Lent
5, Yr. B, March 25, 2012
Jeremiah
31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; Hebrews 5:5-10; John12:20-33
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
If
you read the Herald a week or so ago, you will remember that I wrote about
reading a book called Radical Amazement.[1] It’s a book that talks about the “new
cosmology”, our latest understanding of the universe and how that effects our
thinking about God and spirituality.
You might wonder why that is even a concern to people of faith, and that
is a good question. But we’re in a
period that I think resembles the scientific revolution of the 16th
& 17th centuries, a time of great change in the religious world.
Before people like Galileo and Copernicus
and Newton came along we believed that the earth was flat … that our planet was
the center of the universe … that heaven really was above the earth. The creation stories were taken at
their word, and we believed that the earth was created by God in six days …
beginning with light. We believed
that God commanded the movement of the planets and God’s whim controlled every
act of nature. We prayed to God to
control those things we didn’t understand, or over which we had no
control. We imagined God as the
master controller, the one holding the joystick that ran the world from his
thorne in the stars.
But Copernicus suggested that the Earth
turned on its own axis and that it revolved around the sun. And Galileo built a telescope
that looked deeper into space. He
told us that the planets weren’t heavenly bodies that housed angels. Instead they were made of matter, and
were in fact much more like our planet earth than we ever imagined. Newton discovered natural laws that
explained the motion of the planets, and the behavior of many earthly
phenomenon. The world was more
predictable than we thought, and through observation and experimentation we
could pretty accurately explain what was previously unexplainable. All this science made religion look
like a lie.
But our understanding of God evolved with
this new scientific knowledge … though it has taken years. We’ve had to grapple with the
implications of this new knowledge and rethink what we understood about
God. In the meantime, science kept
revealing new truths about the universe and our place in it. Today, most scientists believe “all
creation has come about through a single cosmic event, often called the Big
Bang. Creation is not a static, fixed event, but a cosmogenensis,
an ongoing act of creation and creativity. [2] We have come into being as a human species through a long
process of evolution in which for more than six billion years the only life
form on our planet was bacteria.
Through this process of evolution life progressed to more and more
complex life forms until we reached the advent of homo sapiens … life with a consciousness that knows
that it knows. Humanity was the first
life form to have this capacity to self- reflect. Human beings know that we are conscious beings.
We have the capacity to make moral
choices … choices between right and wrong. We also have the capacity to make self-giving choices … to
give for another, to suffer for another, to sacrifice for another, to be
generous to others, to empower others.
We have the reflective capacity to understand that we are not whole in
isolation from the rest of humanity, or in isolation from the rest of
creation. Because all life is
part of this single cosmic event, the
Big Bang, all life is connected at its most basic level.”[3]
Because we know this, we are challenged
to question those theologies that allow humanity to take a position above and
apart from the rest of creation.
If we are in fact, made from some of the very same dust that came into
existence during the Big Bang, than we are not so very separate than the Cusea
dogwood outside our window, or the animal companions that share our homes, or
lakes and rivers that water our lawns and bodies. We are all connected in an interdependent system. We are all part of a cycle of life and
death where a fruitful life impacts not only the individual, but the community
as well. It’s a cycle where even
death contributes to the future by returning our matter and energy to the
universe … to the mystery that is God.
I tell you, unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies,
it bears much fruit. Those who
love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will
keep it for eternal life.
If we love our life, and not those who
share it with us … if we love life, and all we care about is getting one more
day out of it, or getting the most satisfaction out of it … we are putting all
of our energy into ourselves. Our
whole focus spirals inward, all our energy is focused on fulfilling our
personal desires. The result is
survival at a high cost to others.
We can survive in isolation, but we cannot be fruitful. I don’t think we can know true joy or
true self-love outside of relationship.
A fruit is a seed. It is produced as a result of
interaction. A flower grows and
blooms. The colorful flower
attracts an insect that is nourished by the sweet nectar. The insect carries pollen from one
flower to another. The pollen
lands on the stigma of another flower and it travels down the pistil to the
ovaries where the pollen unites with an egg. A seed grows, and soft flesh surrounds it. An animal ingests the fruit, and
carries the seed to new places where it is deposited in the earth to grow. Fruitfulness requires interaction
on many levels. Fruitfulness is a
product of right relationship … whether it’s flowers and bees, or the
interaction of soil, air and water.
