Ah, the faithful remnant! I told the 8am folks that I expected the rest
of us would be looking at the back of their heads when we gather at the end of
the age with our Lord. They were
absolutely nuts coming out in that cold and ice to church. Some might say that about you all gathered
here at 10:30, but at least you gave the sun a bit of time to start working on
the roads!
To that end, I changed my sermon. Originally, I had intended to focus on Paul’s
letter to the Corinthians and the discussion of Christ’s Body and the Church. Given the discussions involving the wider
Communion and wider Church, the timeliness of diocesan convention, and some
conversations over the past couple weeks following Sophie’s baptism, such a
topic seemed a slam dunk. But, it dawned
on me at 8am that they really didn’t need to hear that sermon. And I have learned quickly not to preach
different sermons at the two services!
I’m a month behind in getting my sermons typed up and posted. I sure do not need to make my weeks any
busier!
So, as I prayed quickly and fervently this
morning about what I should do, a couple faces popped into my mind, as did some
scenery. I’ll trust it was a gift of the
Holy Spirit. In the end, though, you all
will have to be the judge.
I have reminded a number of you, both in
private conversations and in public sermons, that it has long been held that
our job in the Church as preachers is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable. I think I first mentioned
that in Advent with respect to John the Baptizer. John famously called Israel to repent, along
with colorful names such as viper broods and others, and yet the Gospel writers
noted that John encouraged the people with the Good News. It is a delicate and difficult balance, so it
is not surprising that we tend to get too focused in one area or the
other. I know our wider national church
is perceived to be all about comforting everyone, with very little
attentiveness to sin and its impact in our lives individually and
collectively. Other churches have a
reputation for browbeating their people with their sins and offering very
little by way of comfort. I’m not
interested today in accusing or defending or even arguing about perceptions; I
simply want you to understand the difficulty involved in preaching a
sermon. More importantly, I hope and
pray that if your ears hear people wrestling with the readings or my sermons,
with some pronouncing them as comforting and some pronouncing them as
afflicting, maybe the Holy Spirit really was among us that day.
I cannot say for sure what the prompt was
today, but I really felt called to give up most of the affliction side. Maybe the comfortable people stayed
home. Maybe those of you who dragged
yourself to church in these conditions did so out of a real hunger to know
God’s love. Maybe I should have focused
on Corinthians and the Body with a small group and just bailed, for reasons
unknown. Maybe God sensed you were all
artistic folk and budged me to the subject today. I’m not sure why, but that’s where I am
today.
Turn in your Order of worship to Psalm
19. Psalm 19 is an incredibly rich
psalm. We could probably spend several
hours discussing any number of the themes in the psalm and will when we get to
it on Monday morning Bible Study. The
psalm easily divides into three sections.
Verses 1-6, which should bring us back to the creation narrative in
Genesis, verses 7-11,which speaks of God’s revelation of His torah to humanity, and verses 12-14,
which speaks of the human response to that instruction. But I found myself drawn to one today: The heavens declare.
Let’s look at the description of the
first six verses. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His
handiwork. It is poetry, so I know
it is tough for some of us, but the psalmist is hearkening us back to the
creation story. God created the heavens
and the earth, the all that is seen and unseen in our liturgy, from
nothing. We Christians do not believe
that forces of nature of gods, like many in the ANE, but we do believe that God
created everything to testify to His glory.
Everything.
Think of this snowfall that we have
experienced and that has kept so many of us from church this morning. Yes, in major cities that lack machinery,
snowfall is a major hassle. But even
something that seems like a hassle to us testifies to God’s glory. I found myself Friday heading over to St.
George’s for convention. All kinds of
Adventers asked me if this was reminding me of Iowa. It truth, it is a very different kind of snow
and a heck of a lot more warm, so it more reminds me of March or April in
Iowa. But as I was driving, I could not
help but notice how well the snow was sticking to everything. The trees, the rock clefts, the overhead
wires, everything was covered in snow.
