  His wrestling match with the angel that night will not be his first conflict or confrontation in life.  The event serves as a sort of parable for Jacob’s life up to that point.    

He had always been given over to wrestling – both by nature and by nurture.  His poor mom Rebekah, pregnant with twins, had her womb turned into a wrestling ring before these kids were born.  Genesis 25:22 says, “The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live.’  Apparently Jacob lost the match, because Esau came out first, but Jacob wasn’t giving up as he was born grabbing onto Esau’s heal.  Esau, the infant wrestling champion, had all the legal rights and blessings of the firstborn, but for the slightly younger Jacob, this was just round one.  He would spend much of his adult life trying to wrestle for blessings.  As a young man Jacob gets in a sucker punch against his brother to win round two.  Jacob was cooking a stew at home while Esau came in from hunting, completely famished, needing something to eat.  Rather than kindly handing him a bowl of soup, Jacob charges him a high price – Esau’s birthright.  Starving Esau makes the deal, gobbles down his stew, and goes away with a newfound hatred for his brother.  .  Later in life, finding his mom in his corner of the ring and his dad in Esau’s corner, the Jacob/Rebecca tag team manage to wrestle away the blind and dying father Isaac’s blessing that was supposed to be for the first born.  The blessing had ritual and legal significance, so this was a big prize.  When Esau finds out he is furious and vows to kill Jacob after their elderly father dies.  Rebeka arranges things for Jacob to run away to her brother Laban, and start fresh there with a new life.  Round three goes to Jacob as he flees the scene with his hard earned blessing.  Being the second born, Jacob is like the short guy on the basketball court who has to compensate for his lack of height by being quicker, smarter, and sometimes sneakier than anyone else.  Different sport, similar situation.

So now he is leaving Laban with all the blessings he gained while with him and facing up the fact that he will soon be encountering Esau.  At the river Jabbok, Laban is behind him, Esau is just ahead of him, and Jacob gets jumped by God.

Part of the mystery of the story is the ambiguity around who Jacob is wrestling.  Is it God? An angel? a human being? Is it himself?   All of these are possibilities.  From a modern psychological perspective it’s easy to read this as an internal battle within the anxiety ridden Jacob.  Quite possible.  The text identifies the opponent as “a man” in verse 24, who then later tells Jacob that he has wrestled with human and divine beings.  Eventually, Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.”  The line is blurred here between the struggle with another human being, like a brother Esau, an inner psychological struggle of confronting your own demons, and the struggle with God’s own self.  These kind of distinctions are ones that the text leaves unclear.  What is clear is that Jacob sees his very real, physical struggle as an encounter with God. 

We can relate this to any kind of wrestling match we may be involved in, in our psyche, in our family or friend relationships, in our struggle to promote justice and peace, in our quest for physical and spiritual healing.  All of these encounters are, in hind sight, encounters with God, seeing God face to face.     

Jacob wins not because he pins his opponent, but because he simply won’t let go.  He holds on for dear life and refuses to loosen his grip until he gets a blessing.  His victory comes at a cost.  He gets bruised up.  From now on he will limp through life, bearing the scars of his encounter.  He’ll never quite be the same, and visibly so.  He also never gains complete control over his wrestling partner.  Naming plays a very significant role in the Old Testament, similar to many other cultures.  To name something or someone is to capture the essence of that person.  Naming also can imply having power over a person.  If you can name something, you have a kind of authority over it, sort of like us diagnosing and naming a certain disease so we know how to try and gain power over it.  Jacob tries, but never gets to name his opponent.  The creature remains unnameable.

But Jacob does get his blessing and he gets a new name — Israel, roughly translated as “God-wrestler.”  It captures his character.  It’s also the name for the nation that came out of his descendants that continued receiving blessings and bruisings through its wrestling with God, and the name that the New Testament gives all people willing to enter the ring with this God.  We too are children of Israel and are God –wrestlers. 

This is a service of healing and so far there are just as many bruises as there are blessings.  The words, “Let’s get ready to rumble” are usually not the first ones people think of when they think of the healing process.  But maybe they should be.  Maybe confrontation and aggressiveness are part of what makes us whole human beings.  Maybe we participate in our own healing in an active way when we get assertive about the blessings we want instead of just passively accepting whatever comes our way.  Maybe second born Jacob did us all a favor by refusing to accept his lot in life and demand some of those first born blessings.  Not in an arrogant way, but in a spirited way that won’t accept no-blessing for an answer.  If you wrestle, you can win a blessing.     