In our human condition, it’s particularly about intentional
relationships grounded in covenant.
There is a difference between a contract
and a covenant. Contracts have
specific rules and if one person breaks a rule, the contract is considered
broken. In a covenant, boundaries
might be crossed or expectations unmet, but the spirit of a covenant is one
that encourages reworking the agreement.
It encourages forgiveness and reconciliation in response to wrongs that
occur. Jeremiah speaks this sense
to us when he speaks God’s dream for us.
[But] this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after these days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will
write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. No longer shall they teach
one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.
I have to wonder if that’s not what’s
emerging in our world today. At
some level, people are realizing that God is within them. That God is not just about religious
institutions and churches. That
it’s not just about human beings and our survival on this planet. It’s not just
about personal salvation or individual prosperity. God is bigger than
that. God is already at work
within us revealing our interconnectedness and exposing the church’s slow
response to a rapidly changing understanding of ourselves and our place in the
cosmos. God’s love is written on
our hearts … more and more … and we have the opportunity to help others
recognize it.
A few weeks ago, thanks to you all, I was
helping someone from Sunday supper with his rent. We were chatting in my office as I was getting things in
order. He said, “A guy I work with
is a pastor. He’s been trying to
get me to go to his church. I
haven’t gone. I finally told him
that I went to the church on Chili Avenue.” That’s us, folks.
He hasn’t come to any of our services, but he comes to Sunday supper
often. We’re his church. God is working in him.
Last month we did a three night series on
Deep Listening (Christian Meditation).
About fifteen people attended.
At the end of the sessions, I asked them if they would like to continue
this practice in community at St. Stephen’s. Eleven said “yes” to meeting at least once a month.
A month or so ago, a gentleman showed up
at our mid-week Bible study. He
said that he came because he had been to Mindful Meditation on Tuesdays. He thought he’d like to see what the
Bible study was about. Something
is working in these people, and I think St. Stephen’s is a part of it. I think it is God’s handwriting written
large in their hearts.
It is our desire for God that reveals our
love of God. It is that same
desire that draws us into fruitful relationships and into ministries that draw
us out of ourselves. It is that
same longing that nudges us into giving for others by walking in the CROPWalk
or helping at Sunday supper. In
our Christian language, we express that by saying we are all One body in Christ
… meaning that we recognize the interconnectedness that exists in the world,
experienced through the Spirit of God incarnated in us. We carry that seed, and when we make a
commitment to nourish its growth … our lives become fruitful. We begin giving them away in love … and
in a sense, I guess we lose ourselves and gain the world.
My favorite Sufi poet Hafiz has this to
say.
Just
the deep quiet, just wanting that now, the
unmoving
breeze (God) to penetrate me
as
if I were a woman needing, wanting, destined
to
conceive,
and
now was my only moment ever available
to
this life when I would be as fertile as I am.
If
the Beloved does not lie beside me in the next
hour,
if Light does not leave its seed
all
over my frame and inside, so full inside that
I
drip upon the street
as
I then bless the earth with my steps.
Another
eon
may pass for a conjuncture of the elements in
existence
to
be as opportune, as perfect, as all seems now.
But
I can’t wait, not any longer, knowing how immaculate … the moment.
So
I am begging with all my strength, every cell
has
joined in and is calling … now,
now, now,
now;
don’t resist us God.
and
then You are here, the one who sired every
world,
flooding
my every crevice, every pore, dissolving
any
wound of loneliness, satisfying
every
desire … eternal and ephemeral, eternal and
ephemeral.
The
divine both soothing, making me present, and
tearing
me apart, the way true rapture does.
This is
what
I was really made for.
I
will give birth to You now. What
else could I
possibly
care about?
The
world will become my attendant if I ever
asked
for anything.
And
now look at all the good I could do if I ever
wished.
Yes,
we will give birth to You. Listen,
Hafiz, to
what
you just said. What more could you
ever
want?
What
more could we ever want?
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment