'the kin-dom of heaven: living as God's community' -
thinking about what it is to be brothers and sisters in Christ, and his body here on earth.
Lent 1 explores our communal relationship with God as a covenanted community
Lent 2 takes up the theme of being a cross-carrying community
Lent 3, a reforming community
Lent 4, a beloved community
and Lent 5, a forgiven community.
2nd READING: Mark 1:9-15
SERMON ‘A
covenanted community’
Let’s pray:
May the words
of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Noah...
Most of us
know this story -
a man, his
family,
oodles of
animals,
a jolly big
boat, and...
water, water,
everywhere.
Mostly, when
the story of Noah and his ark crops up in worship,
it’s easy to
get caught up with all the animals:
the cute and
the fluffy,
the small and
the furry
the tweets
and the purring...
to sing
cheery songs about animals going into
the arky arky
- in twosies, twosies...
...Apparently
they didn’t like wearing onesies -
I do know
some humans who wear them, however.
But the story
of Noah and the ark is anything but
cute and cuddly.
This is a
hard story to read, to hear.
Yes, there are
animals - all kinds of animals...
Animals
bleating and tweeting,
baying and
braying,
beaked and
clawed.
Clip-clopping
and slithering and stomping,
moving inexorably
towards the sanctuary of the boat.
Two of each
kind - even, unfortunately, midgies.
And then, there’s
the rain:
the first
drop of rain.
then another.
And another.
Drops making
puddles,
drops filling
and bursting dams,
pouring into rivers
-
rivers overrunning,
overspilling
into the sea.
Water meeting
water,
rising
relentlessly
and, as it
rises,
lifting the
boat with its cargo.
For 40 days
and 40 nights
it rains...
it pours,
and the
waters continue to rise.
The world is submerged.
On the 41st
day, the rain stops and the waters cease swelling.
The
floodgates of heaven close and a wind blows across
the ocean that
is the world.
The waters
recede, subside.
Slowly.
Bit by soggy
bit.
Uncovering the
mountain-tops,
the hills,
revealing
valleys,
until
eventually, after months of waiting,
the family,
and the multitude of animals,
emerge, stand
on dry ground.
It’s a hard
story to read, to hear...
for everything,
everyone, they’ve ever known...
has gone.
The whole
world has changed -
their whole lives have changed
under the
torrents of God’s watery wrath.
God the
Creator, in this act, becoming God the destroyer.
This image of
God is uncomfortable, doesn’t sit easily with us.
And historically,
there’ve been plenty of people who have rather wished
that we
didn’t bother so much with the Hebrew
Bible -
so many difficult bits to have to think about;
much easier
to think of the nice God of the New
Testament.
Of gentle
Jesus, meek and mild...
Thinking
about the story of Noah, and all those fluffy wee animals,
perhaps we
want to make our God
fluffy...maybe
even cute ‘n cuddly,
domesticated:
a tame God -
for a tame
God is easier to cope with
than thinking
of the untamed God of great power and might
seen in this
bible story.
And, actually,
were the animals on the ark really so
tame, so fluffy?
I’m reminded
of the C. S. Lewis stories of Narnia,
and of the
character of Aslan -
Creator and
Lord over all Narnia - the great lion...
loving, compassionate,
but, as the reader is often reminded:
‘he’s not a tame lion, you know.’
So how do we
reconcile our notion of a loving God with the God who confronts us in this text?
It’s not an
easy question and I suspect that there’s not an easy answer.
Sorry about
that.
But let’s
look again at this picture of God.
In a sky,
blue and cloud-free:
another arc -
the arc, the bend of rainbow stretching overhead.
And a new
word - ‘covenant’ -
is heard and
described for the first time in the Bible -
a word
uttered repeatedly by God:
Verse 9 ‘I now establish my covenant with you...’
Verse 9 ‘I now establish my covenant with you...’
Verse 11 ‘I
establish my covenant with you...’
Verse 12
‘This is the sign of the covenant... a covenant
for all
generations to come...’
Verse 13 the
rainbow as ‘the sign of the covenant...
Verse 15 ‘I
will remember my covenant...’
Verse 16 ‘I
will...remember the ever-lasting covenant...’