                So if you find yourself in a wrestling match, or if you see that you may have some wrestling to do in the near future, or if someone close to you is in a great struggle, you will be invited to come forward after the sermon and receive a blessing for yourself or someone else, a touch of anointing oil to the forehead and a short prayer of blessing.  But there’s one more thing to note.    

Jacob wrestled with the angel the night before he was to meet his brother Esau whom he had fought with his whole life.  His servants had told him that Esau was coming toward him with four hundred men, the size of a small fighting force.  Still trying to salvage his blessings, Jacob lines up his family with his most beloved wife and children all the way at the rear, furthest from Esau’s reach.  He sent out a company of servants with gifts to lavish on Esau and his men before they reached him in order to appease him.  Having taken as much precaution as he could to get past the wrath of Esau, and having secured his blessings to the best of his ability, with his most prized blessings being most protected, this is what happens:  Genesis 33:3 (Jacob) himself went on ahead of (his family), bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother. ⁴ But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and (threw his arms around) his neck and kissed him, and they wept…⁸ Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?” Jacob answered, “To find favor with my lord.” ⁹ But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.” ¹⁰ Jacob said, “No, please; if I find favor with you, then accept my (blessing) from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God– since you have received me with such favor. ¹¹ Please accept my gift that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want.”

So, for all his wrestling and struggle, the greatest blessing for Jacob is one for which he did absolutely nothing.  He gets blindsided by an unexpected, undeserved, gift of grace from his brother.  And both realize that they have all the blessings they need.  And again, maybe even in a deeper way now, Jacob has seen the face of God. 

So wrestling and struggle are only part of the story.  Blessings also come in the form of unexpected, undeserved, gifts of grace that God hands out generously.  Reconciliation with an estranged family member, the healing of a memory, or the healing of a body, or being given peace of mind about an illness that isn’t going to go away any time soon.  This is what theologians simply call grace, and it’s something that happens beyond the wrestling ring with all our striving and sweating and holding on for dear life.

So as we move into this time of prayer and singing, you’re also welcome to come forward for a blessing of grace.  No heavy lifting required, no bruises this time, but a blessing that comes in unexpected ways.  You are welcome to come forward for yourself, on behalf of a friend or family member. 

 

A Birth Story – 7,29,07, Genesis 1

Over the years my family established a number of birthday traditions.  One of these traditions was that we would all have supper together, eating the favorite meal of the person having the birthday, and after the meal my mom would tell that person’s birth story.  Even though after a while we knew each other’s stories well, it was still a highlight to hear it told again.  My birth story goes something like this:  That evening Mom and Rachel, my older sister, were watching Dad play basketball in a community league and during the game Dad injured his knee.  When they came home dad still had some chores to do out at the barn, but lied down on the couch for some rest while mom put Rachel to bed and got to finishing some dishes that needed washing.  During the dish washing, and as dad fell off to sleep, mom started having contractions.  She kept washing the dishes, watered the flowers, and then woke up dad as things started getting more intense for her.  Dad hobbled off of the couch down to the barn to finish the chores.  At the time we had a house phone and a barn phone so Mom could call Dad if she was thinking they needed to head to the hospital right away.  After a while, mom felt like it was time, but every time she would pick up the phone to dial she would start to have another contraction such that she would have to hang up and wait until the pain was gone before she could try to dial again.  This was well before the days of push button phones and speed dial.  Eventually she gets the number dialed, talks with Dad, he hobbles back to the house, they call Grandma Lehman, Mom’s mom, to come stay with Rachel, they head to the hospital and I’m born less than an hour after they check in. 

