Wind and Fire
Wind and Fire
Genesis 1:1-5; Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21
September 11, 2011
In the days after September 11, 2001, I found myself listening repeatedly to John Rutter’s Requiem. It is among the most transcendently beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, and its profound depth is equal to the measure of September 11.
If I could write such music … well, if I could write such music I would not stand up here talking, and I would never even attempt to speak to the monumental tragedy of September 11 and the decade of violence that has come since.
But words, inadequate as they will be, are all that I have.
The words, the poetry, that is the beginning of our scripture, the words with which we opened worship – “in the beginning …” – those words were first spoken by a Hebrew poet and theologian writing, scholars believe, during the Babylonian exile. Genesis was written for a faith community in exile, not to explain how the universe came into being but, rather, to reassure the people that the God who created the universe and called it good was still God, and had not yet finished the work of creation with the people.
At a moment when one might have expected words of fear, of hate, of vengeance, the poet in exile spoke a word of light and of hope into the darkness and despair of exile.
Of course, scripture compiles many voices, and the lectionary places before us this day the dancing song of victory from the Exodus story. God has triumphed. Horse and rider have been swept away. Miriam puts on the timbrels and dances in celebration. I read that today and think of the spontaneous celebrations that followed the death of bin Laden last spring.
However, I also read that story of triumph mindful of the midrash of the ancient rabbis, who told the story of the angels dancing in heaven when pharaoh’s army got drowned but then noticing that God was weeping. The angels stopped dancing and asked why God was crying at such a triumphant moment, and God answered, those soldiers are someone’s son or husband or father. Now is not the time for dancing.
There is a time for dancing and a time for weeping, and sometimes it is difficult to know and name the time. When we cannot name the time, it becomes incredibly difficult to speak the right words. When we are lost in our own time we are like exiles, far from home. In such a time, is it yet possible to speak a word of hope?
After ten years of seemingly endless violence that tears at the very soul of the nation is it yet possible to speak a word of light and of hope into our own darkness and despair?
Oh, to be sure, most of us have long since moved on from the emotional trauma of that bright September morning. We have come to grips – and some have come to profit – from the national security state. We accept as normal and necessary inconveniences to our movement and invasions our privacy that would have outraged us a generation ago.
In the new normal most of us don’t feel anything like constant despair and the world doesn’t strike us as particularly dark. We’ve adjusted. We’ve moved on. There is a rising generation that has no memory of the actual events of September 11, 2001. They have lives to live. We have lives to live.
And yet, I can’t help hearing Isaiah – the great prophet of the Exile – who spoke a truth that named the present time for his people:
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades (Isaiah 40:6-8).
To a people who surely felt their flower fading, who knew what it was to be grass tossed into the Babylonian fires, Isaiah named the moment. He named the despair. He named also the deep brokenness and sinfulness of his own people castigating their leaders for ignoring the widows and the orphans. He spoke what could have been merely a word of doom.
Nevertheless, he proclaimed that though “the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of the Lord endures forever.”
On that pivot – the word of the Lord – turns the whole, not only of the several texts of Isaiah, but also the whole tradition of our holy texts. More than that, I would even say that on that pivot – the enduring word of the Lord – turns all of our histories.
And what is the word of the Lord for us on this day, on this tenth anniversary, when we have learned to live as exiles, adjusted to our captivity to endless war and willingly pledging our allegiance to the national security state?
Well, what was the word of the Lord for the exiles in Babylon?
“In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth …”
From the midst of exile, God speaks a new and creative word that reminds the exiles that God has been creating for a very long time and that God is not yet finished with us. In spite of ourselves, in spite of what we do to one another and to a creation that God has called good, in spite of all of that, God is not finished with us yet.
The present moment must surely have felt dark and the Babylonian exiles surely, from time to time, felt themselves stumbling blindly in the darkness of their captivity. Into that darkness, what was the word of the Lord for the exiles?
“Let there be light.”
In the darkness, God speaks a new and creative word, to remind us that God is not finished with us yet.
“Let there be light!”
So what is the word of the Lord for us today? Followers of Jesus, exiled in a post-Christian culture? People of faith in a age of disbelief? Followers of the prince of peace in a time of endless war?
What is the word of the Lord for us?
God speaks to us and through us in all kinds of ways. It is, after all, what God does. God spoke to the exiles through the poetry of Genesis and Isaiah. God speaks still, often through the words of our own poets.
I may have first heard Mary Oliver’s poem, A Summer Day, on a September 11 edition of Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac a few years back. It struck me the first time I heard it as a wonderfully prophetic, creative word to speak into the darkness and doubt, the confusion of our times. The poem, written almost 20 years ago, ends like this:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
In the beginning, when God was creating … creating your wild and precious life and calling it good … in our rising up each day into new beginnings, when God is still creating your one wild and precious life. What shall you do with it? How then shall you live it? What can you hope for?
This morning, you get the final word, and the invitation to write your own answer to those questions.
In a moment I’m going to play a piece of Rutter’s Requiem, and as the music plays I invite you to jot down your own hopes – for your family, for this community, for the nation – whatever level you’re thinking on this morning. Then we’ll gather at table, and I invite you to bring your hopes to the table where you will share in the grace of Jesus Christ, the ground of all our hopes. Amen.
