"We are stardust..."-- Proverbs 8:21-31, Colossians 1:15-20-- Sept. 22, 2013

Did you notice the moon these past few nights? The full moon a few days ago and then slivers of it disappearing night by night? One of the blessings, I try to remind myself, of having a dog is the opportunity to get outside every night and look up. While Luna is thoroughly exploring every centimeter of grass and sidewalk, catching up on all her smell-mail on posts and branches and lawns, I try to remind myself to look up and notice the sky–the moon, if it’s up, and the stars, especially if the moon isn’t up yet. It’s an ancient human exercise, this looking up at the night sky, and from it have come some of our most profound thoughts.

"We had the sky, up there," Mark Twain wrote in Huckleberry Finn, "all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened." "Whether they was made or only just happened"–that’s been the debate between religion and science for centuries, hasn’t it? But from what was once an un-bridgeable chasm between the two is emerging a new respect and even compatibility.

Carl Feit, a biologist and practicing Jew, writes that "Religion and science are two ways of looking at the world, and each helps guide our search for understanding. Profoundly religious people are asking the same questions as science: Who are we? And what are we? What’s the purpose? What’s the end? Where do we come from? And where are we going?" (Cited in The Mind of God, ed. Michael Reagan, p. 28)

On this 4^th and final Sunday of this year’s Season of Creation, we celebrate "Cosmos Sunday." It doesn’t get much "bigger picture" than that. And it is particularly in the study of the universe’s origins and workings, what is called "cosmology," that some of the most profound discoveries and connections are being made. What cosmologists are discovering, writes Sharon Begley, is that the laws of nature do seem to be comprehensible and accessible to the human mind, and so we are somehow connected to or part of the cosmos, and secondly that the cosmos seems to be "fine-tuned for existence, in an almost-too-good-to-be-true manner." (Begley, in Mind of God, p. 16)

"The Lord created me as the beginning of his way [or work]," Wisdom says in the book of Proverbs, "the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth." Wisdom emerges first and, as one scholar says, is the blueprint, the "dynamic design that inspires God and determines the various codes of creation." (Norman Habel , Seasons of the Spirit, Wk 4, Yr. C)

When God established the heavens, I was there,

[Wisdom says], when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside God, like a master worker/

architect/ playmate; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

"The living design that integrates the codes of the cosmos is not viewed as a passive, lifeless blueprint, but a vibrant, living, presence." (Habel, op cit.) Lady Wisdom, Sophia, which is the Greek word for wisdom, works and plays alongside Creator God in this "cosmological poem." Strongly feminine, Sophia permeates creation, delighting in it and celebrating God’s creativity. It is a rich, dynamic, fertile image.

Science’s Big Bang is also a rich, dynamic, and fertile image, and as Leah Schade writes, that original supernova "had life, death, and resurrection, in that it birthed the elements of the universe as it exploded. Its death brought new life–helium, hydrogen, the beginning of galaxies. This means that Nature itself contains this imprint of the crucified and resurrected Christ. It is in every place, in every creature." (Lutherans Restoring Creation, 4^th Sunday in Cration, Yr. C)

Many in the early church saw Jesus as the incarnation of Wisdom, Sophia, calling him the divine Word or logos. "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation [echoing back to Proverbs]; [Paul writes in Colossians] for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers–all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together." This imprint of life, death, and resurrection, this wisdom, this word or intention, is on all creation. "So spacious is he," Peterson puts it, "so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe–people and things, animals and atoms–get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies." (The Message)

The space probe Voyager has now left our solar system and entered into interstellar space, travelling further than anyone or anything in history. It takes our imaginations with it. The Hubble telescope has already sent back images of deep space that literally confound and inspire us with their images that come to us across both time and space. It is many of the scientists involved in these explorations and discoveries that are bridging the gaps between science and religion with their profound sense of awe and wonder at what they are finding.

I belong to the group of scientists

[writes Paul Davies] who do not subscribe to a conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident. Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact. There must, it seems to me, be a deeper level of explanation. Whether one wishes to call that deeper level "God" is a matter of taste and definition." (Mind of God, p. 59)

"The Universe begins to look more like a great thought, than a great machine," writes Sir James Jeans. (Mind of God, p. 141)

Instead of picturing God as a medieval monarch on a marble throne,

[writes Tom Mahon in his book "The Spirit in Technology"] imagine God as the living awareness in the space between the atoms, "empty" space that makes up about 99.99 percent of the universe. Thinking of God that way gets us past some of the great theological divides of the past. Is God immanent or transcendent, internal or external, composed or compassionate? Like the question of whether the atom is wave or particle, the answer is: Yes." (Mind, p. 13)

The God of my early religious training

[writes Chet Raymo] pulled off tricks that are not beyond the powers of any competent conjuror; Harry Houdini or David Copperfield could turn a stick into a serpent or water into wine without batting an eye. But no Houdini or Copperfield can turn microscopic cells into a flock of birds and send them flying on their planet-spinning course. No Houdini or Copperfield can cause consciousness to flare out and embrace the eons and the galaxies. (Mind..., p. 80)

And the great agnostic, Carl Sagan, wrote:

I had an experience I can’t prove, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was part of something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us, are alone.

(Mind, p. 56)

"

When God established the heavens, I was there," Wisdom says. "[Christ, the Logos, the Word] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation," Paul writes. A traditional Jewish Tale explains it this way–"God said to Abraham, ‘But for me, you would not be here.’ ‘I know that, Lord,’ Abraham answered, ‘but were I not here, there would be no one to think about you.’" We are made of the same elements as stardust, we belong in the universe, are a part of the universe, are the self-consciousness of the universe, and it is to our own peril that we continue to think we can behave otherwise.

The late great scholar of myth Joseph Campbell responded to journalist Bill Moyers’ statement that the future of the human race would not be determined from space but rather right here, in how we claim and care for our identity as creatures of this planet.

Well, it certainly is [Campbell said]. When you go out into space, what you’re carrying is your body, and if that hasn’t been transformed, space won’t transform you. But thinking about space may help you to realize something. There’s a two-page spread in a world atlas which shows our galaxy within many galaxies, and within our galaxy the solar system. And here you get a sense of the magnitude of this space that we’re now finding out about. What those pages opened to me was the vision of a universe of unimaginable magnitude and inconceivable violence. Billions upon billions of roaring thermonuclear furnaces scattering from each other. Each thermonuclear furnace a star, and our sun among them. Many of them actually blowing themselves to pieces, littering the outermost reaches of space with dust and gas out of which new stars with circling planets are being born right now. And then from still more remote distances beyond all these there come murmurs, microwaves that are echoes of the greatest cataclysmic explosion of all, namely the big bang of creation, which, according to some reckonings, may have occurred some eighteen billion years ago.

That’s where we are, kiddo, and to realize that, you realize how really important you are, you know–one little microbit in that great magnitude. And then must come the experience that you and that are in some sense one, and you partake of all of that.

And it begins here, [Moyers adds]. It begins here. [The Power of Myth, 1988, p. 183]

"The final mystery is oneself," wrote Oscar Wilde. "When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?’

That is the mystery left to us to explore, even as our brother and sister physicists continue to explore the many mysteries of the cosmos. So listen, finally, to the blessing that Wisdom offers at the end of chapter 8 of the book of Proverbs–

So, my dear friends, listen carefully: those who embrace my ways are most blessed. Mark a life of discipline and live wisely; don’t squander your precious life. Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work. When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of God’s good pleasure. But if you wrong me, you damage your very soul, when you reject me, you’re flirting with death.

May we follow in Wisdom’s ways, and so may we find life, not only for ourselves, but for the whole creation. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"The voice in the storm" --Psalm 29, Luke 8:22-25-- Sept. 15, 2013

Our dog has been spending a lot of time in the bathroom this week. That’s where she goes when there’s a thunder and lightening storm, and we’ve had several this week. She goes into the bathroom, perhaps, because it’s got a relatively small window or is small enough to feel like a cave. Another one of our dogs used to climb into the bathtub during thunderstorms, which is actually probably not a great idea, but that’s where we would find her.

