Building On Sand
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
Every day we have fresh evidence that moral evil is not only a factor in personal life but -- with enormously more potential for destruction -- in societies and nations. Nuclear tensions are once again rising, as is the use in many places of violence to gain political power. How and where can we find security, our "house on the rock"? Lead writer Chris Ewing reflects on the striking references to violence in the appointed lections for this Sunday, especially in the Noah story and in Jesus' words about collapse of the house in a flood, and asks how we might come to terms with the idea of God's wrath, an explicit theme in the First Reading.
The Immediate Word team members add their own thoughts on the question of security in a violent world, providing comments, illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
BUILDING ON SAND
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19;
Psalm 46; Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28, (29-31); Matthew 7:21-29
By Chris Ewing
One doesn't have to be God these days to see that the earth is "corrupt ... and ... filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11). It seems that danger, storms, and shifting foundations surround us on every side, as do impassioned arguments about how to deal with these problems. When a rogue state like North Korea pushes ahead with nuclear-weapons testing, and when the war on terror seems only to be embroiling all concerned in more intractable violence, what can we learn from our Scriptural heritage about responding to corruption and violence? Is weaponization of space and other manifestations of massive military superiority the way to security? What do we mean by security, anyway?
This week's Scripture readings offer much material for reflection. The flood saga directly raises the question of the place of violence in responding to violence. Is there a "final solution" to human corruption? If not, what then?
If the flood story itself begins to suggest some possibilities, Jesus at the end of his Sermon on the Mount issues an unambiguous call to a whole new approach to life and its problems. Very often the story of the wise and foolish builders is taken in isolation, the content of "these words of mine" (Matthew 8:24) left to be reconstructed from the hearer's general apprehension (accurate or otherwise) of what Jesus was all about. If we reconnect this exhortation to its context, what is Jesus saying that constitutes a well-founded approach to life, and what is he saying that will bring our world crashing down around our ears? These are urgent questions, and the citizens in our pews deserve an opportunity to faithfully engage them.
What Kind of God?
Often inappropriately relegated to the domain of children's tales, the Genesis story of the flood raises profound and troubling questions about God's relationship to the earth, and in particular to reprobate humanity.
The story as we have it clearly states that the flood was unleashed as judgment, a divine response to human corruption and violence (Genesis 6:11-13), and/or the outworking of the curse upon the ground uttered in 3:17 (compare 8:21 -- Von Rad in his commentary on Genesis [OT Library; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972], p. 122). Though few would argue that some humans are truly evil, and that the earth as a whole might fare better without our species, there is something profoundly morally troubling about a God whose answer to violence is violence, not to mention the wholesale destruction of not only humanity (including innocent infants, and adults who were surely no worse than Noah -- God here sounds like the depressed Elijah who claimed there was only one faithful person left [1 Kings 19:10]), but also all other creatures and even the inanimate life of the planet. In an age in which we have come to recognize that spanking a misbehaving child is a less than edifying lesson, how do we respond to a God who descends to the level of a corrupt and violent creation? Is this act of judgment redeemed by God's initiative to save a few, or by the subsequent decision (8:21; also 9:11, 15) never to destroy the earth again?
There are those who have asserted that the attribution of violence to God is nothing more than projection, that the flood was simply a natural disaster into which stricken humans read divine wrath. Like young children who in their self-centeredness assume that everything that goes wrong in the family, such as a grandparent's death, is somehow their own fault, even as adults we are prone to read divine judgment into the terrible events that befall us.
This is not merely an ancient proclivity. When Saskatchewan suffered several consecutive years of drought recently, a community prayer meeting was convoked, and I was appalled to hear more than one person pray aloud asking God's forgiveness for whatever failure of faith or morals they conceived to have caused the drought. And who can forget the "God is really mad" (about North American sexual morality, of all things!) rhetoric that followed the September 11 attacks? Not only does such language betray very dubious theology but it also tempts us to ignore the degree of responsibility we may actually have for the disaster (misguided foreign policy in the one case; farming practices that may exacerbate the effects of natural climate cycles in the other).
So we could understand the "divine wrath" theory advanced for the flood as human projection onto God. Roman Catholic philosopher and anthropologist René Girard speaks of biblical "texts in travail," which struggle to birth God's demythologizing revelation from the mesmerizing culture of sacral violence. God is not violent and does not demand violence. Yet the persistent use humans have made of violence to control mimetic rivalry and establish or reunify community makes it very difficult for us to see this truth. (See the quote from Gil Bailie, below, for more on the struggle between myth and revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures.)
The flood story as it stands shows us a crisis in the heart of God, issuing in two momentous decisions about how to respond to human corruption and violence -- first by violent judgment (chapter 6), then by forbearance and will to save (chapters 8-9). Whether the crisis is actually God's (as suggested by Barry Robinson in the sermon referenced below) or whether it is ours as we see our own violent tendencies through the eyes of God, it represents a turning point in the way that we understand God to respond to the sin of the world.
What Kind of Humanity?
If Genesis' portrait of God is troublingly ambiguous, Jesus' picture of God is troublingly clear. For the God he presents -- and calls us to emulate -- is the God of Genesis 8:21, whose response to evil is a unilateral decision to be good. This is a God who does not merely allow the evil to go their way, but who loves enemies and reaches out to them, turning murderous rejection into the means of redemption. This is a God who does not play by our rules, but whose ways and thoughts go far beyond ours (Isaiah 55:6-9).
This is made especially clear in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), of which today's Gospel forms the conclusion. Very often this pericope is taken in isolation, as if it were a freestanding exhortation to be good people. It is a far more powerful and subversive text than that. For "these words of mine" upon which Jesus' hearers are urged to ground their lives as upon bedrock (Matthew 7:24, 26) can only refer to the revolutionary teachings of the previous three chapters.
As against the adversarial thinking that tends to dominate human responses to corruption and danger, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount advocates a suspension of both judgment and worry, a release of anger, a profound integrity of vision and action while forgiving those whose choices wound us. He urges peacemaking, relinquishment of earthly treasure in favor of heavenly, prayer, and a quiet generosity both spiritual ("as we forgive") and pecuniary ("when you give alms"). The foundation for all of this is radical trust in a merciful and provident God, who alone is to be served. All else, he says, is shifting sand.
It is often complained that Jesus' ways "do not work" in the real world -- that in a world of wolves and rats, lambs and doves do not last long. Jesus himself, hard-nosed realists are quick to point out, was crucified, a fate few of us wish to share.
