Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The season of creation: storm sunday (let me be your witness)...

NOTE:  Here are my worship notes for this coming Sunday - the Second Sunday in the Celebration of the Season of Creation - please join us.

Introduction
In any given collection of people on a Sunday morning – in any given part of the world and any given type of Christian denomination – there are always a variety of opinions and understandings concerning what it means to BE the church.  Some people take their cue from popular culture and define the church as a building – a physical plant at a specific address – designed to house public worship and Sunday School.

·        Others believe the church is an institution – a collection of religious officials, clergy and traditions – that functions as an organization in society.  You hear people speak of the Roman Catholic Church, the Congregational Church, the Methodist or Evangelical Church, right?  And mostly they are talking about an institution – a bureaucracy – a social organization.

·        Sometimes people speak of the church more generically like when they ask:  do you really still go to church?  Or who do you work for:  the church?  For them, church is a place or function that you use just like any other employer, profession or social service agency.

·        There are members who believe that the church is essentially a burial society, or a place of family tradition; some consider the church to be a spiritual social club or even a benign but outdated house of rituals that are nice but fundamentally unnecessary for modern living.  Some treat the church as a place to pass on healthy moral values to their children when and if they have the time to attend.  And there are people who are certain that the church is a place that will help them become healthy, wealthy and wise if they just learn to follow the right rules.

There are probably other notions of what it means to BE the church floating around among us today but I suggest that NONE of them would call the church a community of people called out of society and into community in order to live as Christ’s body in the world.  And that, beloved is what the New Testament word ekklesia – church - means.

·        It is a compound word signifying the assembly – or the community – that has been called out of the whole for a unique mission.  St. Paul put it like this in Ephesians:  the church is the body of believers who have been called out from the world by God to live as his people under the authority of Jesus Christ.  

·        Sometimes Paul uses short hand for this mission saying that the church is to be the Body of Christ – the people called together by God to give shape and form to the truth of the Lord – so that the words of our faith become flesh in our everyday experiences.

All of which means that the church is really NOT a building or an institution or a profession or a burial society or social club for so-called spiritual people:  the church is a group of people living out Christ’s mission in their generation.  It is a gathering of individuals who come together in community to help one another become spiritually mature – to grow up and live like adults in the Lord rather than selfish children – who then go out into the world to share God’s love in ways that make that love visible.  One wise soul put it like this:  "The holiest moment of the church service is the moment when God’s people—strengthened by preaching and sacrament—go out of the church door into the world to be the church – and make love flesh.  We don’t go to church; rather we are the church.”

Insights
Now I tell you all of this on the second Sunday of the season of Creation for
two reasons.  First, our readings ask us to explore what God reveals to us through the storm – what can we learn and experience of the Lord through the thunder, rain, wind and power of nature – and each of the appointed readings invite us to consider what it means to serve and worship a God with this kind of awesome power. These are mind-blowing lessons from Scripture and each one challenges us to learn to serve the Lord of the storm.  The second reason I have reminded you about the meaning of the church is because in just a short time, we will welcome some new friends into membership in our community of faith. 

·        And I want to be clear with everyone – old timers, new friends and guests alike – that our new members are not joining a building – or a tradition – or an institution or a burial society or a spiritual social club.

·        They are joining a community called by God to live in the world with a mission – and our mission has a specificity that is grounded in place and time – and there is NOTHING abstract, ambiguous or institutional about it.  Our commitment to mission has been summarized like this:  In community with God and each other, we gather to worship, to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice and to share compassion.

·        And if you are paying attention, you will note four key components to this mission:  we gather as community to worship, to reflect and deepen our faith as followers of Jesus Christ, to do justice in the world and to share compassion in our lives.  Worship, reflection, justice and compassion:  these are the ways THIS community lives as the body of Christ in Pittsfield.  This is how we mature in faith and return to the world bringing a measure of healing and hope to the brokenness.

So let’s reflect for a moment on what our focus text, Psalm 29, tells us about this mission.  This psalm is one of the oldest in the Hebrew tradition.  Scholars believe it is a Jewish reworking of an ancient Babylonian hymn of praise because it contains some rare Canaanite words about the source of thunder, wind and rain.  Now there have been people farming this region of the world since the 8th century BCE – that’s ten thousand years ago – and we know that Israel conquered the region in about 1400 BCE.  So these words have some long legs and go back to some of the earliest understandings and myths about God and God’s power.  And there are three broad insights that I want to lift up for you about this psalm because it helps illumine our mission. 

