Season of Creation 3 – Sunday 17th September 2023 (St. Lucia)
Readings: Exodus 14: 19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14: 1-14; Matthew 18: 21-35
This morning is the third of our reflections in the Season of Creation as we move from earth two weeks ago, sky (or the heavens) a week ago and today to the sea. I’ve discovered that there are some people working these days in what’s called “blue theology” Blue theology is described as an invitation to see the ocean how God sees it. To care for the sea as God would have us do. The ocean reflects God’s presence, and as Christians, we are called to worship our Creator by honouring our connection to the sea.[1] All well and good, but as we shall see I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. I must admit I’ve found that preparing this reflection has been more difficult than the previous two because at each turn I’ve thought of many complexities in our relationship to the seas, the ocean and water in general. It’s all to easy to take a benign view.
A few weeks ago, Libbie and I were in the Royal National Park just south of Sydney. We’d not been there before, and we’ll certainly go back again – it was a wonderful experience. At the southern end, just outside the park boundary is a lookout above the ocean. It was a terrific view south to Wollongong and Port Kembla and the highway built over the water snaking its way below the cliffs. An even more lovely view to the east as it was a sunny day and the sea in all it’s blueness absolutely sparkled. There were a few ships anchored offshore, no doubt waiting to go into port. As we looked at the one closest, there were two or three very large splashes close to it – there were whales or a whale breaching. We were spellbound, hoping to see some more, but didn’t. The psalmist writes:
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.
There go the ships,
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.[2]
A few days ago, I woke to headlines, as I imagine many of us did about the ocean casting up thousands of dead bodies on the Mediterranean shore in the Libyan city of Derna following the storm that caused two dams to collapse, sending a seven-metre wave of water through the city and washing buildings and their inhabitants out to sea. It’s an awful recent example of the terrifyingly destructive power of water and of how the sea is far from a benign environment. The physical destruction and human suffering is unimaginable. And as we maybe think back, there are other examples no less terrifying – the tsunami in Japan and the resultant destruction of the Fukushima nuclear reactor and the years of suffering and upheaval that followed, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2005 are two. And looking back over the reflections of the last two weeks we perhaps should recall similar destructive upheavals of nature in the heavens and in the earth. Tornadoes in the United States, the terrible Moroccan Earthquake spring to mind. Libbie and I were living in Lae in Papua New Guinea in 1994 when Rabaul was destroyed in the eruptions of Mounts Tavuvur and Vulcan. We well remember Archbishop Bevan Meredith arriving in Lae having walked out of St. George’s Rabaul in the clothes he was wearing – his cassock as he’d been saying Morning Prayer.
Let heaven and earth praise him, the psalmist writes, the seas and everything that moves in them[3] So, if the ocean reflects God’s presence as Creator, and if we delight in the ocean as the psalmist would call us to. how then do we then deal with awful destructiveness and suffering.
The Bible reflects on the same dilemma. Our scriptures are full of language about water, and the seas, and the ocean. The ocean, we could say is reflective of light, and of the blue sky, and of God’s love. “Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above. Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Saviour’s love” I and the other children used to sing at Neil Street Methodist Sunday School in Toowoomba all those years ago. The great sacred drama of our scriptures begins in the prologue with a wind from God sweeping over the face of “the waters” and on the third day the creation of the seas.[4] The drama ends in the last chapter of Revelation with the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.[5] But the sea is also an agent of chaos and destruction. In our reading from Exodus this morning, the sea is an actor in the great drama of salvation of the Hebrew people, but also an agent of destruction of the pursuing Egyptian army – young men and horses drowning with all the suffering that entails. Psalm 114 reflects on the event from another perspective. It poetically retells the pushing back of the Red Sea. Here the terrifying destructive power of Nature has been tamed, the sea flees before God and the mountains run away, skipping like lambs. The balance of nature has been recovered. This is a different emphasis on the story, rather than the wrath of nature being revealed in all its destructive force, nature is seen almost as a plaything in the hands of God. For Hebrew people, the seas and the ocean were a place to be feared. It was where the monsters lived and came from. In Daniel’s apocalyptic visions, the four beasts emerge from the seas.[6] In the Gospels, the disciples’ terror at being caught in storms on the Sea of Galilee reflect this fear. There was only one who had control over the seas, and that was God. So the stories of Jesus calming the seas are actually about who Jesus really is. If he has power over the seas, that must indicate his divine nature. Brendan Byrne in his commentary on St. Matthew’s account of the stilling of the storm writes “water out of control is a standard biblical image for the forces of chaos and destruction. “Windstorm” translates the Greek word “seismos” a term that more usually has the sense “earthquake” lending a sense of cosmic upheaval…”[7] There’s more going on here than a sudden squall in a lake.
