Aligning Allegiances

Based on Revelation 1:4b-8

First delivered Nov. 25, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            Imagine living in a society where we are targeted for elimination. The phrase, “If you see something, say something” is targeted at you and me. If our neighbors, employers, people on the street, see us representing the Christian faith in any way, they are to report us to the nearest law enforcement. The FBI is investigating our leaders and trying to infiltrate our churches. Fellow Christians are being rounded up in night time raids and held for questioning, kept in confinement, thrown into prison. Militia groups and other vigilantes take matters into their own hands: setting fire to our churches, vandalizing our places of business, shooting us dead on the streets. Protests all across the country and people on cable news railing about how Christians are destroying the nation, undermining the rule of law, threatening to bring down civilization itself. Some even suggest that it would be good for the whole if all the Christians were simply wiped out.

            Where would you find hope in a situation like this? It must be such a strong temptation to publically reject Christ, to prove that you aren’t one of them. It must be so frightening. And so frustrating. We are a peace loving people. We follow the way of love. Society is better because we are here, because of our lived out faith. Why are we hated and despised so much? It’s so unfair. Is it all worth it? Is this society even worthy of us? I wonder where hope can be found in such a time of massive persecution.

            Writing to a church that was living through this level of persecution, John begins his revelation with the basis for hope. He begins by making it clear who is really in charge. The government, led by the tyrant Roman emperor Nero, who fancied himself to be the son of a god, imposed his will on his subjected peoples. But there is one whose authority is greater than the feared emperor. John begins by naming who God is, the one who is, who was and who is to come. Emperors come and go. Empires rise and fall. God alone endures. And one day God will come to us. When it comes to authority, no one compares with God, not even an emperor. God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” No one has greater might than God. Where is hope found in times of great persecution? Hope is found by placing faith in God, who is everlasting and almighty, who one day will come to us. That’s what John declares. God is the one who is really in charge.

            John goes on to give three titles to Jesus Christ. He is the faithful martyr, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Hope infuses these titles. Think of all your friends and family who have been killed because of their beliefs and remember that Jesus was also killed because of his beliefs. Just as they were killed by state power, so was Jesus. We grieve our loved ones who have been martyred but hope remains because Jesus rose from the dead. He conquered death and the grave. He is the firstborn of the dead, meaning that others will follow, including our loved ones who have been martyred. So there is hope for them and for us. And finally Jesus is the ruler of the kings, the king of kings and lord of lords. Who else ought we to put our hope in than Jesus who rules over all?

            John doesn’t just declare Jesus as king of kings. He also makes the case for how this is true. Jesus is the king of kings because he loves us. A king is one who loves his people. Does Nero the emperor? No. Jesus liberated us, not from human enemies but from sin, the enemy of our souls. And he did this, not by sending an army to fight and die but by offering himself, shedding his own blood and not the blood of others. A king sacrifices all for the liberation of his people. Does Nero the emperor? No. Jesus has made us to be a kingdom of priests who serve God, giving us all dignity, status and purpose. Jesus has shared his authority with us so that we all, together with Jesus, can serve and give honor to his Father, who is the everlasting and almighty God. Has Nero the emperor done anything like that for us? No. What exactly has Nero the emperor done for us? Better, what has he done to us?

            One of the points I see John making in the beginning of his revelation is that the empire does not deserve our allegiance. The empire constrains and oppresses. The empire seeks to destroy us. The empire is only temporary in the grand sweep of time. Sure, it exercises power and demands loyalty. But it is nothing in comparison to the authority and power of God, the very source of life itself.

            Instead, our allegiance rightly belongs to God, the everlasting, the almighty; and to Jesus Christ, who has made us into a kingdom of priests to serve with him to the glory and dominion of God forever and ever. We have no need to bear allegiance to the empire. Our allegiance is with God. The empire can try to wipe us out of existence. But it is a fool’s errand because our kingdom is established by God and Jesus Christ. We will not be erased. For us, as Christians, loyal to God and Jesus, there is always hope. One day God will come and make things right. The empire will fall.

            Now obviously, we don’t live in a society dedicated to our elimination. I invited us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of our ancient ancestors in the faith, to imagine the horrific situation they were in and the need for hope to endure what truly is unimaginable suffering. We can try to put ourselves there but can’t really imagine what it must have been like. Two thousand years later the Roman empire has fallen. There is no longer a Caesar. Other empires have risen and fallen. The British empire has risen and fallen. The American empire has risen and one day our empire will fall. They always do. But right now, in regards to our Christian faith, we don’t live in a society in which our government has a policy to wipe us out. Many would claim that the United States is a Christian nation. We are protected by the Constitution to practice our faith. This is not the case for many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, where being a Christian very well may put your life at risk. In this land we are not afraid to live out our Christian faith.

            But a question of allegiance remains. In the days of John, allegiance to the Roman empire was imposed on the conquered peoples, including the Christians who belonged to the seven churches in the land of Asia, known in the present day as Turkey. For our ancestors in the faith, they rejected allegiance to the Roman empire and instead claimed allegiance to another kingdom, a kingdom not of this world yet one day would be established on this earth, when God would come down from heaven and dwell with us, a new heaven and a new earth. For them it was a choice: allegiance to the Roman empire or allegiance to God and Jesus.

            For us, we have multiple allegiances. We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. We have allegiance to our family, however we define it: the family we were born in to, married in to, or created on our own to be like a family for us. We have allegiance to the society in which we live grounded in the rule of law, individual liberty, and free enterprise. We have allegiance to the high school we went to or for some of us the universities we graduated from. Some of us have a rabid allegiance to our sports teams. We have allegiance to our church. And we have allegiance to God. We have multiple allegiances that sometimes generate tension. Should we go to church or to the family reunion? Free enterprise makes it possible for me to get what I want at a competitive price but at what cost to the creation God has made me responsible to protect and the exploitation of workers who are God’s beloved children? Our multiple allegiances sometimes put us in difficult situations. They don’t always align.

            I wonder what it would be like if we take all our allegiances: to country, to church, to family and friends, to school, and placed them under our primary allegiance to God and Jesus. How would life be different? If our primary allegiance is to serve God, how would that overriding allegiance affect the decisions we make about other allegiances we have? I am thinking of the time when some opponents of Jesus tried to trap him by asking him whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus asked for someone to show him a coin. He then asked, “Whose head is on this coin?” “It is the head of the Caesar.” “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” But wait, doesn’t everything belong to God, the source of all of creation? Yes, it does. So if everything belongs to God anyway and doesn’t belong to us, does it really matter if we pay our taxes? Nothing really belongs to anyone anyway. So, out of allegiance to our nation and to its laws we pay our taxes for the sake of the common good. Everything belongs to God anyway so what sense does it make to hoard what we have for our own private ends?

            I believe that if we make our allegiance to God and Jesus Christ as our primary allegiance, and put all of our other allegiances secondary, that it would impact what we value, and thus how we live. God is the source of all creation. God loves all of creation. So we must value all that God has created. If we value every person God made then we treat each person as valuable to God. If we value the earth that God has created, then we treat the earth as valuable, not for our own use, but with intrinsic value, worthy of our love and care. If we value and love every person God has created, and we love and value the earth that God has created, then we love and value our Creator. To love and value is to be in relationship, with God, with each other, and with the earth.

