Advent 2013: Presence

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 12/15/2013
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
podcast here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/VineyardChurchOfMilan
or via iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vineyard-church-of-milan/id562567379

That experience of personal presence is at the root of the solution to all the world’s troubles. There is a power in presence that nothing can match. This is at the heart of why God comes to us on Christmas as a baby, to bring peace on earth, goodwill towards humankind.

Humankind, us people, the ones Jesus is given to on Christmas, are stressed out. Our minds aren’t working well from stress, we’re at our emotional breaking points, our bodies are suffering in the grip of stress, our relationships are in jeopardy because we are taking our stress out on one another.

Jesus offers us a way out of the grip of STRESS. Because STRESS has spiritual roots, roots in an un-reality, in shadow, in darkness. So Jesus shines a light for us on a truer reality, a reality we can seek asylum in and eventually become citizens of. A reality where STRESS and its demonic offspring aren’t authorized to follow us. And he gives us a way into that reality. I daresay that’s good news for us stressed out human beings.

On top of that, Jesus offers us the very thing that STRESS so insidiously steals from us. Jesus offers us LIFE. Abundant life. The kind of life he has, God-life. What the Bible calls eternal life – which, in the way that we’re talking about it in this context, isn’t a ticket to heaven, but rather the life of the heavens in the here and now (which of course, will continue on and on and on, without ceasing, even when our first creation bodies cease functioning, and will pick up at a whole new level in the new creation bodies we receive at the Resurrection.) The kind of life that isn’t subject to the destructive work of STRESS.

And it all starts with presence. With God making his presence available to us, inviting us to be present with him.

Our challenge, of course, is putting ourselves in a place to experience God’s presence near and with. We’re so stressed out it’s hard to even experience God’s presence.

That’s what Christmas is about. The rescue from our troubles starts with God entrusting himself to us as a baby. In due time, God will use his power to set things right. He’ll bring his powerful presence to bear in every corner of the earth. To fix everything that’s gone wrong. In us, in our relationships, in our world. But he begins by being present with us. Inviting us to be present with him. It’s in simple, holy Presence that the healing begins.

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As we talked about last week, God’s presence – Love made Personal - is the antidote for stress. We even get a taste of that in every form of loving presence, don’t we? An embrace from friend, a family member, a spouse, a child, heck, even a gracious stranger. (Which is why nothing feeds stress like isolation and loneliness – which of course is different from being alone, with…with God, with nature, with your thoughts, a good book, etc.)

However.

We have a problem with presence. Presence requires some things from us that aren’t easy for us.

Presence requires us to stop, for one. It requires us to stop, AND. And what? It requires us to stop and be attentive to what is present before us here and now.

What do we have to stop?

First, we have to stop rehearsing the past, ruminating, regretting, reliving, obsessing. To stop what-iffing.

We are who we are now. Now is what now is. Yes, the old nows can be assigned new meaning. The next nows can be changed, made better perhaps, more holy. But the now now is what it is, and we can either be present to experience it and draw life from the God who has given it to us and us to it, or we can miss it and move one step closer to death.

As the old King James Version says in Psalm 118:

This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!

I like how Eugene Peterson translates that same verse in The Message:

This is God’s work.
We rub our eyes—we can hardly believe it!
This is the very day God acted—
let’s celebrate and be festive!
Salvation now, God. Salvation now!
Oh yes, God—a free and full life!

If we are going to be present to ourselves, to others, to the God who always occupies NOW, making his presence available to us, we’ve got to trust that God is big enough to gather the past in his arms and make something new and good out of it, no matter the regrets, difficulties, pain, or brokenness it contains.

What if you could do that, after a long day at work, with your rambunctious kids, a long day of tests and drama and trouble…? What if you could stop, pay attention to God’s presence with you right where you were, and realize, whoa, he’s here, and life is good, and it’s going to be OK. This is God’s work – I can hardly believe it!

A baby in our arms reminds us of this, doesn’t it…? No matter what has happened in humanity’s past, God has come here now. As a baby. New life, new hope, a new creation. Whatever has been, this now is good. I can accept a past that has led to the goodness that is now, divinity incarnate in my arms.

And presence requires us to stop worrying about the future. To stop imagining that bad is bearing down on us, and unless we make the right moves now, we just might get trampled in its path. If that’s what we imagine, and if we start using all of our nows to worry and fret and strain and manipulate whatever we can to avoid that imagined bad, then that imagined bad has already succeeded in its badness. It’s robbed us of all the good that might be present now, because we’ve missed it in our stressed out exertions. And in some ways, we’ve helped usher the bad into our future nows because of the way we operate under stress, developing cracks in all of our relationships and in our selves, good leaking out and emptiness rushing in.

Finally – with respect to how problematic presence is for us – it can be excruciating for us to be attentive to what is present before us here and now, because until God arrives – or until we become aware of his presence – sometimes all we have here and now is, well, there’s really no other way to say it, all we have is ourselves. And although we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and although reality is shot through with the glory of God, the first thing we are likely to notice when we attend to the reality present in us and before us is the brokenness, the emptiness, the sadness, the pain, what theologians call the “not yet” of God’s kingdom.

I’ll let one of the 21^st centuries great philosophical minds explain…

[Louis CK clip…watch service at http://www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand (December 15) and go to 31:05…]

There’s some deep truth in that, isn’t there?

The even deeper truth, according to the scriptures and the witness of many who’ve gone before us, is that it’s into that emptiness and darkness that God himself comes, reveals himself, makes his presence known in a way we could never otherwise know him.

We’ll never know it though, until we can stop and give our attention to the possibility of the presence of God, here, now.

Jesus has a lot to say to us about that, as we began to talk about last week. Let’s continue.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

What keeps us from taking time to attend to the presence of God with us right now, right here, in this moment? What keeps us from slowing down enough to become aware of God, like a baby, among us, even in our arms?

One significant obstacle is the sense that if we don’t start doing what we need to do to take care of our futures, we’ll be in trouble. We won’t have what we need. And so worry drives us to activity and stressful existence, now after now passing us by, life slipping away in our misguided attempts to prolong our lifeless lives.

That’s why Jesus points out the birds to us. The birds are living entirely by instinct. They don’t dig up fields and plant seeds. They don’t harvest crops and fill up storehouses for a rainy day. They don’t remember the past. They can’t plan for the future. They have bird-brains after all.

Look at them, Jesus says.

Do they look stressed out? Not a bit.

You’re so much more valuable than they are, Jesus says. God cares for the birds. He’s caring for you as well. So worry is for the birds. Wait, strike that, worry is such a waste it’s not even for the birds!

Don’t misunderstand me. Planning and preparing for the future are part of how God has uniquely gifted us human beings. It’s part of his image in us, even, perhaps. We, alone among the known creation, can imagine the future and make wise decisions to cooperate with God’s creative work. But when we do it out of worry and anxiety, as a way to protect ourselves from an imagined scarcity and bad future that will surely overwhelm us if we don’t, then we have lost the plot. We’ve surrendered our gift and exchanged it for a curse.

Jesus knows we’ve forgotten what it means to sow and reap and store away in barns in a way that is fully mindful of God’s blessing in the present and promise of future care, so he’s gently shaking us awake to the reality of God’s good news. We’re not sowing, and reaping, and storing to get life for ourselves, or even to keep ourselves from dying. Stress is born in that perversion of reality. God will provide for us. Period.

No, we sow and reap and store, if that is what we do, or we teach, or we nurse, or we manage, or we parent, or we fix, or we build, or we design, or we make art or music or entertainment, or we beautify, or we invent, or we program, or we play soccer, or we act, or whatever we do, because we are cooperating with God’s rule and reign being experienced by his creation on the earth. As a part of his glory being displayed, magnified. All we need is his presence with us, like a baby in our arms. God himself is our life. If we forget that, then we’ll forget what it means to be alive.

Even more that, Jesus knows the Good News isn’t mediocre news. God will provide abundantly for everything we need for life and life to the full.

²⁸“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The word that stands out to me here is splendor. Not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. God wants to give us splendid life. Glorious life. The Greek word here is doxa. It’s where we get the term “Doxology.” A hymn of Glory: Praise God from whom all blessings flow…. It is the glory of God to bless his children. The more blessings he pours out, the more he meets his kids needs, the more he is glorified. The more splendidly he clothes us, the greater his splendor is.

Paul writes in Philippians: And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever…

Something in the dark shadowy unreality of our world says to us that we can only have full, abundant, splendid glorious life if we go and take it for ourselves. It’s a twisting, a corruption of the truth.

The truth is that work is a gift and blessing from God, and we come fully alive in giving ourselves wholeheartedly to our purposes, that there is joy in exertion. But there is only life and joy in work and exertion if it comes from a foundation of confidence in God’s provision and care and delight in us for simply being who we are, his children – which is why Jesus says “seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

The perversion of Satan’s message to us is that we can only have God’s blessing and favor if we work for it, if we earn it, if we deserve by being perfect, so we’d better step to it. If we believe that, we will work to earn the un-earnable, and stress and worry will rob us of the very thing we are longing for.

So Jesus directs our attention to the flowers. God gives them a splendid, glorious life, and they don’t work at all. Surely we can pause, take in the moment of God’s presence with us now, today, here in this moment, breathe deeply of the smell of new life right under our noses, and live out of that experience of his presence with us.

One of the interesting things here is that Jesus isn't talking about clothing from a warmth/protection standpoint. When we are worried about "what shall we wear?" our worry isn't that we'll freeze (for some people, of course, this is a basic survival question, especially here in Michigan - but in the world Jesus inhabited, closer to the equator, that wasn't the primary issue with clothing.

It had more to do with the way in which you see yourself, the way in which others see you. How will I be able to clothe myself in a way that really reflects how I want to be seen? My clothes are worn out, or not fashionable, not high enough quality to make a good impression. And it's not just about what others think, is it? When we are dressed well, we feel good about ourselves. Like we can take on the world. When we put ourselves together well, we feel like somehow we are that person we see in the mirror, we rise above our flabby, aging nakedness. [Marty McFly, Back to the Future story...watching back to the future at 13 years old, thinking, man I'd like to be the kid that sleeps in his jeans, rolls out of bed, wears a flannel shirt over his t-shirt, takes on the world on a skateboard...actually started going putting on my jeans after closing the door to my room at night...]

From the beginning, clothes are what we use to cover our shame.

Sometimes the STRESS that drives us to anxiety, that keeps us from being present to God's presence, from being present to one another's presence, even from being present to ourselves, stems from the thought that we need to present ourselves in a particular way, in a way that says something about our strength and productivity and usefulness and excellence as human beings. That if anyone - others, God, even ourselves - saw us naked, raw, unmade up, un-killing it, a little unsure of ourselves sometimes, hurting sometimes, just holding on sometimes, maybe just a little like our parents walking around with dark knee socks and boxers, nightgowns and curlers - they wouldn't respect us, want to be around us even, wouldn't go after life with us, wouldn't do life with us.

This is such a lie.

Look at the flowers of the field. They don’t do didly-squat. They don’t even last that long. And they have splendid lives. God makes them beautiful. He’ll do the same for you – you’re his son, his daughter. And you’re going to last forever. Clothing yourself in importance, making yourself look valuable – such a waste! You can relax. There is no shame with God. Your needs are just part of who you are – you don’t need to hide them; God already sees them and he loves you. You’re valuable to him, needy and all. Be concerned with important things, like the presence of God among us, and God will take care of everything else you need, moment to moment to moment, without fail. It’s what he loves doing, it’s how he glorifies himself. God himself will cover your shame.

Practical Suggestions:

1. Give worry the _________. (No, not the bird) The Peace Sign. Identify the two or three things you most often worry about. Picture those worries as vultures circling, hoping you’ll die. Picture yourself giving them the peace sign, and them falling out of the sky dead, replaced by birds happily wheeling about in play and song. Now, pay attention to the next time you start to worry about one of those things. As soon as you notice it, actually hold up your fingers in the peace sign and say to yourself – Jesus promised me that everything is going to be OK, and it has nothing to do with me making it that way. Then, close your eyes for 10 seconds (unless you’re driving or something like that) and say, “I’m here. Please give me your peace as a sign of your presence.”

2. Pray to baby Jesus. For some of us, we feel all kinds of shame when it comes to praying. Because God knows our failings, our weakness, our sin, our needs, we sometimes imagine he won’t be happy with us. Instead of picturing a Majestic, Glorious, Holy God who you’ve got to dress up for to come into his throne room, picture God as a baby in an animal’s feeding trough. Imagine yourself coming in, picking him up, and talking to him. What baby ever cared about the clothes you were wearing? Or how well you spoke? Or if you’d ever done anything important with your life? All they care about is if you love them. The same is true of the God who comes to us in Jesus. The God who clothes the useless flowers in splendor.

Advent 2013: Holding the Baby

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 12/08/2013

video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
podcast here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/VineyardChurchOfMilan
or via iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vineyard-church-of-milan/id562567379

Holding a baby. The experience of now. No thought of the past. No worry about the future. Just the wonder of the now. An attentiveness to this living being.

A calm that comes because of the simplicity of the baby’s existence. It’s here. Profoundly here. When its needs are met, it just breathes. Looks. Responds.

The thought of a baby doesn’t have this impact. Not the idea. Not a picture.

(Well, maybe a little, for some of you.)

No, it’s the baby’s actual presence. In your arms.

Really, there has to be a physical connection, doesn’t there? Across the room, in the crib, in the car seat, someone else’s arms - it’s just not the same.

Not the same as in your arms.

In your lap.

Against your chest, your breast.

It is a wonderful, wondrous wonder.

Assuming you can get over whatever nervousness or discomfort or whatever that you might have with babies.

Assuming you’re not having to attend to its needs.

To make it stop smelling bad.

To get it to stop crying.

Or to get it to eat.

But you’re just there, with her. She’s there, with you.

There’s something about the shared experience of presence. You with him. Him with you. Just the now. The wonder of life and breath and presence.

That experience of personal presence is at the root of the solution to all the world’s troubles. There is a power in presence that nothing – hear me on this! – nothing can match. This is at the heart of why God comes to us on Christmas as a baby, to bring peace on earth, goodwill towards humankind. We’ll be exploring this truth over the next couple of weeks together.

Our journey doesn’t start with the baby in our arms though. It starts with stress. If the baby in our arms is the now, the wonder, the peace, the warmth of presence, the solution, then unhealthy stress is the rumination, the anxiety, the worry, the coldness of isolation and loneliness, the problem at the root of all our problems.

Stress itself seems like not that big a deal, at least not at first. We most all of us feel it, almost all the time for some of us. Life is full of potential stressors. Financial stress. Relational stress. Work stress. Raising kids stress. Health stress. Stuff stress – cars and houses and technology. Mental stress – our brains can’t handle everything there is to think about, and we think we’re going crazy even sometimes. Emotional stress – we’re right on the edge of anger or despair or contempt or terrifying fear, so easily overwhelmed by the seemingly smallest things. Physical stress – our blood pressure is up, we’ve got ulcers and indigestion, knots in our backs and shoulders, headaches.

To clarify the obvious – we’re not talking about healthy, good stress here. Like when you break down muscle tissue so you can get stronger. Like when you tax your brain to learn a new skill or concept, and then have to sleep to retain the new learning. Or when you push yourself to the limits of your capacity so that your capacity can increase. Or when the pressure of a deadline or a developing situation brings you into focus and you marshal everything you have to overcoming a challenge you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, and you discover something inside of yourself that maybe didn’t even exist before. No, that’s good stress. It’s what strength and endurance and true joy are built on.

Jesus wasn’t immune from that kind of stress; he didn’t run from it or avoid it or resist it.

We’re talking about STRESS. The kind that a good night’s sleep won’t erase. The kind that’s destructive. That stays and becomes chronic. The kind that makes you grind your teeth and messes with your physiology and psychology and sociology. The kind that’s rooted in anxiety and scarcity and worry and fear and shame. The kind that makes you smaller and meaner and weaker and less of who you truly are, not larger and more generous and stronger and more fully the you that God intends as gift to the world.

77%. That’s the percentage of people in the United States who report regularly experiencing physical symptoms caused by stress. 77%. Regularly. This is from July study this year by the American Psychological Association.

73% Regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress.

48% Reported lying awake at night due to stress.

48% Feel their stress has increased over the past 5 years.

33% Feel they are living with extreme stress.

Ok, maybe it is a big deal.