Such objections, while true, miss the point. The God whose only way is love made a choice -- perhaps subsequent to the flood, perhaps before the dawn of creation -- to consider that freely loving us was more important than shaping us up. God recognized what human parents are often slow to tumble to: that coercion cannot create right relationship. In the face of failure, error and outright rebellion, the saving choice is not to seek a "final solution" to the presenting problem, but to remain in faithful relationship. God of all persons knows that this does not always result in right relationship. But distorted relationships are not solved by both parties abdicating. Nor does the choice of both to "play hardball" increase the safety of either, let alone restore a functional relationship. (There were plenty of wolves and rats crucified along with the Lamb in Jesus' day, and none of them were either resurrected or made means of reconciliation.) While we as limited humans may need at times to withdraw from hopelessly destructive relationships, and to set limits around the abuse that is perpetrated upon us, we must recognize that this is a necessity imposed by our limited and fallen nature, not by the righteousness of God. Never should we project our judgmental inclinations upon the heart of God or claim divine sanction for hostile actions. Our calling is not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).
Does this "work" in real life? In international affairs? Sometimes it does fairly quickly result in a de-escalation of hostility and progress toward improved relations. Sometimes it does not. Often constructive action is blocked by the reality that people and nations have important interests at stake that they do not feel they can relinquish. This is especially problematic for governments: can they responsibly renounce, on behalf of millions of citizens, some greatly needed resource, such as water, oil, or a secure border? These are serious questions that are not easily answered. At the very least, however, they need to be weighed in the balance against questions of right relationship: not only, is it beneficial to us, but is it beneficial and fair to all parties, as well as to others who may be affected? Not "How can we maintain superiority?" but "How can all peoples and nations enjoy more well-being and security?" Not just "How does this look to me and mine?" but also "If the shoe were on the other foot, how would this look to us then, and what would we want to change?" "In everything," said Jesus near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, "do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12).
These are easy questions to raise in a sermon, very difficult questions to negotiate in the tangle of daily life. They were not easy questions for the biblical writers, and it is not surprising that we have a complex and sometimes contradictory witness as to the faithful response. If there is complexity and contradiction in Scripture, however, there is also clarity about which way bedrock lies. To live in the world on the world's terms is not nearly so secure a proposition as it might appear. We might as well put up a shack on the beach in tsunami country.
The overall tendency of Scripture, and the clear teaching of Jesus, is that in this treacherously difficult world, while there is no "final solution" to evil and danger, there is a security to be found in grounding one's life and choices in the character of God. Justice and compassion are to be the foundation of national as well as of individual life. Fidelity to this way may or may not spare a person or a nation from trouble; it may or may not enable right relationships or deliver "the good life." These temporal outcomes are too dependent on the vagaries -- the shifting sand -- of circumstance and others' choices. To demand such outcomes, in fact, is to build foolishly on sand. The end does not justify the means. The means, sooner or later, become the end. Peaceful integrity is the only way to either peace or integrity: the big stick and the expedient action cannot take us there. Love and justice are the only way to right relationship: coercion and selfishness cannot take us there. Hearing what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount, and doing it, is the house anchored on bedrock, the only one that will stand.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: I should begin with a confession that is relevant to our topic this week. When I'm not the principal Immediate Word writer, I usually don't get my contribution done till Monday evening or even, pushing the deadline, Tuesday morning. This week I'm writing on Sunday because Monday evening will be taken up with the two-hour season finale of the TV program 24, which I've gotten mildly hooked on this season. I need to find out if an American city is going to be destroyed by one of our nuclear weapons which terrorists have stolen.
24 is, I think, well done -- which doesn't mean that it's pretty. It's presented as a real-time account of a day in the life of a U.S. counter-terrorism unit actively combating enemy plots, with a lot of violence, no holds barred interrogation of prisoners and an often rather cynical view of politics. In the wake of 9/11 it's not surprising that a show like this would be popular in the United States -- popular in a morbid sort of way, because the attacks on America four years ago made us fear that the kinds of things portrayed here are real possibilities.
Of course these concerns aren't new. We had a brief period relatively free from such fears between the fall of the Soviet Union and the first terrorist attacks on the United States, but for over half a century we've known about the possibility that so-called ABW (atomic, biological, chemical) weapons could be used against us. We've been looking for an elusive security ever since the first Soviet nuclear test in 1950.
There are two obvious places to look for security. Religious people (which most Americans are to some degree) will think of God. If we trust in God then God will keep us safe. I remember back in the '50s, when I was a junior high student rather more naïve than I am now, hearing a preacher on the radio talking about the threats to our country posed by Russian atomic bombs. But we needn't fear, he told his audience, because the Bible says, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" That took care of my worries for a while -- until I began to wonder how we know that God is for us.
Which is just to say that the certainty that Paul speaks of in Romans 8, that nothing can separate those in Christ from the love of God, can't immediately be transferred to the material security of the United States of America. What the gospel promises is that we are secure in spite of suffering, persecution, and death, not that we are secure from those things. But of course none of this means that we aren't to look to God for security.
There is the other obvious place to look -- to our preparedness, military and otherwise. If we're able to threaten any potential aggressor with defeat and/or to fend off any attack, we'll be secure, at least as far as our material well-being is concerned.
Now those two sources of security, God and our own resources, need not be understood as contradictory. We can see the second as the means through which God works to protect us. The idea that we could be physically secure in a hostile world just by relying on God, without any need to be on the alert for attacks, is a naïve denial of secondary causation. It's like thinking we can just say "Give us this day our daily bread" and then wait at the table for food to appear. Our resources -- military, economic and so on -- are penultimate means of security, but our ultimate confidence is to be in God.
Which sounds good -- except ... . Except that it's too easy to let "In God we trust" be just a pious phrase while our real reliance is on our wealth, our weapons systems and so forth. "Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD" said Isaiah (31:1) 2700 years ago. More recently Tom Lehrer put it another way: "'The Lord's my shepherd,' says the Psalm, but just in case, we need the bomb."
When weapons systems and military preparations are seen as our de facto ultimate source of security, then we'll never feel really secure. We can always imagine new threats for which we'll need new weapons -- new types of nuclear weapons ("bunker busters"), the space-based weapons discussed in the New York Times link that Chris provides, and so forth. It's a little bit like the way in which rich people so often are driven to get more money.
What this week's Gospel perhaps points us to is not new types of weapons but a new type of God. Jesus calls us here to build on his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and if that is the ethic of the Kingdom of God then we're talking about a God who is different in some important ways from the God of standard brand religion. The point isn't so much that if we were just more faithful to the Sermon on the Mount then God would reward us with security and punish our enemies. This is, as Jesus said just a bit earlier, the God who "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45). But if we were more aligned with the teachings of Jesus, our understanding of our security needs might be a little clearer. We might not think, for example, that we had a right to all the oil we happen to want.
And our attitudes toward people of other faiths and other political systems might be a bit different, so that some of the things that arouse hostility would be done away with.
