The Trinity: A sermon

Today the lectionary gives to us a gift from the church – today is Trinity Sunday.  The reason that I say that it is a gift from the church is that the concept of the Trinity does not come to us directly from Scripture because the Bible does not use this language, this word ‘Trinity’, to describe God.  Rather, in reflecting on the depth of God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ, the early church in its struggle to articulate the truth of God’s existence adopted this language of describing God as Trinity. 

This comes to us as gift in the context of the struggle of humanity to know its creator and to understand the creation.  In his book The Mind of God the eminent mathematician and physicist, Paul Davies, declared, ‘While we assume there is a design behind the physical reality, science can’t really tell us anything about the designer, the nature of God, or God’s relationship with human beings.’ 

To seek to understand God and to listen for the story of God does not mean turning away from scientific inquiry and reason but marrying it with the revelation of this very creator in our midst.  For, to borrow a phrase from another physicist and theologian John Polkinghorn, to describe God as Trinity is not a case of doing some ‘speculative mystical arithmetic’ but is grounded in the very narrative of the revelation of God found in the scriptures.

Jesus’ claims concerning himself and his relation with God and the Holy Spirit give rise for us to speak of God in this way. 

John asserts Jesus to be the eternal Word of God. 

Jesus claimed that he was in the Father and the Father was in him and that those who had seen him had seen the Father. 

The promise of the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Spirit sent from the Father, the same Spirit that was seen descending on Jesus at his baptism.

And, Jesus command to go and baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit further makes this description of God appropriate.

Here in these passages, and others, we encounter God not simply as some monad but that God in Godself is a community of existence – a communion of being, to borrow the language of John Zizioulas.

If we listen to the very first story found in the scriptures this truth of God’s very nature as existing as a communion is found as we hear that we are created in God’s image:

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness:

So God created humankind in his image,

          in the image of God he created them;

          male and female he created them.”

Here we find that to be made in God’s image is to be made male and female – not male or female, but both together – a community.  To be in the image of God is to be one, yet one with distinct entities.  The fullness of being human in the image of God is being humans together, just as God is one yet three.

This helps us to make sense of the statement that God is love.  To love involves both a lover and an object of that love.  If God in God’s very self is love then that love is a love expressed in the mutuality of existence of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.  

This gives to us the context of our own existence created to love and be loved by God and by each other – to do less than this would be to deny the reality of our being created in God’s image and thereby to deny what it means to be truly human.

Yet the narrative that unfolds in the pages of the scriptures is that this exactly what human beings do: rather than live in the communion of love whereby we exist as one for each other we as human beings continually seek our personal end, our personal gain.

The story of Adam and Eve is not some isolated event in prehistory but is each of our own stories – we deny the reality of our existence and seek more as if what we have already been given is not enough.  And when we are questioned about this we try to blame someone else.

But God’s love for us is so deep that he gives to us himself, his son, the incarnation – Jesus with us to live for us.  Here the work of God as Trinity becomes clearer and even yet more confronting.  Jesus fully human and fully divine shares our human existence living in communion with God and the creation.

The culmination of Jesus share in our existence as well as our estrangement from God and each other is found in the cross and resurrection.  The theologian JürgenMoltman describes Jesus death as an entirely Trinitarian event in which Jesus human cry of abandonment, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ is matched by the desolation of God the Father as he mourns the estrangement of humanity in the death of his only son.

Here we begin to have an insight into the concern of God at our suffering and of God’s will that this not be the last word for the cross without the resurrection leaves us without much hope.  The Spirit descends into the realm of dead to – a place we assume is completely opposed to and devoid of God’s existence to meet Jesus there and bring him to new life.

To contemplate this is to understand that even in the place of death to which Jesus descends, a place of complete separation from God, Jesus is retrieved.  The Eastern Orthodox churches speak of the days between Jesus death and resurrection as the time of his descent into hell.  There is no place in this life or in our death that God has not been and that God cannot reach u even hell!

This God, who is love, loves us to this point of self sacrificial giving so that we might be with God eternally.  The sending of the Holy Spirit to us makes us one with Jesus in his action for us and in the church we are made to be a sign of hope for the world as humans existing as human beings created in God’s image are meant to – as community.

