Blessed Fingers

Blessed Fingers

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 23, 2014

for the funeral of Joan Bomar

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Isaiah 38: 19-20

Let us pray, 

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

            For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

For we are grieving Lord and need your presence.

Amen.

¹⁹     The living, the living, they thank you,

as I do this day;

fathers make known to children

your faithfulness.

²⁰     The Lord will save me,

and we will sing to stringed instruments

all the days of our lives,

at the house of the Lord. ^[1]

All of us in this room were touched by the life of our beloved Joan. She is one of those people who make an impact. To know Joan is to know what I mean. I, I expect, unlike most of you, only was blessed to know Joan for the last 5 years, but even in that small amount of time, she made an impact. . . It's just what she does, it's who she was, who God made her to be. My wife and I will both admit that she is the reason that I stand before you now as the pastor of this church. She wasn't on the pastoral nominating committee, I don't mean that, what I mean is she was the glue, the magnet, the person who first made us want to keep coming back here, when we were newlyweds, and new visitors, my wife who had just left a job as an organist to follow me a teacher and recent seminary graduate to central Virginia the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The first time she called me sugar, I was done. I was hers, my life was made better. Again Joan being Joan.

She had been such a staple, a pillar of this church for so long, that it was hard to imagine what it would be like to not have her here  each week. And in the last few years when she could only rarely be here, there was a tangible energy anytime she entered the room, any time she came you could tell. She lit everyone up warming our hearts. And no it wasn't just because the heat was on way too high for her. Honey, I tell you, it is hot as can be in here, too hot for this old lady. I tell you that much. She was great for a young new preacher because even in a Presbyterian Church she'd give an audible uhmmm hmmm, or give a soft Amen, a Presbyterian Amen, but you heard it and it mattered, it was small but it made a difference. Again that's Joan.

We bonded more than anything because of our shared love for music. And since I married an organist myself, you know it means alot, but she was always so humble. I can hear her saying, "Sugar," there it is, "Sugar, I'm no organist, but I am a hymn player, and this old woman has been doing it for sometime, and I guess I do okay, I guess the Lord has use for me still." I'll say. Joan was a hymn player, and for more than 40 years she played hymns. Can you imagine with me for a second just how many hymns that old hymn player played in this very room? Can you imagine how many prayers were told to her music? Can you imagine how many times her music was the soundtrack to Communion? How many funerals did her music surround, embrace, give comfort to those mourning crying souls? If we close our eyes for a moment we may just hear her playing, what hymns does she play when you hear in your minds ear? Can you imagine how the work of her fingers and feet blessed each of us again and again, Sunday after Sunday for so long?

Those fingers taught us about Amazing Grace, with its sweet sound, taught us how to walk and talk in the garden with God and that he calls us his own, taught us about how Holy, Holy, Holy the Trinity is, that Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Alleluia, and that it is a sure foundation to be built, on that solid rock, that solid rock of ages cleft for all of us, that she taught palms in hand to sing All glory laud and honor, we can give to thee our redeemer king, shouting Hosanna, to the king of kings, that there was then, is still, and always will be a sweet sweet spirit in this place, that we should glory in the father, and to the son, and to the holy ghost, for it was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be, and so we shall praise God from whom all blessings flow, that as winter approached she shared with us a longing for Emmanuel to O Come O Come, that long expected Jesus will bring Joy to this World, because the Lord has come, with heaven and nature singing along, with herald angels, shepherds watching their flocks by night, three kings, coming faithful and triumphant, to worship Away in a manger, on a Silent and O Holy Night, in a little town of Bethlehem, where Ox and Ass are feeding. She taught us to Worship the King, to cherish a closer walk with thee, grant it Jesus was her plea, she led us to dance dance, whereever we may be, knowing that the Lord is on our Si-de, we can bear the cross of grief and pain if our souls be still, and so that it is somehow well, it is well with our souls, that All things now living are alive in thanksgiving, that we can gather together and ask the Lord's blessing, of love all loves excelling, immortal invisible, God only wise, like a shepherd lead us, All Creatures of our God and King, can lift up their voice and again sing Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the risen lord, seeking first the kingdom of God and it's righteousness, for this is our father's world, and day by day and with each passing moment, we will be guided by thou Great Jehovah, that we shall enter his gates, that by lifting high the cross, we shall indeed overcome, that America is Beautiful, from sea to shining sea, that our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord, and that the God of Our of our fathers, whose all mighty hand, is a mighty fortress, our help in ages past and our hope for years to come. She'd pray with us, playing, Precious Lord, take my hand, abide with me, quickly close the eventide, and she'd inspire each of us playing he leadeth me O blessed thought, that leaning on Jesus, and standing on the promises of God, I shall not be moved, living so God can use me, any day lord, any time. Reminding us again and again that Morning has broken, like the first morning, thou vision, and thy true word, again and again telling us that old, old story that we have loved so long. She loved to tell that story, and her song, her life, her impact is a testament to that story of Jesus and his love.

These simple truths in melodies pouring forth from Joan's fingers into our heart have carved into our souls lasting images of truth, God's love, whole, full, perfect. We'll hear them forever and think of her, her life, her love, and her witness to the truth of salvation.

I chose the passage from Isaiah for it's music of course, but also, so I could paraphrase it now:

We, the living, the living, thank you Joan,

We do, as God does, for a lifetime of faithful service

Your music making faithfulness known to all of us children.

The Lord, who saved you, from numbness and weakness, and worry, and pain, and from death,

is right now singing with you with stringed instruments, and a glorious old pump organ, that only plays hymns. . .

And will all of the days of eternity there in the house of the Lord, forever and ever. Amen.

---

^[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Is 38:19-20). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

The Walk

The Walk

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 23, 2014

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Genesis 12: 1-9

Romans 4: 1-12

Let us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

            For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. ⁵ Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, ⁶ Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸ From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. ⁹ And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb. ^[1]

In many ways you could say that the Bible up until this point is all prologue. It is all about the back story, the set up, the framework, the exposition. The characters are introduced, the situation is set up, and the problem that will be resolved is brought to life, and then this morning's reading, the call of Abram is the beginning of the story. I think about plays like Les Miserables, in the prologue, the main character is let out of prison and finds closed doors everywhere, and then one open door, and then finds his conversion moment. . . and after all of that happening, the true story, the story of his redeemed life, and his walk with God towards the light can finally begin. All of the set up takes place in the prologue. It is an ancient mode of story telling. The Greek playwright, Sophocles, the father of the tragic form, utilizes a similar style in his plays. In Oedipus, the masses come before their king Oedipus begging for him to act, to do something, anything to rid their city of the plague. He promises to do so, and then the play begins, unfolding before him, the resolution from that initial mistake of promising to do more than he possibly could, promising to deliver more than is humanly possible.

In the Biblical narrative we have the break of relationship in the Garden of Eden. The fall from Grace, the hiding from God, the expulsion from the Garden, the devolution into violence and murder, all the way to the culmination of the great Flood and the Tower of Babel, the high water marks of the broken misunderstood relationship between God and Humanity, and now, finally, the very first steps of Salvation, beginning finally begins, with a simple request, and a simple walk, a walk with God, begun in the way that they do again and again throughout the Bible and throughout human history with God, the call is extended from God to humans, and then the first step, the step of faith, the step into the unknown is taken. . . the promise of the call is that each step will be led, but often only the first one is known, only the first one is made visible, the rest relies on faith. God calls Abram, telling him to leave what he knows, leave his comfort, leave his kin, saying "Go from your country, your kindred, and your Father's house, and go to the land that I will show you". . . do you see it's all in the future, the land that God will show him. . . will. . . he isn't shown the goal, just the first step, not the end point just the leaving. Everything on God's end is a promise. There is the land that God will show him, the nation God will make from him, the Blessing is even in the future, the making of the name great is in the future. . . the promise is in the future, but it is a powerful promise: Blessing those who bless you, cursing those who curse you, and then if that was not enough, the blessing isn't just for him, but will extend to all of the families of the Earth through him, but yes of course, at some future point, not now with just this first step. The trade is made, but all of the players are to be named later, such is the way of faith, such we are finding is the way of God. . . Act 1 is now ready to begin, of the play where we learn finally bit by bit, faithful step by faithful step, as well as every misstep by misstep, we are learning in this narrative, just who God is, and how God works, and a little bit about who He made us to be.

It all begins here with Abram and his first step, and it is a faithful step and a misstep all at the same time. We used to joke around at seminary, saying, "when you are called by God, figure out who your "Lot" is, and don't take him with you." He is nothing but trouble. But one thing you learn about God is that when you are walking with Him, both the faithful steps and the missteps are with Him, and therefore they all are important steps, meaningful steps, steps that completely shape your life. . . It is what Adam and Eve didn't know, and what many of us desperately are seeking to learn. God made us, God loves us, God calls us, and then God walks with us, just the way we are. . . the way He made us.

So it all begins with Abraham. Everything. . . the covenants, the laws, Moses, the promised land, the Kingdom, David, Solomon, the exile, the return, and of course Jesus, redemption, all the way to you and I. It is all part of the story that begins with Abram, here in this story. "I will bless all the families of the earth" God says. We all get to be a part of the blessing that begins in this story. Every one, every family. Do you ever think about what that means for you? What that means for all of us? To be blessed. . . and that every family is blessed, every single family, and that it all starts with one man being called to leave behind everything he knows? Could you take a step like that? Has God called you in your life to do such a thing? Or has it happened more than just one time, but constantly? That is what it's like for Abram, too. Since God doesn't tell him everything he needs to know, every turn in the plan, every bend in the road, God calls him again and again, to go here, to leave there, even to sacrifice his own son, only to be saved from such a tragedy at the exact right moment. As we will see in the next few weeks Abrams life takes many turns. . . and if  you look at the call, the blessings and the journey of the children he is promised, the history of all of us takes many turns. God is there with us through all of those turns. Nothing can separate us from the presence of God.