Carlos Wilton responds: "Rods from God." That's the name for a bizarre-sounding new weapon that the Pentagon is in the process of developing, for deployment in outer space. Just as many of our people are heading off to the theaters to see the new Star Wars movie, here is a bit of real "star wars" weaponry, appearing in the headlines. A May 18 New York Times article describes it:
"Another Air Force space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon."
For the full article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html.
The thought of a fearsome space weapon like this is troubling enough, but even more troubling is the self-consciously theological imagery its human creators have chosen to describe it. It sounds like the classic mythological image of a thunderbolt, hurled down from heaven by an angry deity.
Does God respond violently toward the world or any of its inhabitants, zapping us with thunderbolts of righteous wrath? It's a question that may be stirred up in the minds of our people by the Noah story, which comes up in the lectionary readings for this week.
Noteworthy in the First Reading for this week is the change in tone from the beginning of the lection to the end. In Genesis 6:13, God pronounces this judgment of doom: "I have determined to make an end of all flesh. ..." Just two chapters later, God is singing a new tune, commanding Noah, "Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh -- birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth -- so that they may abound on the earth. ..." [8:17]. In two chapters, we've gone from the destruction of "all flesh" to its benevolent preservation. What gives? Is God so mercurial as all that?
Although it doesn't occur in this week's lection, it may be worthwhile to mention the "bow in the clouds" of Genesis 9:13. When we hear that expression, most of us immediately picture a rainbow, and think thoughts of love and harmony. The ancients looked to the rainbow and saw not a multicolored banner of gentleness and peace but rather a fearsome weapon of war. The Hebrew word is the name of a weapon. The rainbow is literally God's bow, hung up in the sky.
Many of our people will find this image of God packing a deadly weapon difficult to accept. What -- in earth or heaven -- is God doing with a bow? Far more comforting it is to imagine the Lord as a benevolent celestial artist, festooning the heavens with all the colors of the rainbow. Yet this is not God, the interior decorator. It's jarring, to say the least, to picture God as a sweaty, muscle-bound warrior, weary from battle, unslinging the bow and hanging it high -- but that's what this highly anthropomorphic text says. Sure, the episode ends with the covenant assurance that God "ain't gonna study war no more." But along the way, Genesis portrays God as a deity to be reckoned with.
Is God, then, a God of wrath? Classical Christian theology says "Yes" -- as troubling as that may sound to modern sensibilities. I remember reading, years ago, a discussion by theologian Emil Brunner about the wrath of God. Brunner was making the point that wrath and love dwell in God simultaneously, and that one is inseparable from the other. Stripped of love, wrath is arbitrary, capricious. and dangerous. Stripped of wrath, love is weak and ineffectual, allowing justice to be trampled underfoot. As paradoxical as it may sound, our God is a God of both wrath and love.
But "rods from God"? I don't think so!
Related Illustrations and Quotations
From Carlos Wilton:
Several years ago, the PBS network presented a fine documentary series called "Genesis: A Living Conversation." TV commentator Bill Moyers assembled ten groups of distinguished Bible scholars, church leaders, and literary figures, to talk about this first book of the Bible.
In one of the early shows, they discussed this story of Noah. Bill Moyers asked one of the panel members, a newspaper editor, what kind of headline he would write for the Noah story. The editor responded with something predictable, like "GOD DESTROYS WORLD." One of the other panel members was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Proctor, for many years pastor of the great old Abyssinian Baptist Church, the leading African American church in Harlem. Proctor suggested an alternative headline: "GOD GIVES HUMANS SECOND CHANCE."
Proctor then went on to share something of how he had learned the Noah story: from his father, a Sunday School teacher. "Sometimes we laughed at the ridiculous aspects of it," he said, with a smile, "[but] we didn't try to rewrite it. We drew from it what it said right then to the people and went on. Every Wednesday, though, my daddy would press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club rehearsal. These sixty black guys -- table waiters, coal trimmers, truck drivers -- would give one big concert a year to the white population. [We] couldn't sit where we wanted to, even though our daddy was singing -- we had to sit in the back. But in the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And do you know the song they sang at the close of the concert? They sang, 'Yesterday the skies were gray/ but look, this morning they are blue.' Noah! 'The smiling sun tells everyone come/ Let's all sing, hallelujah/ for a new day is born/ The world is singing the song of!
the dawn.' Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the 1920s, with lynching everywhere and hatred -- 'nigger' this and 'nigger' that. But they had something we need to recover right now. I can't turn loose this story of Noah and the Flood because after all of the devastation ... there's a rainbow ... I'm not going to live without that kind of hope."
Old Sam Proctor has it exactly right. That rainbow in the sky is more than a "warm fuzzy." It's a powerful symbol of hope: a piece of positive evidence, hung right up there before our very eyes, that God is not finished yet -- not with the world, and not with us.
***
I saw no kind of vengeance in God, not for a short time nor for long. For, as I see it, if God were vengeful, even for a brief moment, we would never have life, place or being. In God is endless friendship, space, life and being.
--Julian of Norwich
***
In C. S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy, part of the Narnia series, Hwin the mare says to Aslan the lion, upon meeting him: "Please," she said, "You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."
***
In one of his books, Robert Farrar Capon speaks of the "... unhappy truth that the world is full of fools who won't believe a good thing when they hear it ... we will sooner accept a God we will be fed to than one we will be fed by."
***
More than sixty years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr summarized the creed of an easygoing American Christianity that has in our time triumphantly come to pass: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment though the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
--Cited by Kenneth L. Woodward in the New York Times, February 25, 2004, "Do You Recognize This Jesus?"
***
Fifty years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein's final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th year, I am the only remaining signatory. Because of this, I feel it is my duty to carry Einstein's message forward, into this 60th year since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which evoked almost universal opposition to any further use of nuclear weapons.
I was the only scientist to resign on moral grounds from the United States nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project. On Aug. 6, 1945, I switched on my radio and heard that we had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I knew that a new era had dawned in which nuclear weapons would be used, and I grew worried about the future of mankind.
--Nobel Peace Prize laureate Joseph Rotblat, "The 50-Year Shadow," op-ed column in the New York Times, May 17, 2005. Full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/opinion/17Rotblat.html?
***
Hate succeeds. The world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane.
--Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), p. 249
From Chris Ewing:
Not only is the Bible's first death a murder, but the Bible's first murderer is also the founder of the Bible's first culture. [In Girardian terms, the function of sacred violence is to found culture.] But the Bible doesn't sing the praises of this founding figure and celebrate the gloriousness of his violence; it remembers him as a murderer. Unfortunately, the Old Testament's moral lucidity -- its tactless preference for truth -- does not always carry the day as conclusively as it does in the Cain and Abel story. Neither, however, is it ever fully subdued, and it grows more irrepressible with each successive attempt to repress it. In the biblical literature, the forces of myth and revelation contend with each other in the boldest and most explicit ways. Though the struggle between them is occasionally both morally unedifying and theologically misleading, the literature in which it occurs is the most important one we have for understanding the journey from religion to faith, from myth to gospel.