The church is meant to be God’s people living in respect to how we were created and were recreated to live, but it does not take a genius to see that we do not live this way as the church, even though this is the church we believe that God calls us to be.  Like those who lived before Jesus death and resurrection our fall into temptation, to live as if we are not in created God’s image and so to seek something other, is continually there.

The rampant individualism of the post enlightenment world, both modernism and post modernism, have so impacted on the belief of the western church that for so many our faith is simply and only private or personal matter.  Evangelists continually emphasize our personal relationship with Jesus as being the central reality of faith, but unless we understand that as persons we are not drawn into a one on one faith experience but into the community of God’s existence which includes not only other people but the fullness of creation then we have turned away from the truth of the gospel.

To be Christian means to be the church – for the church is the body of Christ, it is the Church in the power of the Spirit.  Bound together by God’s love and into God’s existence together we celebrate our risen Lord.

This understanding of the church came up in my lecturing on Thursday when I was quoting a passage from John Calvin’s Institutes written in 1559.

For when we believe the Church, it is in order that we may be firmly persuaded that we are its members. In this way our salvation rests on a foundation so firm and sure, that though the whole fabric of the world were to give way, it could not be destroyed.

Half of the students reacted to this understanding of the church expressing that whilst the ideal and imagery is great it had not been their experience of the church.  Many had been hurt and burnt within the community of the faithful – a reality for most of us. 

Yet within the arms of the church that we believe, the church that God has made through the power of the Spirit, our hope is that we do share in the Trinitarian life of God and we become fully human.

Calvin, being the realist he was, declared:

But in order to embrace the unity of the Church in this manner, it is not necessary, as I have observed, to see it with our eyes, or feel it with our hands. Nay, rather from its being placed in faith, we are reminded that our thoughts are to dwell upon it, as much when it escapes our perception as when it openly appears.

Being church is as much a matter of faith and an expression of God’s Trinitarian life as our hope in the promise of Jesus that we will find our way home in him.

The depths of the mystery of our faith stand alongside the mystery and wonder that is seen in the creation by the physicists and biologist and ecologists.  Our unity with God who is Father, Son and Spirit, our unity with each other, our unity with all living things humbles us and gives to us place in this world, in our lives and with our God.

Giving thanks for this mystery we can echo the wonder of the great Albert Einstein:

One cannot but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality.  It is enough if one merely tries to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.  Never lose a holy curiosity.

So with him and millions before us and millions to come let us pass into silence before the mystery of the Trinity and seek the face of the one in three and three in one who loves us.

Driving out the blind man.

John 9:1-41

“And they drove him out.”

Undoubtedly these are the saddest words in the story of the healing of the blind man.

The Pharisees having dragged the healed man in for questioning reject his witness and ostracise him.  This man who had lived his life blind, begging as a marginalised member of the Jewish community is healed and then through no fault of his own re-dealt the same cards.  His lot in life remains on the edges of the community determined by those who hold power and influence. Their words effectively damn him:

‘”You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.’

The contrast between this story and the story of the woman at the well is remarkable.  The Samaritan woman, estranged in her own community, is able to share the good news of Jesus and people respond whereas the Jewish blind man is more or less dragged in, vilified and thrown out.  In the blind man’s own words the Pharisees would not listen.

How ironic are these words of accusation given that when the disciples had asked the question about the man’s sin and his blindness Jesus had declared: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

The correlation between a person’s lot in life and their sinfulness is brought into stark relief in this story and a challenge is issued to the traditional views of the time – sickness and misfortune were not necessarily to be viewed as a consequence of sin.

Whilst the story revolves around a particular healing event it is clear that John is also seeking to explore deeper issues concerning Jesus.  How to live life in relationship with God and to see God’s ways?  The final few verses of the passage underline this paradoxical situation in which those who claim to see – cannot.

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

The claim by the Pharisees to be able to ‘see’ indicates their misunderstanding concerning Jesus identity and a denial of God’s miraculous works occurring through him. This issue aside their inability to recognise the blind man and his identity is also something of a concern.

One Biblical Scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer remarks on her blog. 

It may be that the most damning point this Sunday's gospel has against Jesus' accusers is one that we easily miss: they did not know the blind man who was healed.