First, this was a song used in worship.  The word psalm means songs of the lyre played to the glory of God in worship and this song celebrates God as a storm.  Many modern people would think such language is either irrelevant or superstitious but let me ask you to go deeper: what does a storm imply or mean to you? 

·        What does it tell us about God and the very order of creation that powerful and sometimes destructive storms have been built into the fabric and cycle of life? 

·        Any thoughts…?

This song has three parts:  it first sees the storm approaching on the Mediterranean and invites the people to seek shelter; then it sees the storm hit the mountains and the trees and rip them apart showing the incomprehensible and sometimes terrifying power of the Lord; and then as the storm moves beyond the people and life gets back to a safer order, the song closes with the words, “Glory to God” because the Lord contains and limits the destruction of nature. The people also sing “glory to God” because they have come to understand that even out of the fury of the storm – the lighting and the flood – blessings come to the land after the chaos has ended.

·        Apparently the ancient people used to believe that the thunder was one of the voices of the Lord and God’s voice caused the waves to crash, the trees to tremble, the earth to move, the floods to rise and fall and so much more.

·        So what does that say to you about the power of the Lord our God?  There’s nothing domesticated or impotent about this God, right?  There is just a mysterious and nearly incomprehensible power at work that even controls the forces of nature. 
 
So first this song of worship speaks of God’s mysterious power.  Second, nobody believes or acts like the power of God displayed in this storm is the result of human sin.  People of all ages love to say that this hurricane or that tornado is somehow related to the wrath of God. But this most ancient and even mythic song of worship tells a very different story.

For what do the people in this psalm do when the storm is over?  They celebrate God and the Lord’s awesome authority over the wind, sky, water and land.  One scholar put it like this:  Nature is upset and suffers, but no one cries for justice or mercy. Later, those on a festival day, who earlier feared for their lives, worship Yahweh with but one appropriate response: Glory to God! (Look at how the postlude of the psalm) sets the entire universe at rest. God sits enthroned above the waters and above the firmament. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He who displayed his power and glory, which so moved heaven and earth, now shares his strength with Israel and blesses them with shalom. (Working Preacher, Wendell Frenchis)

·        What does that tell you about the Lord?  I think that it points to a wisdom that is beyond human understanding; it tells me that if I fully trust God as Lord then there are some things I will never comprehend – they are both too mysterious and awesome for me to understand – but if they are of the Lord then I have to nourish trust rather than fear.

·        Do you know that passage of scripture from Isaiah 55 that says:  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  (It continues) For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 

This is a song about trusting God when we are not in control.  In many ways it
is the ancient rendering of the Serenity Prayer maybe 4000 years before Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

And the third insight this psalm offers is one that encourages the whole community in heaven and earth to live in a way that worships the Lord:  God rules over the flood, the fires and all of the chaos that we experience from time to timeSo this song says: “ascribe glory you heavenly beings and bow down on your knees all people of the earth…
… for you live in the presence of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and you NEED God’s strength for blessings and peace in your lives.  This is a song of celebration, you see, not a psalm of lament because it honors the storm king as one who exercises divine wisdom over creation and holds power over even the chaos. 

Remember how the biblical story begins:  In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness… there was order from the chaos at the start of the first day.  The ancient people celebrated the storm because it came and went and was completely under the authority of the Lord.

·        Modern people usually are not awed by storms these days – at least those of us who live in the industrialized Western nations – we are neither humbled nor terrified.  If we pay any attention at all, we most often speak of storms as a nuisance. We live in a way where our buildings keep us safe and protected, we hire out specialized professionals to keep the electricity flowing and the water potable, so beyond inconvenience, we don’t often pay much attention to the Lord of the storms.

·        Unlike many places of the world, we don’t face the tragedies of floods and tsunamis – drought or hurricanes with gale force winds – and that is a blessing we ought not take for granted.  But it does disconnect us from a sense of God’s incomprehensible power – and that is a problem because comfort breeds complacency – and there is no room for the complacent within a community of faith.

We are people with a mission – God called us from out of the chaos and into a way of living that gives shape and form to grace – so we must remain connected to the awesome power of the Lord.  We cannot take it for granted or treat it as incidental to living.  For it is God who has called us – Christ who has loved us – the Holy Spirit who is guiding us and this truth compels me to become very personal with you about why this matters to us as a community of faith.

·        I believe with every fiber in my heart, soul, mind and flesh that we have been called to be a shelter in the storm of life.  A safe place that not only gives respite from the suffering that surrounds us but also shows people a way to prepare for the inevitable pain of living and how best to deal with it.

·        You see, if storms are a part of God’s creation – and clearly they are – then they must have meaning – the physical storms of nature as well as the emotional, spiritual and political storms of life as we know it.  And one of the clues I take from each of the readings today – and the Scriptures as a whole – has to do with preparing shelter for the inevitable storms of life.