Paul so inspired by Abraham's faith, referring to the beginning, going back to the beginning in  his letter to the Romans, to put Jesus into perspective, He recalls the faith of Abraham in the text Paula read for us this morning, but he goes further, much later in the letter proclaiming this truth about how nothing is able to separate us from the love of God. He writes this: Romans 8: 31-29

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.^[2]

Profound huh. That is how God works. Powerful, unchanging, walking directly beside us, no matter what.

The story of salvation begins with Abraham, the beginning of the story of God's love, the repair of the brokenness begins with Abraham. . . remember when God came to the garden of Eden looking to walk in the cool of the day, it is all about this walk. God even shows us how far his love for us goes, by doing for us, what he doesn't take from Abraham, God does give up his own son as a sacrifice, for he so loved the world. He so loved us. A faithful walk that all begins with a call and a first step.

Since this is how I see Abram's call, as not only a beginning, but the beginning, it is extra cool and appropriate that we celebrate a new beginning this morning, just a few minutes ago, as we welcomed further into the life of Christ, into the life of this church, into a special walk, our boys, John and Andrew. Baptism is the first steps of a walk of faith, very similar to Abram's. God has called John and Andrew to a new life in Christ, just as God has called Margaret into a new life as their mother, just as God has called each of us into new responsibilities as a Congregation committed to their raising. Let us remember that the vows we made today are simply to walk, to take each new step, trying, to be faithful, not knowing what is ahead, but knowing that those future steps will all be led as these first ones have been. It is all about going on a walk. We made vows today, together, to walk with John and Andrew, to care for them, to instruct them, to raise them up in the faith, to love them. We will walk with them, and walk together, called by God. We'll all make missteps, Margaret will make missteps, John and Andrew will make missteps, but walking together, faithfully walking, supporting each other, just like Abram, even our missteps will be made with God, and so never completely wrong, and of course never completely alone. We took the first new step together, let us take each new step that same way. And so we will walk. . . Amen.

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^[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ge 12:1-9). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

^[2]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ro 8:31-39). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Beyond Words

Beyond Words

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 16, 2014

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Genesis 11: 1-9

Acts 2: 1-8

Let us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

            For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

^1 Now the whole earth had one language and few words. ^2 And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ^3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. ^4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” ^5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. ^6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. ^7 Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” ^8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ^9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.^[1]

It's funny the difference a week makes. I've come full circle this week. I was worried this time last week because I was thinking to myself, I've got my first baptism with so much about it to say, and the next story in this series is the Tower of Babel. And I'm like what in the world? Do I put aside the schedule to accommodate the baptism? Because there just is no way to connect these things. I mean you have one story with God confusing the language of all the people's of the Earth and then on the other hand God marking us, cleansing us from our sins, claiming us as his own, a child becoming, through the sacrament, one of the children of God. I thought to myself why couldn't it be last week, where we had Noah, and the amazing cleansing water image, or the week before where with the Cain and Abel story we had God's eternal mark of protection, I even thought, why not next week, when we talk about Abraham and his blessing, and the covenant of faith that he forms with God? But here I get the sacrament of baptism paired with Tower of Babel. And then last Sunday afternoon I'm given a great idea, and I think to myself, is it possible that every single story in the Bible matches well with baptism, because if the Tower of Babel does, surprising to me, believe it or not, now that I have my idea of how to do it, and then I think how much a testament to the power of the sacrament it is. If all parts of the Biblical narrative fit it, does that in itself show the power of the simple act. My idea for the connection is this. . . God is showing us a way to communicate beyond words through the sacraments. Both Communion and Baptism, both instituted as sacraments by Christ, are ways that Christians throughout the world, and throughout time, transcending the limitations of language, and transcending human understandings of what communication is all about, through the sacraments Christians talk to each other, find understanding and connection with each other, and most importantly also find a sure connection with God, and from God the connection comes, and to God we get a chance to commune, amazing. In Baptism we get what the people of Babel were seeking, that bridge to heaven, that connection to God, that reconnection, but on God's terms, in God's terms, not our own. We can't really put the power of the sacraments in words, instead they have to be experienced and remembered experientially, in the way that we can't build a bridge to heaven ourselves, we can't make it on our own, our bricks are insufficient just like our language is insufficient. And hence, through the sacraments we get to communicate beyond words. We get to speak and be spoken to in the heavenly terms of salvation. Pretty cool image huh. . . so I was all ready to talk about that, and excited to do so, but then we decided after all, and I think rightly so, to postpone the baptism until next week in order to better prepare our boys, and myself for what it is all about. And so after all that, having come full circle, I have to again figure out what to say about Babel, now that I'm unfettered as I had originally hoped from the requirements of the real sacramental occasion within life of the church. Be careful what you wish for. . . right.

I think there are real parallels between this story and it's placement right after Noah and the Ark, and Cain and Abel, right after the Garden of Eden. In both you have a seeming punishment by God, and then a subsequent generation trying to find their place in the world where they do not understand God, and the way God works. In both stories you have human beings trying to act as the bridger of the gap between God and humanity. Cain and Abel tried to provide offerings to God to bridge that Gap made by sin, and the builders of the Tower try to literally bridge the gap between heaven and earth by building the tower. The problem of both it would seem is that God doesn't work that way. It isn't about what we can do to get to God, but what God does to get to us. The fact that God is all around us waiting for us to turn to him, rather than at the heights of some monument that we build by our own skill.