This Third Sunday in the Season of Creation this year is Storm Sunday. Lutheran preacher Stanley Saunders writes that "Humans are the only creatures on earth who have become weather-makers, to our own detriment and that of other living things around us. Over the last few decades, the storms we are creating have become more and more frequent, intense, and destructive. The consensus among scientists is that things are likely to get much, much wilder." (In Working preacher.com, 8/15/13)

One of the key facts of the 21^st century [writes Vermont author and environmental activist Bill McKibben] turns out to be that warm air holds more water vapor than cold; in arid areas this means increased evaporation and hence drought...Data shows dramatic increases–20% or more–in the most extreme weather events across the eastern United States, the kind of storms that drop many inches in a single day. [Writing in 2008, before Tropical Storm Irene, McKibben wrote,] Vermont saw three flood emergencies in the 1960's, 2 in the 1970's, 3 in the 1980's, and 10 in the 1990's and 10 so far in the first decade of the new century. (Eaarth, p. xii)

And, as we’ve seen already this summer, it’s not just here that we’re seeing changes and

it’s not just in floods–

Larger storms over land now create more lightening; every degree Celcius brings about 6% more lightening, according to the climate scientist Amanda Staudt. In just one day in June 2008, lightening sparked 1,700 different fires across California, burning a million acres and setting a new state record. These blazes burned on the new earth [Eaarth], not the old one. "We are in the mega-fire era," said Ken Frederick, a spokesman from the federal government.

(Eaarth, p. 3 )

 

　

Colorado has gotten both flood and flame this summer.

"The voice of the Lord is over the waters," sings the psalmist. "The God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty...The Lord sits enthroned over the flood...." Even to this day, earthquakes, trees being ripped up from their roots and spun, lightening strikes, tornadoes and hurricanes and floods are referred to as "acts of God." Zeus, apparently, is alive and well on Mount Olympus and hasn’t lost his taste for hurling lightening bolts at hapless mortals. You can always count on some evangelical preacher to explain events like Superstorm Sandy as God’s punishment of the kinds of sin and perversion that are found in the big East Coast cities, "Sin Cities" one and all.

Beyond such public accusations, however, we also hear survivors of various natural disasters talking about God’s saving or sparing them, unlike their neighbors, which, of course, is an expression of gratitude, but the implication is that God chose not to save the neighbor. Is that what we are to make of the psalmist’s claims that "The Lord sits enthroned over the flood" and "the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire"?

Psalm 29 is a warning against giving credit to idols. The psalmist was making a claim that it was indeed Yahweh God, not the Canaanites’ weather-god Baal, who was Lord of all creation. It took great courage to address such a god of overwhelming power. (Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Christian Century, 12/28/04) In the book of Job, we read, "And God said to humankind, ‘Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.’" (Job 28:28) This is not the fear of capricious punishment, but rather an acknowledgment, a respect and reverence for One whose power is beyond our power or even our imagination. And the case could be made that since we apparently think we can change the earth’s balance without consequence, we might ask ourselves, "How’s that ‘Playing God’ working for you?" Robert Colin Morris writes, "We would be closer to the mark, I believe, if we read most references to the ‘wrath’ of God as part of the automatic response of violated nature, or human nature, rather than as some personal Divine vindictiveness. We go against the grain of reality at our peril." (Weavings, Sept./Oct 2008, p. 13)

The story in Luke of Jesus’ rebuking the wind and the waves is found in various versions in Matthew and Mark as well. On the surface, on the Sunday School level, it is a miracle story, another sign of Jesus’ divinity. But, like most other Biblical stories, this is not just simple, journalistic reporting of "what actually happened." It comes layered with ancient images and echoes, of God’s voice singing out over the waters of chaos and creating order, of God’s saving one righteous man and his family from the waters that destroyed the rest of the earth, of God’s providing a passageway for the people of Israel through the Red Sea waters, freeing them from bondage.

This is the same God who is present in the midst of this storm, the story tells us, present in Jesus, who, stunningly, almost endearingly, has fallen asleep in the back of the boat. It was his idea in the first place to go across to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes, but once they were underway, "he fell asleep," Luke tells us, without the detail that Mark adds, that he fell asleep on a pillow in the stern. Peter Woods suggests that "The ones who truly know their identity and their destiny can allow themselves to be at peace in the midst of danger." (I am listening, 9/14/10) The psalmist confirms, "I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety."

This story of the crossing of Lake Genessaret, or the Sea of Galilee, is the story of all our crossings from one place, or one state, to another. This was a crossing from the known and comfortable, from home harbor, over to Gentile territory, where, in fact, their first encounter would be with a demoniac. Storms, for the most part, are due to changes–changes from low pressure to high pressure systems, from tectonic plate shifts, from movements of air masses.