This story has meant different things to me at different points in life.  Initially I think I liked it because it was dramatic and kind of funny picturing dad hobbling around with the cows while mom was unsuccessfully trying to dial those seven magic numbers to the barn.  In junior high and high school and college, when I was heavily involved in sports, I liked that a basketball game played a part in how I came into the world.  Being competitive, I also liked that I arrived faster than my other siblings.  More recently, being able to place myself better in my parents’ position, I have appreciated how this story shows Mom’s care to put the house in order and her strength to bear through those contractions by herself in the house.  I appreciate the way this story brings out my Dad’s involvement in the different worlds of recreation, work, and family.  And I also appreciate the fact that our family sits down around a table together and tells these stories and that they give us a sense of where we come from.  I love that I have a story that is passed down from another generation telling me something about who I am and who we are.  Because it is told in almost the same way every year it acts like a liturgy of sorts, where we all know the words and relish hearing them again as words that inform and form us.    

Genesis One, the opening chapter of our scriptures, contains an ancient birth story that has had a profound impact on how we think about where we come from and who we believe we are.  It is a sweeping account of the heavens and the earth coming into being through a God whose word is as good as deed.  To speak light is for light to be.  Famously, it is structured into seven days, with the first six days culminating in the creation of the human creature, who, both male and female are created in the image of the Creator.  The entire creative process climaxes in a seventh day, a Sabbath, Shabbot, which means to cease, to rest.  “And on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.”

For the last century plus, this text has gotten stuck in between what we could call the secular/biblical literalist divide.  Since Darwin’s Origin of the Species the scientific community has compiled more and more data that reveals that our earth, and our universe, has evolved through a slow, gradual process covering billions of years.  One response, the secular, has been to see Genesis as an example of outdated bad science where humans who knew little about the origins of the cosmos came up with an explanation that made God the creator of everything.  Now that we know more about our evolving universe we are no longer in need of this God and certainly no longer in need of this story.  To this many people of faith have responded by re-asserting the authority of the Bible, God’s Word over human knowledge, with the belief that true faith involves an acceptance of a consistent literal interpretation of scripture, including six days of God creating the universe. 

We in this area of the country may hear more than others about this ongoing clash with the recent construction and opening of the creation museum in Petersburg, Northern Kentucky.  Just last week the Enquirer reported that the museum is receiving more business than expected, over 100,000 people in the first two months, and is looking to expand parking. 

Anytime an argument gets framed in either/or type of thinking, either it is false and irrelevant or it is literally true, there is failure of imagination that happens.  In this case a failure to recognize ways that the scriptures, and specifically Genesis One, can express profound truth, without having to be literal accounts of actual historical events.  So how might we allow this passage to get unstuck from the narrow secularist/biblical literalist conversation, and, to use a pun, to place it in a different light, perhaps even a light closer to the intention of the text?  Put another way, how can we embrace open ended scientific inquiry and continue to claim this as a birth story?

One of the first rules of biblical interpretation, and the interpretation of any text, is to look at the historical context out of which it came.  Scholars now know that the Ancient Near East abounded with various birth stories of how the world came into being, creation myths.  We sometimes use the word myth to refer to something that isn’t true, but a better use of the word myth is for something that is so true that it characterizes the very structure of reality.  A creation myth was a story that told a culture about why their present day world was the way that it was and what that meant for how they should order their lives.  One theme that many of these creation myths of the Ancient Near East held in common was that they were incredibly violent, often telling of a brutal conflict where a male warrior God goes to battle and defeats a female divine being, usually depicted as a sea dragon or the sea itself.

One of the most influential creation myths of the ancient near east was that of the Babylonians.  Their birth story told that in the beginning were Tiamat, the chaotic deep salt waters, and her husband Apsu, the fresh waters.  Tiamat and Apsu give birth to younger gods who eventually start making a lot of noise such that their parents plot to destroy them.  But, the plot is discovered and one of the younger gods kills Apsu, the father, and his wife Tiamat vows revenge.  Eventually the younger gods turn to the youngest, Marduk, for salvation.  He pledges to fight the powerful Tiamat if the other gods will make him chief and obey his every command.  After a violent battle, Marduk defeats the watery deep chaos monster Tiamat and out of her corpse creates the universe.  Marduk then reigns supreme over his creation with all the other gods serving him.  Walter Wink names this as a primary example of the myth of redemptive violence, the belief that violence is necessary for having power and that we are saved through this violence.  Wink believes this myth, this birth story, is the one that most people in the world still believe.  

