NOTE: Here are my worship notes for this upcoming Sunday, September 29th.
Introduction
“More than 25% of the Earth’s
species dwell in the ocean’s depths.”
Nearly 97% of the Earth’s water and 95% of the Earth’s biosphere (the
space on Earth that nourishes life) are connected to the ocean. Sixty percent of our bodies are water. Life and land have their origins in the
ocean. “And like marine life, we
ourselves mature in the waters of our mother’s womb” on the way towards our
birth. (Seasons of the Spirit Sunday School material, Season of Creation, Wood
Lake Publishing) Our baptismal liturgy
speaks of the sacred waters of life like this:
We thank you, God, for the gift of
creation called forth by your saving Word. Before the world had shape and form,
your Spirit moved over the waters. Out
of the waters of the deep, you formed the firmament and brought forth the earth
to sustain all life. In the time of
Noah, you washed the earth with the waters of the flood and your ark of
salvation bore a new beginning. In the time of Moses, your people Israel passed
through the Red Sea waters from slavery into freedom and crossed the flowing
Jordan to enter the Promised Land. In
the fullness of time, you sent Jesus Christ who was nurtured in the water of
Mary’s womb. Jesus was baptized by John
in the water of the Jordan, became living water to a woman at the Samaritan
well, washed the feet of the disciples in water and sent them forth to baptize
all nations by water and the Holy Spirit.
· Our tradition and
our very existence is saturated in waters – and today on what we are calling
“Ocean Sunday” in the season of creation we have been asked to ponder and honor
the truth of the Lord as expressed and experienced in the ocean.
· And let me tell
you something: I am terrified of the
ocean. I love to walk beside it and feel
very much at home along the ocean shore.
But the thought of going more than 10 feet INTO the ocean makes my head
spin and my stomach hurt in ways I can’t begin to describe. And it is not
just because I get sea-sick (which I do in the most tragic and unpleasant
way). No, the vast power and sheer
physical enormity of the ocean unhinges me in ways are beyond
comprehension. The depth and breadth of
the ocean terrify and mystify me. The
uncontrollable and unpredictable force of a storm at sea alarms me beyond all
reason. And the whole subject of
unnerves me.
Did anyone see the movie,
“The Life of Pi?” It was beautiful – and
insightful – and a truly wonderful story – except, of course, that whole
sequence with the ship wreck. Apparently
there is a term for my fear – thalassaphobia
– from the Greek word, thalassa,
meaning sea and phobos meaning
fear. I don’t think I am totally phobic
about the ocean because I love walking on the beach and adore sea food – and I
really don’t think much about sea monsters – but let’s just say that there is
no way on God’s great green earth that you are going to get me on a boat that
does anything on the ocean but sit snuggly secured to its port, ok?
Insights
And that might be a good
place to start to go deeper into today’s focus scripture from the book of Job. Because the One Who is Holy gets just a little
salty and agitated with our man, Job, who in spite of his miserable troubles
and woes has come to think that the world really does revolve around himself.
After listening to Job’s
complaints for five chapters – as well as the less than insightful inanities of
Job’s friends – from out of the whirlwind the Lord of hosts says: Who
is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man as I
begin to question you – and I want some answers! ‘Where were you when I laid
the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined the measurements of
creation—surely you know! On what
were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and
all the heavenly beings shouted
for joy?
·
Do you get a sense of the Lord’s annoyance at Job’s
self-absorbed arrogance – and anthropocentric understanding of reality? And here’s the thing:
God’s rant goes on for another long four chapters: Where you there, Job, when I shut the doors
on the sea…
… when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment and
thick darkness its swaddling band and prescribed bounds for it and set bars and
doors and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther and here shall your
proud waves be stopped?”
· Now do you get
what is going on here? Ordinarily we
tend to think of the Sacred One, the Lord our God, as gracious and merciful,
right? We even sometimes domesticate God
into a sweet and ultra-forgiving old grandpa.
Bt not here – no here we have a God who is every bit as powerful and
mysterious as the ocean itself – deep and inscrutable – patient and nurturing,
to be sure, but equally capable of unimaginable destruction, rage and awe.
· The first insight
about this scripture has to do with human humility: God expresses to Job what his true place in
creation actually is – and it isn’t very grand.
It is tiny – real and important – but hardly the center of the universe. And apparently before Job can make peace with
his troubles, he needs a reality check:
his egocentric world view and his inflated sense of place in the order
of creation needs some adjusting. Are you with me on this point; have I been
clear?
Job’s “sense of justice is
linked with his own estimation of his virtue?” (Seasons of the Spirit) “How
come bad things are happening to me, Lord?
I’m a good guy, so what’s going on?
This isn’t fair?” To which God
doesn’t give much of an answer, right?
Rather, the sacred reply goes something like: Are you kidding me? Do you have any sense of how creation
works? Or began or is ordered since
before there was time? Tell me – if you
do, then I will treat you as an equal – but if not then get a grip and
understand where you fit in the fullness of the cosmos! That is, how about some authentic humility,
man?
· What do you think
or feel about that?
· Does it challenge
or call into question any of your notions about the Lord?
If respect and humility in
the face of God’s power and authority is the first point, then the second is a
reminder that there is a sacred order to the way God works that is as deep and
diverse as the ocean itself: it is
bigger than our imagination; it is more wild than our ability to comprehend;
and despite the terrifying destruction built into the rhythm of the cosmos,
God’s order is greater still and sets limits to all things.
