Awe & Wonder
(Beginning this week, we launch a 52 week series based on Brian McLaren's book We Make the Road by Walking: A year-long quest for spiritual renewal, reorientation and reactivation. 52 weeks is a long commitment, but here's why we're embarking on this quest: we will begin to bring our lenses to the same scriptures with the intention of learning from the text and from one another. Check out what we're doing at www.faithworskhere.com - maybe you'd like to join a small group and grow with others.)
This week, I was recounting some of the challenges of this season with someone who listens to me without judgement. And it all was tumbling out – the chaos of COVID 19, the chaos of a divided political environment, the chaos of looking at my own biases, the chaos of seeing others’ biases, the chaos of working to love people in the midst of sickness and grief and all of the above, the chaos of young adults trying to launch careers in this season, the chaos of being a mom and a wife and a pastor and a friend.
And she asked me where I felt the Spirit’s presence.
And then all the gifts of this season tumbled out – the gift of Josef’s preaching last week, the gift of leaders with an eye on the uncertain but beckoning horizon, the gift of people stepping into new leadership roles, the gift of people sharing how God is working in their life, calling them to new actions, the gift of what I call thin space – those places where God’s presence is palpable. The gift of young adults realizing their independence and showing that they are scrappy survivors. The gift of call in the midst of the chaos.
And I found myself saying this:
In the midst of it all – it is all Good. Like in the way creation is GOOD.
It is good. Very good.
We are setting out on a new journey today – a yearlong journey. A journey of reading and studying scripture together.
A journey is more than a metaphor in this case – it is truly a path we walk together. We’ll get out of it what we are willing to put in. There will be rocky parts and downhill smooth parts, hard to navigate parts and blisters, and hopefully amazing mountaintop moments.
We are on a journey whose map is Brian McLaren’s book We Make the Road by Walking – A yearlong quest for spiritual formation, reorientation and activation. McLaren’s introduction to the book suggests that as humans, we seek aliveness as a matter of instinct – where aliveness has to do with recognizing that we have purpose and that life means more than going to work and coming home to make dinner and go to bed. Where aliveness means that our lives have something to offer the rest of the world and are part of a bigger story.
I encourage you to read along, to study the scriptures each week, to live into a plan of exploring these ideas together with others. I’ll say it again – we’ll get out of this journey what we are willing to put in.
So…off we go.
And what better place to start such a journey than “in the beginning…”?
You see, in the beginning there was chaos – a formless void. And God spoke over the void and it was forever changed. There was light in the darkness. And God saw that it was GOOD. The very first acts of creation separates light from dark, earth from water and sky, and begin to order time and space.
God creates order out of the chaos. And saw that it was GOOD.
The next acts of creation involve an astounding diversity of living things – more living things than we as mere humans can possibly imagine or catalog. Things that bear fruit, things that taste good and things that are healing for bodies, things that bloom, things that have thorns and poison and stingers and other protective tricks. Things with fins and with gills and wings and beaks and talons and feathers and fur and hair and scales and spines. Living things with a purpose in the scope of creation. Diversity that was created with great intention for the good of the whole.
As a sidebar, I want to note that it is important to our journey in the year to come to acknowledge that as Christians, and perhaps especially as people called United Methodists, we approach the biblical text in very different ways. Some approach it quite literally. Others approach this collection of stories as a source narrative – one that gives context and meaning to our lived experience, one that gives God shape in our lives. Still others see it as a story that spans billions of years in a metaphor of 7 days. All of those approaches are valuable, especially to the person who is steeped in that particular approach.
Part of the important work we are doing is bringing all of our individual readings of this text into conversation as a community that is seeking to love God, love one another, and follow Jesus. Along the way, we’ll find out about how this story is about us, individually and collectively, too.
Right of the bat on our shared journey, we’re showing up with a chaotic set of interpretations prayerfully waiting for what God will bring to life and declare good.
In the beginning, God created from chaos, looked at the wide diversity of things and declared all of it – the amazing diversity and complexity and interdependence of it all - declared it Good. And Very Good.
I have a little confession to make...
I am finding our world right now to be SO VERY CHAOTIC. Like, who are we? What have we become? What is happening to our beloved earth? Where is all this rain coming from? Why is my grass still lush and green here in late August? Why is our country so divided? Why do we have all these ingrained biases about people? What is this virus all about? How are people going to work their jobs and educate their kids? What is the market doing?
But as I dumped all this out this week and laid it beside what is being created and what is emerging in this season – I can see that there is good that will emerge.
Do not hear me say that we need to look past hard things and just see the good.
Do not hear me say that we are living all of this chaos for a reason.
No. But I do believe that God is in the midst of it. I do believe that the chaos of billions of years can be ordered by God and can continue to be declared “good.” I do believe that a God who created ex nihilo (from nothing) can work in the existing chaos just fine thank you very much.
And that causes me to put on a particular set of lenses as we begin this journey together.
I’ll just assume from the first step that your lenses are different than mine. Maybe a little bit. Maybe a lot. You’re bringing your view along on the journey. You are bringing your experience, your tradition, your reason into this reading and this journey. Thank God. We are part of that diversity of creation in our genes but also in our experiences.
And when your lenses and my lenses journey together, we will surely see DIFFERENT things that God is doing and declares good.
So…With each step of the journey, acknowledging that we are traveling in a chaotic world, a chaotic world that God has created and whose diversity I cannot fully grasp or comprehend, where is God’s goodness emerging from darkness and chaos?
And what is my role to tend to that emerging goodness?
Because the scripture suggests we were created to have a specific role. (And I’ll warn that this is the beginning of a whole new sermon for next week – but let me begin to share some thoughts for you and possibly your small groups to consider in the week to come….)
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
God has dominion over all of creation. God has created us in God’s image. We bear the image of God and in the next breath God delegated to humankind dominion - native responsibility for - living things – creatures and plants. To tend – and care as God tends and cares. This is why we bear God’s image.
So this creation is not ours to destroy but to steward
So this created diversity not ours to neutralize but to nurture.
So this creation is not for our personal abundance but for the shared thriving of the entire creation.
This is where the journey begins….
Out of chaos, a dazzling and overwhelming feat of creation.
Out of chaos, God declares it Good.
And so…we step forward into our work – the work of care for all that God has done and continues to do rendering goodness from the chaos.
It is good. It is very good.
May it be so.
Amen.
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