So I've had my say and three posts in one week may be one (or two or maybe even three) too many. As a rule, in most of my posts I tend to stay fairly close to the texts. On occasion I move from "preaching to meddling" but more often I am trying to do a close reading of texts here, which I then hope sheds some light on what is happening in the world and in local contexts. So others can do the meddling...
I believe that old adage attributed to Karl Barth about holding the Scriptures in one hand and the newspaper in the other and seeing what they have to say to each other: the preacher stands in that middle place of conversation. And obviously that sometimes happens here. But my normal "persona" here is to stay pretty close to the text and let preachers (and those who listen to preachers) go where they will from there.
This week, though, like most Americans I am thinking a lot about the murder of George Floyd and the protests - mostly peaceful and sometimes violent - that have been happening all over this nation. I am thinking about the president standing in front of an Episcopal Church, holding an unopened Bible in his hand like a weapon, and using both that church building and Holy Scripture as props for his corrupt political agenda.
I feel some mixture of fear, helplessness, anxiety, sadness, and also hopefulness that maybe something new will happen. I feel those feelings all at once, chaotically, like something I wish God would bring order out of. Yet my spiritual director assures me (often) that one can feel more than one emotion at a time!
I feel like we are in a critical year as a nation, perhaps a year not unlike 1968. I am hopeful that people are beginning to wake up to systemic racism and re-remembering the life and witness of Dr. King and others who fought for civil rights and dreamed of a more perfect union. And I know the road is long and hard and Americans don't tend to be able to stick to things beyond one or two news cycles. I know that it is not enough in this time and place to not be a racist. We must commit ourselves in new ways to being anti-racists because the racists are on the move. And yet it is hard to know exactly what we can do, and even then it may feel as if it were not enough.
So if I were preaching this coming Sunday, I am not sure that my insights about what happened at Nicaea would be all that helpful this year. It's not what I'd preach myself and not what I'm looking to hear. Some year, maybe. But whether gathered in a congregation or watching a preacher on Facebook Live, I think we are all looking for some way to try to make sense of the chaos of the world we are seeing unravel before our very eyes. Right now. And even though we could all use a dose of hope, before hope we must tell the truth. There are so many painful truths to tell.
I might be tempted to get to Genesis a week early, and leave the Trinity for another year. It'll still be there. You can find the text appointed here. So, if you've come this far with me on this post, please stay a little longer. We are, in this text, at the very beginning. A very good place to start. And yet as I used to tell students when I taught the Bible to undergraduates, this is not an eye-witness account. This is serious theology, presented as liturgy, from people who have experienced chaos. It's a prayer.
The first chapter of Genesis is a creation story. It's not the only one, but it is the first. It's a priestly document, and priests love liturgy and order. It's definitely ordered, like a litany. And God saw that it was good. And God saw that it was good. In fact I've done this reading in public worship as a responsive litany to emphasize the point with readers and congregation echoing the various parts of the narrative. Let's be clear: this is not in competition with the Big Bang theory or Darwin. It's not science. It's liturgy. It's poetry.
God orders the chaos, that "formless void and darkness that covers the face of the deep." The wind of God comes to do that.God orders the chaos. But it's not done. In spite of liturgies that mean to help us to dream with God, the work is never finished. Evil is persistent. That's what the Jewish scholar, Jon D. Levenson wrestles with in his extraordinary book, Creation and the Persistence of Evil. It's worth re-reading, and I think it's time for me to re-read it, since it's been a while.
But here is the spoiler alert: God isn't done. Evil and chaos still persist. God got a lot of good work accomplished in that first week, and then took a well-deserved rest. But the world is complicated. It's not Eden. That's a story we tell and that our forebears told to help explain why we do not experience the world as a garden. Why there is still evil in the world...
The people who put together the oral traditions from various sources to make a kind of quilt that we call the Book of Genesis were not naive. They knew the world of empire and violence and degradation. By the waters of Babylon (i.e. Iraq) they wept. The scribes who kept these old stories knew other stories including the Babylonian creation narrative. They dared to write their own liturgy - their own prayer, of a creation that is good, and of a God who is working on overtime. But even still will take time to rest when the sun goes down on Friday night.
This is post is not about why there is still evil in the world. It is a post that says that we all know it, even when we see it from very different perspectives. We tend to fear the chaos that keeps breaking in. We feel like the world is being un-created. It is.
But this is where our vocations, our several callings, come in again. Because the world is still chaotic, and because evil persists, our work on the eighth day is to join with God in co-creating something that more closely resembles not a garden but the City of God in the new creation. God didn't create, past tense. God is still creating and God still invites us to be co-creators. Right now, toward the goal of creating a place that looks like people from every tribe and language and people and nation joining hands rather than raising fists.
Levenson's argument in his book is that God isn't done as long as evil persists in the world. But that the rest of the Bible is about the call of people to share in the work of respecting dignity, of seeing the image of God in each person, of striving for justice and peace. And yeah, it's really hard work. Which is why rest needs to be built in, too.
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