In fact, just as there are
limits that God asks Job to acknowledge about his own ability to understand, God
tells Job that the Lord has set creation in motion in a way that puts limits on
even the ocean and the wind and land and all living things. If you pay attention to the way this passage
is constructed, just like the creation story at the beginning of the Bible you
will see that there is an order and limit to all things:
· First there is
the creation of the earth – from out of the chaos of the oceans – in verses
4-7.
‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you
have understanding. Who
determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon
it? On what were its bases sunk,or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings
shouted for joy?
·
Second there is
the creation of the oceans – an act of order and limits – in verses 8-11.
‘Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness
its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it and set bars and doors and
said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther and here shall your proud waves
be stopped”?
·
And third there
is the creation of light and darkness – yet another act of creation with
ordered limitation – in verses 12-15.
Have you commanded the morning since your days began and
caused the dawn to know its place, so
that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out
of it? It is changed like clay under the seal and
it is dyed like a garment. Light is withheld from the wicked and their
uplifted arm is broken.
Do you see the sacred truth in the order the text itself
emphasizes? The theological insight here
is that while there is a power at work that is astounding – and sometimes even
menacing – built into our awe in the Lord’s creation is a balance that always preserves
life. There is a limit to even evil or
destruction in the way of the Lord just as there is a limit to the cold and the
heat, the water and the land, the day and the night.
And even if we can’t see it – even if we are unable to
experience this truth in our hearts – faith asks us to trust that it is true. St. Paul reminds us that: “Now we see as through a glass darkly, but
later we shall see face to face.”
The preacher in the book of Hebrews tells us that: “Faith is the assurance of things
hoped for… The fundamental fact
of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation
under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t
see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the
crowd… for by faith we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what
we see created by what we don’t see.”
The poet of
Ecclesiastes is even more clear when it comes to reminding us
· What
does that say to you about the nature of the Lord? What are you thinking or feeling about all of
this so far?
· In
reality as well as metaphor the wisdom our spiritual ancestors want to share
with us about the ocean is that the wildness of the sea is meant to humble us,
and, God has set limits on even its power and size.
· It
is the paradox of faith: humility and
trust – awe and respect – reverence and love.
Conclusion
And if we’re learning about
both humility and trust in the Lord from the ocean, then even the Gospel story
about Jesus and those out in the fishing boat underscores what Job and all of
us must witness. We want to believe that
we can make it on our own – that if we just try hard enough and work long
enough – then we can earn and get what we want.
· But that wasn’t true for the fishermen in this story, was
it? They worked all night long doing
heavy labor and still didn’t have much to show for it, right? The text tells us that when they came in
there was only a small catch. Like Job,
they did everything right and still were unable to come out as winners.
· Jesus, of course, upsets all of this by showing them the
“instability of their labor” and efforts by having them go back out into the
deep and start fishing again. The point
isn’t so much about the miracle – although that’s fun – but the realization
that what we control in life is really very small. We have responsibility to do our part, but God’s
mysterious order is much bigger and far more powerful than anything we can
think or say or even do.
And when Simon
Peter – like Job – realizes that God’s power is at work in the world in ways he
cannot comprehend, he is set free to live in a new and faithful way that is in
harmony with God’s order. The way I read
these stories is that when both Peter and Job let themselves be “guided by awe
and reverence” then their lives were able to take on a whole new level of
beauty and peace and even power.
The ocean
invites us to reclaim and celebrate awe.
It also asks of us in humility to own our responsibility for the ways we
have wounded this powerful and mysterious friend with pollution and sin. To date we have created 405 dead zones in the
ocean where life can no longer be supported.
Because we have ignored the limits of God’s created order, dumping tons
and tons of fertilizer run off into the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico now
as a dead zone that is the size of the state of New Jersey. But here’s the good news: dead zones are not eternal. They can be reversed.
· The Black Sea was once a complete dead zone, but between 1991
and 2001 – as the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union – fertilizers
become too expensive to be used in excess.
And now a thriving fishing industry has returned to the once God
forsaken place.
· Pete Seeger and his Clearwater crew have done much the same
for the Hudson River. And while the jury is still out on our treasured
Housatonic River there is hope.
All around us
are signs that when we live without humility and respect for the Lord’s limits,
all hell breaks loose. And that too is
one of God’s limits: when we live
without care, when we treat everything – including people – as if it were a
tissue to be used and then thrown away, all hell breaks loose.
· We find dead zones in the ocean – beleaguered and wounded
people gunning one another down in a perverted cry for help – cynicism and
pollution becoming the order of the day.
· The poet, Mary Oliver. Who lives near the ocean in
Provincetown, Massachusetts put it like this in her recent collection:
The good
citizens of the commission
cast their
votes
for more of
everything.
Very early in
the morning
I go out
to the pale
dunes, to look over
the empty
spaces
of the
wilderness.
For something
is there,
something is
there when nothing is there but itself,
that is not
there when anything else is.
Alas,
the good
citizens of the commission
have never
seen it,
Whatever it
is,
formless, yet
palpable.
Very shining,
very delicate.
Very rare.
Beloved, there
is a sacred and created order that we have been entrusted with that begins with
awe. We are the stewards of awe, the
custodians of reverence, women and men called to honor the God we love by
living in harmony with the cosmos. Our
ancestors said to us: Bless
the Lord, O my soul, for you, O Lord have set the earth on its foundation… and
I will sing your praise by living in awe all the days of my life.
Lord, may it
be so for us, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment