Cosmic Consequences

We are connected to the world around us. Most of us know that already, but the Old Testament makes it clear just HOW connected we are! My sermon this week takes one of Jeremiah's visions very seriously. I wonder how different we really are from the people of his own time...?

I am constantly amazed at what some people consider to be entertainment. Many pastimes that amuse other folks simply leave me wondering, “What in the world is the attraction of that?” Horror movies fall into that category for me. I never have seen the sense in paying good money to sit in a dark, crowded theater and have the liver scared out of you every 10 or 15 minutes! But lots of people enjoy that sort of thing. They sit on the edge of their seats, pulses racing and nerves tingling, eagerly waiting for a zombie to thrust his moldy arm through the window and snatch some unwary teenager. These people love them all: aliens, poltergeists, and chainsaw-wielding madmen!

Now, I will admit that there is one big attraction to horror movies. The experience is under our control! When the movie is over, we walk out of the dark theater into the comfort of the daylight, secure in the knowledge that the horrors we’ve just seen are going to stay on the movie screen. After all – they’re not real! They’re just made up for our entertainment. The vision that Jeremiah saw, though was a horror that he couldn’t escape (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28). It was a Technicolor, surround-sound, 3D disaster, like a nightmare from which you can’t seem to awake. As Jeremiah stood by horrified, he watched the very fabric of creation come unglued. Image followed dreadful image like the tolling of a funeral bell. God took the world apart and returned it to the state that existed before creation began. The mountains swayed back and forth like a man after a drunken binge. The birds fled, leaving creation as silent as the grave. All the cities collapsed like houses of cards. Finally, the world dissolved into black, formless chaos.

What in the world caused God to dismantle his beloved creation? What was so bad that God threw up his hands in despair and said, “The heck with all of it! I’m starting all over again!” Why, the people didn’t know God! Even worse, they became experts in evil! The Hebrew text literally says, “They are wise in the ways of evil.” Instead of trying to be good, they were working at being bad! They established Evil State University, a school that offered majors in Exploitation, Oppression, and Greed. And oh, how well they learned their lessons! They earned advanced degrees in selfishness, greediness, stupidity, and arrogance; and creation itself paid the penalty.

The writers of the Hebrew Bible knew that creation is always a player in the cosmic drama. They understood that the well-being of creation and people are intimately joined. That’s something that many people have forgotten in this day and age. They talk about living “in the world,” as though we aren’t really a part of it. They look at creation as just a background for their activities. If creation is damaged because of the way that we live, well, that’s too bad; but it’s unavoidable in the long run. It’s “collateral damage,” something that just got in the way of progress! But the reality is that creation and we humans who are a part of it are as intertwined as the threads of a garment. If one set of threads breaks, the other set becomes weaker, too. All the threads must stay strong or the garment will fall apart. If we think that we can separate ourselves from the creation that surrounds us, we’re only fooling ourselves

Jeremiah might have the same vision if he were living today, because Evil State University is still enrolling millions of students, still teaching its lessons of selfishness and stupidity, still graduating lots of experts in greed and arrogance. There is a difference between Jeremiah’s time and ours, though. Today, God doesn’t need to destroy creation. We’re doing a good job of that all by ourselves. We’re taking creation apart, one piece at a time, because of our greed, arrogance, and stupidity.

One of my close friends, Rev. Robin Blakeman, is a Presbyterian pastor who is a native of West Virginia. She feels called to a ministry of increasing environmental awareness. Several years ago, she described the effects of mountaintop removal mining in her home state:

“The most urgent wake-up call of my life was delivered during a plane flight in June. For the first time, I got to see those majestic mountains from a bird’s eye – perhaps a God’s eye – view. Just outside Charleston, reality struck. The number and size of mountain top removal sites were astounding! Giant sites extended in every direction to the horizon – some worse than others. The sludge pond behind Marsh Fork Elementary dwarfs the school. It was enough to make this preacher want to cuss! A mining company in our region has defended their practices by posting a scriptural quote on their website: Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low. (Isaiah 40:4) What arrogance! Will we allow mining company executives and the politicians who are beholden to them to play God with these ancient mountain habitats, and with the ancient texts of the Holy Bible? West Virginia used to be (in the words of John Denver) ‘almost heaven,’ but now we are [just] ‘open for business.’”