He sat and begged there daily, and every day they walked by him, but when the time came, they couldn't be sure of who he was -- others had to fetch his parents before they could be sure of the identification

Maybe it is that when we associate sin and suffering too closely, or when we assume that our prosperity is due entirely to our own efforts whilst others suffering is due to their sin, laziness or ineptitude, that we can turn a blind eye to what is occurring in the life of others who are right under our nose.  The man would have begged in the temple courtyard but the Pharisees did not see him.

We as people who claim to have seen Jesus and been transformed should hear the words of Paul to the Ephesians as an invitation or maybe even an injunction to live as people who were blind and can now see:

Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

As the days and weeks of Lent go by I am personally being challenged more and more in my own faith as to the lifestyle that I live as I ask myself ‘where are the blind spots in my life?’, ‘where am I turning a blind eye to those in need?’  These are uncomfortable questions and unless the discrepancies between how I live and how I am being called to live are exposed by the light of Jesus love it is too easy to go on living in the humidicrib of this wealthy and so called enlightened Australian culture.

Last week I watched a confronting documentary available free on the web called “Home”.  It is made by the French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Home depicts the history and plight of this earth we call our home.

The cinematography is beautiful, the message confronting.  It raises questions which have been themes in my preaching concerning the care of our environment, pollution, deforestation, depletion of fish stocks, global warming, over consumption and the like.

Whilst I do not believe doomsday saying is necessarily that helpful recognising inequity and the seriousness of global issues is certainly a responsibility of us as Christians, more so as people, who were given dominion over the creation.

With this in mind I was lead to considering the 7 deadly sins which have been a part of the churches history since the fourth century.  Whilst they may have not been a part of the protestant tradition I was struck by 3 which seem to confront me in terms of my responsibility to live as a child of the light and where my blindness might lie and need more healing.

Greed

Gluttony and

Acedia, usually called sloth

It is not difficult to make the connections.  Our overconsumption of goods in the west and desire to own more are grounded in an economic system built on the phrase made famous by Gordon Gecko “Greed is good.”  Advertising is designed to have us buy things we do not need, when we buy the next item are we not simple buying more stuff, are we giving in to greed?

In my mind gluttony is one expression of our greed, an expression that many of us fail to recognise.  The great Indian philosopher Ghandi once said “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”.  The distribution and availability of food on our planet is a massive issue as millions go hungry every day.

Acedia or sloth is not simply laziness or lethargy but not doing good.  It is the sins of omission – the things we don’t do that we should.  Seeing the suffering of the nameless millions and like the Pharisees failing to recognise that here is a person who is just as loved, just as valued in God’s eyes, who may need our help means that as enlightened as we might think we are we are still blind.

When we live in the light of God’s love, when we like the blind man can say I once was blind but know I see, we see not just physically but we see through the eyes of people who hope in a coming kingdom of justice and peace and love and equity. 

It is interesting to note that in his great hymn “Amazing Grace” John Newton captured the words of the blind man.  Of course we who know the history of the hymn know that the blindness of John Newton from which he was set free was his blindness to the evils of the slave trade.  Newton’s encounter with Jesus, his healing from blindness, leads him to become an activist and advocate in the context of the tyranny of his age and ours as well: slavery.

This of course raises the issue for me what are the key social, economic, religious and political issues of our day and age that God is calling us to respond to. How are we to live faithfully, seeing, hearing and obeying?

Seeing again brings a response in how we live.  It begins for the blind man in his belief in Jesus and in his worship of Jesus.  But the witness of the New Testament and of Christian history is that an encounter with Jesus also leads to a transformed way of living, a way which may brings us into conflict with the powers of this world and the way things are done. 

Of course we may hesitate to change our lives because we ask ourselves ‘Can one person really change the world?’  My answer to this would generally be ‘no’ but the issues for me is whether I believe I am living as a faithful witness to God’s love in Jesus and the promise of renewed creation.

It is possible that the consequence of living our lives in God’s time, we will find not a welcoming embrace in our community, but that like the blind man, we are ostracised.  In fact, I sometimes find it surprising that more Christians do not find themselves being driven out by a community which is largely not Christian.  But, if we see as Jesus calls us to see, and, if we live as our faith drives us to live, then it only makes sense that we will live differently to others.

For, if we revel in singing the words “I once was blind but now I see”, we should also live as children of the light, because we have been healed and set free by the immense and unending grace of God that has touched our lives.  

Eating an apple with attitude!