            Living our lives in which our primary allegiance is to love and value God, each person, and the earth, may or may not make us popular or successful. To love and value people that society often doesn’t love and value may not be the popular thing to do. To associate with the vulnerable and the despised may cause others to look down on you, dissociate from you, keep you from the centers of power and influence. But popularity and success are secondary to being true to the one who created us, the one who loves us, the one who saves us.

            To realign our allegiances and make our allegiance with God primary, the place to begin is with gratitude. Give gratitude to God for the land we live on and the nation we are citizens of. Give gratitude to God for your family and friends, for your school you graduated from. Give gratitude to God for this church you belong to. Give gratitude to God for all that you hold allegiance to. Acknowledge that God is the source of all to which you give your allegiance.

            And then, ask the question to God, “What would you have me do?” Especially when you find yourself having to navigate between competing allegiances, go to God in prayer, ask the question, “What would you have me do?” and then listen for the answer. What does your gut tell you? God speaks to us through our intuition. Trust it. Trust that inner voice. And then go do it. Trust that this voice, the one that comes from God the everlasting and almighty one, and of Jesus Christ, the king of kings, is the voice to heed. Let the one who loves us and saves us be the one who leads us on our life journey.

Healing the Soul of the Nation

Based on Hebrews 9:11-14, 24-28

First delivered Nov. 11, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            As I reflected on the scripture for this morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about the violence that is sweeping our country. Two Black people killed at a Wal-Mart. Two women killed at a yoga studio. Eleven Jews killed at a synagogue. And then this past Wednesday twelve people killed at a bar. So much violence. So much death. And that’s just the killings that make the national news. People are being shot and killed all the time all across America.

            Someone I know made the observation that all these shootings had nothing to do with blue states or red states. It isn’t about politics. These killings are driven by hate: hatred of black people, hatred of women, hatred of Jews, hatred of people in general. All this violence is fueled by broken people filled with hate. And yet, there is so much arguing over politics. Are we ignoring the fact that there are so many people among us who are disconnected, angry, lost?

            We are confronted with a necessary question: what can we do to change the direction our society is going? I see all this violence and hatred in our society as a sign that there is something wrong with our society. We could push for gun control laws. Maybe you saw a mother who lost her son at the mass shooting at the Borderline Bar this past Wednesday. Her son was at the massacre in Las Vegas last year. He was able to escape that, but not this one. With a fierceness in her eyes, as she stood before the cameras, she cried out that she doesn’t want anyone’s thoughts and she doesn’t want anyone to send her prayers. She wants gun control laws. She finished her statement saying, “No more guns!” So much pain in her voice. Surely something could be done to limit access to weapons.

            But gun control laws are not enough. Our problem of violence and hatred goes much deeper. What I see is a blight on our national soul. Maybe this wouldn’t be the case if these mass shootings rarely happened. But there are so many, and it seems to be increasing. It makes me wonder that what we are dealing with is beyond individual persons who are broken or mentally disturbed. It seems so much greater.

            I have a friend who talks about this by using the image of the fish and the lake. If you walk by a lake and you see a fish lying dead on the shore, then you wonder what might have been wrong with that fish. But if you walk by the lake and see hundreds of fish lying dead on the shore, then you wonder what might be wrong with the lake. I say there is something wrong with the lake we are swimming in. There is something wrong with our national soul.

            So what I am asking us is: what can we do to bring healing to the soul of this nation? What can we do so there is less hate and less violence in our society? I think this passage from Hebrews may point to an answer to this question.

            To understand this passage, you need to know a little about the Jewish festival called the Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest would go into the holy of holies, the central room of the Temple, carrying with him the blood from an animal sacrifice. In this room, a room the high priest alone can enter, and only on this day, would be an altar upon which sat the ark of the covenant. Above the ark would be two angels facing each other. The high priest would take some of the blood and sprinkle it upon the altar as an act of purification, not only for his own sins, but for the sins of all the people that had been committed over the past year. This ritual act would purify all the people. Their sin would be atoned for. And then, next year, on the Day of Atonement, the process would repeat, year after year.

            The preacher, the one who offered this sermon that we call Hebrews, looks to the high priest on the Day of Atonement as a prototype for Jesus, the one whom he calls the true high priest. Jesus performed the ritual of atonement for all the people. But he didn’t enter the holy of holies. He entered heaven itself. And he did not bring the blood of animals. He shed his own blood. And he doesn’t have to go back into heaven to shed his blood year after year. He only had to do it once for all.

            So the good news is that God, through Jesus, has dealt with the stain of sin once for all. If God is holy, and we are unholy, then God through Christ has made us holy so that there is no obstacle between us and God. As the preacher puts it in vs. 14, God has purified our conscience from dead works to worship the living God. By an act of sheer grace, God has done what is needed so that we can be in God’s presence with no fear.

            What this is getting at is deliverance from the blight of guilt and shame that tears our souls apart. See, in those days, if you had done anything sinful you would offer up an animal sacrifice so that you would become ritually pure again. But on the Day of Atonement, a sacrifice was made on your behalf to cover all your sins that you either didn’t know about or that you never got around to offering a sacrifice for yourself. The purpose of the Day of Atonement was to make sure that you were ritually pure. If you were afraid that you may be guilty of something, or you were weighed down with shame because of what you had done, the intent of the Day of Atonement was to lift that burden off your soul so that you could be free, so that you could worship God and be in relationship with God and each other with a clear conscience. Well, Jesus has offered Himself as a sacrifice on your behalf, and just once, which is good enough to cover all your sins for your whole life. God has acted to deliver you and me from guilt and shame.

            This liberation from the corrosive power of guilt and shame is communicated in Hebrews through the lens that Jews and Jewish Christians would understand, the lens of Jewish ritual. They would have gotten it, connecting the Day of Atonement with what Jesus did in his crucifixion. But we don’t really get the Day of Atonement, or the whole blood sacrifice thing, ritual purity and all of that. We can know about it but it’s not part of who we are. We don’t understand it in a deep way. How can we understand what Jesus has done for us without explaining it through the lens of blood sacrifice and the Day of Atonement? How can we understand it in a way that makes sense to our own lives?

            Maybe it is as simple as claiming with faith this truth: God’s grace is sufficient to cleanse us from our shame and guilt. Of course we feel guilty when we screw up. That’s a necessary feeling so we realize we have caused harm and that we need to take responsibility to make things right the best we can. God’s grace enables us to receive that feeling of guilt as a prompt to make things right and then to release that feeling of guilt rather than allow guilt to fester within us.