If we look at it this way, there are obvious similarities between The Tower of Babel and Cain and Abel, but the differences really put those similarities in the right context. The difference that I'm talking about is the outcome. We can easily overlook the issue of the offering in Cain and Abel, the issue of trying to earn God's favor through our own efforts, in our own way, because we get blinded by the murder. Obviously the murder of Abel by Cain, brother on brother is the center piece of that story. We quickly jump to that aspect and often miss asking the question of what exactly Cain and Abel were after in giving their offerings in the first place. We can get blinded to that by the ugliness of envy and jealousy. We can miss the disease for the symptoms, seeing how envy and jealousy result in murder, and miss the controlling notion that creates the envy in the first place, Cain and Abel trying to earn God's affections through their offering. . . but when you look at Babel you get a different picture.

You don't have envy among the people in the Tower of Babel. You don't have jealousy in the Tower of Babel. You don't have murder in the Tower of Babel. So we say to ourselves what's the problem? Why God? Why punish? Why scatter? Why confuse the tongues? What's wrong here? You could easily say that the problems that arose between Cain and Abel have now been put aside, that the violence of the pre Noah era has been put aside, that now human beings are working together. Doesn't God want human beings to work together? Doesn't God want us all to get along? Doesn't God want peace among the people? Unity among the people? Compromising and getting things done among the people? It seems to us like God would be for all of those things. . . especially when you think that God rebuked Cain for his violence, and that he flooded the world in response to the violent ways of human beings. But now here human beings are finally working together, are finally getting somewhere, are finally creating something, and God doesn't like it. The question calls out to us, why?

I'm not sure. . . but there is more to the Cain and Abel story than the murder, just like there is more to the Adam and Eve story than the bite of the apple. God works in ways, and wants us to be a part of those ways. Those ways are perfect, and ours are not, unless they are perfectly aligned with God. Look at how the people, look at why the people build this tower.  They say,

Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves

Let us do this for us. Let us build a city for us, let us reach to the heavens to make a name for us. It would seem that there is more to righteousness than peace. It would seem that there is more to righteousness than merely getting along. It would seem that there is more to righteousness than building amazing structures that show off our skill and our abilities, our greatness. And I'm still not sure, but I think this is really great and important to remember.

There are alot of people who think that salvation comes from compromise. There are alot of people who think that solutions to the world's problems occur when people get along. There are alot of people who think that if people in congress would just agree, we could get things done, if there just was a little more civility, that there must be some happy middle ground that we can find and step forward, find a way towards progress. The tower of Babel story seems to scream that there is more to it than just getting along. I remember there was a quote from Cal Ripken, he said, "Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect." Compromise doesn't equal right, consensus is not the same thing as being right, just because everyone agrees that we could make a name for ourselves by building this tower, doesn't mean that we should build the tower. This is probably one of the most difficult concepts for human beings to grasp.

I know it is for my students. It is hard to wrap our heads around. Humility is needed. Just because no one believes it doesn't mean it's not true, and conversely, just because every one believes it doesn't mean it is true. Knowing it, acknowledging truth, is not what makes it so. When I said that to my students they were like, yeah of course. They understood the theory, but they couldn't really grasp it in reality, they are too trapped in relativity and point of view. So I put them on opposite sides of the room. I put 12 of them on one side and then just one on the other. I asked the 12 to declare that 2+2=5. . .and then the one to declare that 2+2=4. How is that for consensus. I asked them, does that happen? What about this, now he, the one, starts to feel self conscious, he starts to doubt, what he knows is true, and the majority convinces him that he is wrong. And he goes to the other side, now no one is saying that 2+2=4. . . does that mean it isn't true? Lights went on, they kinda got it, at least a glimpse of the possibility.  

So what happens when truth goes out of style? What happens when human beings all start to speak the same language, but it is a language full of lies, delusion, and illusion? Every body agrees, so there is consensus, and work can begin, the shovels are ready, the contracts have been approved, so now you can go for it, start building. But it is the wrong building, built for the wrong reasons. . . God points that out the fact that this is a huge problem. The only way to stop the building is to disrupt it, confuse the people, because division is better than being wrong. Disunity is better than being falsely righteous. Conflict is better than false peace. This message isn't popular these days. We'd rather get along. It is safer. We would rather believe that the best of us know better, but then again we remember last week, the imagination of man's hearts. . .