There are some green spaces which were simply postcard pretty. At a time when we lament the deeming dead and
dormancy of nature in the season we name winter, God used it for a glorious
canvas. Look at those hills out the
windows. Two days later and everything
is still covered in white. How can you
look at it and not appreciate the glory of the snow?
What else did the snow bring? I do not yet know where all of you live, but
my family and I live pretty close to the interstate. It is always noisy around here with cars and
trucks swooshing by, an occasional horn, tractor trailers pumping air brakes,
and the not infrequent sirens of emergency responders. Listen today.
Yes, there is some background noise, but even two days out the noise is
still muffled. The snow causes many to
stay off the roads and acts as a sound breaker for those who brave the
roads. There is a peace, a whisper that
descends with the snow that often causes us to marvel.
One other benefit of that snow, of course,
is the Sabbath that was forced on everyone.
I am not sure how many texts, e-mails, Facebook notifications, and phone
calls I received from Adventers on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but there were
quite a few. Delegates could not make it
to convention or work and so stayed home on Friday. Saturday was even a bit worse, causing the
diocesan staff to cancel the attempt to hold convention. It was my first off day in four weeks and,
after talking with a number of Adventers, it was the first weekend a number of
you have had in some time. Adventers
felt bad about not making it to meetings or to fulfil their responsibilities at
church. Why? I do not mind doing funerals for believers,
they are after all a celebration for us in one sense, but I sure as heck would
rather not. I don’t want us out on those
roads, risking the idiots who think they can switch to four wheel drive and
drive like they do on a sunny day, or risking those who have proven to me time
and time again they cannot drive in the rain.
But the snow not only quieted the world around us, it made us quiet
ourselves. Some of us slept; others of
us hunkered down with good books; some enjoyed television or movies; a lot of
us just spent time with our families.
The snowfall forced most of us into a Sabbath. This glorious creation testifies on many
levels to the glory of God described in Psalm 19, and it is one simple event in
nature! There are tons of others.
Perhaps you are one of those who prefers
the ocean to the snowfall. Maybe you
best hear God’s voice or nature’s testimony to His glory in the crashing of the
waves. Maybe you are one of those who
loves to hike or bike in nature. You see
the rolling hills and the skies, and all the scurrying on or beneath both, as a
testimony to His glory and handiwork.
Maybe you are a visual person.
For you the wonderful testimony to His glory is the perfect sunset or
the perfect sunrise--you know, the ones with enough volcanic ash in the
atmosphere to bring out those incredible hues of pink, blue, orange, and
violet. Maybe you hear God in nature
better. For you the song of the thrush
or other bird or the call of particular insects or other animals sings the song
that was sung on that first day or on that glory Easter morning. Maybe you are like the magi and simple marvel
at the skies. For the next four weeks or
so, five of our planets (mercury through Saturn) line up in the night sky,
making them easy to spot. Maybe you are
one of those who appreciate the pictures sent back by the Hubble
telescope. Last week, several of my
Facebook friends shared a picture that purported to be the gates of
heaven. It was a crystalline ice
structure a ridiculous distance away from us, but it perplexes scientists just
because it is there and causes wonder in some because the structure looks like
gates, just like that exploding nova a couple years ago looked like the eye of God. Whatever it is, there is something or several
somethings that speaks to you in creation about the glory of God. It might be something visual, it might be
something heard or silenced, or it might be something touched. Judging from the nods, you are all thinking
of those handiworks now.
I want you, however, to think of the rest
of this part of the message of the psalm.
For all the beauty of the snowfall, what causes it? Really, it’s just lots and lots and lots of
snowflakes, right? For years I have
heard that no two snowflakes are ever identical. Every time I have seen these discussions
about snowflakes, they show these amazing crystalline structures under
microscopes, none of which seem identical.
I have had the pleasure of speaking with a couple meteorologists over
the years about the phenomenon. Both
shared a similar answer to my question of how we can know this. On the one hand, we can’t. How many billions and billions of individual
snowflakes fell on the eastern third of the United States this past couple
days? How can we know they were all
different? We can’t. Nobody is going out there examining them all. They would all melt before the job was
complete.