Storms in our own lives, which often threaten to overwhelm us, may come from changes, from threats to what we perceive is our safety or comfort, from changes in our health or physical condition that threaten our independence, our mobility, our sense of well-being; from changes in relationships, when outside threats of job loss or other interests make us fearful of losing our bearings, when children move away, physically or emotionally, and we are overwhelmed with feelings of loss or anger or hurt or fear. Busy-ness and increasing demands on our time and resources and attention may swamp us with feelings of inadequacy or fear of losing our job or our sanity or dignity. World events may overwhelm us with their enormity and complexity and peril, until, along with the disciples, we cry out, "Master, master, we are perishing!" Wake up, God, and save us...save us from all that threatens to overwhelm us...save us from ourselves.

"Where is Wisdom to be found?" the book of Job asks. "Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom," comes the response. It is wise to recognize that we are part of something much greater than ourselves, part of a great web of creation, as we spoke about last week, connected to each and every other part, able to impart repair and healing, or destruction and harm throughout that web. But we are not the whole piece. We are not in charge. A sense of reverence, of respect, of humility is the beginning of wisdom. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in the Gulf of Alaska and threatened the pristine waters of the Denai Peninsula, Alaskan schoolchildren and elders went down to the shoreline and wrote notes of apology to the earth and sea in the sand. How many notes of apology do we need to write to the oceans and rivers, to the species now extinct, to the generations who will live after us? Where is wisdom to be found?

"Master, master, we are perishing!" "Where is the one who is wise?" the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians. "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?[he wrote]. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe...[and] we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, both to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength." (1 Cor., 1: 20-25)

In this one sleeping in the back of the boat, in the middle of the storm, in this one headed for Gentile country and the man filled with the legion of demons, in this one who would empty himself so utterly on the cross that he would be filled with the glory of God, in this one is the wisdom and power of God. That’s what this favorite gospel story is about–that the God who is Lord over the winds and waves – we recognize that kind of dominating power, don’t we? – that God is also embodied in this one whose power does not come through overwhelming or dominating, but through emptying, through such deep trust that none of us are, ultimately, "perishing."

It is through turning to that true refuge in the midst of the storm that we are saved. So, in this era of "mega-fires" and super-storms, humility and sacrifice are called for. We do not tamper with our earth’s design and balance without consequences for ourselves and every other creature and ecosystem. We must stop pumping carbon dioxide and heat into the atmosphere; we must advocate to dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels; we must find new–or maybe old–ways of feeding and clothing ourselves; we must stop amassing things that distract us from the true value and worth of our lives–our relationships, our connection with the earth, our service to those in need. We can also prepare ourselves and others to weather these storms [there’s a list of things to have on hand that can help during a storm in the insert], and help one another when those storms occur. We saw that so powerfully during Irene. That is the way of the one sleeping in the boat who is able to rebuke the storm.

And in the storms of our lives, we can turn to those ways as well; through meditation and prayer, where we return to the stillness and wisdom at the heart of our true selves–"I wish I could show you," wrote the poet Hafiz, "When you are lonely or in darkness, The astonishing light Of your own Being!" We can turn to the ways of the One sleeping in the back of the boat through participation in the community of others who like us, struggle with rocky crossings and yet can remind each other where our true refuge lies. With the psalmist, we too ask for the blessing and strength of God–"May the Lord give strength to God’s people, and may the Lord bless God’s people with peace!" Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"World-wide Web"-- Psalm 104:14-23, Luke 12:22-31-- Sept. 8, 2013

The poet Mary Oliver is the quintessential "observer" or "consider-er" of the lilies. Listen to her poem, "The Lily"–

Night after night/darkness/ enters the face of the lily

which, lightly, closes its five walls/ around itself,/ and its purse

of honey,/and its fragrance,/ and is content/to stand there

in the garden,/not quite sleeping,/and, maybe,/ saying in lily language/some small words/we can’t heart/even when there is no wind/anywhere,

its lips/are so secret,/its tongue/is so hidden–/or, maybe,/ it says nothing at all/but just stands there/with the patience

of vegetables/and saints/until the whole earth has turned around/and the silver moon

becomes the golden sun–/ as the lily absolutely knew it would,/ which is itself, isn’t it, /the perfect prayer?

(Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early, pp. 24-25)

"Consider the lilies," Jesus said, "how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these."

This is the second Sunday in the Season of Creation, celebrated these first four weeks in September by churches throughout the world, as we in the northern hemisphere move toward fall and our brothers and sisters in the southern hemisphere move toward spring. Today is "Flora and Fauna Sunday," a rather quaint and fancy name for Plants and Animals.

