Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost - 17th September 2023

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]

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 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

Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost - 10th September 2023

Season of Creation 2 – Sunday 10th  September 2023 (St Lucia)| The Reverend Bill Crossman

Readings:   Exodus 12: 1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13: 1-10; Matthew 18: 10-20

On this the Second Sunday in the Season of Creation I want to reflect on “sky”.  You’ll recall last Sunday there was some context around the Season and a little about “earth”.  Next Sunday we’ll put out to sea.  But this morning – the sky, or more particularly, the heavens, as opposed to heaven.  That’s something for another day.

Some of you may have seen “Compass” on ABC TV last Sunday evening.  The programme was titled “The Awe Hunters” and was presented by Julia Baird.  It was about those who actively seek out moments of awe.  Awe, she wrote in an accompanying article is something not easy to define, but usually involves stopping in your tracks, being amazed by something and, often, feeling small against the full scale of the universe.  She quoted a Dascher Keltner, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California who has said “a key to awe is sheer perspective: “When you feel awe around vast trees or under the ocean like you’ve experienced or looking at a night sky or … listening to a choir, whatever it may be, you kind of feel … small and insignificant and humble.”  In the programme there were wonderful shots of the night sky in the Blue Mountains, and of the Southern Aurora in Tasmania.  She writes “ peach smudge of light, ringed with gold. With the help of a time lapse, we saw it in its full, spectacular contrast and whooped with delight. With blue-lit waves underneath — a double dazzler — what are the chances?”[1]

All of this resonated with me – I can recall an occasion driving back from Dalby to Kingaroy late one night when I was the Area Dean of Bunya.  It was winter, the night was clear and cold.  I drove over a low rise in the foothills of the Bunya Mountains and suddenly there before me was the moon – it was so stunning I almost stopped the car. It was so bright I actually put the sun visor down for a short distance.  I felt so insignificant against the scale of what I was seeing, but it was an incredibly joyful moment.  But actually before professors of psychology from California were writing about this sort of experience, theologians were writing about it.  One of the standard texts when I was at college was John Macquarrie’s “Principles of Christian Theology”.  

In it he quoted the French theologian and philosopher Paul Ricoeur who wrote Anxiety is the sense of the difference between the finite being and the mysterious totality in which he has, so it seems, an insignificant place; hope or joy arises from the sense of belonging to that totality and having some affinity with it.[2]

But before television programmes, professors of psychology, theologians and philosophers, there were -  and are – the scriptures and in particular the Psalms.  If you put “heavens” and psalms” into your favourite bible browser, you’ll come up with 44 matches!  Like “Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,
your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.”[3]  The writer poetically describes the heavens in all their vastness and wonder offering their praises to God.  Perhaps the best known is Psalm 19, a Psalm of David written some translations say “for the director of music”. 

Essentially Psalm 19 is a profound poetic meditation on the meaning of human life in God’s creation.  It is divided into three distinct sections: a meditation on creation, on the Torah or perhaps more accurately the revelation of God in scripture, and on the reality of human life.   This morning’s focus is the first.

The Psalm begins with creation, which is an important theological statement in itself.  Judeo/Christian theology always begins, like the Bible does in Genesis, with creation.  Whenever theology, whether it’s about God’s saving power, or human beings, or God in Christ, or the last things, loses its grounding in creation, it goes astray.  Apart from a grounding in creation, Salvation becomes other-worldly, human beings true nature as being in the image and likeness of God is forgotten and they become mere human resources, or worse, playthings for exploitation by others; Christ’s real human nature as the second Adam gets swallowed up in his divine Sonship, and the vision of fulfillment of a new heavens and new earth is truncated.  Theology begins and ends with a doctrine of creation. 