And verse 17
‘This is the sign of the covenant I have
established
between me and all life on the earth.’
I’m not sure
just how much more you could
actually shoe-horn
the word ‘covenant’ into these few verses of our text.
Covenant is
obviously hugely important given the amount of times
the word is
repeated here.
What’s a
covenant?
And what’s going
on?
A covenant is
an agreement, a promise, a contract.
It implies
that there’s some kind of relationship between the parties involved within this
arrangement.
After the
destruction of the world,
in the
after-math of the great flood,
is there a
change of heart,
an expression
of deep heart-rending regret by God,
seen within
these repeated assurances ...
seen within
the promise made and the shimmering sign of the rainbow?
The story
tells us of God’s power,
fierce and
wild
but there’s a
twist in this hard to read,
hard to hear
tale -
for this is,
perhaps, a tale about repentance: God’s
repentance -
repentance
meaning a change of heart;
repentance
meaning a turning from,
and a turning
towards;
repentance
meaning finding a new,
a different
way of being and relating;
...repentance
that has at its heart reconciliation -
for
repentance is always, always about
the restoration of relationship.
In this case,
God’s great desire to rebuild and to restore the fractured relationship with
humanity.
God
reconciles himself to humanity and to the world in this story.
‘God, in
goodness and love, chooses to be bound with all creation, promising to preserve
and not destroy.’
A bow is set
within the sky -
A bow that,
should an arrow be fired,
would shoot away from the earth,
and not into it;
would shoot
away from the earth...and into the
heavens.
A sign that
God would rather undergo
suffering
himself than ever, ever cause suffering upon humanity and upon the world.
Never again.
Never
again.
This first of
all covenants is the model and mark
for
repentance, reconciliation, and relationship.
Over
thousands of years, God will make other, different covenants with the people
he
chooses to call his own - the people of the promise.
As God’s
gathered people here, and now,
we are inheritors of that promise - we are a covenanted community:
called as God’s
own.
The season of
Lent is a good time to think of this idea of covenant -
and of our
communal relationship and bond with God.
What is it to
be God’s community?
Before we
explore that, let’s think of the other story we heard earlier.
It too,
involved water.
It too,
involved repentance and 40 days in the wilderness -
not of ocean
wilds, but of barren desert.
We see a man baptised;
discover that
this is God’s son - beloved - with
whom God is pleased.
God’s son...baptised:
Jesus’ first
appearance in the gospel of Mark sees him undertaking a ritual of repentance ...
harking back
to that first covenant of God with Noah, perhaps?
As we read
more of the story of Jesus, we walk with him to Jerusalem
and discover
another sign
another
symbol -
another way
of being:
the way of
the cross -
and the
suffering Son of God,
taking upon
himself all the pain and muck and mess of humanity:
carrying the
weight of all the world
upon his
shoulders -
the only shoulders
capable of carrying that load.
Doing this, rather
than seeing an ancient promise broken.
In this act, we
learn about the deep, deep love and faithfulness of God,
but here too,
is a twist in the tale -
death is not
the end
it is upended,
overturned,
defeated.
Love wins, and
hope will have its way.
But before
that, before Resurrection Sunday, there’s the waiting time.
As God’s
gathered people here, and now,
what is it to
be God’s community - a covenanted community?
We are one in
Christ, yet we’re also diverse -
a wild and
woolly mix indeed, at times,
just like
that assortment living on the ark.
And, just like that assortment on the ark,
there’s an
art in working out how we manage to live together without clawing - or even
biting one another -
though sometimes
that happens too.
And because
it does, we’re a community of reconciliation:
of second,
third, fourth, and fifth to the power of infinity chances.
A community
of repentance and of open-heartedness:
to God, to
neighbour, and to ourselves;
prepared to
change our heart, our direction,
our way of
being in the world and among one another.
A community
where sacrificial love is our standard:
‘for there is
not greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ [Jn 15:13]
A community
bound to God and to each other -
for through
Christ, our brother, we are brothers
and sisters together:
the kin-dom of God -
God, with
whom we are in covenant,
and who we
are called to love, to serve,
to praise and
to worship, now and always.
And to him be
all praise, and honour and glory, forever, Amen.
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