So if our hearts cannot be trusted, and the checks and balances of the herd are not enough, what can we hope for, from where do these answers come? We need a way instead to commune with the right. We need a way to understand God's will so that it, and not the consensus of our wills may be done. We need a way to know truth. We need that bridge, and Christ becomes that bridge, not built by us, but made by God, made of God, God himself. . .. . . Actual Righteousness, and a Connecting Example, and an indwelling helper, allowing us to see. . . Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, or in other words, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is through them we must communicate lest we proceed in dreadful error. This story comes full circle in Acts as Paula read for us today. All of a sudden infused with the Holy Spirit our voices could again be understood by each other again. God's words could be understood through us. There is hope in the culmination of the story, but short of that we often can go astray trying to build our own towers, our own perfection, our own Utopias, they all continually are falling short, and leading towards confusion of the truth.  Let us then instead all seek not consensus of the things of man, but to become aware of the ways of God, truth that sometimes cannot be captured in words, words are merely symbols we make to point us toward truth, but in truth itself, indwelling within each of us, but not of us, of God, experienced only through coming to know real relationship with the totality of the triune God, again we will be ready to experience again what Baptism is all about next week, celebrating anew, and remembering our own beginning. Thanks be to God,  Amen.

---

^[1]The Revised Standard Version. 1971 (Ge 11:1). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Imagination of Man's Heart

Imagination of Man's Heart

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 9, 2014

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Genesis 8: 13-22

Let us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

            For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

Most of us, if we grew up in the church have known and loved this morning's story. The story of Noah is one of the first ones we teach our kids. It has so many vivid images that warm a child's heart. There is the rainbow and the dove. . . the kindly old bearded man, working away at his ark, and of course there are the animals, lined up 2 by 2, the humpbacked camel and the kangaroo. "Cat's and Rat's and elephants, and sure as your born" no one could forget the legends of the unicorn, magical creature lost forever because they just didn't make it on board. Noah is a  magical story for kids, it's a great story in a Sunday School room, great craft potential, great songs, you can rise and shine and give God your glory, glory, all morning long, but out here, it's much more difficult. Out here we have questions. Out here we have some concerns. Out here the animals and the rainbow are paralleled with the destruction of the world, the cost of wickedness and violence, and most troubling for me, God seeming to change His mind, at least twice, showing remorse, at least twice, and that is troubling. . . for a God who the story has shown so far to be a perfect, sovereign, unerring, creator of everything. So I've been dreading this one. It is the story, probably most of all the stories in the Bible, that I have the most trouble with, the hardest to make sense of, but this week reading, rereading, praying, and thinking I feel much more comfortable with it than I ever have before, so we're at least getting somewhere. So I chose a passage from one of the endings. I chose it because it has a very interesting phrase for what God is up to. . . I'll point it out as I read.  

^13 In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. ^14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. ^15 Then God said to Noah, ^16 “Go forth from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. ^17 Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.” ^18 So Noah went forth, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. ^19 And every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves upon the earth, went forth by families out of the ark.

^20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ^21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. ^22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”^[1]

That jumped out at me as I was reading. . . "the imagination of man's heart." By a stroke of luck I was reading the Revised Standard Version, but the King James also uses that translation, but they are the only versions that put it that way, which is the more literal translation of the Hebrew word, which is "yetser," having to do with being formed, or shaped, as a potter, paired then with the heart, the source of intellect, rather than emotion to the Hebrews.  The NRSV, says "The intention" of the human heart" the NIV says, "every inclination of his heart," Imagination, though, is such a cool image I thought, and what it means helps me with this troubling passage, but let's put that off for now to focus on the troubling parts, and some other key background details that may help put it all into perspective. Let's walk through my week of thoughts.

One issue of the story is the text. There seems to be at least two accounts of the story superimposed and jammed together to produce one connected though disjointed narrative. The biggest most glaring difference, though often ignored, is the amount of each animal brought on board. The all so famous two by two is only one version, the other claims instead 7 pairs of each clean animal, but only one pair of each unclean. And they are back to back, at the end of chapter 6 with the 2 by 2, and then the beginning of 7 with the 7 pairs. It makes for difficult reading because it gets to be repetitive and contradicting all together. It can be troubling, but the story is there, and it has power even with the contradictions. Any reader of the gospel should know that often a Bible reader has to take such things in stride. Multiple versions of stories being placed together seamlessly is part of the Bible's charm really.

But these two aren't the only two versions of the flood narrative that exists. One of the oldest pieces of literature that we have in existence still, found in its primary form, carved in a tablet of lapiz-lazuli is the Epic of Gilgamesh, the great Sumerian epic. It too includes the flood in its story. I read that every year with my World Lit students, and they are always blown away to think that there is another source for the Noah's ark story. They are always like, hey isn't that Noah's ark from the Bible. I always ask them the same question. It's the beginning of the year, and a good time to plant these kinds of seeds. I ask them, and I'll ask you as well, "Do you think the fact that more than one civilization attests to the story that it is more or less likely to have actually happened in history?" It gets them thinking. Remember they are all mostly skeptical teenagers, so they are moving from doubt usually to faith. . . What about you, does it make you think anything different? The honest answer is that it really shouldn't make much difference, since it is all a leap of faith anyway, evidence for or against isn't really what it's all about. . . perhaps someone should have told Bill Nye and Ken Ham before they had their three hour debate earlier this week. . . there is a lot of noise, it's a fun argument, but not a whole lot of movement happens, on either side. Faith comes from other places, than facts, like the cross.