There is plenty of violence in biblical literature. These are obviously troubled texts, but what troubles them is the truth. Myths exist to spare us the trouble. The greatness of the Hebrew Scriptures lies in the candor with which they document a struggle between Israel's dependence on a system of sacralized power and violence and its moral and theological ambivalence about the workings of such a system. This tension fairly defines the religious life of biblical Israel. ... If any literary artifacts might be deemed "divinely inspired," perhaps it is those texts that reveal what neither their authors nor their readers wish to have revealed.
--Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled (New York: Crossroad, 1997), p. 134
***
Barry Robinson has written a powerful sermon entitled "The Godward Side of Judgment" in which he explores the crisis of anger, love and sorrow in the heart of God that the Noah story depicts. A few excerpts:
The popular understanding of this story is that the crisis of the flood put the world in jeopardy. That the future of the human race is what is at risk. But if you read the story carefully, it is the heart and person of God that are in crisis. The crisis is not whether the flood will destroy the world; but what the wickedness of humankind will do in the heart of God. ...
This ancient story was written as a reminder that it is not darkness that is in the heart of God but a deep sorrow, a sorrow born of that limitation God has placed upon himself not to indulge his anger for everything that we have done and, God knows, continue to do to one another and the good earth. It is a story about God's remarkable decision to remain steadfast in his love toward us in spite of everything. The good news, not that there was a Noah or a rainbow, but that there was a God who would not abandon us. The good news that God chose to wait for the deep change that happened in his own heart one day -- to happen in all of our hearts.
The entire sermon can be found in the sermon archive at Richard Fairchild's "Kir-Shalom" website: http://www.spirit-net.ca/sermon. It may also be available directly from the author at fernstone@fernstone.org.
***
The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.
--New York Times, May 18, 2005; see the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
Theme: When trusted information and institutions change around us, our longing for security and safety grows. We become anxious as street vocabulary, the arts and the media present familiar ideas in different cadences, colors and formats. We seek comfort in scriptures.
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on Romans 1:16-17)
Leader: Welcome to this place this spring day! Here, with each other, we experience sanctuary from the hassles of life.
People: Here, we express our thanks to God; here we will rest and be refreshed by the Spirit.
Leader: As the culture is changing around you, where is your confidence?
People: We trust God to love us and to sustain us when everything else seems unsteady.
Leader: It is faith from beginning to end that puts us right with God.
People: God's gift of life in Christ sets us free from thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that are not consistent with teachings of Jesus.
Leader: God is One and invites all peoples to be at peace.
People: Amen!
PRAYER OF ADORATION (based on Psalm 46)
Living God, thank you for your readiness to walk with us through all the troubles of life. We know that you are our shelter and strength. Each dawn we are aware of the breath of life and the joy which comes as we consider the day before us. We anticipate opportunities to be your hands and voice in all our daily activities. For this hour, we give you our undivided attention, singing our praise and listening for your Word.
Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"All Glory Be to God on High." ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HOH
"Creating God, Your Fingers Trace." HANCOCK
"Sovereign Lord of All Creation." GENEVA
"A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing." DEO GRACIAS
"God Is Our Refuge and Our Strength." Psalm 46; WINCHESTER OLD
"O God, Our Help in Ages Past." Psalm 90; ST ANNE
"Now Praise the Hidden God of Love." DICKINSON COLLEGE
Stanza one would work well as doxological lyrics as part of the offering section of the liturgy. Stanza three is a nice "charge."
CALL TO CONFESSION (based on Romans 3:23)
It is human nature to ignore God's call to right living; it is our nature to think and behave in ways that diminish God's love for others and for ourselves. Look within your heart and mind and invite God to free you all sin.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Gracious God,
All the world seems to be grabbing for securities, for in so many places wars and rumors of wars threaten homes and the land.
Wipe from our hearts the desires for more-than-enough;
erase greediness from our thoughts;
curb our hunger for profit and give us prophets' courage to bring justice.
Free us from prejudices that thwart your love and live through us as hospitable neighbors. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE
In the person of Jesus of Nazareth we see the love of God for humanity. In the teachings of Jesus, we learn how to live as people of God. In Christ, we experience peace. This is good news. Receive it and feel Holy affirmation.
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE
"Dear Lord and Father," stanza 4 (REST)
Drop thy still dews of quietness till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress and
Let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AFFIRMATION (based on Matthew 7:24-29 and other sayings from the Sermon on the Mount)
We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the rock of our lives, his teachings the foundation for our decisions.
We experience God as the source of peace and joy, loving the world through us.
We sense the Spirit within us, guiding our daily activities to be consistent with Divine Love and hopes for humanity.
Together, we call the Holy One God, Creator of us all and believe that in living and dying, we are not left alone.
God knows us by name and invites us to our eternal homes.
Hallelujah!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (based on Matthew 6:24-30)
Life is more than food, more than beauty, more than brand name clothes for our bodies. Living well is different from bank accounts and mutual funds and securities. Yet, money is the exchange medium in our global village. It is needed here and around the planet to provide for this place and for people in need. Share as you can.
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Giver of Goodness,
Thank you for these gifts, these tithes and offerings. Use them to make this world a more wholesome environment for people and animals. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
Maker of rainbows,
The world seems new again after gentle rains with the color arch spread across the sky. Thank you for showers of blessings, for beautiful grasses and for nutritious foods. Thank you for stories of Noah and safety, for stories which banish corruption, for stories that give us hope.
Maker of rocks and sand,
All the universe reveals your imagination! Thank you for our planet and its many systems that sustain life. Guide us and our leaders to protect the air, the land, the waters, and the climate differences. As we build our homes, help us guard the wetlands and trees. Encourage us to value the dunes and mountains.
Deliverer from evil,
When all the world seems bent on "one-upsmanship" and profit, we pray for safety in our homes and in our schools. Guns and violence seem rampant and we pray for security in our yards and playgrounds. Chemicals and preservatives torment our joints, skin and sinuses, so we pray for healing inside and out. Employment vanishes from our cities and countrysides and so we pray for meaningful work to do which pays our mortgages and puts food on our tables.
Giver of grace,
We are a country at war -- so much of humanity is warring.
We remember the angel song: let there be peace on earth!
Let it begin with us. Be in the midst of soldiers and victims, terrorists and peacemakers
and give new, unmistakable evidences of hospitality. Amen.