A sermon on Genesis 2-3 & the Temptations

As most of you know I took the theme for today’s service as “eating an apple with attitude”.  Now whilst the story we read from Genesis does not refer to an apple being the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil certainly historically the apple has often been associated with that fruit.

So what does it mean to “eat the apple with attitude” and what kind of attitude might we have as we eat the

apple – the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

Well, to let you know from the outset where this is going I believe one of the truths within this story is that like Adam and Eve we all reach out and taste the fruit, we eat the apple.

But, and this is the big but, we eat the apple with an understanding that despite this error God continues to reach out to us in love. So we eat the apple with an attitude both of rebellion and of humility.

So let’s explore this story and this theme a little more deeply.

Whenever I teach this story at school to grade 7 kids the question is asked of me, “but is it true sir,” by which the questioner is usually asking whether I believe Adam and Eve were real people.

In response I usually ask the students to put up their hand if they have a brother or sister.  (You can do this now too).  Now what I want you to do is to leave your hand in the air if you have ever blamed your brother or sister for something you did wrong.

Whether or not Adam and Eve actually existed or not, which is indeed a moot point, the story is true in each of us.  We are very good at conveniently blaming someone else and deflecting blame if something has gone wrong.

Just as they story is true at this point I believe the story is true in the ambiguous question it poses about the knowledge of good and evil, of morality.

So, let’s focus on the tree and its fruit for a moment.

The very presence of the tree and God’s instruction concerning it are paradoxical.

Here is the riddle as I see it.  Adam and Eve are told not to eat the fruit.  But to understand that disobedience to God is wrong or evil Adam and Eve need to be able know the difference between right and wrong.

How can they know disobeying God is wrong if they do not know the disobedience is wrong or evil?

But if they already understand eating the fruit would be wrong then isn’t logical to say they don’t need to eat the fruit?

What is often presented as quite a straightforward story, a story we will to teach in Sunday School, I believe has some quite difficult and confronting themes.

What kind of answer might we find to this riddle in the story?  If we paused and looked back into Genesis 1 I think we can find an indicator in the first of the two stories about the creation of man and woman.

In Genesis 1: 26 & 27

‘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.’

               

So God created humankind in his image,

                in the image of God he created them;

                male and female he created them.

The little passage helps unlock the riddle in chapter 3.  Man and woman are made in God’s image:

So here is another truth the scriptures teach us which traditionally be describe as the doctrine of the imago dei.  Unfortunately, like most things in the truth Christians are no always in agreement about being created in the image of God means but let me suggest a few things.  Being made in God’s image means:

We are creative beings

We are made to be in relationships

We are loved and have the capacity to love others

We are given knowledge

And, here is the biggie, we know something about good and evil

It would be my contention that Adam and Eve having being made in God’s image already know the difference between good and evil.

So when serpent turns up, with his crafty words and exaggerations, he is not speaking to people who have no idea about good and evil but to people who have the capacity for doubt.

Whatever the serpent is the doubt he sews into the mind of Eve and through her Adam also is a doubt in their created nature, they doubt they are in God’s image and try to be like God: another paradox.

Going back to the idea of how truth is operating in this story one of primary the questions the story raises for us is this: do we doubt ourselves and do we doubt God?  The answer in the story is clear – we do.

And it is because we doubt we go seeking for knowledge, knowledge of good and evil, knowledge about God, knowledge about ourselves and knowledge about our world.

Now on a day we are celebrating the beginning of the university year I do not want to be suggesting that seek knowledge is necessarily wrong; whether it is of good and evil or of engineering, pharmacy, teaching business, law or whatever else you may be studying. However, when the motivation for our seeking is grounded in the denial of our created nature in preference for the existence we would carve out for ourselves then there are some serious questions to be raised and that is what I believe this story does.

Flipping forward into the New Testament for a moment the story of the temptation of Jesus is closely linked to the story of the garden.  In it the temptation to define our own existence rather than accept our existence as gift is played out again in a different way.

In each scene that Jesus is tempted we hear a temptation that each one of us is susceptible to.  Jesus is tempted to turn the stones to bread: to use his gifts simply for his own needs and wants.  Jesus is tempted to put God to the test: to place his trust in things other than God.  Jesus is tempted to gain power: to use his abilities for the sake of his own prestige.

