Reflections Feb 26, 2012 Creation Care

Reflections on the Season                                       Lent 1   February 26, 2012

Today’s readings are

Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15

Imagine you’re college student and have signed up for a course called “ecology of snakes and amphibians in western Florida”.    I said “imagine”.   Then you find out that the “lab” in this course will consist of several weekend field trips.  You will be experiencing the tangled vine and mangrove wetlands and their inhabitants first-hand...in the water…mostly at night.  Hold that image for just a minute while we look at the readings for this week. 

The readings start with the legend of the great flood, Noah’s ark, and God’s blessing of every creature:  "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."

The Gospel reading is another water story:  In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild animals; and the angels waited on him.

The Epistle connects the two stories in a reading that may have been part of an early church baptism ritual:  “And baptism, which this (the ark) prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…”

Now back to the swamps of Florida.  My daughter called from college last week in exactly this situation.  Her concern, however, was how to pay for the wetsuit and headlamp.  She couldn’t wait to get off campus and into the water.  Her passion is for saving as much precious wetland habitat as possible, and protecting the lives of each native species in them.  Her passion is shared by a large and rapidly growing number of young people around the globe.  There is an ark-like quality to the nature preserves and marine set-asides and humans-in-habitat projects multiplying around the globe.  It is interesting that the sciences of ecology and psychology now understand what the ancient story of the Ark is saying:  the human species really can’t live without the rest of Creation.  We can read the Gospel story “against the grain” of the usual interpretation of the wilderness as a fearful testing place.  Of course it is fearful for those of us who are separate from it and don’t know it.  But the Spirit moved Jesus right into that holy place of wild creatures, the undomesticated and free.    For growing number of Christians,  re-reading the Ark story, knowing an undomesticated Jesus  and experiencing the fullness of baptism means taking on God’s care of creation as a central tenant of faith.   

All I want to know is, are cottonmouth snakes nocturnal?

John+

Notes:

 Interfaith Power and Light, Green Cross, and Creation Care are just three examples of networks of Christians living to put this faith into action. 

Reflections on the Season, Feb 5, 2012

Reflections on the Season                                       Epiphany 5    February 5, 2012

Today’s readings are

Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-11, 20c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23,  Mark 1:29-39

Isaiah says

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?  The One who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

And the Psalm  says

¹Praise you God! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for God is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

²God builds up Jerusalem; and gathers the outcasts of Israel.

³God heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

⁴God determines the number of the stars; and gives to all of them their names.

My son, Lucas, got us into astronomy.  We gave him a telescope a few years ago, and have  identified the various “seas” on the surface of the moon and viewed the row of tiny lights lined up either side of a brighter dot …the moons of Jupiter!    Every time I slow down to really see, it is truly awe-inspiring.  It makes me yearn to praise God, and not just myself, together as a community, to worship in awe and wonder -- “There’s a song that’s inside of my soul; it’s the one that I’ve tried to write over and over again”.¹

But I have trouble praising God freely, wildly, openly, publicly, deeply, and truly.  And from the tenor of many worship services and gatherings I’ve been part of over the last ten years or so, I wonder if many of us are somehow impeded from praising God.  There are a number of issues here 1) First off, we’re busy with important must-do tasks, and praising and worshiping God just does not get much done. Part of a psalm or a couple of songs are ok, but more would really be a “royal waste of time”².   2) I think enthusiastic praise and deep worship are somehow (in the U.S. at least) associated with right-wing political, moral majority evangelical fundamentalism, and we in no way want to look like or be otherwise associated with that kind of thing.  3) Losing ourselves in praise takes and certain kind of humility and letting go of self-sufficiency, and that’s never easy 4) Wait, is there really a God who names stars, anyway? Seems like a quaint anachronism to many (more on that in a later blog).  5) Then there is also the problem of how to do communal worship when we have so many various styles of worship.  It is risky to lead worship where one person’s great experience is another’s fingernails on the chalkboard.

My point is that it is no wonder our worship may be lacking in depth and length, zest and vigor.  It takes courage to be in praise and worship these days.  But as Matthew Fox points out “Courage is the first sign of the Spirit. It is the root of all the other virtues.”

Well, I am not often very courageous. But I do have this question:  if a few of us were to en-courage each other, could we water the seeds of the Spirit to expand and deepen our worship together? God invites us to respond to God’s love with extravagant praise.  I would value a conversation about what you make of my reflections today.  How  can we overcome the impediments and find a way?  What are you finding as positive group worship practices? 

John+

Notes:

¹ Song “Only Hope”  by Switchfoot

²A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World.   Marva J. Dawn.   Eerdmans Press, 1999.