Even if we don’t live in West Virginia, we can all see effects of human greed on the environment. We remove wetlands so that we can build homes close to the beach, and whole ecosystems disappear. Fertilizer runoff is killing fish and wildlife in south Florida. Monarch butterflies are no longer plentiful because we are destroying the milkweed that they need to live. We seem to think that regardless of what we do, creation will continue to putter along just fine the way it always has. And we’re wrong.

So where does that leave us? How do we move beyond these catastrophic predictions, dire warnings, and despair? Is there any good news here? There is, indeed! The good news is that God will never leave us in despair. In the midst of Jeremiah’s horrifying vision of creation’s destruction, one verse glimmers with a ray of hope: “Thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be desolate; yet I will not make a full end.” Much of the earth is indeed desolate today; but God has not given up on us! God continues to call men and women to heal and nurture the creation that God loves so much. Pope John Paul II once commented, “The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.”

Protestant and Roman Catholic churches alike need to take Pope John Paul II seriously. Can we Christians be like the flower that grows through a crack in the asphalt to bloom in the most barren of surroundings? Can we set an example to the rest of society? We can recycle paper, cans, and bottles. We can set a goal to decrease the amount of energy that our facility uses. We can continue to offer our recreation park for groups that want to experience creation first hand! Oh, we may not be doing big things like the Cincinnati Zoo; they’re trying to save entire animal species! But we can do small things; and lots of small things add up to big things!

Like the people of Jeremiah’s time, we have a choice to make. We can continue to follow the ruinous way that Evil State University has taught us; and friends, it has taught us well.  As long as we do, we will have a front-row seat in that dark movie theater, and we will watch horrors of our own making come to life right in front of our eyes. But there is another way: we can wise up. We can come to our senses and choose to do things God’s way and love creation as much as we love ourselves! If we do that, we will leave the darkness of the horror movie theater behind us, and walk joyfully into the light of God’s good creation.

Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord! That phrase isn't reserved for Sunday mornings or revival meetings. In fact, it's suitable for any day of the week! Read on to find out why...

If I asked you to imagine a situation in which people cried “Praise the Lord!” over 60 times, what would it be? I’ll bet it would be a revival meeting; one with a big tent, and rows and rows of folding chairs, and a preacher up in the front of the tent getting the congregation all fired up! He’s shouting “Praise the Lord!” and all the people are echoing “Praise the Lord!” We could easily hear “Praise the Lord” over 60 times in a situation like that.

But today, I’m not thinking about a church revival. No, what I have in mind right now is something that we usually consider to be much more serious and sober. The Old Testament tells us to “Praise the Lord!” over 60 separate times. And that’s only the imperative form – you know, a word that tells us to do something. If we count the total times that the word “praise” is used in the Old Testament, it’s over 200 times! You might guess that most of those commands are in the Psalms; and you would be absolutely right. Out of a total of 150 psalms, 23 tell us to “Praise the Lord!” and one of them tells us 13 different times that we should be praising God! The Psalm that I read a few minutes ago (Psalm 147:1-13) only tells us to praise God five times: once at the beginning, three times in the middle, and once again at the very end. But Psalm 147 not only tells us to praise God: it tells us why we should do that!

One of those reasons is because of who God is. God is gracious, powerful, wise, and loving. We could add more to that list, too, couldn’t we? God is not only gracious, powerful, wise, and loving; God is kind, merciful, compassionate, reliable, and creative. Those qualities alone make God worthy of praise! But God’s qualities are barren if God doesn’t act on them. “What has God done for me lately?” we could ask. So the psalm reminds us of some of the things that God does. God not only does things for us; God does things for plants, and for animals, and for the whole universe! Imagine that you’re lying on your back on a grassy field at midnight looking up at the vast expanse of the Milky Way. God not only created every one of those stars, God knows the name of every single one of them! Not only did God create everything, God set up creation so that everything fits together. The clouds supply rain; the rain makes the grass, the flowers, and the crops grow; and the grass feeds the cattle, the flower seeds feed the birds, and the crops feed us! And we humans have a special place in God’s creation. God blesses us, calls us together in love, forgives us when we mess up, and helps us when times get rough. God heals us, too, both the ouchies that we have on our knees and the wounds that we have in our souls. We just have to praise a God like that!