But it is cool to take the Noah story and look at how it is different from the one in Gilgamesh. The biggest difference is all about why it all happens. From a Sumerian point of view there isn't one god, first of all there are many, and they have a council, and the council decides to flood the Earth because human beings are becoming too strong, and may challenge their dominance and authority. They are the jealous god types, and want to make sure that those uppity humans stay in their place. It is actually very similar, in a very pagan way, to the "Tower of Babel" story that we'll look at next week. The Hebrews though bring in the idea of moral correction being at stake. That God is correcting the behavior of people. . . hating violence. . and wishing to once and for all make a statement about the consequences of violent behavior. It is an important an poignant distinction about the difference between this Biblical Creator God, who Bara's and the gods seen by the rest of the world. So that important distinction has been in my head this week.

But then I've always known, most of us would claim, that God has an eye toward the ethics and morals of his people, that God doesn't like wickedness, that isn't anything new. How could a God of Justice not revile wickedness? But let me get to the biggest difficulty I've always had with this text. Most people would think it would be about the destruction of God destroying the world, and though that is troubling, the bigger issue I have isn't that God would destroy the world, but that he would change His mind, not just changing his mind, but changing it based on His reacting to human beings, human beings He created, to which his knowledge should be perfect. A reactive God isn't free. . . and I think God's freedom is an important aspect of his sovereignty. It gets in the difference between consequences and punishment, and then also then the difference between manipulation and love. Here is what I mean.

It all starts with the difference between punishment and consequences: We touched on it a little bit before when we were looking at Adam and Eve, but I didn't really get into it then, to any real degree of depth. Here is what I mean, there are times when Coralee, she's gotten better, so maybe Clara is a better example, she does something, usually climbing up something she shouldn't, and she needs learn so, invariably she falls, and the first words out of mine or DeAnna's mouth is, "That's what happens." This is how I see the "lest ye die" in the garden, the expulsion and the result of that original sin. . . It is also how I saw last week's situation with Cain, yes Cain you killed Abel, the ground cries out, now you must head out on your own. Hey it's what happens. . . we often see it as punishment from our limited perspective, but it is simply God's system, God's perfect system unfolding, and God's presence with us always stays. Punishment on the other hand happens afterwards, is reactive, becomes about manipulation, teaching yes, but through changing the reality. Sometimes it's a good thing, and a necessary thing, thinking again about Clara, sometimes the natural consequence is too great, so teaching through punishment can curb bad behavior before the results get real. Like slapping the hand before it touches the stove, the slap is much less serious than the burns, but how does that apply to flooding the entire earth and saving one family? God seems to be reacting to the poor behavior of humanity, by destroying humanity. . . if it's reactive punishment. . . it doesn't seem to be inspired and instructive, but destructive and defeated, like God was giving up. . . Genesis 6:6 "And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.^" How can God, who is omniscient and omnipotent, grieve a mistake? How is that love? See this story is a little troubling, huh. . . but then God changes his mind again, and vows never to destroy the world again, at least not in the same way, and puts a rainbow in the sky to prove it, placing his bow in the sky, laying down his arms, a surrendering action of peace, and the beginning of a new theme in the Old Testament, the first covenant. We'll have more. . . but the interesting thing about this first one, is that it is all on God. There is no bargain just that fact. God won't do it again. So good for us, yeah, but again God grieving and regretting an action, which is still very troubling. Are there other mistakes?

I said that I didn't really have a problem with the action God takes. The world being in abject rejection of wickedness is a good thing. It's justice, the workings of a just God. But isn't consistency and blindness a few of the aspects of justice that we hold so dear? Lately in my World Literature class we've looked at the concept of Judgment Day because we were studying Islam, and now this week we were looking at Dante's Divine Comedy. I was explaining to them how logically these are necessary elements to a world that is free and just at the same time. They logically flow and stem from the basic idea that God equals Good. Justice equals Good. Creation though isn't Good now. . . and so Dante's Inferno and the doctrine of Judgment Day are based on the idea that Creation will one day be Just, the rights will be rewarded and the wrongs fixed. It's harsh right, but logical. We grow squeamish around such concepts, but we must ask ourselves honestly why that is? We have our doubts, right. . . about the whole thing, and our place in it, we have a dread about our own wickedness, and our comfort, our comfortable lives built on wickedness, nuclear weapons keeping us safe, systems kept alive by greed and envy, using violence to buy our security, and we like to say, "Thank God for Jesus!" And here the lights went on this week in this story. 

A change in perspective. . . not to the many perishing in the flood, but to the one small simple family spared. It is so easy to take for granted the one, that Noah was just chosen at random, like we see the animals are, but no, God sees in Noah a noble heart, an honest character, and that matters to God, too. It matters enough to God to save one just because he was good in a bad world, and that is so hard. Now we find out as the story progresses that Noah isn't perfect and he messes up, too, but there was something about Noah worth saving. The name, Noah, means "comfort, rest" let us seek to take rest in the fact that God cared enough to spare Noah, truly amazing, and truly important. . . so love maybe within the inconsistencies.