I remember Flora and Fauna as the names of two of the fairies in Walt Disney’s movie of "Sleeping Beauty" who, along with their sister Meriweather, took care of the young princess and were able to mitigate the effects of the curse their sister fairy Maleficent had placed upon her. You remember that story, yes? Having been excluded from the party celebrating the birth of the infant princess, this 13^th fairy, Maleficent, crashed the party and put a curse on Princess Aurora, saying that when the princess grew up, she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and would die. The one fairy who had not yet given her gift mitigated the curse by saying that the princess would not die, but rather would fall asleep for a 100 years.

Now that may sound like a rather random word association on this Flora and Fauna Sunday, but a case could be made that the plight of plants and animals and our not-so-merry weather are all indicators of the curse we have put ourselves under as our planet warms and sickens and struggles to throw off the toxins we have poured into it and its atmosphere.

"You cause the grass to grow for the cattle," the psalmist sings to God, "and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart." Divine Wisdom has created an earth intricately woven together–grass for the cattle and plants for people to use, the high mountains for wild goats and rocks as refuge for the coneys. Rhythms of day and night, rain and dryness, work and rest; life and death; boundaries set for the waters; infinite variety; cycles of decay and renewal. And human beings as part of it all, given bread for strength and wine for gladness. God Himself/Herself delights in this creation.

In his book, Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos, Bruce Sanguin writes,

"In the last 300 years, during the age of scientific rationalism, human beings have stepped out of the flow of creation. We have extricated ourselves from the story of the life of the planet, and have assumed the position of outside observers, of beings who live on the earth, but who are not of it." (P. 13) Bill McKibben entitled his book Eaarth, spelled with 2 a’s, as it’s no longer the planet earth that has sustained life as we know it up until now. A 2005 United Nations Millenium Ecosystem Assessment found that two-thirds of the earth’s ecosystems were seriously degraded; 90% of the earth’s fish stocks depleted. Species die-off has accelerated, largely due to human activity and overpopulation. We may think we are above or outside the web of creation, but, alas, we are really proving what an integral part of the whole web we are and are poisoning our own home.

In Nov. 2004, the Gallup organization put this statement to 1000 Americans: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." 45% agreed with that statement. If that percentage were projected out into the whole human population, that would mean, writes Bruce Sanguin, "that approximately 100 million people are walking around with no sense that we have any biological connection to the rest of creation! One wonders how that impacts lifestyle choices and environmental policy-making." (Op cit. 102)

The two stories at the beginning of the book of Genesis–and there are two different stories–are some of the most beautiful prose and poetry ever written–the first story: "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." Day after day, in succession, God creates the heavens and the earth, each day declaring it all "good," until the 6^th day, when God creates human beings, male and female, in God’s image, and God looked upon it all and said, "That’s very good!" And then God rested.

The second story begins in a garden, and the Lord God scooped mud up out of the riverbank and fashioned an earth creature–adamah– which literally means, of the earth. That is our original name–Earth Creature–and we are enlivened by the breath of God. But both scientific rationalism and Biblical literalism have dis-enchanted our story, either consigning the story of the universe to sheer chance or, in the case of Biblical literalism, ignoring the incredible, awe-some discoveries of scientists about the nature of the universe and of life on our planet, and choosing instead to cling to a 2500 year old creation story never meant to scientifically explain anything.

What mathematical physicists and cosmologists like Brian Swimme have discovered about the unfolding of the universe over 14 billion years is as awesome as any fairy tale, and while Swimme does not refer to God or Spirit, he does talk about the Heart of the universe. From the original Big Bang or "Flaring Forth, " the universe burst forth from "the void," as Genesis put it, sending sub-atomic particles forth at incredible speed and temperatures, not going into space, but creating both time and space as they expanded. As the poet Hafiz wrote, "the secret One, slowly growing a body." (Sanguin, 80)

Over billions of years, through violent explosions, waves of destruction and creation, supernovas and negative spaces, starfields and galaxies formed and re-formed. On our tiny planet, one grain of sand in a universal shoreline, atoms came together, eventually differentiated, organized, learned to renew themselves. From bacteria to higher organisms, emerging from the water onto land, coming together, evolving, until creatures able to reflect upon themselves– human beings-- emerged. Our bodies share the same elements as the stars, and as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, "the only difference between us and trees or rocks and chickens is the way in which these elements are arranged." (Cited in Sanguin, p. 85)

Some people–notably some Christian people–are offended that we are related to apes and monkeys, let alone chickens and crysanthemums, but it is in fact that very kinship, or at least reclaiming and re-membering that kinship, that may finally wake us out of our disenchanted sleep and return us to the Wisdom built into creation in the first place. The emerging field of biomimicry looks to the designs and functioning of nature to learn about energy-efficiency, locally derived materials, non-toxic to the environment. Lily-like impellers have been designed for cooling systems and pumps. Velcro got its design from the hooks on the burr plant. Consider the lilies...

