September 12, 2010 - Proper 19, Year C (RCL)
In the beginning
the earth was formless and void
and darkness covered
the face of the deep.
And a mighty wind
blew across
the water.
It was chaos.
And then, then God spoke. “Let there be light.”
And there was light.
“Let there be sky.”
And there was the sky.
“And let there be land, and sea, and plants,
and sun and moon and stars,
and fish and birds and animals.”
And there was land, and sea, and plants,
and sun and moon and stars,
and fish and birds and animals.
“Let there be human beings.”
And there were human beings,
made in the image of God.
And they all lived happily together in a beautiful garden
under the watchful eye of God,
until the day
when the human beings decided
that they knew better than God,
and ate
the forbidden
fruit.
And were thrown out of the garden,
sent away
and told to fend
for themselves.
But they weren’t forgotten.
God continued
to watch over them,
and even though, time after time
they rejected God,
God kept reaching out,
kept caring for them,
kept inviting them back
to the relationship
they had once had.
But eventually
God got tired of it all.
Got tired
of being ignored,
got tired
of being opposed.
Got tired
of the his travesty
once beautiful creation
had become.
It didn’t seem to matter
what God did,
they didn’t want to part of it.
And God began to wonder
if perhaps the best thing
would be
to begin
again.
But God still loved the people he had created.
They had too much history together
to simply be discarded.
And so he gave them
another chance.
And another.
And another.
And each time,
the people would respond to God,
well, some of them, anyway,
and would begin to live
as God had created them to live.
For a while.
And then, gradually,
they’d get caught back up
in their own ways of doing things.
And they’d begin to forget God,
all but a few of them,
and soon they were back where they started.
And God began to wonder,
what would it take
to get the people
to listen?
What would it take
to pay attention?
It didn’t seem to matter
how many prophets God sent,
how severe the warnings.
The people, God’s people,
didn’t seem to care.
Nothing
worked.
And so, finally, God decided
that the only option
was destruction.
It was the inevitable consequence
of what the people had done.
And so a wind would come,
a mighty wind,
but not like the mighty wind of creation.
This wind
would not bring life;
this wind
would bring death.
Hot and fierce, the sort of wind that rips leaves off trees and leaves them bare,
the sort of wind
that brings clouds of dust
that sneaks in the cracks of windows and doors,
that rubs your eyes raw and fills your lungs and sends animals into panic,
the sort of wind
that does not create
but destroys.
And that wind would simply be
the forebear
of disaster.
And there would be no light.
And the earth would become a wasteland,
mountains quaking to rubble.
The birds would flee and the animals died
and the plants shrivel away,
and the land become desolate.
And the earth
would be formless and void.
And darkness
would cover it.
The undoing
of creation.
It’s worth noting
that this description we read
of the undoing of God’s creation
doesn’t seem to come from God’s mouth.
It actually seems to be Jeremiah
who is speaking.
And what he is saying
is not so much a warning
as a simple description.
This is what
it is going to look like.
It’s not clear
who is going to cause it. Is it God, striking out in anger?
Or is it simply the armies of an invading conquerer,
taking advantage of weak leaders
more concerned with good living than wise government?
But either way the people are doomed. Because this time
God isn’t coming to the rescue.
This time
God is going to listen to them. They have said they don’t want God in their lives?
Then God won’t intervene.
And there is no turning back. This time, God is done.
Done with the people’s unfaithfulness.
Done with the people’s lack of caring.
Done with the people’s lack of attention.
That’s the message of this part of Jeremiah. God is done.
The people have not paid attention, and God let them bear
the consequences
of their inattention.
Back in verse 18 of chapter 4, one of the verses we skipped over, God says,
“Your ways and your doings
have brought this upon you.
This is our doom; how bitter it is!
It has reached your very heart.”
The verdict is certain: guilty.
The result is clear: destruction.
And yet, there is a hint of hope.
Eight words. “Yet I will not make
a full end.”
God will not
totally destroy them. Something, someone
will be saved.
You might know
what happened in the end.
Judah was overrun with invaders.
Eventually it happened to Israel too.
The promised land
became a wasteland.
The people of God were taken into exile.
A small remnant remained,
and they together with the faithful who eventually returned from exile
began to rebuild the people of God.
But even then, it wasn’t enough. Somehow,
the people didn’t learn from what they had experienced.
They still didn’t
pay attention to God.
And so God began
all over again.
That’s how we ended up with Jesus,
that’s how we ended up
with the faith that we profess,
the faith that we call Christian.
But you know, the same problem still persists.
We’re not really a whole lot different
We still struggle to pay attention to God.
Recently there has been a lot in the news about Islam,
both about the building of the center in lower Manhattan,
and the threatened burning of the Quran in Florida.
In all the debate and the stories and the hype
what struck me most was the report I read
about some of the street vendors in lower Manhattan.
Someone who worked in the area wrote how he had noticed
these street vendors.
Each day, five times, they would simply stop selling their handbags and pashminas and sunglasses,
roll out a small square of carpet, and kneel to the east to pray.
The noise of the taxis squeezing through the gaps in traffic,
the rumble of the subway underneath,
the noise of conversation and cellphones and children
none of that would distract them; without any fuss,
they would simply get on with their prayers.
And I wonder if that’s not the biggest challenge to us as American Christians.
Not whether or where an islamic center is built, whether it’s in New York City or Murfreesboro,Tennessee,
but whether we are willing to take our faith
as seriously as our Muslim brothers and sisters.
Not to become martyrs,
because that’s only a tiny minority of extremist muslims, just as Timothy McVey, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, was only one of a tiny minority of Christian extremists,
but seriously enough
that we would take time out of our ordinary lives
to stop
and pray.
That our faith in God
would take precedence over the rest of our lives,
and shape our lives through and through.
What will it take for us to take God that seriously?
On Friday I met with my spiritual director.
She has set me a task of doing ten minutes of silent prayer each day.
And we were talking about how easy it is for me to find reasons
not to pray. Usually
it’s that I am too tired.
Because I usually do this prayer
late at night.
But somehow
I always find time
to watch few minutes of TV, or play a game of sudoku,
or read a chapter of a novel,
or make another cup of coffee.
all of those things
take about the same time
as my ten minutes
of listening to God.
And my spiritual director reminded me
that we rarely miss a meal, or anything else
that we really want to do.
So why is it so easy
to miss out
on God?
My task for the next month, until the next time I meet with my spiritual director,
is to take God seriously.
To pay attention.
To take the time to worship God.
To pray.
To quit making excuses.
I invite you to join me.
And I suspect that what we’ll find
is that God will take us seriously,
and will enter our lives
in new and unexpected ways,
and bless us more
than we would have thought possible.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010