Now I've been all over, and I posed a few issues only to change gears, not dealing with the issues, but showing some of the happy side of it. And that brings me to my favorite line, that image, of "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." God says this twice. At the beginning in Chapter 6 and then here in Chapter 8, both around God's decisions. First to destroy, and then never to destroy again. Now I'm not saying that the issues of this text aren't real and troubling to us, but is that not the imaginations of hearts? The same imagination that leads us to doubt God, to eat the fruit, to see the world as an illusion, rather than what is real. The truth is there is much to this story that isn't understood, and there is also a certain arrogance in trying to understand it, rather than simply seeing the rainbow in the sky and knowing that God is. The inconsistencies fall aay, as mere figments of our wicked imaginative hearts, and the spectrum is real in our true vision. The Sunday School lesson becomes the more important. The faith of a child becomes the real lesson. There may be some inconsistencies, but the truth of God is all through this story, and the truth of Christ is all through this story. What could be more consistent than that? In honor of the children to whom we should aspire to be more like. Let me close witha line from a great children's song, usually sung by a familiar frog. . . "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" Because God's still on the other side. Amen!

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^[1]The Revised Standard Version. 1971 (Ge 8:13). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Orange Love

If love were only passion

   We'd see orange and not red,

For flaming burning beauty

    Is yellowish instead,

And though it's flickering light

     Illumines the lover's bed

Morning's glow will come again

      To shine on what is dead.

So love's color then is red

      Like bleeding sacrifice

The inward stuff pouring out

      Not worrying over price

Without fear's hold, completely pure

        Of yellow's cowardice

For deep inside we all admit

          That less just can't suffice.

But orange's symbol has it's place

       The reminder of new kindling fire

The needs we have set free set loose

        By the spark of our desire

The end does not the beginning blame

         For mistakes that do transpire

It's not the flame that leads astray

          But the actions our fears require.

More Than I Can Bear

More Than I Can Bear

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 2, 2014

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Genesis 4: 8-16

Luke 11: 45-52

So now, Let us pray, for the open hearts and minds that only God can give,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives      

For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

⁸ Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. ⁹ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” ¹⁰ And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! ¹¹ And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” ¹³ Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! ¹⁴ Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. ¹⁶ Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. ^[1]

So this is another familiar story to us. Cain and Abel, the first murder. I think I've referenced this story in my sermons the most of any Old Testament Story. There really is so much going on here. It has been a good compliment to many of the New Testament stories, and now I'm excited to look especially at it on its own, to take a deeper look at some of the issues, questions, and details of the story we all know so well. Often when you talk about Cain and Abel there are two issues that usually find their way into the conversation. One is, of course, why does God choose Abel's offering and not Cain's? What is the problem with Cain's? And the other has more to do with the historical logistical problems this story raises, namely, if it's only Adam and Eve in the world, and Cain and Abel are their children, Cain gets exiled from the family, and then settles to the East in the Land of Nod and takes a wife and Enoch is born. . . where did his wife come from? It challenges the historical aspect of the story. . . and just this week I have run into Atheists using this very discrepancy as a reason to throw out the entire Biblical story. It is sad isn't it, to let such insignificant details become the stumbling block to seeing truth. Both of these questions, though interesting and edgy do not get at what I find to be the most intriguing and formative parts of this story. They just don't, so rather than going into the weeds of the historical record, as I have done on the Adam and Eve stories and creation, I want to approach them without worrying about their historicity and see it as a type story for human nature and the way that we as humans tend to work.

Before I begin let's connect last week with this week. I said many things last week, the biggest claim of all being that Sin had to do with believing the lie, resulting in human beings not being able to understand God, not understanding how God works, and what God is all about. The actions then are the symptoms of that state. I see this Cain and Abel story as a completely understandable next step in the cycle, in that sense, actions symptomatic of the disease. Adam and Eve hide from God, they blame each other, then they receive their punishment and are expelled from the garden. So think about it, you've been kicked out of some place, you thought you could hide from God, you thought that you could lie to God, blaming others, and somehow save yourself from the full extent of God's wrath by doing so. It's all part of this self preservation instinct that we have, at least that we have now, part of sin. And so Adam and Eve have children, and they teach them everything they know about how God works, at least their limited understanding, is it about wrath, anger, punishment, power, and instill in them the idea that they should try by all means necessary to work themselves back into God's good graces, and so they teach them that they should give their offerings to God.

 The story doesn't say all that, but it is also silent on exactly why it is that Cain and Abel do give their offerings. Why do they? What are they looking for and what do they think God will do? What do they expect God's reaction to be, especially because it is obvious from Cain's standpoint that he didn't get what he thought. He was expecting something very different. He expected God to be happy with him. Wouldn't you? Here  you are giving God something you had made, wouldn't you expect God to be happy with you, that you had done good and that you had earned God's love, respect, and affection? Isn't that what Cain seems to expect, and so reacts the way he does because God in fact surprises him. God is different from what he assumed God was.