But it’s worse than that even. Because how we begin to relate to each other, and the world around us, and even to ourselves is shaped by that stress.

54% of people report that stress has caused them to fight with people close to them. (I wonder if people close to stressed people report that 46% of stressed people lied on the survey…)

Terrible ills, from global in scope to personal, are fueled at first by stress. Wars, greed-fueled inequities, domestic abuse, suicide, broken relationships, theft, destructive sexual behaviors, addictions…what do they have in common? They grow out of unhealthy stress.

Is there anything we can do about STRESS? Does Jesus have anything to teach us about it?

Because of course we can take deep breaths. And of course we can practice brain calming techniques like meditation and prayer. And we can exercise. And eat better. And, yes, hold babies. All of these, and others, will help. And are worth doing.

But is that all we’ve got? Some decent ways to cope with STRESS? Wouldn’t it be great if there were some hope for more than that?

Jesus offers us more.

Jesus offers us a way out of the grip of STRESS. Because STRESS has spiritual roots, roots in an un-reality, in shadow, in darkness. So Jesus shines a light for us on a truer reality, a reality we can seek asylum in and eventually become citizens of. A reality where STRESS and its demonic offspring aren’t authorized to follow us. And he gives us a way into that reality. I daresay that’s good news for us stressed out human beings.

On top of that, Jesus offers us the very thing that STRESS so insidiously steals from us. Jesus offers us LIFE. Abundant life. The kind of life he has, God-life. What the Bible calls eternal life – which, in the way that we’re talking about it in this context, isn’t a ticket to heaven, but rather the life of the heavens in the here and now (which of course, will continue on and on and on, without ceasing, even when our first creation bodies cease functioning, and will pick up at a whole new level in the new creation bodies we receive at the Resurrection.) The kind of life that isn’t subject to the destructive work of STRESS.

And it all starts with presence. With God making his presence available to us, inviting us to be present with him.

That’s what Christmas is about. The rescue from our troubles starts with God entrusting himself to us as a baby.

There’s not much you can do with God when he’s a baby in your arms, is there? You’re just present with him, and he with you. The past slips away and the future pauses to make space for the present moment. All you have is now. You. Jesus. Breath, warmth, weight.

And the wonder of it all.

God in our arms.

The divine energy, personality, creative power at the center of the universe, Love itself, tiny legs swaddled in the crook of our elbow, tiny hands and fingers curled around our finger, content with us. Content, in that moment, to simply be, with us.

Even then, Jesus, as a helpless infant, beginning to teach us in action what he would later teach us with words.

Because there is power in the presence of a God who is making himself present to us. And in due time, God will use his power to set things right. He’ll bring his powerful presence to bear in every corner of the earth. To fix everything that’s gone wrong. In us, in our relationships, in our world. But he begins by being present with us. Inviting us to be present with him. It’s in simple, holy presence that the healing begins.

Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 6.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

²⁸“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:24-34

I understand that the connection between all this and the infant God in our arms may not be immediately obvious, so let’s take a few minutes and see how it works.

Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? … Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own, Jesus says.

What’s so wrong about worry? The irony of worry is that every hour of worry robs us of an hour of life. Worry keeps us from being present to the here and now where God is, where God is present to us with his care and his Love – even when now is full of troubles. Worry is rooted in a distorted picture of the past and anemic view of the future. Jesus is trying to dislodge us from that false past, trying to pull us back from that mistaken future. Jesus wants us to be present right now, here, in this very moment. Because this is where he is. Now. Here. We are surrounded by a God-breathed, God-filled, Good-News witnessing now.

Try this exercise.

Think about food for 15 seconds.

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

What did you think about? A meal you ate at some point in the past? Something you’re hoping to eat in the future? Food you really enjoy and are hoping to have? Food that you cooked or want to learn how to cook? Food that you hate?

Whatever you were thinking about – no matter what it was – you weren’t present to this present moment. You were somewhere else. Ruminating about or rehearsing or remembering the past. Planning for or hoping for or being concerned for the future. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself, but it’s that somewhere else where worry can get in a foot in the door.

Although God was in the past, when we were there, unless we invite him to accompany us as we revisit it, and reveal himself to us there, we won’t experience him in the present moment as we dwell in the past. There is no present presence.