I guess we need to continually reflect on this paradox that the oceans, the seas are a wonderful life-giving part of God’s creation, but at the same time are agents of chaos and destruction. Personally, I’m always reminded of this when I conduct a baptism. Picking up on the Exodus story from the reading this morning, the baptismal liturgy has these words “We give you thanks that through the waters of the Red Sea you led your people out of slavery into freedom and brought them through the river Jordan to new life in the land of promise.”[8] Water is the sacramental sign of new life, freedom and salvation, yet the same element has wrought such terrible destruction and caused so much death. Last Thursday was Holy Cross Day. We reflect then on the central paradox of our faith. One of the collects for the day goes to the heart of it.
“Almighty God,
who in the passion of your blessed Son
made an instrument of painful death
to be for us the means of life and peace……:”
I seem to have drifted away from the sea and the ocean, on the raft of my own struggle with this reflection. One of the theological challenges of a Season of Creation is to make sure we do not arrive at a stage where we worship Creation. That would be to break the first of the ten commandments “you shall have no other gods before me”. We worship God but see the power and character of God revealed in nature. (Rom 1:20) “God’s power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
I guess it’s easy to see God’s power revealed in nature, but what of God’s character? Here I believe we need to consider seriously much of the late 20th Century theological thinking about God as a suffering God. If we concentrate solely on notions of a Creator God being omnipotent and all powerful it becomes too easy to retreat into simplistic notions upheavals in creation as being God's will. Sovereignty does not mean God controls everything like a capricious monarch. God's power must be interpreted and perceived in terms of grace, mercy, servanthood and sacrifice. In Christian terms, God is so identified with, and a participant in Christ's suffering that we see God as a vulnerable and suffering God. We begin to see God as one who suffers in and with and for the creation, not one who is aloof and distant from it.
As we reflect today on the seas, we might delight with God in their immensity and beauty; we might give thanks to God for the wonder and diversity of all that’s in them and how essential they are to sustaining our own lives whether as a rich source of food or a means of transport for many of the things we need, for those who go down to the sea in ships and do business on the mighty waters;[9]and we might weep with God as God weeps for the suffering of all caught up in the upheavals and destructiveness of the seas.
From Psalm 46;
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult……..
and the next line is……There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God……..[10]
COLLECT
Lord of wholeness, Lord of completion, may we be granted a vision of creation renewed. May we not grow weary in doing what is right. Let your justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. May we be caught in the mighty river of your love, coming at last to the sea of communion with you. Renew our strength, that we might soar on wings like eagles; run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint, until the world is healed. Through Jesus Christ, Lord of life, prophet of renewal. Amen
POST COMMUNION PRAYER
God of life, in your grace we receive what we need each day. As you have met us in the ordinary things of bread and wine, meet us in our homes and places of work. In our gardens and places of recreation, renew, nourish and sustain us, inspiring within us a deep love for your creation
BLESSING
Go in peace and with courage, singing God’s song. Join the chorus of possibility and renewal. Grieve what is lost. Nurture what remains. Restore what will be, sowing seeds that will bring life to future generations. May we see in all things, the fingerprint of the Holy One, and may we rejoice; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among us and remain with us always. Amen
[1] https://www.ucc.org/blue-theology-the-christian-call-to-care-for-the-ocean/
[2] Psalm 104:24-26
[3] Psalm 69:34
[4] Genesis 1: 1-9
[5] Revelation 22:1
[6] Daniel 7: 1-8
[7] Brendan Byrne Lifting the Burden – Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 2004 p78
[8] APBA p58
[9] Psalm 107:23
[10] Psalm 46:1-4