The stories our culture tells us–the story of consumerism, where the more you have, the happier you’ll be; or the story of Not-Good-Enough–you need to be more, do more, be something or someone you’re not; or the story of celebrity–that the glitter and lights of celebrity will warm your heart and light your way–these stories have led us to this place of estrangement from our true selves as earth creatures infused with the breath of God. And, of course, it’s more than estrangement from but also endangerment to the rest of the planet. The Sacred Story of the universe’s unfolding, connecting us with all that ever was and all that ever will be, has the power to restore us to our true selves and to turn us away from the distraction of those cultural stories to the Great Work, as Thomas Berry puts it, of healing the planet.

This web that we are part of, which quantum physics now describes for us as energy, as light, as connection far beyond our imagining, is both our blessing and our curse. It is a curse because, as we’ve seen, when one part of the web is destroyed or weakened, we all are made weaker, part of us dies. We are vulnerable. The blessing is that we each can make a difference, we each can send energy and healing throughout the web, infused as it is with God’s own being. When we practice meditation and go beneath the surface clutter and busyness, we tap into that deep Wisdom. When we engage with others in sacred rituals to re-enchant or remind ourselves of the sacredness of all things, when we celebrate, lament, encourage, empower one another to begin again, we strengthen the web. When we act and speak together for protecting and restoring the environment and its creatures, we strengthen the web. "Taking up one’s cross in an ecological age," writes Bruce Sanguin, "means exiting the culture of convenience." (Op cit., p. 175). "To make holy or sacred" is the deep meaning of the word "sacrifice." We need to return to knowing where our food comes from, supporting local farmers, growing gardens, living closer to the seasons of the earth. When we gather to pray for the earth, for the people of Syria, for the rainforests in the Amazon, for the poor and the homeless and the sick, we send our energy along the threads of the web. It makes a difference.

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow... Do not be anxious, but rather strive for the kingdom–the kin-dom– of God, the kin-dom that includes all the peoples of the world, the plants and animals of the earth, even the sun and moon and the stars. "Where does the temple begin, and where does it end?" asks Mary Oliver....

There are things you can’t reach. But/ you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily/out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing/from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around/as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some/ shining coil of wind,/ or a few leaves from any old tree–/they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth./ Everything in the world/ comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake./Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold/fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

(Oliver, op cit., pp. 8-9)

Where does the Temple begin, and where does it end?

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Put out into deep water"-- Job 38:1-18, Luke 5:1-11-- Sept. 1, 2013

If Jesus were to instruct a modern-day Peter and his fellow fishermen to "Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch," chances are that along with fish they would bring up a horrifying tangle of plastic bags, six-pack rings, articles of clothing, tires, and bottles. All you have to do is type in "trash in the ocean" in Google Images on a computer, and you will see picture after stomach-turning picture of marine life caught in plastic nooses, islands of trash as big as many cities, beaches strewn with piles of human refuse. "Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

This story that Luke tells about the calling of the first disciples is a Sunday-school favorite. Here is Jesus, walking along the lake, or elsewhere, "the sea." Luke calls it Lake Gennesaret, a fresh-water lake, and elsewhere in the gospels it’s identified as the Sea of Galilee; but as one commentator explains, "in antiquity, both bodies of water–salt seas and freshwater lakes–were viewed as a part of the same great subterranean reservoir that fed springs, rivers, lakes, and oceans." (Theodore Hiebert, "The Living Ocean," workingpreacher.org, 8/1/13)

Jesus sees the fishermen, washing their nets, having failed to catch anything overnight, and asks one of them, Simon, to take him out a ways so that he might teach the people pressing against him on the shore from out on the water. When he’s done speaking, he tells Simon and his companions to set out again and "Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Against the protest of an experienced fisherman who knew that sometimes you come in with nothing, Simon does what Jesus tells him and the catch is so huge he has to call his partners to come out quickly to help them bring in the haul.