And although God will be present in the future, when we get there, unless we invite him to shape our imagination as we consider the future, and reveal himself to us there, we won’t experience him in the present moment as we imaginatively cast our minds into the future. There is no present presence.

And since all any of us actually has is a series of neverending nows, as long as our nows are spent thinking about the past or the future, then we are missing God’s actual presence with us now. And all we have left is God-empty past that makes room for worry to dominate our present as we live in fear of what the future might bring. That’s STRESSFUL, isn’t it?

Now, try this.

Instead of thinking about food, just pay attention to your experience of food, right now. For the next few seconds. Do you feel satisfied? Provided for? Hungry and in need? Go ahead and just notice your present experience.

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

This is a completely different way to experience life, and it opens the door to experiencing the presence of God in the present moment. Because if what you notice is that you have been provided for, that you are satisfied and cared for, it tells you a Good News story. God loves you, he’s taking care of you, you’re not alone, you have nothing to be afraid of in the future. You don’t have to worry.

And if what you notice is that you are hungry, that you have unmet needs, well then those needs can be presented to God, right now, who is here with you, right now, and is already aware of them, but because he’s your Father, who gets his glory from providing for you. And because you’ve given your needs to God, you don’t have to worry about the future. What the future holds is God being faithful to his promise to provide for you in all sorts of interesting and surprising ways. What the future holds is a series of Christmas morning experiences. Who in their right mind would worry when they anticipated that kind of future?

Which brings us back to the baby. To God arriving as a baby. Placing himself in humanity’s arms.

If anyone should be worried, it would be the baby Jesus, in that situation, don’t you think? After all, what is it about our past behavior that suggests we’d take excellent care of him? We don’t have the best track record with caring for one another, let alone with God. And what is it about his actual immediate future that wouldn’t give him reason to worry? He’s going to be misunderstood, rejected, crucified. By us! The one’s holding him in our arms. He should be petrified.

But he’s not.

Glad tidings! The angels sing. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men on whom God’s favor rests! Praise God!

Jesus doesn’t worry because from the first moment of his human experience, he is simply present in the now that is God-breathed, God-filled, Good News witnessing. He is present with us, and God’s Spirit is present to him.

Practical Suggestion:

17 minutes of presence. Take 17 minutes each day this week (a minute for each day until Christmas) to pause and be present to God, simply opening yourself to experiencing the reality of the presence of God with you. Begin with a simple prayer: God, I’m here, in your arms like a baby. Will you show me that you are here, now, in this moment, in this place? If your mind starts to ruminate about the past or worry about the future, just gently stop it and return to now. Notice how you’re feeling, if it helps. Express gratitude for whatever you notice that’s good. Ask for God’s help for whatever you notice that feels like a need or a problem. You can try holding a baby, if you have one. Or someone or something else – yes, even a thing will do – that’s precious to you. When the time is up, say, Jesus, you are all I need, and you have come to me. Even if you’re just saying it in faith.

Starting Here // The Cosmos and the Cosmonauts

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/27/2013
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ²Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1-3

As we said last week, Genesis 1&2 are trying to do what the best poems are always trying to do:

arrest our assumptive plodding along,

wrest our attentions from the numbing distractions of this world,

and draw us into beauty and truth that can transform us at the deepest levels, quickening our hearts and minds to re-enter the world

invigorated by our encounter with it.

Tragically, Genesis 1&2 have for many become, instead, a stumbling block. Either for those against whom it is wielded as a weapon in a contentious debate about origins, or for those who for one reason or another have developed callouses against its subversive power. Our goal is to create breathing room for Genesis to speak to us afresh the life-giving words it’s long been longing to speak. Words that waken us to a world alive with wonder, mystery, and purpose.

A quick review:

Genesis 1&2 are telling the story of God entering into creative relationship with existing chaos and bringing order and purpose to it, dividing it up and giving it function. Genesis 1&2 are about functional creation, not material. They are about God creating an ordered system and creating function and functionaries within it. They are about God giving purpose and function to functionless things that seemingly already have begun to exist, at least from a material perspective.

Just before the beginning, Genesis asserts, the world was disordered and functionless. It was welter and waste, formless and void, darkness over the deep. The breath of a creator unlike any ever imagined by human beings hovered over the chaos, like an eagle over her hungry, needy chicks.

