|
|
            
|
|
Guaranteed for Life
A sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephanie Nagley at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland, June 1, 2008
Do you have a story to tell about the first time God let you down? Or the first time you doubted there was a God? Or the first time you doubted there was a God and then quickly ducked for cover should lightening strike?
God, at least the God most of us would prefer, will disappoint. The God that I want is the know -it -all, see –it- all, fix –it- all kind of God, who, with a snap and clap, makes all the bad stuff go away, and delivers on the promise of a good life.
With all that’s going on in the world you would think that God could make it all better. If God is God how complicated could it be to put China back together, close that gash that lies below ground and close the wounds the earthquake has caused? If God is God, why doesn’t God repair the damage done to Burma (now Myanmar)? If God is God how hard could it have been to move a couple of miles away from Parkersburg, Iowa where no one would get hurt?
Where is God? What is God doing? Why is God hurting us? Why doesn’t God respond?
These are the questions human beings have asked since the first time God let them down.
And in response to the questions God is silent. No comment.
Human beings fill the silence with a story trying to make some sense of our experience. Human beings tell story about you and me and God and how we are connected once to another. And the stories that get told often involve natural disasters like the one we hear today in the recounting of Noah and the ark.
There is evidence that a great flood did happen, like the one we here about in Genesis. There are variations on the theme of the great flood that have been told in nearly every ancient culture.
Our ancestors built their flood story around God and God’s disappointment in what human beings did after God got the ball rolling with creation.
The book Genesis, where we find Noah, starts with creation. In the beginning God created the earth. God separated light from dark, and the water from the land. God created birds and fish and all the creatures of the earth. God created human beings that they might be caretakers of all that is and that they would love God.
And God said, “It’s all good.” It’s all looking very good in the first couple chapters but long for human beings to mess it up. A few more chapters and it’s all gone downhill from there until God wept so hard the sky opened up and the floods came and everything was destroyed.
You can blame free will, I guess. If God hadn’t given free will, the ability to make choices about how we wanted to live and about how we wanted to connect within ourselves, with each other with God Adam and Eve would still be romping happily in the garden. Cain wouldn’t have killed Abel. And we wouldn’t be the any wiser.
That’s the problem. We wouldn’t be any wiser. We never would have grown up. We would we be mindless Stepford children of God without any sense of our own souls.
God had to set us free, so that we could choose. God just hoped that we would make the best choice, that we would choose God back and choose to be connected, and choose to live from our innermost selves.
Noah and the Ark isn’t told to explain a natural disaster, or make toe the line because God can be cruel or kind. The story of the Flood tells us about the disasters that can happen when we humans disconnect from God.
Another way to say that is when we disconnect from our souls. And when we disconnect we usually get itchy and in our effort to stop the itch we grab and stab and jab at whatever is in our way. And before long we’re up to our necks in trouble. That’s the back-story for how Noah ended up making a boat and waiting out the rain.
God isn’t to blame for cyclones and earthquakes and tornados and all the rest. Natural disasters just happen. It’s one of the risks we live with because we live in this world. Because we live in this world, things happen. Tragedies happen. God isn’t to blame, nor is God the magician we may have hoped for. We live in the real world and in this world bad things happen. But that’s not the end of the story. When the rain finally ends in this account of Noah and the ark a rainbow appears. In the end there is always more. God was still around, and life continued – maybe differently than it had before but life did continue.
Jesus knew the story. He knew about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. He knew the story of the flood and about the rainbow. He knew the human tendency to wander away from God and what can bring us back again. So he provides a little tale of his own about making life work for us.
Jesus was a carpenter so he tells a tale about what happens is you build a house on a house of fog and sand. That house will surely fall.
A house built with wisdom, a house whose foundation is a connection to one’s soul, to God, to the only thing that really matters is solid. Life can huff and puff all it wants. That house will never fall.
Jesus wasn’t talking about a set of beliefs that make our soul home strong. He was talking about a way of life. He was talking about how we live and what we do with our experiences.
A contemporary preacher put it this way:
What kind of person will you become in the math and aftermath of all the fecality life slings at you between diapers and Depends?
In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You’ll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy and you and will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else.
Well tended, your character will be a fragrant garden, an artist’s home, with walls and halls full of memories and beauty, a party with live music and good jokes and pleasant conversations in every corner. You’ll be good and deep company for others and yourself. (Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again)
What kind of person will you become in the math and aftermath of all the fecality life slings at you between diapers and Depends?
Bad things will happen but whatever happens cannot destroy us, our souls, our heart, our essence, what makes us a unique, complex and wonderfully created being.
When I was in my late twenties, maybe nudging thirty I went through one of those bad times. I was a young scientist trying mightily to build a career on research grants and publications. So, I worried about how to make it all happen and make my life a success but I wasn’t happy. I still worried about almost everything, mostly making mountains out of mole hills, something I was very good at.
One night I let God have it. I had been trying my hardest try to be a success and to be happy. I said, “I’m done. If you can do it any better have at it”.
I don’t recommend telling people you heard a voice, but I did hear a voice, that kind voice inside and that voice said:
Stephanie, nothing bad is going to happen to you. Nothing is going to destroy you. I felt a peace come over me, an amazing and powerful sense of peace.
That moment got me through the days ahead but, of course, I lost and regained that powerful peace over and over again. I would get off track, looking for peace in all the wrong places. I would worry about things that just didn’t matter, and worry about a lot of things that really did matter but all the worrying didn’t help.
It took me almost thirty years for me to understand what I heard that night. What I was told that night is that God was with me. Me. Me, not me the priest, not the rector, not the daughter or sister or aunt, or me the friend, or me the partner….God was with ME. Me as creation, as a being, as the beloved of God.
Bad things will happen but if we find that sense of ourselves, where we are connected to God, we are okay. Our essence, our being, the dwelling place of being God’s beloved cannot be destroyed or broken.
That is the message of Jesus. That is the message of Brian McLaren who bids us to tend our spiritual garden. That was the message I heard that night nearly thirty years ago. That was the message to all of humankind as Noah’s boat rocked on the flood waters
When the rains come, and the flood waters swell, earthquakes rumble, tornados roar, bodies get sick, jobs are lost, fortunes and good looks fade, a the house crumbles and our hearts are broken it is not the end of the story. Remember the rainbow. The story tellers bring us to the rainbow when God made a deal with all of us. Nothing bad will destroy us, even when everything around us is destroyed. When everything is destroyed we are still here and so is God. And so we begin again.
|
|
|
|