            Shame, on the other hand, is much deeper. It is less a feeling than it is a state of being. It is a sense of being less than, damaged goods, unworthy. It is a state that has less to do with things we have done and more to do with how we have been treated by others, particularly those close to us who have said to us that we are not worthy, that we are less than, that we are not good enough, that we are failures. Shame is the result of harm done to us. But even here, God’s grace is sufficient. God has made us worthy, God has redeemed us, reclaimed us, in the process of restoring us. With God we belong, we matter. With God we don’t have to grovel or shrink back in fear. No we can stand in God’s presence and we can worship God in the fullness of who we are. We are precious to God. We are God’s children. That’s what God has made possible through Christ. Shame does not have to weigh us down any more. There is a remedy to the blight of guilt and shame on our souls. There is a balm in Gilead.

            What God has done through Jesus is not just a remedy for guilt and shame, I believe it is also a remedy for violence. I wonder if what drives violence, at its root, is guilt or shame? Maybe not guilt so much, but definitely shame. I wonder if those who have perpetrated these killings we have heard about on the news were burdened with guilt but, more deeply, full of shame. Did our society give them the message that they were damaged goods, failures, screw ups? Did the pain of shame prompt them to lash out at others to release the negative energy of their suffering that they either didn’t know how to deal with or got the message that no one really cares about their suffering? I wonder how many people who live among us, who are weighed down with guilt or shame, who don’t know that they don’t have to carry that guilt and shame any more. And because of the pain of that weight they carry on their souls, they release the pain through violence, either to themselves or by inflicting pain on others.

            This gets to the big question I asked earlier: what can we do to bring healing to the soul of the nation? We can be conduits of God’s grace. We can be quick to forgive, forgive ourselves as well as forgive others, although forgiveness doesn’t excuse us or others from making restitution for the harm that has been done. Forgiveness is not a get out of jail free card. We can forgive and we can also see other people as having inherent worth. We all screw up. Each of us fails. We fall short of expectations we place on ourselves or expectations others place on us. But we are still worthy, we are still precious, we still belong. And it’s that basic approach toward people, that they are worthy, precious, belong, without reservation. This is how we can approach people. People need to know that they matter to somebody. We can be the ones who communicate that, through our words and actions, that every person matters to us. In a small way, such a posture, grounded in what we know about what God has done through Jesus, can let in a glimmer of light in the dark prison of shame that so many people are trapped in. And I believe that anything we do to ease people of their sense of shame about themselves will lessen the possibility of violence.

            This is not the only thing we can do. Forgiving ourselves and others, relating with people in ways that communicate that they are valued and worthy, this won’t fix everything. Peace and harmony won’t break out everywhere. We live in a shaming culture. It is the water in which we swim. We receive messages all day long that we aren’t good enough. But, by forgiving others and ourselves, by treating others with respect and by respecting ourselves, at least we are not furthering harm. We are resisting the “not good enough” message. It is a place to start to heal the soul of our nation, to lower the temperature, to minimize the possibility of the manifestation of violence.

            Claim this good news for yourself, for the guilt and shame you carry. With faith in God’s love for you, let that guilt and shame go. Release yourself from its weight. Know that you are forgiven. Know that you are worthy. Not by anything you have done but by the sheer grace of God. God has declared that you are worthy. Believe it. Live into it. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise, that you are worthy, you are loved, you matter, you are somebody.

            And then, share this good news with others. Let other people know that they are worthy, that they are loved, that they matter, that they are somebodies. Let them know it by how you treat them. It may or may not make a difference. Shame, in particular, is deeply ingrained in the psyche. It takes time to draw that poison out of us and out of others. And we swim in a lake filled with the toxin of shame. So this isn’t a quick fix. But it is something, to treat others with the dignity that God has established through Jesus. It is at least an attempt to reduce the violence that is running rampant through our land. To treat others with dignity may even save lives. It is worth the effort.

What God Needs are Saints

Based on Rev. 21:1-6

First delivered Nov. 4, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            I have presided over a lot of funerals in my 24 years of ministry. In probably every one of those funerals we have prayed together Psalm 23. It is a psalm that names the reality of death but also the promise of eternal life. “Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me…Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.” This psalm gives us a word of comfort, of promise, of hope, that for our dearly departed, the final chapter of their life has not yet been written. They have gone ahead of us, to dwell with God. And one day we will join them on the other side of the veil.

            Another scripture that I have used almost as much is the passage we heard today. It is John’s vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven and resting on the earth, an event that signals how God is making all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, where weeping, sorrow, pain, even death itself, will be vanquished. It is a powerful vision filled with hope and promise for us of our destiny, even the destiny of the whole world. Let’s take some time this morning to look more closely at this vision John received.

            It begins with John saying he saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. By saying he saw a new heaven and a new earth meant that he saw something that was different, something that had not existed before. But it was not completely new. There was continuity with what had been. The first heaven and first earth had passed away, but there still existed a heaven and earth. They were not replaced with something completely new. This is something to keep in mind. In this vision, John is seeing continuity and change. There is still a heaven and earth, but it is different, changed, transformed, new. It is sort of like when a person receives a new name, which marks a transformation in their life. Saul changed his name to Paul. Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter. In the Orthodox church tradition, at baptism you receive a baptismal name. When people become monks or nuns they receive a new name. When someone is elected pope he selects a new name. Among indigenous peoples, young people will go on a vision quest as a rite of passage, in order to receive a new name. People who transition from one gender to another will take a new name. I took on a new name when I went through college, as I committed my life to being a pastor. My friends started calling me “Kev the Rev.” We get new names as we go through life: Tina Jones becomes Mrs. Tina Jones-Baldwin, then Dr. Tina Jones-Baldwin. Her kids call her “mom.” One day she will be called Grandma, maybe even Great-Grandma. You and I remain human our whole life. But we go through changes. We experience transformations. We are not the same when we are old as we were when we were young. Our names and titles change as we go through these times of transformation. And that’s what John is talking about here. He was allowed to see a transformed heaven and a transformed earth. Still heaven and earth, but different, transformed, new.

            Then he saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. In those days, the people believed that the holy city of Jerusalem on earth mirrored the holy city of Jerusalem in heaven. God’s throne was in the heavenly city but God’s footstool was in the holy city on earth, in the Temple, the holy of holies, which was the center of the earth. Remember, in those days, it was believed that the earth was flat. Jerusalem occupied the center of the earth, so the people believed. Of course, the holy city on earth had been destroyed more than once. And, in fact, when John had this vision, the Temple in Jerusalem had not only been destroyed, the city had been renamed, literally wiped off the map. As you can imagine, it was a time of great crisis. How would God restore the holy city? Well, John got his answer. The holy city in heaven would come down to earth. This would be the new Jerusalem. It would not be rebuilt only to be destroyed again. No, the heavenly city itself, where God’s throne was, where God lived, would come down to earth. There would be no replacement Temple because God himself will dwell with them.

            I cannot overstate how awesome this vision is. What John saw was the removal of the veil between heaven and earth. Right now, when we die, we have the hope that we will pass through the veil to the other side, where we will join our loved ones in heaven. Or sometimes we talk about crossing the chilly river Jordan to the other side. There is a barrier between heaven and earth. We look forward to going to heaven but we can’t see heaven. It is hidden from us. Just like we can’t see God. We know God is present but we can’t see God. There is a veil, a barrier, a wall between heaven and earth.