Many scholars hold that the Genesis One account came out of the Jews experience of being exiled into Babylon.  The Babylonian creation myth told the Babylonians, and everyone else, who they were and how the world should be ordered.  In a world where the chaos of floods and droughts and war constantly threatened civilization, Babylon and its god Marduk, had conquered and reigned supreme.  Babylon was born out of violence and continued to live through conquering the nations around it and creating its empire out of the corpse of those nations.  Their creation myth was for them not just a story, but a liturgy that they would retell every year on the News Years festival, a birthday story, telling them about where they came from.  And every year the king of Babylon would be reinstated as the image of the god Marduk ruling on earth.  And the myth of redemptive violence was imprinted again in people’s minds.

The Jews — first, in their own land, were confronted with the overwhelming power of the Babylonian army which eventually destroyed their temple and carried many of them away to live in the capital of Babylon.  Then, in Babylon, were confronted with the overwhelming power of the Babylonian creation myth that described a world where the Babylonian god Marduk and his earthly image the king conquered all and ruled all.  It would seem to be a true story.  The Jews and their nation of Judah were just another small part of that defeated corpse out of which Marduk was fashioning his world.  Every year they would have heard that liturgy being recited and see Marduk’s image, this Babylonian king, lifted up as supreme.

Imagine then, what kind of contrast this Genesis birth story would have in such a context.  Recited by the Jews as a counter liturgy to the liturgy of the empire.  What is the nature of our world?  Where do we come from?  Who and what carries real power?

“In the beginning, Elohim, the God of all nations, created the heavens and the earth.”  The account is surprisingly peaceful.  There is no conquering or killing necessary.  The power to create here is given to the power of speech, the power of language, the power of the spoken word to persuade.  God’s word, “Let there be light, let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, let the earth bring forth vegetation”  God calling out to the created order and the created order responding with joy.  “And it was so.”  And the joy of the creation in turn filling the creator with Joy.  And Elohim saw that it was good.  This is a very different picture of the kind of world we live in.  One that surely required great faith on the part of those Jewish captives living in Babylon. 

Verse two tells of darkness that covered the face of the deep.  The Hebrew word for deep is “Tehom” very likely a reference to Tiamat, the watery abyss.  It continues, and the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.  The spirit of God, Ruach Elohim, just as easily translate breath of God or wind from God, is feminine in Hebrew.  The image here is one like a mother bird hovering over her nest, the spirit of God hovering over her world she is about to speak into being.  Whereas the Babylonian story and the Babylonian empire were extremely patriarchal needing to defeat the mother Tiamat in order to rule, here the Spirit of God is hovering over Tehom, out of which will emerge all that is.

Perhaps one of the most important and theologically rich statements in this account is when God says, “Let us make human kind in our image, according to our likeness…So God created the human creature in God’s image, in the image of God they were created, male and female God created them.  And God blessed them…”  Who bears the image of God and the power and responsibility that goes with that.  Is it the king, the ruler of the empire, who has power to conquer and rule?  Or is it every human creature, male and female who has been blessed from the beginning to be God’s image bearer? 

I like to imagine a scene in ancient Babylon, inside a Jewish home, sitting around the table after a meal.  Perhaps it is even during the Babylonian New Years festival, while the myth of redemptive violence, the battle between Tiamat and Marduk, is being retold with Marduk again destroying his enemy and out of her defeated body creating the cosmos and the civilized world and Marduk’s image bearer, the king getting exalted again.  Around this table the mother and father recount what they believe to be the birth story of the world to their children.  They start quietly “In the beginning when Elohim, created the heavens and the earth…”  There is some smiling that goes on with the mention of Tehom, the great deep, and the mothering spirit hovering, waiting.  And as the parents continue to speak with deep faith and authority the children begin to get a sense of how these words, and God’s words, create light in darkness, vegetation out of a barren landscape.  As a family liturgy I can imagine the whole family saying the certain repetitive lines together.  “And God saw that it was good.”  “And there was evening and there was morning.”  And since I’m about to be the father of two girls, I imagine that when they get to the part about being created in the image of God, a title usually reserved for the male king, there is a slight dramatic pause in the mother’s voice when she says with a smile, ‘So God created the human creature in God’s image, male…and female.’  And the young daughters are filled with a sense of holiness and awe that they too bear the image of the Creator.    