BENEDICTION/CHARGE
From this sanctuary, take peace;
From this place, take calm;
From these people, take love.
Within yourself, find the zest to work, to play and to praise.
The Creating God is your strength!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 29, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
The Immediate Word team members add their own thoughts on the question of security in a violent world, providing comments, illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
BUILDING ON SAND
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19;
Psalm 46; Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28, (29-31); Matthew 7:21-29
By Chris Ewing
One doesn't have to be God these days to see that the earth is "corrupt ... and ... filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11). It seems that danger, storms, and shifting foundations surround us on every side, as do impassioned arguments about how to deal with these problems. When a rogue state like North Korea pushes ahead with nuclear-weapons testing, and when the war on terror seems only to be embroiling all concerned in more intractable violence, what can we learn from our Scriptural heritage about responding to corruption and violence? Is weaponization of space and other manifestations of massive military superiority the way to security? What do we mean by security, anyway?
This week's Scripture readings offer much material for reflection. The flood saga directly raises the question of the place of violence in responding to violence. Is there a "final solution" to human corruption? If not, what then?
If the flood story itself begins to suggest some possibilities, Jesus at the end of his Sermon on the Mount issues an unambiguous call to a whole new approach to life and its problems. Very often the story of the wise and foolish builders is taken in isolation, the content of "these words of mine" (Matthew 8:24) left to be reconstructed from the hearer's general apprehension (accurate or otherwise) of what Jesus was all about. If we reconnect this exhortation to its context, what is Jesus saying that constitutes a well-founded approach to life, and what is he saying that will bring our world crashing down around our ears? These are urgent questions, and the citizens in our pews deserve an opportunity to faithfully engage them.
What Kind of God?
Often inappropriately relegated to the domain of children's tales, the Genesis story of the flood raises profound and troubling questions about God's relationship to the earth, and in particular to reprobate humanity.
The story as we have it clearly states that the flood was unleashed as judgment, a divine response to human corruption and violence (Genesis 6:11-13), and/or the outworking of the curse upon the ground uttered in 3:17 (compare 8:21 -- Von Rad in his commentary on Genesis [OT Library; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972], p. 122). Though few would argue that some humans are truly evil, and that the earth as a whole might fare better without our species, there is something profoundly morally troubling about a God whose answer to violence is violence, not to mention the wholesale destruction of not only humanity (including innocent infants, and adults who were surely no worse than Noah -- God here sounds like the depressed Elijah who claimed there was only one faithful person left [1 Kings 19:10]), but also all other creatures and even the inanimate life of the planet. In an age in which we have come to recognize that spanking a misbehaving child is a less than edifying lesson, how do we respond to a God who descends to the level of a corrupt and violent creation? Is this act of judgment redeemed by God's initiative to save a few, or by the subsequent decision (8:21; also 9:11, 15) never to destroy the earth again?
There are those who have asserted that the attribution of violence to God is nothing more than projection, that the flood was simply a natural disaster into which stricken humans read divine wrath. Like young children who in their self-centeredness assume that everything that goes wrong in the family, such as a grandparent's death, is somehow their own fault, even as adults we are prone to read divine judgment into the terrible events that befall us.
This is not merely an ancient proclivity. When Saskatchewan suffered several consecutive years of drought recently, a community prayer meeting was convoked, and I was appalled to hear more than one person pray aloud asking God's forgiveness for whatever failure of faith or morals they conceived to have caused the drought. And who can forget the "God is really mad" (about North American sexual morality, of all things!) rhetoric that followed the September 11 attacks? Not only does such language betray very dubious theology but it also tempts us to ignore the degree of responsibility we may actually have for the disaster (misguided foreign policy in the one case; farming practices that may exacerbate the effects of natural climate cycles in the other).
So we could understand the "divine wrath" theory advanced for the flood as human projection onto God. Roman Catholic philosopher and anthropologist René Girard speaks of biblical "texts in travail," which struggle to birth God's demythologizing revelation from the mesmerizing culture of sacral violence. God is not violent and does not demand violence. Yet the persistent use humans have made of violence to control mimetic rivalry and establish or reunify community makes it very difficult for us to see this truth. (See the quote from Gil Bailie, below, for more on the struggle between myth and revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures.)
The flood story as it stands shows us a crisis in the heart of God, issuing in two momentous decisions about how to respond to human corruption and violence -- first by violent judgment (chapter 6), then by forbearance and will to save (chapters 8-9). Whether the crisis is actually God's (as suggested by Barry Robinson in the sermon referenced below) or whether it is ours as we see our own violent tendencies through the eyes of God, it represents a turning point in the way that we understand God to respond to the sin of the world.
What Kind of Humanity?
If Genesis' portrait of God is troublingly ambiguous, Jesus' picture of God is troublingly clear. For the God he presents -- and calls us to emulate -- is the God of Genesis 8:21, whose response to evil is a unilateral decision to be good. This is a God who does not merely allow the evil to go their way, but who loves enemies and reaches out to them, turning murderous rejection into the means of redemption. This is a God who does not play by our rules, but whose ways and thoughts go far beyond ours (Isaiah 55:6-9).
This is made especially clear in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), of which today's Gospel forms the conclusion. Very often this pericope is taken in isolation, as if it were a freestanding exhortation to be good people. It is a far more powerful and subversive text than that. For "these words of mine" upon which Jesus' hearers are urged to ground their lives as upon bedrock (Matthew 7:24, 26) can only refer to the revolutionary teachings of the previous three chapters.
As against the adversarial thinking that tends to dominate human responses to corruption and danger, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount advocates a suspension of both judgment and worry, a release of anger, a profound integrity of vision and action while forgiving those whose choices wound us. He urges peacemaking, relinquishment of earthly treasure in favor of heavenly, prayer, and a quiet generosity both spiritual ("as we forgive") and pecuniary ("when you give alms"). The foundation for all of this is radical trust in a merciful and provident God, who alone is to be served. All else, he says, is shifting sand.
It is often complained that Jesus' ways "do not work" in the real world -- that in a world of wolves and rats, lambs and doves do not last long. Jesus himself, hard-nosed realists are quick to point out, was crucified, a fate few of us wish to share.