You may think this is a very small and insignificant detail, but it actually is quite revolutionary within religion. Most people assume that religion is all about controlling the uncontrollable, that people seek religions to offer them hope and control over their lives and the future in a world that seems to them to be very much out of control. That is what most religion is, it is certainly what most ancient religions were. It is the basis of ancient polytheistic religion. You have gods, they are in control of certain aspects of the universe, and if you want to control those aspects you appeal to the god of it. If you want it to rain  you perform a rain ritual to the rain god, giving him homage. If you want to be successful in your next military campaign you make your offerings to the god of war. If you want your crops to come in or your wife to have a baby you make an offering to the fertility gods. If you don't want the volcano to erupt you throw a virgin in once a  year to appease it's anger. What do you do if you want to win the superbowl, or win the lottery or pass a math test? Just to make sure we are all paying attention. If you want to win the God who created all things, who is upset with you because your parents broke one rule, and you really want to make up for it, you give the first fruits of your labors, and you then can be restored into that God's good graces again, maybe he'll even let you back in the Garden. It was afterall just a little rule anyway.

There are so many literary examples of how ancient pagan religions work like that. The most famous is Homer's Iliad, where the priest of Apollo is offended in Book 1, and he prays to Apollo, saying, Apollo I have dedicated my life to you, I have given offerings, I have made sacrifices, I have spoken prayers, if any of those meant something to you, now is when I need you the most, I am asking that you punish those Greeks for their insult. And Apollo does, he rains down arrows on the Greek camp. The big question then, when you have a situation like this, is who is in control? Who is calling the shots? The human or the god? There is a sense that it is all a game where the human being pulls the strings, manipulates the more powerful god to perform the human will. Here though, in Genesis 4, as we have had so far in all the previous chapters, we see that this God, the God who baras, the God who speaks truth and it is, doesn't work like that. God doesn't play games. He doesn't set up systems that can be manipulated. Instead God simply is. So Cain is seeking to control God, and God isn't playing.

So that gets us to the big question, why Abel's and not Cain's, why is Abel's accepted? Isn't he out for the same thing? Why do we ask that question? I remember from seminary we spent a long time on this passage and read tons of different takes on why. So many of them were seeking to figure out the system, to figure out how God works, so that knowledge, which would be power could be given, if we could be like Abel instead of being like Cain then God will favor us too, that seemed to be the point but I found so many of them to be a stretch. Things like, well Cain's wasn't the best of his fruit, or that Cain was a farmer and God prefers animal herders, preferring the nomad over the planted person, that the nomad is somehow more dependent on God. All of these were trying to seek the way to live, to receive God's blessing, I think greatly missing the point.

What if we read this story with the knowledge about God that Jesus gives us, based on the Jesus revelation, and in the light of what we talked about last week. God is already there waiting for them to turn around. . . Adam and Eve, and now Cain and Abel, are still in the hide, blame mode, adding a new aspect: hide, blame, expiate, make amends, pay the fine, make yourself feel better by assuming responsibility, of course though you are only seeking to make up for it on your own terms. Anything more than that could really be dangerous, a slippery slope, a submitting to someone else's control, maybe more than you are willing to give. We wouldn't want to do that, but yet that is exactly what God wants, it's why we start the Lord's prayer with Thy Will be done. The offering of stuff just isn't enough, because there is no such thing. Remember we just don't understand how God works if we are trying to earn our place back. God shows up in the garden even after we disobeyed, and can see through our half hearted attempts to win his affection, and then we strike out against our brother, and destroy God's creation just a little more, God shows up then, too. When will we get it?

There are two more points I want make connected to this, I think really pushing this interpretation of the story further. One is the New Testament reading for today. Luke 11, one of the places in the New Testament where this story is referenced, and this the time where Jesus mentions it himself. Jesus says:

“Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them. ⁴⁷ Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. ⁴⁸ So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹ Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ ⁵⁰ so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, ⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.^[2]

Why does Jesus say this, and what is he talking about? The slaying of the prophets, the placing of burdens too heavy to bear, people perishing between the altar and the sanctuary, and above all else lawyers. . . lawyers those system manipulators, is Cain the first lawyer, or is the snake? do you see all these images that Jesus is challenging? He is challenging this quid pro quo relationship between people and God where the priest and the lawyers are the middle men. You've been selling that God works this way, and I'm here to tell you that you are wrong, just as many of the prophets have said throughout the centuries, beginning with the first testimony of Abel. . . whose only prophetic action it seems is to be killed, a perfect witness to the fact that we don't get it, and Jesus is showing these lawyers that they don't get it still. . .  he closes with "you took the key of knowledge, but you didn't enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering." You got in the way! There need be nothing in the way, the key of knowledge is this: God is there simply turn.

And now returning to the story, look at how it ends. Cain is so sure that he has been forsaken by God. He is being told the consequences of his action, but he starts to worry that it is too much for him to bear. Of course it is, but it always has been, Cain is a little closer to getting it, to understanding the need for complete forgiveness, unearned grace. He says, "The punishment is more than I can bear." And at that point God puts on him his mark, he will not be touched. Forsaken not at all, God still shows up. And will continue. Lay down the burden you carry, there is no limit, there is no such thing as too much, there is no such thing as enough, there just is the God who created everything, turn to Him and begin life. It's so simple, and yet so hard for to accept. God give us the faith. Amen.

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^[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ge 4:8-16). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

^[2]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Lk 11:46-51). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.