            But John saw that barrier removed. But it wasn’t God bringing earth up to heaven. No, heaven came down to earth. John heard the voice from heaven saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them. God will be with them. God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” This is John’s vision. Instead of us going to God when we die, God will remove the wall of division, and come down to us. And that is the essence of what it means to have a new heaven and a new earth. Everything will be new because heaven and earth will become one, with no division, no wall, no barrier. In this vision, earth is not destroyed. It is transformed, it is made holy and pure. It is literally heaven on earth.

            What are the consequences of heaven on earth? “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” That is, the first things of a barrier between heaven and earth. The first things in which for us to get to heaven, we have to die first. If heaven is on earth, there is no need for death. The wall is torn down. The gates are open wide. Death, and the grief that comes with it, is vanquished. Death has no place in heaven. Even more, death, sorrow, suffering, are all temporary states. They are not permanent. The only thing that is permanent, eternal, everlasting, is life. Because God is the source of life and God is everlasting. Death is temporary, life is everlasting. And this truth will be fully manifest one day. That’s the vision that John has received. And for us, it is a vision filled with hope.

            Of course, John’s vision was prefigured in a person. Jesus is the very incarnation of John’s vision. In Jesus, God came down to earth and dwelled with us. Jesus wept, suffered, was full of sorrow, and died. He experienced these things that we must all experience. But then Jesus rose from the dead, defeating the power of death, demonstrating that death is temporary, life is everlasting. But then Jesus had to go back up to heaven. He ascended in a cloud and his disciples could see him no more. The barrier between heaven and earth remained. We know Jesus. We know Jesus lives in our hearts. But we can’t see Jesus face to face. We can’t physically embrace Jesus and look into his eyes. Not yet. One day we will when we pass through the veil. Yet, the day will come, when what was ushered in by Jesus will become fully manifest, when the veil is torn in two, and God comes down to dwell on earth. All things made new.

            This vision that John has received of what will happen in the future is a vision that fills us with wonder. It is a hopeful vision. Rather than the earth being destroyed, this vision promises that the earth will be transformed. The Paradise of Eden will come back. Except it won’t be a garden, it will be a city. It is a vision that insists that death and sorrow and pain are not a permanent reality. The only thing that is permanent is life. This gives us hope. This gives us the strength to push through our times of suffering. As Paul once said, these momentary sufferings are nothing in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ our savior and his resurrection. This is a life-giving vision for us. It provides comfort as we grieve the loss of those we love and as we contemplate our own death.

            But I want to give a warning. There is a temptation, as the old phrase goes, to be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good. There is a temptation, if we dwell on this vision, to slip into pie-in-the-sky, things will be better by and by thinking. There is a temptation to look on the mess of this world, the brokenness, the violence, the ugliness, the evil run rampant in our world, and to close ourselves in with our vision of God coming down and making everything new. So we need to just do our best, love Jesus, and wait for our turn to experience that camp meeting standard, “Some glad morning when this life is over, I’ll fly away, to that home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away.” I love that song! It lifts our spirits and helps us cope with the reality of death.

            But what about this world? Are we supposed to just shrug our shoulders when we look at how messed up this world is and say to ourselves, “It’s God’s problem. God’s going to have to fix this mess. I know where I’m going when I die. Good luck for everyone else.” Here’s the problem with pie-in-the-sky thinking. The first commandment God gave us was to be stewards of the earth. But we also know the two greatest commandments, which are to love God and to love our neighbor as our self. And who is our neighbor? Jesus taught us that everyone is our neighbor. Jesus made it personal. He said that when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick or in prison, whatever you do for the least of these, the marginalized, the discarded, the overlooked, you are doing it to Jesus. Far from pie-in-the-sky, we’ll get to heaven by and by thinking, we are called to deep compassion and care for this earth and for every creature, human and non-human on it. It is a dereliction of our responsibility to have an “I’ll Fly Away” mindset when we have work to do right now. Paul said that as ambassadors of Jesus we all have received the ministry of reconciliation. In a time when the political divides have not been this stark since the 1960s, our ministry of reconciliation, to bridge differences, to find common ground, to heal the wounds…if we don’t do this work, who will?

            But it’s not just that we have this responsibility. I want to remind you that, although it is possible for God to act unilaterally, the truth is that God gets God’s work done through people. When we do good, it is God working through us. We are the hands and feet of Christ. God is always at work, seeking to bring about healing, good, restoration, renewal, through us. When we fail, and we often do fail, to allow God to work through us, we frustrate God’s work. I say all this to ask a question: is it possible that the vision John received, of God coming down to earth, removing the barrier between heaven and earth, will that vision only become manifest through our co-operation with God? What if God’s plan to make all things new will get worked out through us and those who will come after us?

            I wonder if the destiny of humanity is to be used by God to usher in God’s reign on earth. I wonder if our common task as human beings is to resist the forces of death and destruction and evil and instead to make every effort to foster life, redemption, transformation. Not just our own transformation but the transformation of others, of communities, of our state, our nation, our world. I wonder if God’s desire is to remove all barriers between God and the world, to merge heaven and earth, and all God needs is people who will yield to the Spirit of God and be the instruments by which God yokes heaven and earth together. What God needs are saints. What God needs is for each of us, who have received the Spirit, to be who we are, the saints of God.

Restoration

Based on Job 42:1-6, 10-17

First delivered Oct. 28, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

             Today we come to the end of the book of Job and hear Job’s response to God’s response. It has been quite a journey for Job. Having lost so much and burdened with unimaginable suffering, Job has had to contend with three friends who tried to reason with him. But as each one made their case that surely Job had done something to deserve all this suffering, Job would argue back, making it clear that he had done nothing wrong. His responses to his friends were filled with angst, bitterness, sometimes with a tinge of despair. He cried out to God, demanding to be heard, to make his case, to even put God on trial.

            Finally, God responds to Job’s cries and venting. But God doesn’t answer Job’s “why” questions. Instead, God details how God created everything that exists, and not just creates but sustains creation, from worlds to baby ravens. Rather than answering Job’s question of why God brought all this suffering on him, God reminds Job of who God is, the one who creates and sustains all life, including Job’s. Job still doesn’t know why he had to suffer so much. But it is made clear to Job how awesome, powerful, and providential that God is. God had not abandoned Job, but was there all along, knew everything that had happened to Job, and sustained Job even as he cried out in anger toward God. God’s grace and mercy bathed this whole terrible and traumatic experience of apparently random and unjust suffering.

            So what is Job’s response? He finally has his audience with God. The One who Job was convinced had either made a mistake or who was capricious, uncaring, perhaps even cruel, the One who needed to be held accountable for what had been unleashed on Job, he finally has God’s attention. Job now has his chance to tell God face to face what he really thinks of this whole situation. So what does Job say?

            He starts by summing up his understanding of God’s response. In a short and sweet summary, Job says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” Job had gotten the message that God had a hand in making everything that exists in the universe. And further that God’s creative activity was not done randomly, but that God did this in an ordered way, in which everything fits together. And God didn’t just create everything just to set things up and then watch how everything works out. No, God’s creativity was done with purpose, the purpose of demonstrating who God is, the one who cares for and provides for all that God has made. That God created anything at all, and maintains all that God has created, was done for the purpose of revealing who God is: creator, sustainer, restorer. That’s what Job got out of God’s response.