Such objections, while true, miss the point. The God whose only way is love made a choice -- perhaps subsequent to the flood, perhaps before the dawn of creation -- to consider that freely loving us was more important than shaping us up. God recognized what human parents are often slow to tumble to: that coercion cannot create right relationship. In the face of failure, error and outright rebellion, the saving choice is not to seek a "final solution" to the presenting problem, but to remain in faithful relationship. God of all persons knows that this does not always result in right relationship. But distorted relationships are not solved by both parties abdicating. Nor does the choice of both to "play hardball" increase the safety of either, let alone restore a functional relationship. (There were plenty of wolves and rats crucified along with the Lamb in Jesus' day, and none of them were either resurrected or made means of reconciliation.) While we as limited humans may need at times to withdraw from hopelessly destructive relationships, and to set limits around the abuse that is perpetrated upon us, we must recognize that this is a necessity imposed by our limited and fallen nature, not by the righteousness of God. Never should we project our judgmental inclinations upon the heart of God or claim divine sanction for hostile actions. Our calling is not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).
Does this "work" in real life? In international affairs? Sometimes it does fairly quickly result in a de-escalation of hostility and progress toward improved relations. Sometimes it does not. Often constructive action is blocked by the reality that people and nations have important interests at stake that they do not feel they can relinquish. This is especially problematic for governments: can they responsibly renounce, on behalf of millions of citizens, some greatly needed resource, such as water, oil, or a secure border? These are serious questions that are not easily answered. At the very least, however, they need to be weighed in the balance against questions of right relationship: not only, is it beneficial to us, but is it beneficial and fair to all parties, as well as to others who may be affected? Not "How can we maintain superiority?" but "How can all peoples and nations enjoy more well-being and security?" Not just "How does this look to me and mine?" but also "If the shoe were on the other foot, how would this look to us then, and what would we want to change?" "In everything," said Jesus near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, "do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12).
These are easy questions to raise in a sermon, very difficult questions to negotiate in the tangle of daily life. They were not easy questions for the biblical writers, and it is not surprising that we have a complex and sometimes contradictory witness as to the faithful response. If there is complexity and contradiction in Scripture, however, there is also clarity about which way bedrock lies. To live in the world on the world's terms is not nearly so secure a proposition as it might appear. We might as well put up a shack on the beach in tsunami country.
The overall tendency of Scripture, and the clear teaching of Jesus, is that in this treacherously difficult world, while there is no "final solution" to evil and danger, there is a security to be found in grounding one's life and choices in the character of God. Justice and compassion are to be the foundation of national as well as of individual life. Fidelity to this way may or may not spare a person or a nation from trouble; it may or may not enable right relationships or deliver "the good life." These temporal outcomes are too dependent on the vagaries -- the shifting sand -- of circumstance and others' choices. To demand such outcomes, in fact, is to build foolishly on sand. The end does not justify the means. The means, sooner or later, become the end. Peaceful integrity is the only way to either peace or integrity: the big stick and the expedient action cannot take us there. Love and justice are the only way to right relationship: coercion and selfishness cannot take us there. Hearing what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount, and doing it, is the house anchored on bedrock, the only one that will stand.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: I should begin with a confession that is relevant to our topic this week. When I'm not the principal Immediate Word writer, I usually don't get my contribution done till Monday evening or even, pushing the deadline, Tuesday morning. This week I'm writing on Sunday because Monday evening will be taken up with the two-hour season finale of the TV program 24, which I've gotten mildly hooked on this season. I need to find out if an American city is going to be destroyed by one of our nuclear weapons which terrorists have stolen.
24 is, I think, well done -- which doesn't mean that it's pretty. It's presented as a real-time account of a day in the life of a U.S. counter-terrorism unit actively combating enemy plots, with a lot of violence, no holds barred interrogation of prisoners and an often rather cynical view of politics. In the wake of 9/11 it's not surprising that a show like this would be popular in the United States -- popular in a morbid sort of way, because the attacks on America four years ago made us fear that the kinds of things portrayed here are real possibilities.
Of course these concerns aren't new. We had a brief period relatively free from such fears between the fall of the Soviet Union and the first terrorist attacks on the United States, but for over half a century we've known about the possibility that so-called ABW (atomic, biological, chemical) weapons could be used against us. We've been looking for an elusive security ever since the first Soviet nuclear test in 1950.
There are two obvious places to look for security. Religious people (which most Americans are to some degree) will think of God. If we trust in God then God will keep us safe. I remember back in the '50s, when I was a junior high student rather more naïve than I am now, hearing a preacher on the radio talking about the threats to our country posed by Russian atomic bombs. But we needn't fear, he told his audience, because the Bible says, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" That took care of my worries for a while -- until I began to wonder how we know that God is for us.
Which is just to say that the certainty that Paul speaks of in Romans 8, that nothing can separate those in Christ from the love of God, can't immediately be transferred to the material security of the United States of America. What the gospel promises is that we are secure in spite of suffering, persecution, and death, not that we are secure from those things. But of course none of this means that we aren't to look to God for security.
There is the other obvious place to look -- to our preparedness, military and otherwise. If we're able to threaten any potential aggressor with defeat and/or to fend off any attack, we'll be secure, at least as far as our material well-being is concerned.
Now those two sources of security, God and our own resources, need not be understood as contradictory. We can see the second as the means through which God works to protect us. The idea that we could be physically secure in a hostile world just by relying on God, without any need to be on the alert for attacks, is a naïve denial of secondary causation. It's like thinking we can just say "Give us this day our daily bread" and then wait at the table for food to appear. Our resources -- military, economic and so on -- are penultimate means of security, but our ultimate confidence is to be in God.
Which sounds good -- except ... . Except that it's too easy to let "In God we trust" be just a pious phrase while our real reliance is on our wealth, our weapons systems and so forth. "Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD" said Isaiah (31:1) 2700 years ago. More recently Tom Lehrer put it another way: "'The Lord's my shepherd,' says the Psalm, but just in case, we need the bomb."
When weapons systems and military preparations are seen as our de facto ultimate source of security, then we'll never feel really secure. We can always imagine new threats for which we'll need new weapons -- new types of nuclear weapons ("bunker busters"), the space-based weapons discussed in the New York Times link that Chris provides, and so forth. It's a little bit like the way in which rich people so often are driven to get more money.
What this week's Gospel perhaps points us to is not new types of weapons but a new type of God. Jesus calls us here to build on his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and if that is the ethic of the Kingdom of God then we're talking about a God who is different in some important ways from the God of standard brand religion. The point isn't so much that if we were just more faithful to the Sermon on the Mount then God would reward us with security and punish our enemies. This is, as Jesus said just a bit earlier, the God who "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45). But if we were more aligned with the teachings of Jesus, our understanding of our security needs might be a little clearer. We might not think, for example, that we had a right to all the oil we happen to want.
And our attitudes toward people of other faiths and other political systems might be a bit different, so that some of the things that arouse hostility would be done away with.
Carlos Wilton responds: "Rods from God." That's the name for a bizarre-sounding new weapon that the Pentagon is in the process of developing, for deployment in outer space. Just as many of our people are heading off to the theaters to see the new Star Wars movie, here is a bit of real "star wars" weaponry, appearing in the headlines. A May 18 New York Times article describes it:
"Another Air Force space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon."