When Simon finally has a chance to catch his breath upon safely reaching shore, he realizes that this stranger has access to wisdom far deeper than his own experience, which completely unsettles his sense of what is what, makes him question whether 2 plus 2 always equals 4, whether the constants and truths he relies on are all that constant. And so he is afraid, and tells Jesus to get away from him. Jesus just laughs at him and tells him, "From now on you’ll be catching people," or, as many of us learned, "I’ll teach you to become fishers of men." And Luke tells us, "they left everything and followed him."

It was Sir Francis Bacon who first said that "God has in fact written two books–...the Bible... and creation." And it could be argued that the first book–the Bible–was written–or, "God-breathed through people," as some put it–largely in response to human beings’ experience of creation, which was, like they perceived God, beyond their control, beautiful, terrifying, awe-inspiring, more complex and varied than they could ever understand. From the very first lines of the Bible, God is involved with creation, God’s spirit brooding over the face of the deep.

We now know that life on earth most likely emerged from the oceans, and not only does Scripture say that the sea is God’s, but the ocean has been a primordial archetype or image for God, the primary giver of life. "The most widespread cultural image for EL, a major title of God in the Hebrew Bible, [one writer explains] was as the Father of Waters, dwelling at the root and spring of the worlds." (Weavings,Mar/Apr 2001, pp. 13-14)

The oceans contain more than 97% of the earth’s water and more than 95% of the earth’s living space. They literally make the earth more habitable for us by absorbing about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans.

"The living ocean

[writes Sylvia Earle, Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1990-92] drives planetary chemistry, governs climate and weather, and otherwise provides the corner-stone of the life-support system for all creatures on our planet, from deep-sea starfish to desert sagebrush. That’s why the ocean matters. If the sea is sick, we’ll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one."

Alas, we know that the state of the oceans is not good.

[Earle goes on,]"Due to indifference, ignorance, and greed, we’ve placed our oceans under extreme stress and compromised their ability to sustain a healthy planet." (Cited by Hiebert, op cit.)

We’ve overfished, upset the fragile balance of animal life; dumped our trash, put out more CO2 so that as the oceans have absorbed more they’ve become more acidic, becoming hostile to marine ecology. And of course as the oceans have become warmer, they’ve spawned more violent storms, accelerated the melting of the polar ice caps, and their levels have risen at an alarming rate. "The sea is God’s," the psalmist declares, and with concerned scientists across the planet, we affirm, the ocean matters.

But let’s get back to this story by the lakeshore, or seaside. "Put out into the deep water," Jesus told Simon, "and let down your nets for a catch." The Sunday School version says that Jesus performed a miracle and the disciples followed this miracle-worker. But on another level, "This story [as one pastor writes] says that God breaks down walls (or breaks open the nets) of what we think is possible, and points us toward a future we think is impossible...and that future is the new reign of God." (Linda Pepe, Theological Stew.com) We can either keep doing what we’ve always done, holding on to the same equations that we’ve always relied upon–2 + 2=4, or success = happiness, or bigger=better, or more=better; or we can stop long enough to ask, "How’s this working for us?" And not just for us, as individuals, of course, but for the wider community, and really, for the world.

Isn’t it interesting that when the fishermen had brought their haul onto shore, their nets bursting with the catch, a professional fisherfolks’ dream come true, that "they left everything and followed Jesus." "So," as one woman put it, "having all we can, ...all we want,...all we think we need...perhaps that’s not all there is..." So, we might ask, What really matters? "What would your net need to be filled with that would blow your mind enough to leave it all behind and follow?" (Pepe, op cit.) And then, of course, we need to figure out, what does it mean to "follow Jesus"?

"Put out into the deep waters and let your nets down for a catch." In dreams, the sea or ocean waters often symbolize everything that is overwhelming. Robert Morris, an Episcopal priest and observer of his dreams, affirms that "the sea is God’s, and like the ocean, God is not always manifest as a comforting, personal presence, but as unknown, immense, and deep, to be approached with due respect...Mystics and saints warn that deepening skills of humility, compassion, faithfulness, self-control, and courage are needed for the pilgrimage into God." (Weavings, op cit., p. 12)–and we might even say, for the pilgrimage into our future.