Once again these temptations ring true of the story in the garden we too can easily deny the purpose our gifts are given for.  Instead stones to bread it might be using our gifts for building our own wealth: big houses, cars, expensive gadgets and holidays.  There can be no doubt in our search for knowledge humanity has put God to the test, the rise of new atheism and its prophets echo Friedrich Nietzsche proclamation “God is dead” whilst many of us will use our knowledge and gifts to gain power and prestige for ourselves.

The scriptures tell us who we are and challenge us on that.  We eat the apple with attitude, we seek knowledge and our motivations are intentionally or otherwise about denying our created existence in preference for the identity we can make for ourselves.

But the stories do not finish with our failures or with God’s rejection of us for them.

Hear the good news of the Genesis story.  Despite the prohibition God makes, despite the indication anyone who eats the fruit will die Adam and Eve live.  Yes they die, but not immediately, another debate point for theologians through history and God’s response involves consequences yes but also grace.  God makes Adam and Eve clothes and God sends them into the world.

This story of grace is then backed up by Jesus response to the temptations.  Where we fail Jesus resists and through the gift of the Spirit our lives are joined to his faithfulness.  The promise of his resistance of the temptations culminates in the resurrection of Jesus and the promise that death indeed is not the final word, just as death was not immediate for Adam and Eve God’s choice is always in favour of the creation.

The scriptures show us ourselves: we eat the apple with attitude; we pursue knowledge to set ourselves over against God and for our own selfish motivations but despite the confusion of our ways God continues to reach out in love for us.  God transform and resurrects our mistakes and leads us into new life. God clothes us again in Jesus resurrection and promises us new life.

The Glory of God

Peter Lockhart Easter 5

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

These words of Jesus to the disciples are among the best known from all of the scriptures. Even many outside the church know that Jesus calls people to love one another.

Ironically, even sadly, despite how well these words are known, and how easily we might think we understand them, when we consider our own lives and the history of the church and the world around us we know that we fail miserably.

Loving those closest to us can be difficult – parents, husbands, wives, children, close friends – all of these relationships can cause us heartache and confront us with the difficulty we have in our capacity to love. This is before we even begin to think about loving other people in the church, and beyond, even our enemies!

Yesterday was ANZAC day. It is a day we commemorate those who have fought and died in wars, those who have lost loved ones and those who still serve. The need for ANZAC Day is an indictment on humanity in respect to the call to love one another.

Jesus love for his disciples was profound and challenging and we who follow Jesus as his disciples know this so well.

To understand the difficulty of love I want to explore a different but not unrelated theme from our 4 readings this morning – the theme of glory. It is theme which is quite pronounced in the gospel reading but rather than begin with Jesus being glorified I want to begin with the Psalm; then move to Peter’s address in Jerusalem recorded in Acts; after which, I will comment about Jesus glory; and, finally, we will hear about the promised future.

Turning then to Psalm 148 I want to begin with making a brief comment about the meaning of the word glory in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we are taught that God in Godself could not be seen – to look upon the face of God would be death to mortal humans. Yet God’s presence could be apprehended, his radiance known, and this was God’s glory, radiating from God’s own being.

To glorify God, to praise God was to reflect that glory back and this is what we hear that the very creation is doing in Psalm 148:

Praise him, sun and moon;

praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for he commanded and they were created.

Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!

The relationship between God and what God has made in the creation is made manifest in the idea that creation itself sings out praising God. I would go as far as to say that not only is God’s glory being sung by the creation but that creation is reflecting that Glory and God’s presence to the world.

How many of you have found yourself staring into the starlight sky, or watching the roiling ocean, or wandering through the bushland or mountains and had a sense of God’s glory being reflected in what you are seeing and feeling.

Yet as the great reformation scholar John Calvin points out despite the fact that God’s glory is so manifest in the creation which surrounds us this knowledge flows away from us without it profiting us.

Yes we know God but then we fail to be transformed into loving God and God’s creation and people as we ought. For me the importance of Psalm 148 in reminding us of the goodness of the creation is so poignant in our modern era where we have so deeply exploited the world that the scars it now bears threaten our very life and security through the processes leading to pollution and climate change and desalination and deforestation and the destruction of the oceans and the list goes on.

How have we humans sought to mute the praise of the creation found in Psalm 148? Yet God still loves us and all that God has made.

This brings me to the second reading from the book of Acts where Peter is before the Jewish Christian in Jerusalem. He is being criticised for visiting gentile Christians.

