Creation & Commission
June 15, 2014
Genesis 1; Matthew 28
I have been variously accused during my 15 years of ministry
of being too political, of being not political enough, and of being too subtle.
I suspect that in the next 15 minutes of my ministry, I’ll be each of those
things again, and I do hope that in the next 10 to 15 weeks, we’ll be all of
those things, and more, together.
Over the past couple of years, we have engaged in several
cooperative ventures in worship with our daughter congregation, the Church of
the Covenant, and our sister congregation, Arlington Presbyterian. This summer,
we’re going to welcome an additional community, Fairlington Presby, to this
circle and the four congregations will be working from a shared liturgy each
Sunday. We’re working on some plans for a Labor Day weekend multi-congregational
picnic and worship – about which much more is to come.
“So,” you might ask, “what does this have to do with
politics?”
Or, you might just ask, “so what?”
We just read the rich and quite familiar words from the
first creation story in Genesis. Generally speaking, these words, in that very
familiarity, are more comforting than challenging, and that’s probably a good
thing given where the lectionary is going to take us this summer.
We’re in Genesis throughout the summer, but we’re skipping
straight from the pastoral images of the creation myth into the discomforting,
even strange world of the founding stories of God’s chosen people. Yes, we’re
spending the summer in the company of the wildly dysfunctional First Family of
Israel: Abraham and Sarah and their offspring.
Summer is often “family reunion” time, and on Sunday
mornings at CPC this summer we’re going to visit the family reunion of Abraham
and Sarah. We’ll hear their stories. You’ve heard them before. Remember that
crazy hiking trip Abraham took with Isaac? How about that little thing, or
fling, Abraham had with the servant girl, Hagar?
Oh, right. Polite families don’t talk about such things.
Well, apparently the people of Israel not only talked, but
they wrote down these stories and canonized them as sacred scripture. We’re
going to spend the summer with this crazy family, and explore some of the sex
and violence at the roots of our own tradition.
Sex and violence at the roots of our family tree.
That’s the subtle part this morning.
Well, maybe not. Actually, our gathering, around the water
of the font, was the subtle beginning of our family reunion. In the waters of
our baptism we are connected – to our sisters and brothers worshipping today at
Covenant and Arlington and Fairlington, and to every other sister and brother
who walks and stumbles along the way of Jesus.
We say we are washed clean in the waters of baptism, and,
before you go to meet extended family, don’t you want to clean up a bit?
I don’t know about you, but I know that many time, before I
step into the circle of extended family, I not only want to clean up, but I also
want to set aside things that are burdening me, that are weighing me down. So
we began our worship in an act of prayerful unburdening, lighting candles to
symbolize those situations in our own lives that we hold in the light of God’s
love and grace.
Having come to the font, I feel ready to take on the less
subtle parts of engaging the family – including the political parts.
I noted a moment ago that the creation story is often a
comforting one, and it should be that. Lots of us find comfort in trusting the
God who created the world and all that is in it, and pronounced it “good.”
That’s well and, well, “good,” as far as it goes. However,
we cut off the reading there. Of course it goes on through all the days of
creation, and includes the charge to be fruitful and multiply – we’re still in
the words of comfort that far – but then comes the great responsibility:
“dominion” over the earth.
This does not mean domination over the earth, but rather
stewardship, care and concern for it, as with a garden. More to the point, the
creation story invites us into ongoing relationship with the Creator and with
the whole of creation.
The reality of our world compels us, in the words of our
Brief Statement of Faith, to confess that “we threaten death to the planet
entrusted to our care.”
Present reality and Biblical mandate taken together do not
an overly subtle point make. Indeed, they cry out loudly and clearly for a politics
of creation care, and as church in the capital of the nation that uses way more
than its fair share of the earth’s resources, that politics might just need to
start with confession that strives toward reconciliation and restored right
relations with creation and with the rest of the human family, as well.
The condition of the environment is enough to make one
angry, to spark one’s passion, to get one out of bed in the morning to work for
change. It’s far from the only concern, and this is not about rank-ordering of passion
nor a hierarchy of suffering. It is, however, about us; about our passions;
about what sparks us. So I want to pause, for just a moment, for a prayerful
naming of passions.
We’re not engaging in expository, explanatory, issue papers
here. We’re offering prayers. Still, I do invite you, in the quiet of this
moment, to name issues and concerns about which you are passionate:
Lord, hear our prayers.
* *
*
Lord, hear our prayers, and give us the courage of the
followers of Jesus, who have prayed in all times and all places the prayer he
taught. …
Praying together, following the teaching of Jesus, is one of
the ways we practice discipleship. It’s one of the ways we follow the great
commission: go into all the world discipling – as Matthew 28 could well be
translated. That is, go out into the world and invite all kinds of people to
join in a community whose life is centered on what Jesus taught.
And what is that? As James Robinson put it, “Trust God to
care for you, and hear God calling on you to care for your neighbor.”[1]
Hear God calling.
Listen for the voice of a 1st century rabbi from
the little town of Bethlehem: “if you love me, feed my sheep; if you love me,
tend my sheep; if you love me, feed my sheep.”
God calls us to send us. How do we hear this call?
The pull of conscience when we know our consumption is
fueling the earth’s warming, the fracturing of your heart at the most recent
spasm of gun violence, the rending of your peace at the latest example of
sexism or racism or heterosexism. These are the ways God speaks. These are the
ways God calls. These are the foundations of our politics.
Our passions are God’s calling to us.
Here’s the political part: we are called, in Jesus’ great
commission, to build relationships with all peoples.
Politics, rightly and fully and deeply understood and
realized is nothing more and nothing less than the order of power in the city.
Any “politics of Jesus” must be first, and foremost, about the ways power is
used in the city in the pursuit justice.
And what is justice? In scripture, justice amount to this:
sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it.
The rub is this: to understand that, to get it right,
requires that we live in deep, authentic relationship with one another. We can
start with our sister congregations, and that’s good, but it is all the more
necessary today that we build such relationships with people who are not like
us – people who understand “belonging” differently, who may have different
priorities around “what belongs to them” than we do, and people who may have a
valid claim on what we have come to think of as “ours.”
A politics of Jesus begins in relationships, in sticky,
difficult, challenging human relationships.
That’s why to table is central to our life.
It where we hear Jesus call; it’s where we respond to that
calling by saying “send me, Jesus, lead me Jesus, fill me Jesus. Send me, lord.”
Thuma mina.
Lord, when we see our neighbor hungry, send us out with food,
and help us shatter every barrier to tables of plenty and welcome.
Thuma mina.
Lord, when we read the news of another school shooting, lead
us to some deeper wisdom, some political courage, and the passion to insist
“not one more.”
Thuma mina.
Lord, when we witness sexism, racism – however subtle or not
– give us the courage of our convictions to speak up and speak out, and the
passion to make the personal into the political and work to change not only
hearts and minds but also systems and structures of patriarchy and racism.
Thuma mina.
Send me, Jesus. Lead me, Jesus. Fill me, Jesus.
Send us out into all the world – the world created good by
the triune God – to build and foster relationships between and among all
peoples.
Lead us into deep relationships where we learn to listen for
quiet voices – for your voice – and where we learn together to follow the way
of the nonviolent Jesus.
Fill us with your Spirit – a spirit of love and of grace –
that we may be instruments of your peace. Thuma
mina. Send us, lord. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
10:52 AM
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