            Job then takes the first two sentences of God’s response and reacts to them. The first sentence is, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” It’s God basically telling Job, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” And Job admits as much, saying that he did utter things that he didn’t understand. He talked about God without knowing the whole picture. The ways of God are too wonderful, too complex, for Job or any of us to fully comprehend. That is, after all, why God is God. Aspects of God will always be a mystery to us. And Job acknowledges his presumption, of thinking he understood God when he didn’t.

            The second sentence God spoke was, “Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.” It was God telling Job, “Now it’s my turn to talk. I have some questions for you and I want you to answer them.” Then, as we know, God’s barrage of rhetorical questions communicated to Job just how awesome, powerful, and providential God is, that everything in creation has God’s fingerprints on it, that God knows what is going on, and that God acts to provide for all that exists. Job’s response is that he has heard what God was saying. But not only has Job heard God, he now sees God in a different light. His understanding of God, his perspective, has been broadened. He doesn’t only know about God, he knows God in a deep way. Their relationship has been established because God has graciously revealed a bit of Godself to Job so that now Job more clearly sees who God is. And this new understanding, this broader perspective, prompts Job to confess his repentance.

            In both of his responses, Job is basically saying that he admits to his prior ignorance. After this experience of God, Job revealed his character by humbling himself. He was willing to admit that he had made a mistake, that he didn’t know everything about God. Having gained a new perspective about God, he had the capacity to repent, to leave behind his old beliefs about God and to embrace a new understanding, not based on what others have told him, but by his own direct experience of God.

            Perhaps most of all, Job came to terms with the fact that, at least for now, he isn’t going to get all his questions answered. Why God allowed such suffering to pour down on Job will remain a mystery for him. But even though Job’s questions aren’t going to be answered, he now knows deep in his heart that God cares for him and provides for him. Even when he was crying out against God and railing against God, God still cared for him and sustained him in his grief. God never abandoned him. For whatever reason, whether God was complicit or not, Job knows that God cares about him and about every little part of all of creation.

            And so now, with this response of humble confession from Job, his confession of a deeper knowing of God, a deeper and stronger relationship with God, then God responds. God does not respond with words. No, God responds by doing what God does, which is restoration. How does God do it?

            The restoration of Job doesn’t just fall from the sky or rise up from the ground. It didn’t just magically appear. We are told that Job’s family and friends started coming around. They had a banquet for Job. They consoled him in his suffering. They gave him money and rings, restoring his fortune. Apparently Job’s relationship with his wife was restored because Job received more sons and daughters. In time he was able to build back up his livestock. He got his health back, able to live to a ripe old age, long enough to see his great-great-grandchildren. So God restored Job’s fortune through his family, his friends, his wife, and his own efforts. With the co-operation of so many people, God restored Job. He was better off than he was when his great suffering began.

            So what are we to make of Job’s story? What are the lessons? I suppose there are many lessons, depending on how you understand this book. It’s a complicated book. We have only been exposed to a few snippets. If you dig down deep into the speeches of Job and his friends, there are a lot of issues that are brought up. All through this book, Job is challenging the standard views of his day about God, justice, the linkage of sinfulness and suffering, and more. The big question of why bad things happen to good people runs throughout the book. But, of course, that’s the “why” question that God doesn’t answer. So what can we take from this story that we can apply to our lives today? I have thought of three takeaways.

            I think one lesson we can take is that our perspectives are limited in comparison to God’s perspective. I know that sounds obvious, but we sometimes forget obvious things. We forget how broad and deep God’s perspective is. God is everywhere in the universe. God is present and aware of everything that happens, everywhere, every second, from right here to the farthest reaches of the universe. Our minds literally cannot conceive how vast God’s awareness is. I believe that God not only knows everything that is happening all the time, but God also knows every possible future happening. God knows everything that can be known. And with that kind of knowing, God’s perspective is total and clear, without confusion. And this is good news for us. Whatever happens to us, either good or bad, God knows about it, God knows what might happen next, and God, through the Spirit, is trying to influence each of us to respond in the best possible way. I guess what I’m trying to say is, we don’t know the whole picture, or why things happen, or what might happen in the future, but God does and God is always at work to influence the best possible response in every situation.

            Another takeaway from Job is that even in times of great loss, God is with us. When we are faced with the reality that there is so much of our life that we cannot control, God sustains us. That’s maybe the biggest lesson Job learned and it’s a lesson that we can hold on to. It is this lesson that keeps our chins up, that empowers us to keep moving forward instead of collapsing into despair or bitterness. It is claiming this lesson that helps us be resilient when life is hard. With God, we can get through anything. That’s good news.

            Finally, a lesson we can take from Job is that healing and restoration can come to us when we stop trying to figure things out and instead submit to the mysteries of life. We have to make peace with the fact that there are a lot of things that happen to us that we will never understand why it happened. We will not know the reasons for everything that happens in this life. Why did he die and not me? Why am I suffering from muscular dystrophy? Why does someone get in his head that sending pipe bombs in the mail to political enemies is ok? Why does a white man, a U.S. citizen, feel so threatened by Jews that he can go into a synagogue and open fire? These are questions we will not get answers to. And even if we did, how does that help? The pain is still there. The suffering, the brokenness, the sorrow and grief, it doesn’t go away. But God doesn’t go away either. God is still in relationship with us, still providing for us, sustaining life. For that we can be grateful. And we can be grateful for those people in our lives who can be with us like God is with us…no matter what. In times of suffering, loss, tragedy and grief, we don’t need answers. We need friends. Are you suffering today? Please know that you are not alone. God is with you. And you have friends who will stand with you. Do you know someone who is suffering today? How can you let them know that you are there for them and will stick with them no matter what?

God's Response to Job

Based on Job 38:1-7, 34-41

First delivered Oct. 21, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            You have heard this story before. A famous person, a superstar athlete, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, gets pulled over by the police for some moving violation. As the officer explains what the driver did wrong and starts writing up a ticket the driver says, “Hey, don’t you know who I am?” They say that with the implication that the law doesn’t really apply to them, or they deserve a break. It’s a power move to avoid being held accountable for their actions. I doubt if such a move works that often. But it doesn’t hurt to try I suppose.

            I thought about these situations when a person with power tries to avoid answering for their actions when reading God’s response to Job’s long and anguished demand to be heard. Job wants God to answer for Godself, to be held accountable for the unjust suffering that Job has endured. As I read God’s response, I could almost hear God basically saying to Job, “Don’t you know who I am!?” God doesn’t try to justify what happened to Job. Instead, God goes on about how powerful and full of understanding God is in comparison to Job. God doesn’t deserve to be held accountable by anyone, especially Job. Who does Job think he is? Doesn’t he know who God is? At least, that’s an impression I got when reading through the passage we have before us today.