For the full article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html.
The thought of a fearsome space weapon like this is troubling enough, but even more troubling is the self-consciously theological imagery its human creators have chosen to describe it. It sounds like the classic mythological image of a thunderbolt, hurled down from heaven by an angry deity.
Does God respond violently toward the world or any of its inhabitants, zapping us with thunderbolts of righteous wrath? It's a question that may be stirred up in the minds of our people by the Noah story, which comes up in the lectionary readings for this week.
Noteworthy in the First Reading for this week is the change in tone from the beginning of the lection to the end. In Genesis 6:13, God pronounces this judgment of doom: "I have determined to make an end of all flesh. ..." Just two chapters later, God is singing a new tune, commanding Noah, "Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh -- birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth -- so that they may abound on the earth. ..." [8:17]. In two chapters, we've gone from the destruction of "all flesh" to its benevolent preservation. What gives? Is God so mercurial as all that?
Although it doesn't occur in this week's lection, it may be worthwhile to mention the "bow in the clouds" of Genesis 9:13. When we hear that expression, most of us immediately picture a rainbow, and think thoughts of love and harmony. The ancients looked to the rainbow and saw not a multicolored banner of gentleness and peace but rather a fearsome weapon of war. The Hebrew word is the name of a weapon. The rainbow is literally God's bow, hung up in the sky.
Many of our people will find this image of God packing a deadly weapon difficult to accept. What -- in earth or heaven -- is God doing with a bow? Far more comforting it is to imagine the Lord as a benevolent celestial artist, festooning the heavens with all the colors of the rainbow. Yet this is not God, the interior decorator. It's jarring, to say the least, to picture God as a sweaty, muscle-bound warrior, weary from battle, unslinging the bow and hanging it high -- but that's what this highly anthropomorphic text says. Sure, the episode ends with the covenant assurance that God "ain't gonna study war no more." But along the way, Genesis portrays God as a deity to be reckoned with.
Is God, then, a God of wrath? Classical Christian theology says "Yes" -- as troubling as that may sound to modern sensibilities. I remember reading, years ago, a discussion by theologian Emil Brunner about the wrath of God. Brunner was making the point that wrath and love dwell in God simultaneously, and that one is inseparable from the other. Stripped of love, wrath is arbitrary, capricious. and dangerous. Stripped of wrath, love is weak and ineffectual, allowing justice to be trampled underfoot. As paradoxical as it may sound, our God is a God of both wrath and love.
But "rods from God"? I don't think so!
Related Illustrations and Quotations
From Carlos Wilton:
Several years ago, the PBS network presented a fine documentary series called "Genesis: A Living Conversation." TV commentator Bill Moyers assembled ten groups of distinguished Bible scholars, church leaders, and literary figures, to talk about this first book of the Bible.
In one of the early shows, they discussed this story of Noah. Bill Moyers asked one of the panel members, a newspaper editor, what kind of headline he would write for the Noah story. The editor responded with something predictable, like "GOD DESTROYS WORLD." One of the other panel members was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Proctor, for many years pastor of the great old Abyssinian Baptist Church, the leading African American church in Harlem. Proctor suggested an alternative headline: "GOD GIVES HUMANS SECOND CHANCE."
Proctor then went on to share something of how he had learned the Noah story: from his father, a Sunday School teacher. "Sometimes we laughed at the ridiculous aspects of it," he said, with a smile, "[but] we didn't try to rewrite it. We drew from it what it said right then to the people and went on. Every Wednesday, though, my daddy would press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club rehearsal. These sixty black guys -- table waiters, coal trimmers, truck drivers -- would give one big concert a year to the white population. [We] couldn't sit where we wanted to, even though our daddy was singing -- we had to sit in the back. But in the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And do you know the song they sang at the close of the concert? They sang, 'Yesterday the skies were gray/ but look, this morning they are blue.' Noah! 'The smiling sun tells everyone come/ Let's all sing, hallelujah/ for a new day is born/ The world is singing the song of!
the dawn.' Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the 1920s, with lynching everywhere and hatred -- 'nigger' this and 'nigger' that. But they had something we need to recover right now. I can't turn loose this story of Noah and the Flood because after all of the devastation ... there's a rainbow ... I'm not going to live without that kind of hope."
Old Sam Proctor has it exactly right. That rainbow in the sky is more than a "warm fuzzy." It's a powerful symbol of hope: a piece of positive evidence, hung right up there before our very eyes, that God is not finished yet -- not with the world, and not with us.
***
I saw no kind of vengeance in God, not for a short time nor for long. For, as I see it, if God were vengeful, even for a brief moment, we would never have life, place or being. In God is endless friendship, space, life and being.
--Julian of Norwich
***
In C. S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy, part of the Narnia series, Hwin the mare says to Aslan the lion, upon meeting him: "Please," she said, "You're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."
***
In one of his books, Robert Farrar Capon speaks of the "... unhappy truth that the world is full of fools who won't believe a good thing when they hear it ... we will sooner accept a God we will be fed to than one we will be fed by."
***
More than sixty years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr summarized the creed of an easygoing American Christianity that has in our time triumphantly come to pass: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment though the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
--Cited by Kenneth L. Woodward in the New York Times, February 25, 2004, "Do You Recognize This Jesus?"
***
Fifty years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein's final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th year, I am the only remaining signatory. Because of this, I feel it is my duty to carry Einstein's message forward, into this 60th year since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which evoked almost universal opposition to any further use of nuclear weapons.
I was the only scientist to resign on moral grounds from the United States nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project. On Aug. 6, 1945, I switched on my radio and heard that we had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I knew that a new era had dawned in which nuclear weapons would be used, and I grew worried about the future of mankind.
--Nobel Peace Prize laureate Joseph Rotblat, "The 50-Year Shadow," op-ed column in the New York Times, May 17, 2005. Full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/opinion/17Rotblat.html?
***
Hate succeeds. The world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane.
--Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), p. 249
From Chris Ewing:
Not only is the Bible's first death a murder, but the Bible's first murderer is also the founder of the Bible's first culture. [In Girardian terms, the function of sacred violence is to found culture.] But the Bible doesn't sing the praises of this founding figure and celebrate the gloriousness of his violence; it remembers him as a murderer. Unfortunately, the Old Testament's moral lucidity -- its tactless preference for truth -- does not always carry the day as conclusively as it does in the Cain and Abel story. Neither, however, is it ever fully subdued, and it grows more irrepressible with each successive attempt to repress it. In the biblical literature, the forces of myth and revelation contend with each other in the boldest and most explicit ways. Though the struggle between them is occasionally both morally unedifying and theologically misleading, the literature in which it occurs is the most important one we have for understanding the journey from religion to faith, from myth to gospel.