Genesis 1:1-5; Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21
September 11, 2011
In the days after September 11, 2001, I found myself listening repeatedly to John Rutter’s Requiem. It is among the most transcendently beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, and its profound depth is equal to the measure of September 11.
If I could write such music … well, if I could write such music I would not stand up here talking, and I would never even attempt to speak to the monumental tragedy of September 11 and the decade of violence that has come since.
But words, inadequate as they will be, are all that I have.
The words, the poetry, that is the beginning of our scripture, the words with which we opened worship – “in the beginning …” – those words were first spoken by a Hebrew poet and theologian writing, scholars believe, during the Babylonian exile. Genesis was written for a faith community in exile, not to explain how the universe came into being but, rather, to reassure the people that the God who created the universe and called it good was still God, and had not yet finished the work of creation with the people.
At a moment when one might have expected words of fear, of hate, of vengeance, the poet in exile spoke a word of light and of hope into the darkness and despair of exile.
Of course, scripture compiles many voices, and the lectionary places before us this day the dancing song of victory from the Exodus story. God has triumphed. Horse and rider have been swept away. Miriam puts on the timbrels and dances in celebration. I read that today and think of the spontaneous celebrations that followed the death of bin Laden last spring.
However, I also read that story of triumph mindful of the midrash of the ancient rabbis, who told the story of the angels dancing in heaven when pharaoh’s army got drowned but then noticing that God was weeping. The angels stopped dancing and asked why God was crying at such a triumphant moment, and God answered, those soldiers are someone’s son or husband or father. Now is not the time for dancing.
There is a time for dancing and a time for weeping, and sometimes it is difficult to know and name the time. When we cannot name the time, it becomes incredibly difficult to speak the right words. When we are lost in our own time we are like exiles, far from home. In such a time, is it yet possible to speak a word of hope?
After ten years of seemingly endless violence that tears at the very soul of the nation is it yet possible to speak a word of light and of hope into our own darkness and despair?
Oh, to be sure, most of us have long since moved on from the emotional trauma of that bright September morning. We have come to grips – and some have come to profit – from the national security state. We accept as normal and necessary inconveniences to our movement and invasions our privacy that would have outraged us a generation ago.
In the new normal most of us don’t feel anything like constant despair and the world doesn’t strike us as particularly dark. We’ve adjusted. We’ve moved on. There is a rising generation that has no memory of the actual events of September 11, 2001. They have lives to live. We have lives to live.
And yet, I can’t help hearing Isaiah – the great prophet of the Exile – who spoke a truth that named the present time for his people:
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades (Isaiah 40:6-8).
To a people who surely felt their flower fading, who knew what it was to be grass tossed into the Babylonian fires, Isaiah named the moment. He named the despair. He named also the deep brokenness and sinfulness of his own people castigating their leaders for ignoring the widows and the orphans. He spoke what could have been merely a word of doom.
Nevertheless, he proclaimed that though “the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of the Lord endures forever.”
On that pivot – the word of the Lord – turns the whole, not only of the several texts of Isaiah, but also the whole tradition of our holy texts. More than that, I would even say that on that pivot – the enduring word of the Lord – turns all of our histories.
And what is the word of the Lord for us on this day, on this tenth anniversary, when we have learned to live as exiles, adjusted to our captivity to endless war and willingly pledging our allegiance to the national security state?
Well, what was the word of the Lord for the exiles in Babylon?
“In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth …”
From the midst of exile, God speaks a new and creative word that reminds the exiles that God has been creating for a very long time and that God is not yet finished with us. In spite of ourselves, in spite of what we do to one another and to a creation that God has called good, in spite of all of that, God is not finished with us yet.
The present moment must surely have felt dark and the Babylonian exiles surely, from time to time, felt themselves stumbling blindly in the darkness of their captivity. Into that darkness, what was the word of the Lord for the exiles?
“Let there be light.”
In the darkness, God speaks a new and creative word, to remind us that God is not finished with us yet.
“Let there be light!”
So what is the word of the Lord for us today? Followers of Jesus, exiled in a post-Christian culture? People of faith in a age of disbelief? Followers of the prince of peace in a time of endless war?
What is the word of the Lord for us?
God speaks to us and through us in all kinds of ways. It is, after all, what God does. God spoke to the exiles through the poetry of Genesis and Isaiah. God speaks still, often through the words of our own poets.
I may have first heard Mary Oliver’s poem, A Summer Day, on a September 11 edition of Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac a few years back. It struck me the first time I heard it as a wonderfully prophetic, creative word to speak into the darkness and doubt, the confusion of our times. The poem, written almost 20 years ago, ends like this:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
In the beginning, when God was creating … creating your wild and precious life and calling it good … in our rising up each day into new beginnings, when God is still creating your one wild and precious life. What shall you do with it? How then shall you live it? What can you hope for?
This morning, you get the final word, and the invitation to write your own answer to those questions.
In a moment I’m going to play a piece of Rutter’s Requiem, and as the music plays I invite you to jot down your own hopes – for your family, for this community, for the nation – whatever level you’re thinking on this morning. Then we’ll gather at table, and I invite you to bring your hopes to the table where you will share in the grace of Jesus Christ, the ground of all our hopes. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
1:02 PM