In this light, Genesis One as a counter-liturgy to the liturgy of empire, we have a birth story that we need to continue recounting and believing.  If our culture insists that we must continue to conquer with violence so that we can create a new world out of the corpse of the old, we can proclaim that humans are not inherently violent and that we are going against the grain of God’s good creation in our training and carrying out of warfare.  If our culture insists that power can only be expressed as coercion and domination, we can live believing that creative power can be expressed through the spoken word and persuasion.  If ever anyone tries to elevate one gender or one nationality or one race or economic class above another, we carry out our lives believing that we are all created in God’s image and therefore all have inherent dignity and worth.

This, of course, doesn’t directly address the creation/evolution debate and certainly doesn’t fit neatly into either category of secular or biblical literalist.  Creation/evolution is a conversation worth having, but not the primary conversation that Genesis One is concerned about.  The threat to our well-being and our faith does not come from the scientific outlook on the world.  We need not fear the desire to look deeply into our own history and origins and the evolutionary findings that have come out of this.  In fact, this desire to explore and know can even be seen as a part of God’s goodness dwelling within us, a way that we love God with all our minds.  The real threat to our faith and well-being comes from buying into the myth of redemptive violence.  It remains a powerful birth story and many can’t even imagine an identity outside of it.  Yet we are a part of a new creation that God has been speaking into being since the beginning of time.  Our birth and rebirth, we believe, are gifts to be received with gratitude, not possessions to be hoarded and defended with violence.  God speaks with joy and we have the opportunity to respond with joy as this creation comes into being.  A creation that is good, very good indeed. 

 

A Meditation on Psalm 8 – 10,08,06

When’s the last time you stood in the midst of something really large and felt really small?  One of the first times I can remember feeling this way as an adult was when I moved to Atlanta, Georgia and lived there for a year with some friends.  This was my first time living in a city.  It didn’t take me long to feel like a very tiny part of this very large thing know as the city.  Our apartment was one of hundreds of thousands in the area.  My car was one of many thousands packed onto the highway – and if you’ve ever been in Atlanta around rush hour you know what I mean.  I had just come off of two years living on a college campus where I knew pretty much everyone by name.  In the city I knew no one, no one knew me, and I felt rather small.

            I have the honor of being married to a Kansan – and not just a Kansan, but a Western Kansan.  One thing about Western Kansas is that it’s mostly made up of sky.  Huge sky, with very few things blocking your vision from taking it all in.  Abbie’s parents live about a mile out of town, so when I go jogging there and head away from town I quickly get out into the open.  And there’s certainly a feeling of being surrounded by something very large, with me being just a small part of the landscape.

            This feeling of smallness in the face of something utterly massive is what the Psalmist is confronting.  He’s gone star gazing recently.  Verse three of Ps. 8 reads, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

            “What are human beings?”  It’s a fair question.  Given our tiny little selves, who are we to expect God’s undivided attention?  Or, who are we to expect that there is some kind of divine care shown toward us in the midst of all this cosmic craziness?  I would guess this is a question that is even more persistent in our own time than that of the Psalmist. 

 

Given what we are coming to learn about our universe, we haven’t been thinking near big enough yet.  Large cities, the big sky, the moon and the stars visible to the naked eye are just a drop in the bucket compared to some of the other things that are out there.  Now I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure the opening line of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” gets it right. 

‘Space,’ it says, ‘is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

            One thing I do know is that we figured out a while ago that we are not in the center of the universe, and not only that, we’re not even in the center of our own little pocket of the universe.  Our planet revolves around our sun which resolves around the center of our galaxy which is one of the many galaxies making up one of the many clusters of known galaxies.

 

It’s almost silly to think of ourselves in comparison with these things.  Our lives are such a small part of the unfolding life of the universe.   

 

There is a foreign film, the name of which escapes me, but I believe its an Israeli film, in which one of characters is convinced life is absolutely meaningless.  And just to prove it to others he drops out of high school, and spends his days dressed up in a large mouse costume handing out flyers on buses.   He’s always telling people that we’re just little bits of floating dust in an ever expanding universe. 

 

Whether or not people choose to express their feelings in this same way, there is no doubt a struggle for meaning within many people who are willing to ponder, along with the Psalmist, the vastness of the cosmos.

 

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” 

 

There is an important shift that happens in this Psalm at verse 5, like a hinge, swinging us in a different direction.  The NRSV translation starts this verse with the word “yet.”  This is an important word.  It means – this one side of things taken by itself might not be so hopeful, ‘yet’ there is another side to consider.  It means there is some truth in this perspective, “yet” there is also some truth in this other perspective.  Vv. 5-6 “Yet you have made them just a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.  You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” 

 

We are indeed small creatures, yet, we have been given responsibilities and authority to care for what God has made.  Compared to the size of the universe we are almost like specks of dust, yet our glory and honor come from God.  Our dignity is a gift and we have the honor of being valuable and of giving value to each other and every other created thing, living or nonliving. 

 

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them?”

One of the best images in Scripture of the meaning of the human being comes from the Genesis 2 passage that was read earlier.  If I could choose a phrase to describe this passage I would say that it speaks with a “poetry of intimacy.”  “What are human beings?”  It’s as if we have been molded by the very hand of God, and as if God breathed breath into our nostrils to give us life.  It’s as if we have been formed from the ground itself, made from the same substance as all other living beings.  We are intimately connected with our earth because we are made out of the same stuff.  And what is the human being in relation to another human being?  Well, it’s as if we have been taken out of one another, like we share bones and flesh with each other.  And we’re charged with all sorts of wonderful things like emotions and desires and sexuality that attracts us to each other, like we’re the same flesh trying to unite again.  That’s how wonderful and awe-inspiring God has made us.  We are made for intimacy and we find our fulfillment when we nurture our intimacy with God, with the earth, and with each other.  

 

The Psalmist says that we have dominion over the sheep and the oxen and the birds and the fish.  The tasks of farming and hunting and fishing aren’t quite as common for us as they were for the Psalmist.  But we each have our daily responsibilities to provide for our families, to live safe healthy lives, to serve in our places of work.  This also is part of the honor given us by God.  The honor of having authority, of helping shape our world.

 

One of my memories from early childhood is having the responsibility of carrying a pitcher of milk from the barn to the house.  Mom would give me the empty pitcher and let me go down to the barn by myself to have dad fill up the pitcher so I could carry it up by myself to the house.  I took this very seriously.  It was a huge responsibility.  My entire world was focused on balancing that pitcher of milk across the lane so I could deliver it to Mom.  And it made me feel important when we would drink milk in the house I knew that I had carried it up from the barn.  Having responsibility is an honor, and it certainly made me feel like a big person.       

 

YET, there is a certain freedom that comes with recognizing our smallness.  I have a friend who once told me that when he stands beside the ocean, he is perfectly fine with how small he feels, and actually enjoys it.  I would have to agree with him here.  Being OK with being small can be very liberating.  It means I don’t have to take myself so seriously.  It means I can put some things in better perspective.    

 

There is a process of decentering the self that is a healthy thing.  It’s a part of a child’s development when they begin to realize that the world does not revolve around them and that there are other people who are equally important as themselves.  It’s also a part of our spiritual development when we recognize that we are not in the center of the universe and are a small part of a much bigger picture. 

 

The Psalmist wants us to hold together two great truths.  Humility in the face of our smallness.  And dignity in the light of having been given a life by God.  Wonder and awe at the glory of the universe, and the wonder of our own lives, like we have been formed by the very hand of God.  Formed for each other. 

 

All of this begins and ends with an expression of praise to God.  We begin with “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Verse 1.  We end with “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”  Verse 9, the final verse.  God is praised in our smallness, our near insignificance, our tinyness in the face of the hugeness of creation.  God is also praised in our bigness, our importance, our responsibilities with watching over this earth, with caring for one another, with tending to our daily tasks of work and play.  It begins and ends with praise.  It’s surrounded by one continuous, unbroken Hallelujah.

 

This is one of those Scriptures that isn’t really asking us to do anything particular.  It has much more to do with being and receiving than doing.  Small, yet crowned with glory and honor.  Humbled, yet given great dignity.  “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”   

 

Let’s spend several minutes in prayer, after which I will offer a prayer.

 

Silence

Prayer of Response

Gracious God, you form us by your own hands and give us dignity and honor.  May we receive this gift.

Mighty God, you form the moon and stars and ever-expanding universe.  May we live in awe and wonder.  AMEN.