            Then, look at how God’s response starts, when God says, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” In other words, God tells Job, “You don’t know what you are talking about.” It reminds me of what Job said to his wife after she said the only two sentences she gets in the whole book. She said, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” But Job responds by saying, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak.” In other words, “You don’t know what you are talking about.” This time it’s Job who is being called a fool. Turnabout is fair play I suppose.

            But let’s look closer at God’s response. As we pay attention to the questions God asks, how God frames God’s response, we may see that God’s intent was not to humiliate Job or make some power move to avoid being held accountable. As I see it, what God is attempting to do is to help Job get a bigger picture of who God is. God is stressing the truth that God relates intimately to all creation. You may remember last week, Job was feeling abandoned by everyone. His three friends were no help. They didn’t understand or sympathize, but accused Job of hiding something. Surely he was being punished for something. His friends were not consolers, but accusers. He was calling out to God but there was no response. He was alone in his suffering and misery. He was wondering, “God, where are you?” Well, God finally responds. And in these questions that God peppers Job with, God asks, “Job, where were you? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

            I’m not going to re-read the questions God asks. We only heard a few sections of chapter 38. If you go back and look at the whole chapter, you will see how God’s response to Job delves into great detail about parts of creation, and how creation works, implying that God is behind it all. It was God who laid the foundation of the earth. It was God who determined how big the foundation would be. It was God who sunk the bases of the foundation into whatever is underneath the earth. Remember, we are going off the belief held in those days that the earth was a flat table. It is God that tells the clouds to rain. It is God that causes lightning bolts to fly. It is God who puts wisdom into the mind. It is God that provides food for lions and ravens.

            Through all these rhetorical questions, God is making the point over and over that God intimately knows every aspect of creation. God had a hand in its making. God is present and active in every part of creation. When Job was asking his question, “Where are you, God?” God’s response is, “Everywhere!” But God isn’t just everywhere, observing everything. God is intimately engaged in everything that happens in creation, even when we don’t sense God’s presence or see God’s activity. Just because we don’t sense God’s presence doesn’t mean God isn’t there. And God is influencing every situation. God is not a passive observer but an active participant in the ongoing processes of creation throughout the entire world, indeed, the whole cosmos. This is not a power trip, of God saying, “Don’t you know who I am!?” Instead, this is a detailed account from God of how intimately engaged God is with every aspect of the creation, even to the detail of measuring the foundation, opening the clouds so rain comes down, and making sure baby ravens are fed.

            But there is something unsatisfying about God’s response to Job. Job was wondering where God was because he wanted God to answer the question of “why.” Job wanted to know from God, “Why am I suffering like this? What did I do to deserve this? Why are you doing this to me, God?” In God’s response, God does not answer Job’s “why” questions. In fact, God does what Jesus often did when people asked him a question. He responded by asking them a question. So annoying! What’s with the questions, just give me the answer! Here, God doesn’t answer Job’s questions. God does not justify God’s actions that contributed to Job’s intense suffering. God doesn’t say, “The reason why you are suffering so much is because I wanted to show Satan how pious and holy you are. At least I didn’t allow Satan to kill you.” God does not share with Job the conversation God and Satan had. The reason for Job’s suffering remains a mystery for Job, an unanswered question.

            But God does make it clear that God is not only intimately present to all of creation, but also provides for creation, actively engaged in all the processes of creation, from the making of worlds to the feeding of birds. Nothing is too big or too small for God’s intimate attention. And that includes Job. God knows intimately what Job has experienced. God has sustained Job all this time that Job was railing against God and crying out in lament. God made space and gave Job the capacity to express his anger and despair. God heard every word. And God kept giving Job the breath and the voice and the brainpower he needed to keep speaking those words of anger and despair toward God. God enabled Job to cry out to God. God never made Job shut up. God never took away Job’s voice. And that is grace.

            Job’s lament is justifiable. The indescribable loss and suffering he had to endure is beyond our experience, and for that we can be grateful. Gratitude is what God is trying to remind Job of as God offers the long awaited response. When considering the vastness of God’s creative work, and how God is present and active in all of it, even in our own lives, is something to be grateful for. Sometimes, life is simply brutal. Although not at the same level as Job, we experience times of devastating loss. We are confronted with a terrible illness that sends us to the hospital, and perhaps even prompts us to consider the real possibility of our own death. There are times in our personal life, our family, and in our community and nation, where lament is called for. Our whole nation entered into a time of lament after the attacks on 9/11. But in our collective grief over all that was lost that September day, not only the loss of life but the loss of our sense of security, there was also much that prompted gratitude. People lined up to give blood. Outpourings of support for the emergency workers in New York City gave them a bit of relief. We saw so much of the best of our common humanity in the days and months after. God was in the midst of all of that, prompting, influencing, making possible, all the individual acts of kindness, support, and healing. What we experienced then, Job was being encouraged to do by God, which was to hold together the tension of lament and gratitude; naming the hurt, crying out with sorrow, even rage, but also being grateful: for community, for life, for the rising of the sun and the calming grace of a full moon, the brilliant show of a lightening filled sky, the sparrows flitting around the bird feeder, the bees getting heavy with pollen from the sunflowers, all made possible by God’s hand. The holding together of lament and gratitude: there is wisdom in that.

            Rather than brush Job off as a foolish man, God not only responds to Job but responds in a way that helps Job gain understanding and wisdom about God and how God relates intimately with all of creation, tending and caring for every bit of it, even in times of great loss. God is not absent. God is intimately present. That’s what God is telling Job, without answering Job’s question of “why.” When it came to answering Job’s question, “Why did I have to suffer for no good reason?” God does not answer the question. The mystery of why bad things happen to good people, of why God allows evil and suffering to happen, remains an unsolved mystery. The ancient mystery of theodicy, if God is all powerful and all loving, then why is there evil, is an unsolved mystery in the book of Job. God shifts the focus away from “why” questions and instead focuses on God’s intimate knowledge, loving care, and constant presence in all of creation.

            How does Job respond to God’s response? That’s for next week’s sermon. What is your response? What do you lament today? What are you grateful for? Let’s take a moment and have a conversation with God. We know that God is with us. So in the quiet of your heart, speak to God what you lament today. And then speak to God what you are grateful for today…

Alone

Based on Job 23:1-9, 16-17

First delivered Oct. 14, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            Do you all remember the repeated scenario in Peanuts where Charlie Brown and Lucy are outside with a football? Lucy always promises Charlie Brown, “I won’t pull the ball away.” And Charlie Brown trusts her. He runs up to kick the ball and, at the last second, Lucy pulls the ball away anyhow, and Charlie Brown spins through the air and lands on his back side. Every time. And we all know what will happen. We almost want to yell at the newspaper or the screen for Lucy to cut it out. Don’t you wish that just once someone would see what was going on and tell Lucy to stop doing that? But there’s never anyone else around. It’s just Charlie Brown and Lucy. There is no one to intervene. Lucy goes off laughing and Charlie Brown says, “Rats!” Poor Charlie Brown is alone in his experience of injustice. It’s not fair, what Lucy does to Charlie Brown. And there’s no one around to make sure that Charlie Brown gets his fair shot at kicking that ball. Charlie Brown is alone.