There is plenty of violence in biblical literature. These are obviously troubled texts, but what troubles them is the truth. Myths exist to spare us the trouble. The greatness of the Hebrew Scriptures lies in the candor with which they document a struggle between Israel's dependence on a system of sacralized power and violence and its moral and theological ambivalence about the workings of such a system. This tension fairly defines the religious life of biblical Israel. ... If any literary artifacts might be deemed "divinely inspired," perhaps it is those texts that reveal what neither their authors nor their readers wish to have revealed.
--Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled (New York: Crossroad, 1997), p. 134
***
Barry Robinson has written a powerful sermon entitled "The Godward Side of Judgment" in which he explores the crisis of anger, love and sorrow in the heart of God that the Noah story depicts. A few excerpts:
The popular understanding of this story is that the crisis of the flood put the world in jeopardy. That the future of the human race is what is at risk. But if you read the story carefully, it is the heart and person of God that are in crisis. The crisis is not whether the flood will destroy the world; but what the wickedness of humankind will do in the heart of God. ...
This ancient story was written as a reminder that it is not darkness that is in the heart of God but a deep sorrow, a sorrow born of that limitation God has placed upon himself not to indulge his anger for everything that we have done and, God knows, continue to do to one another and the good earth. It is a story about God's remarkable decision to remain steadfast in his love toward us in spite of everything. The good news, not that there was a Noah or a rainbow, but that there was a God who would not abandon us. The good news that God chose to wait for the deep change that happened in his own heart one day -- to happen in all of our hearts.
The entire sermon can be found in the sermon archive at Richard Fairchild's "Kir-Shalom" website: http://www.spirit-net.ca/sermon. It may also be available directly from the author at fernstone@fernstone.org.
***
The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.
--New York Times, May 18, 2005; see the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
Theme: When trusted information and institutions change around us, our longing for security and safety grows. We become anxious as street vocabulary, the arts and the media present familiar ideas in different cadences, colors and formats. We seek comfort in scriptures.
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on Romans 1:16-17)
Leader: Welcome to this place this spring day! Here, with each other, we experience sanctuary from the hassles of life.
People: Here, we express our thanks to God; here we will rest and be refreshed by the Spirit.
Leader: As the culture is changing around you, where is your confidence?
People: We trust God to love us and to sustain us when everything else seems unsteady.
Leader: It is faith from beginning to end that puts us right with God.
People: God's gift of life in Christ sets us free from thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that are not consistent with teachings of Jesus.
Leader: God is One and invites all peoples to be at peace.
People: Amen!
PRAYER OF ADORATION (based on Psalm 46)
Living God, thank you for your readiness to walk with us through all the troubles of life. We know that you are our shelter and strength. Each dawn we are aware of the breath of life and the joy which comes as we consider the day before us. We anticipate opportunities to be your hands and voice in all our daily activities. For this hour, we give you our undivided attention, singing our praise and listening for your Word.
Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"All Glory Be to God on High." ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HOH
"Creating God, Your Fingers Trace." HANCOCK
"Sovereign Lord of All Creation." GENEVA
"A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing." DEO GRACIAS
"God Is Our Refuge and Our Strength." Psalm 46; WINCHESTER OLD
"O God, Our Help in Ages Past." Psalm 90; ST ANNE
"Now Praise the Hidden God of Love." DICKINSON COLLEGE
Stanza one would work well as doxological lyrics as part of the offering section of the liturgy. Stanza three is a nice "charge."
CALL TO CONFESSION (based on Romans 3:23)
It is human nature to ignore God's call to right living; it is our nature to think and behave in ways that diminish God's love for others and for ourselves. Look within your heart and mind and invite God to free you all sin.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Gracious God,
All the world seems to be grabbing for securities, for in so many places wars and rumors of wars threaten homes and the land.
Wipe from our hearts the desires for more-than-enough;
erase greediness from our thoughts;
curb our hunger for profit and give us prophets' courage to bring justice.
Free us from prejudices that thwart your love and live through us as hospitable neighbors. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE
In the person of Jesus of Nazareth we see the love of God for humanity. In the teachings of Jesus, we learn how to live as people of God. In Christ, we experience peace. This is good news. Receive it and feel Holy affirmation.
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE
"Dear Lord and Father," stanza 4 (REST)
Drop thy still dews of quietness till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress and
Let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AFFIRMATION (based on Matthew 7:24-29 and other sayings from the Sermon on the Mount)
We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the rock of our lives, his teachings the foundation for our decisions.
We experience God as the source of peace and joy, loving the world through us.
We sense the Spirit within us, guiding our daily activities to be consistent with Divine Love and hopes for humanity.
Together, we call the Holy One God, Creator of us all and believe that in living and dying, we are not left alone.
God knows us by name and invites us to our eternal homes.
Hallelujah!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (based on Matthew 6:24-30)
Life is more than food, more than beauty, more than brand name clothes for our bodies. Living well is different from bank accounts and mutual funds and securities. Yet, money is the exchange medium in our global village. It is needed here and around the planet to provide for this place and for people in need. Share as you can.
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Giver of Goodness,
Thank you for these gifts, these tithes and offerings. Use them to make this world a more wholesome environment for people and animals. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
Maker of rainbows,
The world seems new again after gentle rains with the color arch spread across the sky. Thank you for showers of blessings, for beautiful grasses and for nutritious foods. Thank you for stories of Noah and safety, for stories which banish corruption, for stories that give us hope.
Maker of rocks and sand,
All the universe reveals your imagination! Thank you for our planet and its many systems that sustain life. Guide us and our leaders to protect the air, the land, the waters, and the climate differences. As we build our homes, help us guard the wetlands and trees. Encourage us to value the dunes and mountains.
Deliverer from evil,
When all the world seems bent on "one-upsmanship" and profit, we pray for safety in our homes and in our schools. Guns and violence seem rampant and we pray for security in our yards and playgrounds. Chemicals and preservatives torment our joints, skin and sinuses, so we pray for healing inside and out. Employment vanishes from our cities and countrysides and so we pray for meaningful work to do which pays our mortgages and puts food on our tables.
Giver of grace,
We are a country at war -- so much of humanity is warring.
We remember the angel song: let there be peace on earth!
Let it begin with us. Be in the midst of soldiers and victims, terrorists and peacemakers
and give new, unmistakable evidences of hospitality. Amen.
BENEDICTION/CHARGE
From this sanctuary, take peace;
From this place, take calm;
From these people, take love.
Within yourself, find the zest to work, to play and to praise.
The Creating God is your strength!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 29, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