The Psalmist’s first thoughts on creation declare that it is a revelation of the glory of God.  As in Psalm 85, seemingly mute creation sings the praise of its creator.  This is a foundational matter of Israel’s faith which Paul also picks up in the new covenant.  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” [4]

The psalm’s assertion of creation’s hymn of praise to God has suffered in the modern scientific era in which we live.  A lot of people today might read these opening verses as naive religious nonsense.  Looking at the vastness of the universe, and its billions of years-long process of its development, they do not hear a hymn to God’s glory, but the drone of completely natural processes.[5]  I think that all the scientific discoveries related to the creation of the universe do not silence creation’s hymn of praise, they amplify it.  The difference between the Biblical view that the creation sings of its Creator and the secular denial of God as creator is not that one side looks at it through the naive lens of the Bible, and the other through scientific truth.  There are many Christian scientists and theologians who are quite comfortable with the evidence from science and yet are no less confident that God is the Creator.  John Polkinghorne was a theoretical physicist, theologian and Anglican priest who publicly championed the reconciliation of science and religion.

An American commentator writes Everything we see throughout the physical creation is the glorious work of an ingenious Creator God. The stars that twinkle, the sun that shines, the clouds that scud through brilliantly blue noonday skies all bear witness to the grandeur of the God who fashioned each and every one of those remarkable things. To those with ears to hear, whole oratorios of praise to God are being sung constantly. The universe is like one giant opera house that features a never-ending production of lyric melodies, achingly beautiful arias, and soaring crescendos of joy to the Creator.[6]

He goes on to say The heavens declare the glory of God in a universal language that needs no translation from German into Dutch, from Farsi into Japanese. It’s a universal tongue whose grammar and vocabulary are intelligible to anyone willing to listen. When you view the universe this way, then you start to trust any God capable of making such wonders. What’s more, you take joy in any God who so obviously wants the rest of us to enjoy the universe the same way he does. He cares for us. He’s invested in our lives.

Of course, there are always those who look through telescopes at distant wonders, who learn how outrageously vast the universe is, who look at our own Milky Way galaxy and its mind-boggling 100 billion stars and they then conclude, “Obviously, we human beings are nothing. We’re a galactic footnote so tiny, so insignificant, even if there is a God out there somewhere, he’d have to strain to see our puny little planet, much less take note of any individual person on this cosmic speck we call the earth!”

The psalmist will have none of that. The wonder of God is that he is at once the Creator of splendors that dwarf us and also the tender God who loves each person and calls each by name.[7]

Which puts me in mind of a hymn we used to sing quite a lot in my Methodist youth.  It was written by an American hymn writer, physician, poet and essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes.  The first verse of the hymn is:

LORD of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Centre and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near.

So, in this second week of the Season of Creation, having felt the earth beneath our feet last week, you might like to go on your own search for awe in the night sky, join your praise to God with the praises of the heavens and you too may, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, be surprised by joy and feel God very near.

 

COLLECT

God of unchangeable power when you fashioned the world the morning stars sang together and the host of heaven shouted for joy; open our eyes to the wonders of creation and teach us to use all things for good, to the honour of your glorious name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

POST COMMUNION PRAYER

Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. Now send us forth a people, forgiven, healed, renewed; that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Saviour. Amen

 BLESSING

Go forth now to care for God’s world. Use resources wisely. Share your knowledge. Sacrifice where necessary. Live in harmony with all creation. Go out into all the world as prophets of a new way of living and preach the good news to all.

And the blessing of the Creator God, the Risen Son, and the Promised Holy Spirit bless you that you might be a blessing to others today and always. Amen.


[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/awe-hunters-stunning-secret-solace-wonder-transformation/102755992

[2] John Macquarrie Principles of Christian Theology SCM Press 1966

[3] Psalm 89:5

[4] Romans 1: 20

[5] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2018-09-10/psalm-19-3/

[6] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2022-01-17/psalm-19-9/

[7] ibid

Sermon for 7th Sunday after Pentecost 16 July 2023

Sermon for 7th Sunday after Pentecost 16 July 2023

It shows us that the God we trust, and worship is a God who acts in unpredictable ways, in God’s timing, God’s purpose and God’s ability to transform circumstances. It reminds us of the good and the bad that exists in all of us, by showing us Isaac’s faithfulness in prayer, Rebekah’s honesty, Esau’s mindlessness and Jacob’s lack of compassion. May God strengthen us in all that is good and transform us when we act from sin.