But we don’t always want to praise, do we? There are days when we are depressed, angry, frustrated, or lonely. When we’ve had a terrible argument with someone in the family, nobody is speaking to anybody else, and the tension is so thick that you can feel it, we don’t feel very much like praising God! So we need to understand what praise is – and what praise isn’t. Praise is simply expressing approval or admiration for something. It’s a judgment call; and we can make judgment calls no matter how we feel on any given day. One of the great misunderstandings about praise is that you can only do it when you’re feeling good. Sure, praise flows naturally then, but it should flow when you’re not feeling good, too. Let’s meet somebody who will be able to explain what I mean.

Meet Barbara. Barbara has just lost her factory job that she has had for over 20 years. She has to start all over again looking for another job. In the meanwhile, her husband is recovering from a serious automobile accident that left him bedridden. Her son is having real difficulty in school, too. And yet, Barbara praises God every chance that she gets! How is that possible? Is Barbara just a hopeless Pollyanna whose eyes are closed to the reality of her life? Well, let’s ask her, and you can decide for yourself.

“How, Barbara,” we ask, “can you possibly praise God when you just lost your job?” “Why, honey,” she replies, “God will lead me to something else! After all, God is my provider; and I will praise my provider at all times!”

“OK,” we say, “but what about your husband? He’s stuck in bed and you have to take care of him.” “For goodness sake,” she replies, “he could have been killed in that accident, and he’s still with us! Besides, God is the great healer; and in the meantime, God will help us as we take care of him. God is my healer, and I will praise my healer at all times! Actually, since I lost my job, I can be home with him until I find another one. Praise God, because God is my strength and my comforter!”

“But what about your son?” we ask. “Surely you can’t praise God that he is having trouble in school!” “God didn’t cause his troubles,” Barbara replies. “I praise God that there are people who are so ready to help him with his schoolwork: teachers, and tutors, and even some of his friends! God is my helper; and I will praise my helper at all times!”

“Besides,” she concludes, “I believe that things will get better. God is my hope; and I will praise my hope at all times!”

Now, Barbara isn’t a real person. She is a combination of people that I have known during my life. But her responses to us are real. Praising God isn’t something that we do only when times are good and we feel happy. Praising God should be something that we do all the time! God is our provider… our healer… our strength… our comforter… our helper… and our hope. God is the One whose love for us will never change, and whose presence is always with us, whether or not we feel it. As the psalm proclaims, God blesses us – not some of the time, but all of the time! God is our Divine Parent whose loving arms hold us tightly from our birth to our death and even into eternal life. Of course we should praise the Lord! I invite you this morning to continue doing just that! It’s the right thing to do – not only on Sunday, but on any day of the week.

Earworms

Have you ever had an earworm? You know, that tune that refuses to stop playing in your head over and over and over... Jesus wants us to have an earworm, too, but not an advertising jingle. This earworm is the sound of the Kingdom of God! Interested? Read on.
 

Does anybody here find Jesus confusing at times? I know that I do. Sometimes I think that he was being confusing on purpose! This text is a perfect example (Matthew 13:10-17). Jesus has just told a parable to the crowd. The disciples don’t understand it; so they come to Jesus and ask, “Why are you telling us parables?” His answer isn’t anything but crystal clear. It’s all about listening and hearing and understanding. We will be healed, Jesus says, because we hear and understand; but most people won’t, because they refuse to use the ears that God gave them. Now we’re more confused than ever; and we have a few questions of our own to ask Jesus. What does Jesus want us to be listening to? Why isn’t anyone else listening? And what is it that we understand that nobody else does? Let’s see if we can untangle what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus is talking about listening. There are all kinds of sounds in the world that we can listen to. Some are pleasant, and others… not so much! Many of the sounds that we hear come from the media. Let’s turn on the TV news and listen to what we find there. When we click the “On” button on our TV remote, we’re in the middle of the CBS news. They’re reporting on the situation in the Middle East; and we hear the sobs of mothers in the Gaza strip whose children have been wounded by mortar attacks from Israel. Let’s change the channel. The ABC news is reporting about an earthquake in Indonesia where over 300 people died. What do we hear there? The screams of men who have found their families dead in the rubble. So we move on. The third news network is NBC. When we turn to that channel, we hear the crackling roar of the wildfires that are raging in California, and the despairing voices of those who have lost their homes in the inferno. Who wants to listen to sounds like those? They make us feel angry and frustrated; maybe even despairing. The world is going to hell in a handbasket; and nobody seems to care! And if we listen to these sounds too much, we’ll get an earworm; and it will eat away at us like a canker sore.