On the other hand, think of all the
dynamics that go into the formation of a snowflake. There is water vapor, temperature, wind,
barometric pressure, altitude, pollution particles, and time to the ground just
to name seven quick factors. Scientists
among us could start naming more. Adjust
any one of those variables just a smidgen, and the formation of the crystal is
changed. Each one of those snowflakes
that fell outside of the church were likely formed in an amazing combination of
variables. My guess is, if we had the
desire and equipment, they would look different from one another. After all, what would be the odds of all
those variable lining up perfectly again?
Some would be incredible different, but others would be similar. Why all this discussion about snowflakes?
What is God’s greatest creation? What does Scripture teach us, as revealed by
the Lord God, is His greatest creation?
For all our love of snowfalls or ocean rumbling or majestic mountains or
northern lights, God’s greatest creation is you and me. Nature may show His handiwork, but you and I and
everyone we encounter were fashioned in His image! And like the billions and billions and
billions of snowflakes blanketing the East coast, no two of us are exactly
alike. We are shaped by our families, by
our diets, by where we grew up, by our interests, by what we do, by what we
learn, by the environments in which we are located, and by what we
experience. Even twins and triplets, who
share the same material down to the microscopic level, end up different from
one another. All of those things that
shape us, of course, are influenced by sin, but they shape and mold us in ways
not unlike the ways the snowflakes are shaped and molded by those natural
forces. And like nature and all
creation, you and I have a purpose. We
were fashioned to testify to His glory and to His handiwork! Our lives are meant to be signposts on the
road to salvation for those whom we encounter.
We are called to be like John the Baptizer, pointing the way to the One
in whom we glory and whom we praise. God
gave us the torah, as this psalm notes, that we might reveal to the world His
holy, saving, merciful grace and rest assuredly in His love and mercy.
Yes, we get it wrong. Yes, sin pollutes us like particles pollute
snow. Yes, we fight amongst ourselves;
we ignore His instruction to our harm; we turn our backs on Him; we trust in
powerless idols; heck, we often trust in our own abilities or strength to fix
us or our mistakes. But in the end, all
these fail. Only the maker of heaven and
earth is truly able to fix us. Only the creator
of all that is, seen and unseen, is able to create a clean heart in each one of
us. Only He can remove the stains that
we so desperately want excised from ourselves.
And guess what, as the psalm reminds us, one day He will do just that
for all His people! For all who come to
Him in faith, He promises complete restoration and redemption. What hints we get today are merest
shadows. Make no mistake, the
transformation in each of us is begun, but it will not be completed until our
Lord returns and fashions us again a new body for a new heaven and new earth.
I do not know all your struggles
today. I can, perhaps, wonder a bit at
your sanity for having braved the roads and southern drives to be here this
morning. But given my late urge to change
my intended sermon and your obvious hunger for these words today, I do not
wonder about our need. Brothers and
sisters, as you head home from worship this morning and begin to reflect on the
beauty of the snow around you or of the handiwork of nature that testifies to
you of God’s glory, remember this: With the same care and concern and intention
with which He fashioned those incredible handiworks that you love, He fashioned
you! And such was His intention and focus
that He numbered your hairs. More amazingly
by far, though, when He could have rightly left you and me and the world to rot
in ur sin and idolatry, He took the shape of you and me, He took the form of a
frail human being, lived and died and was raised in that form in all its
gloriousness, that we might know the depth of the love in which He holds each
one of us. Brothers and sisters, you and
I are part of His greatest creations, but the best is yet to come. One day, one glorious day, all those who
claim Him as Lord will be recreated in His complete glory, unique as any
snowflake, testifying individually and collectively to His love and mercy of
all humanity. That, my friends, is a
lesson we need always to remember! That
is the lesson that caused both the psalmist and Mary to sing!
Peace,
Brian†
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