            In a few days, the Westerville Police Department will host a community forum, led by The Center for Family Safety and Healing. They will address the topic of domestic violence, a reality that is too common. It is found across the board, regardless of race or class. And cases of domestic violence are underreported. How many people suffer in an abusive relationship and are afraid to speak out or do not know who to reach out to? They are afraid to speak out because of what their abusive partner might do to them. Or there is fear about what others might think. The one being abused doesn’t know who to talk to. If they tell someone who knows them, what if it gets back to their partner? The thought of airing one’s personal life to a stranger also doesn’t feel right. The abused is trapped and alone.

            By the way, there is help. On the door of my office you will find some information about how to respond to domestic violence, if you need help or you know someone who does. You can also go to www.familysafetyandhealing.org. No one who is abused has to suffer alone.

            But they do anyway. They feel trapped and don’t know where to turn. They may even cry out to God for help. They may cry out for justice, or deliverance. But the cries go unheard. There is no discernable response from God. The abuse continues. To be alone in your suffering and not able to turn to anyone who can make things right, or not knowing who you can turn to, that’s a recipe for despair. For too many people in our community, this is their reality.

            Job was alone in his suffering. At least, that’s how he perceived it. Sure, he had his three friends. But they were no consolation. They kept arguing with him that he must have done something very sinful to get the suffering he has. They question Job’s honesty. They are not supportive and understanding. Surely God is with him. God is everywhere, right? But God was nowhere to be found. Job says he looks in every direction but can’t find God. He can’t sense God’s presence. His friends are no support. God is silent. Job is alone.

            There’s no doubt that Job believed in God. Job was incredibly righteous and pious. He knew that God was a just judge. And he made every effort to assure that neither he nor anyone in his family would receive God’s wrath. As Faith pointed out last week; when Job’s kids had drinking parties, Job would offer burnt offerings for each of his kids on the oft chance in their partying they may have done something that would have prompted God to punish them. Central to Job’s belief in God is that God is a righteous judge. God is just. Job is convinced that if he could just state his case before God that God would immediately acquit him from whatever was causing his great suffering. He just wants his day in court, if you will. But he can’t have his day in court because the judge is absent. The One who can easily fix this situation, clear up the misunderstanding, make things right, give Job justice, is missing, hiding, unreachable. And there is nothing Job can do about it. The One who can give him justice is nowhere to be seen.

            What do you do when you experience injustice but the one who can give you remedy is absent? Such a tough position to be in. You just feel impotent. It hurts. You want to cry out, “It’s not fair!” Whether on the school playground, in a street protest, or an argument between a parent and child, we hear the cry, “It’s not fair!” How many of us have told a child who said, “It’s not fair”, and said back, “Life’s not fair.” That’s a true statement. Life isn’t always fair. Justice is not always served. Yes, we have a justice system that strives to be impartial. But the system is made up of people. And we all have blind spots, unperceived prejudices, that skew judgment. All the necessary information to make the right judgment is not always received. It is a tough situation to try to make a right judgment when not all the facts are known, or can be known. When there is no corroborating evidence, judgments have to be made and they may not always be the right one. Sometimes our justice system produces a miscarriage of justice. What do you do when the justice system has failed you? Where do you turn?

            You can say to yourself that God knows what happened and someday you will get your justice. You can have faith that God will make things right. But when will God make things right? Will it be the Judgment Day or will it be while you are still alive? Nobody knows. You can become bitter when you don’t get justice. You can despair about ever getting justice. You may wish to tear the justice system down. You may lose your faith in God. Or you can choose to remain hopeful. You can choose to be resilient, to say to yourself that yes, you have suffered an injustice, and it hurts. But your value is so much greater than any injustice or indignity you must endure. You are still a beloved child of God, no matter what. You are loved. By God’s grace you can endure.

            Job wanted to disappear into the darkness. He just wants to fade away. But since he isn’t fading away, he chooses to keep arguing with his friends and with God. He would not let God off the hook. He knew he was innocent. He knew he didn’t deserve this unjust suffering. He knew that God was just. He would not allow God to just blow him off. He would persist, demand, that God give him a hearing. Job eventually gets to the place where he wants to put God on trial for what he sees as a travesty of justice.

            Like the persistent widow, Job was not going to give up. You remember the story? Jesus told the story of an old woman who demanded justice from the judge. But he would not listen to her plea. So she kept coming, and kept coming, and kept coming, until the judge said to himself, “I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to give this woman justice before she wears me out with her constantly coming to me.” It took a lot of persistence for her to receive her justice. Sometimes persistence is required to get justice. Job has the same mindset. He will persist, demanding justice from God, even if it seemed like he was shouting into the wind. Job refused to give up on God, even though God seemed absent, missing, perhaps hiding. Job may feel alone, but he was not going to give up proclaiming his innocence.

            How little Job knew that it was God who allowed this suffering to happen to Job. God allowed the suffering to happen just to prove Satan wrong. The God Job looked to as the just judge is the one who gave permission to suffer so much, so harshly, so unjustly. God, the righteous and just God, is complicit in Job’s unjust suffering. Surely it is unjust. Surely Job did nothing to deserve this suffering. Surely God could have handled Satan’s accusations in a different way so that Job didn’t have to suffer so much.

            Let me go out on a limb and suggest that it appears that God is complicit in Job’s unjust suffering. I call it unjust because it was allowed by God in order to prove Satan wrong. What are we to do with this? If it happened to Job, could God sometimes be complicit in your own experiences of unjust suffering? Such a question goes against the grain. It’s a question that I don’t want to consider. I don’t know about you, but it is hard for me to contemplate the possibility that God would be complicit in unjust suffering as God appears to be in Job’s situation.

            What kind of God is this? How can a righteous judge, who God is, be complicit in unjust suffering? I wonder how Job would answer that question. I wonder how Job would respond if he found out that all this suffering that Satan afflicted on him was allowed by God just to show Satan how pious Job is, just to win an argument, to prove a point. Knowing Job, I doubt if he would just shrug his shoulders. He would demand an answer to that question. He would want to know why God that that was ok. Job would want to ask, “Is that fair?” But the one who could answer that question…is silent.

Blessing Sunday

Based on Psalm 124

First delivered Sept. 30, 2018

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            “Our help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” What a great statement of faith. It is a statement of faith that grounds us, comforts us, gives us courage, and hope. This is not the only place where this statement shows up in the scriptures. Just a few psalms before, Psalm 121, we have that beautiful lyric: “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” What a vivid and strong statement of faith.

            This faith claim is a statement of power. It declares that God is more powerful than any other entity in existence. Surely, the one who made everything is the source of power itself. And so, in comparison of God’s power and the power of the enemies of God’s people, surely God has more power. For Israel, a relatively small people in a larger world with much larger peoples, such as the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, they saw great nations, with large armies and massive wealth. Then there were the Romans, a whole different level of power and strength. Israel was so small in comparison to these great empires. But it is God who made the heavens and the earth. And Israel belongs to God. So the enemy may be powerful and fierce. But our God is greater in power and strength.