In response Peter relays a vision which he has had in which God affirms the breaking down of barriers between Jew and gentile and challenges Peter to understand that God’s mercy and grace are available to all peoples who live on the earth.

It is only after hearing this challenge that we see that Jewish Christians are silenced from there divisive ways and praise God. God’s glory and God’s love are not restricted to those whom we may think belong. Or to look at it from the other angle God’s glory and love is not held back from those whom we may think are outsiders.

As human beings we have a tendency to exclude others.  This is challenged by God and this breaking down of barriers should not be a cause of fear or consternation but an invitation to glorify the God who shares his glory with all peoples.

So God’s glory is reflected in the creation and in all peoples but the reality is that we find these messages of good news hard to accept and understand fully. Perhaps this is because it is easier to feel as if we are somehow more special or different from others, which brings me to make a comment on the nature of God’s glory found in John’s gospel.

The passage from which we read is a part of the story of the last supper. The segment we read begins with the words, ‘When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”’

This passage takes us back to that pre-Easter setting and it is important to reminded of who it is that had just gone out – Judas. It is after Judas leaves to betray Jesus; after Jesus has washed their feet; and after Peter had contradicted Jesus that Jesus says ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified!’

Jesus glory is revealed in the moments of betrayal that lead to the cross. God’s presence is seen here, glimpsed, in a way which simply does not fit with the way we think as human beings.

Instead of retaliation for the betrayal, for the doubt and even for the violence to be committed against Jesus, and so also God Jesus accepts with humility this rejection. In these moments Jesus shows that God’s love does not respond to such ignominious acts with anything but grace and mercy.

This is what God’s love is like, this is the love that Jesus invites his disciples to share in and this is God’s glory. As Christians who experience this amazing grace, this love divine, we who become Jesus disciples are taught that tolerance is not enough, that retribution has no place, and that loving one another sometimes involves sacrifice beyond our abilities.

It is through Jesus glorification that you and I are drawn into God’s glory as he carries all humanity into the space of the cross and resurrection and so reveals the promise of a new future.

This brings me to make a brief comment on the vision of Revelation 21. The overarching theme of the vision is a world at peace with God and each other living in the glorious presence of God – responding to that glory appropriately and celebrating it.

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”

Despite our constant incomprehension and incompetence in responding to God’s glory revealed and sung by the creation, God’s promise is or a future when will live with one another in that glory. This is God’s love revealed in Jesus, the love which we have been given to share in as good news. Possibly this is the most difficult thing to do – to love as Jesus loved.

But the glory of God draws us in and homewards to participate in God’s glory and God’s life alongside the whole creation. So let us be silent and glorify the one who shares his glory with us and let us carry the good news of grace as the heart stone of our lives: God is love. Amen.

And God said

Peter Lockhart  Genesis 1

Whenever any of us are confronted by an issue or a question about our lives we are influenced in our decisions making and our direction by the voices around us. There are many voices around us, friends and family, people on the radio and TV, blogs and websites, and books that we read. And there are the voices within us: the voice of our own memories and our conscience. 

One of the voices that we have an option to seek to listen to is the voice of God as it comes to us through the scriptures but it is not an easy voice to hear or understand. This morning we heard read the story of creation from the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. This story is a somewhat controversial story for many reasons and has become a stumbling for many in their willingness to accept and listen to the voice of God as it speaks to us through the scriptures. 

This morning I want to just pick up one phrase from the story to begin to explore the difficulties of reading the Bible. In Genesis 1 we read, “And God said.” These may seem fairly innocuous words but they are repeated 10 times in the chapter. Whoever wrote this story wanted us to know that God was speaking because he kept making the point, “And God said.” 

Now for the moment I am not overly concerned with what God said simply the claim that God spoke at the moment of creation. I remember years ago being troubled by this whole story of creation and the notion that the story is supposed to convey what God said at the moment of creation. In terms of logic and reasonable thinking this claim borders on the nonsensical. 

 It’s a bit like that question “if a tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it” “If God spoke at the dawning of creation does anyone hear it” 

Of course I can romanticise the answer and suggest something along the lines that the echoes of God’s voice continue to resound in every moment of our existence and the wonder of creation. But this kind of romanticising of the voice of God does not deal with the claim that is being made by the storyteller, to know exactly what God says. 

 Based in the knowledge that there was no one there to hear what God said and neither can we present any scientific or historical proof of God’s words it would be easy to dismiss the voice of the scriptures as being important in shaping my life because the claims are not scientifically or historically true. But, and this is a vital but, I don’t believe that the point of the story is to claim that this actually what happened but rather to say something about the nature of God and what the creation is in relationship to God. 

So the truth of the story lays not in some historical claim but in the truth the reveal about God. Each phrase, each word, recorded by the author carries weight as it unfolds before us who God is and what God is like and through the discovery of the meaning of the words so we may even hear God’s voice speaking to us. 

If we approach the scripture in this way the question might then be not whether it is historically true but what does it tell us about God that God speaks? “And God said.” Here are just a few quick observations. 

 First off, in affirming that God speaks the scriptures tell us that God chooses to communicate with humanity in a way in which human beings can relate to and understand. Moreover, it would seem to me that there is no logical necessity for God to speak, so in God speaking God make this choice for relationship: a choice to love what God is making. 

Second, that when God speaks there is authority and power in his words. Without going too much into the content of God’s words what occurs in the story is that when God speaks there is a consistency between what God says and what occurs. “Let there be light”, and there was light! 

Now I could say more on this but I wanted to make a fundamental point here about how we read the Bible and whether or not the voice of God is worth listening to in the course of our existence. 

If we try to ask is the Bible “true” in a logical or forensic scientific sense then we come into having problems in the first few verses but if we listen for the theological truth of the scriptures what we encounter is that the God we believe in speaks and God speaks because of God’s choice to love and God speaks with authority. This is good news for all of us and the whole creation.

Psalm 8 Dominion over the sea

Peter Lockhart

I had a request to put up the rest of the sermon about "Care for the Creation" which I posted the end of a couple of days ago here . The sermon was based on Psalm 8, which is the Psalm set down for Trinity Sunday.In Psalm 8 we read about our responsibility as human beings.

The Psalmist declares:

“You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.”

This week as I contemplated this concept of human dominion I was drawn into reflecting on the question, “So, how is that working out for us?” or maybe it is better put: “How is our exercise of dominion going?”

This question was focussed for me after reading a blog by Byron Smith entitled, “And the sea was no more.”

Attached to the article on the blog was a video by Jeremy Jackson a Marine ecologist who painted a grim picture for the future of our oceans.

As human beings we are having a huge impact on the marine environment, an impact on a global scale. This seems to affirm the notion that we do have dominion over “the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas”

Of course I am not one to use one Marine Ecologist’s view on a topic found on a random blog so I did some further reading and reflecting. After confirming some of what Jeremy had to say I came to one of those kind of moments where you just go “oh no”.

If we just consider how we as human beings are dealing with the marine environment, there are some concerning issues!

The first issue is that of overfishing. In some parts of the world we have fished the marine landscape to the point exhaustion – since the 1980s world fish stocks have been in rapid decline and as we have sought new and ingenious ways of catching the fish the impact has been getting worse.

Long line fishing with millions of hooks and drag netting have horrendous side effects.

In some places the ocean floors have been absolutely devastated, disrupting the whole marine environment. The scientists simply do not know how long the recovery of these ecosystems might take.

If we add to this issue of overfishing the impact of the pollution of the world’s oceans the situation gets just that little bit more scary.

Of course most of you will have heard the news about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico emanating from the Deepwater Horizons rig. It was an accident to be sure, but no less driven by our hunger for fossil fuels.

The impact of the pollution is astounding and the toxic impact on the whole Gulf of Mexico will be felt for decades to come.

This is but a small sample of the toxins we are feeding into the water, in Queensland there have been issues with the nitrogen run off from farms and debates and disputes about the control of the use of fertilizers and so on.

Then there is just the everyday rubbish that finds its way into the sea – especially plastics.

In my reading I discovered something called the Great pacific Garbage patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is caused by the flow of ocean currents which seem to circle towards a point in the northern centre of the Pacific.

Here at the centre of this gyre is an area somewhat larger than the size of Texas with 3.5 million tonnes of trash floating just below the ocean surface.

Then add to these two issues the possibility of global warming and in particular the warming of the ocean temperatures the equilibrium of the marine environment is in dire straits. Jeremy Jackson suggested somewhere in the next 20-50 years it is plausible to argue that we will no longer be able to eat fish coming from our seas.

So to return to my question at the beginning, “So how are we going with the dominion over seas thing?”

I find it kind of bizarre this whole issue given that many of us claim to see God’s glory reflected in nature. I wonder how many of you would claim to have experienced God by the sea, for example. One would think if we see God’s glory in nature then we would respond to God’s glory by caring for it and celebrating our place as a little lower than the angels by living generously and wisely as people in this wonderful world God has created.

500 years ago John Calvin wrote about this very thing saying: “But although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward such manifest testimonies, and they flow away without profiting us.”

Even if we do see something of God’s glory reflected in nature, Calvin goes on to say, “After we rashly grasp the conception of some sort of divinity, straightway we fall back into the ravings or evil imaginings of our flesh, and corrupt by our vanity the pure truth of God.”

Reading another blog the biblical scholar Daniel Deffenbaugh writes in response to the state of the environment:

"It is in a situation like this that I can be thankful for my Reformed roots – extending all the way back to Augustine, and finally to Paul – reminding me that, when I look at the heavens and the work of God's fingers, and then consider what human beings have done to it all, I cannot help but disagree with the Psalmist's hopeful anthropology: we are, in fact, a lot lower than God. We're not even close to how we were originally created. This being the case, I am then led to ask, and with some trepidation, why God would even want to be mindful of us."

The dying oceans and the disappearing stars seem to match the increasing clamour of competing voices which seek to drown out the good news of Jesus Christ and the revelation of God’s love for the world.

The whole situation draws us to reflect on Paul’s letter to the Romans not simply the snippet we read today but from Romans 8 as well

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Care for the creation

Peter Lockhart

I've just been watching a video of a lecture by Jeremy Jackson found on Byron Smith's blog, here. After preaching on the destruction on the oceans last year this was how I finished my sermon.

As we wait and we witness our own folly as God’s stewards we are reassured by God’s gracious word to us from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is the peace with God that can inspire us to consider again our place as witnesses to the future we hope in by the way we live as citizens of the coming kingdom now.

Maybe this is what John Calvin was on about when he wrote: “The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam, to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands, on the condition, that being content with frugal and moderate use of them, we should take care of what shall remain... Moreover, that this economy and this diligence, with respect to those good things which God has given us to enjoy, may flourish among us; let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved.”
(John Calvin: Commentary on Genesis 2:15)

Despite our inability to respond to the wonder of creation appropriately, despite our destructive interpretation of 'dominion', despite our hurt of nature and each other the empty tomb reminds us that God chooses to love us and forgive us and invites us to a future yet to be fully understood or seen: a future in which God promises not simply to save human beings but renew the whole creation.

God’s grace comes and echoes in our lives like the distant crashing of waves against the shore, a comforting sound as the Spirit moves within us and draws into God’s life and God’s future. When we taste of the bread and wine our hope is that one day the renewal of the whole creation will occur and we will be blessed as we see the reflection of God’s glory and live as God’s people.

Jesus Emmanuel

Matthew 1:18-25

The word genesis has strong overtones for us as people of faith. It takes us back to the beginning – when the Word of God spoke and the Spirit hovered over the waters and something was created out of nothing – a world, teeming with life and beauty, at the heart of which was ‘man and woman’ made in God’s image.

The connotation of this wondrous mystery of creation and life is captured in the word genealogy. For anyone who has witnessed a birth or seen or held a new born baby will have shared that sense of wonder of the creation of a new life: tiny hands closing around an adult’s finger, wispy hair like strands of silk, utter dependency, living and breathing; a baby replete with the aroma of complete newness. The rhythm of one generation to the next heard in the tiny cries of new born life. Genealogy is the genesis of one generation to the next, created and blessed by God.

But now Matthew asserts there is something else arising in the midst of this rhythm of the generations: the genesis, the birth, of Jesus which took place in this way. An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to announce the news that his betrothed Mary was with child, even though they had not had marital relations. This is something different again, something new: a new beginning, another genesis! The event of the virgin birth stands outside our common understanding of human reproductive processes and the generation of life from parents to child.

What occurs in Mary’s empty womb is a distinctively new creative act of God, through which God is coming to be with us, to live with us and to save us. This new reality of God’s relationship with the creation is reflected in the naming of this unborn child as ‘Jesus’ and ‘Emmanuel’.