The storms are going to come – just like the snow in a few months – whether we like it or not.  And as my liturgist friend for today once told me shortly after arriving in the Berkshires from the desert Southwest: There is no such thing as bad weather – just bad equipment – so get ready for the snow by getting the best equipment you can.  She probably didn’t know how biblical her advice was but it was truly a word of the Lord to me – and very helpful, too.

Conclusion
Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road:  when I was a teen-ager, my life was mostly hell. I won’t bore or tantalize you with the details, let’s just say that the combination of alcoholism and the sins of the mothers and fathers that had been passed down to the third and fourth generations in my home were ugly and painful.  So I tried to stay away from my house as much as was possible.  I got at job working in a gas station when I was 14.  I played in a rock and roll band when I was 15.  And I became very, very active in my church starting in the 8th grade.  In fact, I learned to break-in to my church in those days so that I would have a place to go that wasn’t home.

·        Sometimes it was through a window in the Fellowship Hall, other times I would hide in a restroom until the sexton had left; but mostly I got in through the side door to the Youth Room.  I figured out early on how to jimmy the modest lock so that I could get into that place of safety and warmth – my shelter from the storm – whenever I needed to read or rest or just think and pray.  Sometimes I even fell asleep until it was safe to go home.

·        My pastor, Sam Fogal, eventually found me asleep in the Youth Room one night when I had run away and so began a life-long relationship with him of trust and love and protection.  Through the physical safety of that place – and the deep understanding Sam shared with me – the church became for me a place of refuge.  Like the medieval monks would say:  the church become my mother – my place of nurture – my shelter in the storm.

In ways too deep for human words, I know that the church saved my life:  it gave me safety and rest from the physical pain and helped point me towards my best self.  You see, at church I was not just a boy filled with shame and bitterness, I was part of the living Body of Christ.  I had gifts and beauty and worth that gave glory to God.  I had mentors to guide me and friends to help me sing and learn to play the guitar.  I had opportunities to serve others in the mission trips we used to take all over the country and I had a place to go that was always safe.

In time I came to realize that everyone faces storms in their lives – and sometimes those storms are so overwhelming and frightening that the pain wounds you – and there’s nothing you can do to escape.  Sometimes those storms rip everything apart.  And that’s why God created the church – that’s why Christ came among us in the flesh – that’s why the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words:  to help us prepare for the storms we can’t control and to create shelter from those storms for those who are aching for relief. 

·        That’s why I went into ministry:  the church became my shelter in the storm and it saved my life.  I didn’t go into this calling to be the custodian of a building – or the director of a burial society – or the activities coordinator of a social club for spirituality.

·        I entered ministry – and stay in it – so that the church might live as a shelter for someone else in their storm.  One of the reasons our Open and Affirming commitment to gay, lesbian and transgendered people is so important to me is because I know it can save lives.  It has NOTHING to do with being PC and everything to do with being a shelter in the storm.

Same is true with what we do in the river clean-ups, our hunger and habitat work, our Sunday School and worship:  we have been called out of the chaos to build a shelter in the storm.  We have been called by the Lord of the storm to share love in ways that will save lives. We have been united to become the body of Christ in our generation – servants of grace, agents of compassion, actors for justice – for THIS is how we give glory to God – by living as shelter from the inevitable and often agonizing storms of life.

And that’s why church matters so much to me:  contrary to the advice of Marlon Brando in the movie, “The Godfather,” this ISN’T professional or about business, this is PERSONAL.  It is about life and death for the most vulnerable and precious among and within us.  And here’s the thing, some people will never comprehend this:  they really believe the church is about the building, or the tradition, or a spiritual social club.  But not me – it is ALL about being shelter from the storm – and honoring the Lord of grace.

That’s why I often pick certain songs to sing to the Lord for you in worship:  you see, every time I sing with my mates, it takes me right back to those days when I was a fat and frightened young man searching for a sign of hope.  My songs are really prayers of confession and dedication – psalms of celebration to the Lord of the storm - not sounds of lament or hipster posturing to facilitate church growth.  They are a confession that our God reigns…

·        And sometimes when I can’t feel or see the evidence I find myself singing to the Lord because once upon a time there was was shelter from the storm for me.

·        So until the time comes when I can no longer do it, I’m going to keep on singing and teaching and testifying that the church is about God’s love and Christ’s shelter.

The buildings can come and go – the cedars can snap and the rocks crumble – what must remain is a people living as shelter from the storm.  Here’s what that sounds and feels like to me…

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