Rev Helen preached this sermon on Sunday 23 February. Here it is for you again:
I’m going to start with a little quiz, no need to look so worried. What are the first few verses of the bible, right back to Genesis? In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. There are several versions but the general idea is you have a formless and unruly place until the spirit of God comes and brings order to the world and makes it…we’ll less unruly. This is the second creation account in Genesis (yes there are two separate accounts in Genesis one and two) and this one is a more personal and caring account of how it happened. You have God creating a man, realising he needs companions so gives him the animals to name and interact with but it’s not enough so God creates a woman who is like him. It’s very sweet and very lovely with everyone living in harmony together in the Garden of Eden where they have everything they need for eternity (until we get to Genesis 3 but that’s a story for another day), even all the animals happy and not eating each other it’s all to lovely!
It’s also a far cry when we look at the world today and we just know that things aren’t like that, it’s an idealistic image of a fantasy. We live in a world where people go hungry, they have to flee from their homes in fear for their lives, rulers and leaders who are unjust and self-important, places being torn apart by war and fighting even in our own country people have to choose between feeding themselves and heating their homes. How can this reality be allowed, but it is, because it’s the world we live in today. We could do with that spirit of God coming over the world and intervening again to try and bring some order out of the chayos.
Whenever I see things like this I am always drawn to the book of Job, a man, who has everything that was good in his life taken away from him for…well some slightly egotistical bet between God and Lucifer I think it the simplest version of this story. After much torment Job demands that God explain this and God obliges appearing in a storm cloud. God’s answer is that God has control over the whole universe and must keep everything in order, sometime you will feel blessed, other times not so much but because you don’t understand the complexities of balancing that order what right have you got to complain when you are just a small cog in this, you can’t comprehend it so just have to accept it. I don’t know about you but that answer it’s just…it’s not good enough! God intervened in the beginning, the flood, so why not do it again! Let’s stick with Job for the moment? Job 38 – 42 specifically(last half of Job 37 if you want a bit of context), go away and read it. See how God holds the who Universe in stasis, it really is a beautiful piece of poetry. God hold everything in place and this is something beyond our comprehension so we just have to accept it, when things go awal have faith that God has a plan and all will right itself eventually. Job held onto that and he was blessed, God didn’t need to interfere…much.
The thing is God did intervene again, even more directly. God knew to understand humanity there was only one thing left, I’m going to become one of them, head down to earth and live like them. Jesus comes to bring some order and we see some of that in todays gospel. The disciples are at sea in a boat and there is a storm that is throwing them about, Jesus is asleep below deck while all this is going on. Everyone is going mad, they’re running around in panic, they’re afraid of the chayos going on around them. What does Jesus do? He berates them for their lack of faith (bit like what happened to Job) and he calms the storm. Jesus has the power to bring order to the chayos that was raging all around them. It leads to the disciples to ask a question, who is this man? He seems to be able to control things beyond human contemplation. Even the wind and the waves obey him, you can see the parallels with Job. God goes from being in a cloud with Job, to being in human. So God intervenes and we killed him. We actually ask will God intervene again after that!
But does God actually need to intervene again? Yeah Jesus was exicuted but he didn’t stay dead, he rose from the dead and created a path to eternal life for all those who take him into their hearts and live how he asked them to. That place, the one beyond this one is depicted in the reading from Revelation 4 that we have heard today. The throne room, those creatures, the saints, angels, archangels, those we love who have died there, that beautiful song, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come’. The beautiful order has been restored and there is finally calm, what did they call the New Jerusalem, the second eden where order will be restored and God will be with humanity again. Things are going to be tough, but we will get through it and in the end we will be with God through Jesus resurrection.
So will we get direct intervention from God again in the world, maybe, maybe not, who knows what the future holds there is a lot of uncertainty in the world, you can insert your own caveat there! Know this we are not alone in the chayos, we have not been abandoned because God is with us when we are celebrating, God is with us when we are struggling and if that is one certainty to take from all this then…it’s not all bad no matter how things might seem on the outside because even when things get tough. When the first Eden feels like a joke there is another one in the future and if we trust God, know that God is with us then…it’ll be ok soon. Hold tight…God’s got you. Amen
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 