            Psalm 124 is a psalm of deliverance. It starts out by saying that if the Lord had not been on their side when their enemies attacked them then Israel would have been utterly destroyed. They would have been swallowed up as if an earthquake cracked open the earth, or engulfed as if a torrential flood swept them all away. God prevented Israel from being chewed up like a lion’s prey. Israel escaped like a bird breaking free from the fowler’s snare. In their time of need, when their enemies, stoked with anger, bore down on Israel to destroy the people, God intervened and delivered them from sure destruction.

            We don’t know which enemy the psalm is referring to. Some have suggested that this psalm was written after the great exile, the time when the Persians invaded and destroyed Jerusalem, and most of Israel were taken in exile to Babylon. But the exile came to an end. Cyrus, the king of Babylon, allowed Israel to return and rebuild Jerusalem. So maybe this psalm is a way to celebrate collectively how God has delivered them from the Persians. But maybe it wasn’t the Persians. Maybe it was when the Assyrians threatened to destroy Israel. Or it was the Egyptians. Or it was the Romans. In their history, Israel has been overrun a number of times. But eventually, all these foreign powers lost their hold on Israel. At some point, God delivered them.

            So Israel may not have been wiped out like being deluged by a flood, but they did get wet. God did come to their rescue. God was on their side. But that didn’t mean that Israel did not suffer. For most of their existence Israel was an oppressed people. They were often under the thumb of some other foreign power. And this psalm picks up on that history. The psalmist says that they escaped from the fowler’s snare. The snare was broken and they escaped captivity. But they were captive first. The enemy had caught them, bound them, held them against their will. But the fowler’s snare was broken. The power of the foreign enemies was broken. And the psalmist infers that it was God who broke the snare, who broke the chains, that set Israel free from their oppressor. Yes, oppression happens. The oppressor does have its way with the oppressed. But the time will come when God will act, and the oppressor’s chain will be broken, and the oppressed will be set free. For God is on the side of the oppressed.

            What a relief this psalm must express. In spite of the great suffering of Israel’s experience of oppression, they are not destroyed. Over their history, Israel has suffered oppression in ways that most if not all of us here can never understand. We must never forget the Holocaust, the determined attempt to eradicate Jews from the face of the earth. Nevertheless, in spite of all the suffering that Israel has endured over the centuries, Israel still exists. They are not destroyed. God has come to their rescue to prevent their utter destruction. If it wasn’t for God’s intervention time and again, surely Israel would have been destroyed. Yet, Israel exists. God was on the side of Israel. More broadly, God is on the side of the oppressed.

            But I want to take this a step further. This powerful statement of faith, that God is the maker of the heavens and the earth, implies that God cares deeply and loves the heavens and the earth. And if God loves and cares for what God has made, then surely God seeks to protect the heavens and the earth. In other words, God is on the side of the heavens and the earth. So if the heavens and the earth are experiencing oppression, are being attacked, injured, invaded, occupied, in the process of being destroyed…God will intervene because God is on the side of the oppressed.

            Do the heavens and the earth have enemies? Are there any peoples that seek to overwhelm and dominate the heavens and the earth? I think perhaps there are. Maybe intentional or maybe out of ignorance, I believe there are people who oppress the heavens and the earth. Now, I said last week that we can’t do much to the heavens. We can and do pollute the air. But we have no impact on the sun, moon and stars. We are impacted by these entities, but impacted in ways that help us thrive. Our life depends on the sun. The beauty of the moon gives us comfort. The billions of stars in the universe provoke from us awe and wonder.

            But we do impact the earth in dramatic ways. We enrich soil to make it even more fertile. We channel water for the purposes of irrigation and for hydroelectric power. We take sea water and take the salt out so that it can be used for irrigation or for drinking. With time we are able to transform desert places into fertile fields. We can protect animal species, moving them from near extinction to full flourishing again. Someone recently told me that there is a bald eagle nest near Grandview, which is pretty cool, especially because I remember when I was a kid that the bald eagle was very endangered. No longer. I remember when the grey wolf was near extinction. They now run free in Yellowstone. I have hope that one day bison by the hundreds will once again thunder across the plains.

            But we also make a lot of roads. We tear up what used to be farm land to build more houses in the suburban sprawl. We pump chemicals into the ground. We spray pesticides that threaten the survivability of bees. We continue the deforestation of the Amazon. Fertilizer run off creates massive algae blooms that kill off the fish. Lead leaches into the water that then comes out of the water fountains of elementary schools, not only in Flint and in Detroit but in other places as well.

            We, as the human species, impact the earth in many ways. Some of the impacts foster life and renewal. Some of the impacts are destructive and deprive the earth of life. Some of our impacts liberate the earth to bring forth life, which is what the earth is designed to do. Some of our impacts oppress the earth, undermining and even preventing the bringing forth of life, frustrating what the earth is designed to do. We know that God, who made the earth, is on the side of the earth. So here’s the question: are you also on the side of the earth? Do you stand with God as a faithful steward of the earth or not?

            I can’t imagine there are any of you who would readily say that you are not on the side of the earth. I am sure we are all concerned about the well-being of the earth. We all know that the earth is our home. It’s the only home we have in this life. And not just for us, but also for our children, grandchildren, all the generations that will follow us. This is our home. Surely all of us want to be responsible stewards of the earth, not just because God commanded as much in Genesis 2 but because we want there to be a habitable earth for the generations to follow. For better or worse, previous generations have handed the earth to us to care for. And our care is a mixed bag. Lake Erie is much cleaner than it used to be, back in the days when the water caught fire in Cleveland. Poor farming practices that turned the fertile prairies of Oklahoma and Kansas into barren sand in the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s have been restored through conservation efforts. The harm done to the earth in previous generations can be repaired. We do have the capacity to bless, restore, heal the earth.

            The hopeful thing about all of this is the conviction that God will intervene to protect the heavens and the earth from destruction. But the frightening thing is that the human species might be wiped out as a consequence of God’s protection of the earth from destruction. Now I know that might sound a bit alarmist. Maybe God would intervene in some way to prevent humanity from being wiped out as a consequence of the destructive impact humanity will make on the earth in the years and centuries ahead. The fact is that whether you see the earth as your responsibility to tend and care for or as a resource for you to extract for your own purposes, we all suffer from the consequences of our collective failure to care for the earth. We rise and fall together. That’s not to say that some suffer more than others. For example, there is a reason why massive pig and chicken farms are located in rural areas and often near the populations of people with brown or black skin. Environmental racism exists. Still, environmental degradation has no borders. We are all affected. And if entire species can become extinct, with or without human causes, then why couldn’t the same thing happen to the human species? Maybe God would prevent that from happening. Maybe the long term plan is for humanity to leave the earth and resettle on Mars and from there to the stars. Who knows?

            What I do know is that it would be wise for all of us to commit ourselves to be on God’s side. If God is on the side of the oppressed, then we should be on the side of the oppressed. If God is on the side of the heavens and the earth, then so should we. This has consequences for how we live, what we eat, what we buy, how we tend our corners of the world. So this is my challenge for us as this series of sermons during the season of creation comes to a close: I challenge us all to do what we can to protect and care for the earth, trusting that God is our help, the one who made heaven and earth.