I’m not talking about earworms that infest the corn crop. I’m talking about the kind of earworm that crawls into your head and won't let go. It’s usually a catchy song or an advertising jingle; and it keeps you up at night. We’ve all had them. Remember that night when you had to get up early the next morning? It was 11:00 p.m., you were lying in your bed desperately trying to fall asleep, and what kept running through your head? “We are Farmers! Bump pah dum pum, pum pum pum.” It’s not just advertising jingles that can become earworms. The sounds that we hear on the evening news can become earworms too. We can’t un-hear the sounds of the sobbing mothers in the Gaza strip, and we can’t un-see the pictures of them holding their dying children in their arms. No wonder Jesus said that the people “don’t hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.” We don’t want those screams to crawl into our brains; so we tune them out! When it’s too painful, we just stop hearing and seeing. I don’t think that Jesus wants us to have that kind of earworm, either. Oh, we can’t ignore those sounds, because they’re part of our broken world that Jesus wants us to help. But Jesus points to other sounds that most people miss; and he says that we are the ones who can hear them. “Blessed are your eyes because they see,” he tells us, “and blessed are your ears because they hear.” What is it that we as Jesus’ followers hear that the rest of the world doesn’t?

Let’s turn the clock back just two weeks and revisit the Caribbean Concert that we held in our recreation park. What sounds do we hear there? Well, we certainly hear the beautiful music that Joseph Glenn provided on his steel pan drum! We hear the laughter of children as they frolic in our playground: sliding down the slides and swinging on the swings. We hear sounds of hospitality, too, as people welcome friend and stranger alike into the park. But there is one other sound, too, so faint that we have to listen closely to hear it. It’s the sound of coins dropping into a donation box for Puerto Rican hurricane relief. Listen! Can you hear it, too? Clink… that’s a nickel. Clink… that’s a dime. Clink, clink, clink… that’s a quarter and two pennies. When we identify the donor, we are surprised to see a small boy, maybe 4 years old. His mother explains to us that he has raided his piggy bank to get those coins, because he wants to help children who don’t have as much as he has. Those sounds are earworms that I wouldn’t mind having: music, laughter, and the unselfish action of a small child who is just learning about his faith!

Yes, the sounds of the world are a mixed bag. Some are pleasant and some are distressing. We know that we need to listen really carefully to hear some of them; but we still don’t understand the point that Jesus is trying to make. So we turn to him and ask, “OK, we’re listening. We hear things in the park that we would never hear on TV. But what is it that we are hearing?” That’s when Jesus clears everything up. “You’re hearing the Kingdom of God,” he says. “The world can’t hear it because the world only listens to itself. But you can hear it because you listen to me!” And that’s when Jesus heals us. He turns our frustration at the world’s stupidity into joy that the fulfillment of God’s kingdom is on the way. He turns our anger at the world’s lack of caring into the certainty that millions of Christians are working for peace and reconciliation. And he turns our despair that nothing will ever change into hope that the world’s violence will one day be transformed one into the peace of God’s kingdom.

Oh, the sounds of the Kingdom of God are easy to miss. The world’s cries of pain and suffering drown them out most of the time. So maybe we should tune down the noises of the world. As we listen to the morning news, or read the daily paper, or scroll through the Facebook page, when the noises of the world intrude – as they will – let’s turn down the volume. We all know what they sound like; and we don’t want them to become our earworms. Jesus tells us to listen, instead, for the sounds of the Kingdom of God: murmurs of love, echoes of faith, and whispers of hope. When you hear those sounds, turn up the volume and invite them into your life! Let them crawl into your head and make their home there! Fall asleep at night listening to them! And if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the clamor of the world, Jesus invites you to turn once again to him, and be healed.