The image that seems appropriate for many of us right now is the experience of being adrift–in our personal lives, the life of the church, the state of our nation, and the state of the planet. It’s a state of not knowing. "Being adrift comes after the storm and before landfall," one writer says, [Stephen Doughty, Weavings, ...] It’s not a state we choose. So here we are, actually probably more likely in the midst of the storms, that will no doubt be coming more frequently and more violently, in the weather, in the political climate of our country and the nations of the world, and it’s hard to imagine where we’ll end up. Or rather, all the places we can imagine are pretty scary. Who knows where the ship of the Church is headed?

Those deepening skills that saints and mystics teach us–of meditation, of humility, compassion, faithful-ness, self-control, and courage–are not the most valued in our world, but they may be the most necessary as we drift along. One sage advises, "Watch for what quickens your spirit." In the midst of so many things that would overwhelm us, when much of the time we are simply swept along and need to wait, we must stay alert for what quickens our spirit, what opportunities appear before us for action and response, grounding those actions in the depths of God.

Judy Cannato, in her important book Field of Compassion, tells the story of Nate Sears, which may well be the model of how we are to "put out into the deep waters and let down our nets for a catch" in this fearful, yet potentially awesome, world in which we live.--

One of the responsibilities of Nate Sears, a landscaper working at a housing complex on Cape Cod, is to check the piers at the adjacent beach for storm damage. One morning he was doing just that when he spotted a 10-foot pilot whale coming toward shore. He watched for a moment. He then saw a second whale, then a third, each one heading for land. Stunned at first, Nate watched the approach of the whales with awe. Then his concern took over. Since it is not unusual for whales to beach themselves on Cape Cod, Nate knew that this was probably intent of these large, gentle mammals. He summoned a neighbor, who ran to call the National Sea Shore Service. Knowing that the whales were coming so fast they would be on the beach before help could arrive, Nate quickly threw off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pant legs, and waded out in the direction of the first whale. He caught up with it in waist-deep water on a sand bar. The whale was thrashing about, and he could see cuts on its body from its batter with the sand. Moved solely by instinct, Nate placed his hands on the whale and held them there. The thrashing stopped. The whale became completely still. Nate said in that moment he became aware that this was the whale’s first encounter with the human species. It seems that both human and whale were operating on instinct, each trusting the other in an encounter that neither had experienced before.

After the whale had grown calm, Nate gently turned it around and pointed it away from shore. The whale began to swim back out to sea. Losing no time, Nate approached the second whale. Again, he simply placed his hands on the creature and its thrashing stopped. Once this second whale grew still, Nate turned it away from shore. It too began to swim out. By this time members of the National Sea Shore Service arrived, and they helped Nate turn the third whale back.

Frequently, whales that threaten to beach themselves and are rescued come ashore in another location. That does not seem to be the case here. For whatever reason, the whales returned to their natural habitat without further incident. Although there is no proof, I think it was their encounter with Nate’s energy and his willingness to simply hold them in their travail that made the difference.

...We find ourselves in a world with whale-sized issues,

[Cannato writes], huge matters that seem unrestrained, threatening to not only go out of control, but take us down as well...Set in this context, Nate’s story is instructive. Finding himself in an unfamiliar and unique situation, nate responded in the moment, acting out of his own experience, following his instincts, intuitively doing the next right thing. Recognizing that time was of the essence, he trusted his ability to respond to the unknown in a way that was not only life-saving, but life-giving, both for himself and the whale. [Judy Cannato, Field of Compassion, pp. 1-4, sel.]

We do have immense resources, both technological and material, available to us, but also, perhaps like at no other time in human history, we have resources of expanded consciousness and creativity, as Cannato says, the ability to connect with one another and work together. We are part of the problem, yes, but we can also be part of the solution, opening ourselves up the One who is deep and wide, ever creative, full of mystery beyond our imagining. We can each become energy fields of compassion, joining with others to spread that field of compassion throughout creation.

Following Jesus in this day and age may mean "going out into the deep," as Nate did–"wading out to the cusp of the known/unknown, responding in care and kindness to the challenge of the moment, holding the tangible manifestations of the challenge in [our] hands, imparting [our] energy, and redirecting the movement" (Cannato, pp. 4-5) of the forces that would take us and our world closer and closer to destruction. Following Jesus includes becoming his body, taking his consciousness into ours. In this bread is the whole loaf, in this cup the whole cup. We are part of it, part of everything, so let us take and eat, take and drink. Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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