This creator, in our Jesus-informed and nature-revealed understanding, is a community of Love, the universe’s first universe, an organized relational system, giving and receiving, and out of that unceasing exchange, ever-creating.

The chaos, at beginning’s advent, frothed and foamed, disconnected at the heart of itself, if it could even be said to have a self. It was, like all chaos, enslaved to its own purposelessness. Powerless.

Until.

Until the creator.

Until Elohim spoke.

What kind of word?

A command? Yes.

An invitation? Yes, that too.

A word of loving, life-giving authority, language that bid order into being.

Let there be.

Let there be light.

And the chaos heard.

It received the voice of love deep into itself.

And with that, the formerly order-less, shadowy darkness became a womb.

A womb that gave birth to light.

Light that God calls “Day,” interestingly, rather than “light” - because what God has created here is nothing less than the basis for the function of time.

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

From that day forward, the creative community of divine Love continued their creating.

Let there be.

Let there be.

Let there be.

And in fits and starts, mostly graceful and good, there was.

First there was every doing and then every doer.

On day two he creates – brings into functional existence – all that is necessary for the function of weather.

Time. Weather. And now on day three, the basis of food. Three days, and all the functions we need for life have been established.

[Not quite convinced? Consider the creator’s promise in Genesis 8:22, after the flood of Noah’s time - which is, of course, a return to chaos and disorder, followed by re:freshed creation:

As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat,

Summer and winter,

Day and night

Will never cease

Food, weather, and time in reverse order, never to cease. An affirmation of the goodness of God who has made the world for our benefit.]

And then on days four and five God creates the functionaries to accomplish their tasks and to fill the spaces he has made for functioning - the lights in the heavens to mark the times and seasons, the plants, fish, birds, animals…

And finally, the freest and most functional of the creation, humanity itself.

And God created the human in his image,

in the image of God He created him,

male and female he created them.

Human beings are creatures who not only fill the earth, but they also fulfill a function in relation to the rest of creation (to subdue and rule), in relation to God (image-bearers) and in relation to each other (male and female).

And this story isn’t just a bedtime story to help us fall asleep at night, comforted by a pleasant picture of our beginnings, to satisfy our curiosity. No, it has some very important things to say to us about who God is, and who we are, and what our lives are all about. It tells us where we started and where we are going. It is, most of all, a daytime story. A story for the work of our lives.

Last week we said it’s a good news story, because it says that God created the world not to exploit us and use us, but rather he created it for our benefit. And that he is a God who made us free and all of creation shares in our freedom. Because he is a God of love, and love only exists in the context of freedom. And so his creating tools are invitation and blessing, tools that allow him to remain vulnerable before his creation, in the service of his ultimate purpose, which is Love.

And now onto the new.

4 things today:

1. The Cosmos as Temple. Genesis 1 is describing the creation of the cosmos as the inauguration of a Temple.

2. The Cosmonauts as Priests and Image-bearers. Human beings have a particular role as image-bearers to represent Elohim throughout the earth.

3. Life as a Work-in-Progress. Our function is established, but our functioning is a journey, a road stretched out before us.

4. God-Connection as Essential for Life. Connection to God is required to come alive.

ONE: Cosmos as Temple

Genesis 1 & 2 aren’t hiding the fact that they are describing God making a Temple in which he can dwell. Our first clue that Genesis 1 is describing the inauguration of a temple is the fact that it takes 7 days. Inauguration rituals were common in the ancient world, and they always take 7 days. If you read the account of the inauguration of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings or 2 Chronicles, you’ll see a 7 day dedication followed by a 7 day feast. Also, it is a well-known temple inauguration image in the ancient world to have gardens situated next to sacred spaces, with fertile waters flowing from the deity to bring abundance to the earth. Which of course is what we have with the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.

In Genesis, God is making the chaotic cosmos into his temple. In the ancient world, temples weren’t so much gathering places for worship (although they did have that function) as they were places for the deity to have a center for his rule. It’s his home, but more importantly it’s his headquarters, not unlike the White House here in America. The earth is like God’s holy of holies, the specific sacred space where his presence is most profoundly felt.

The parallels to the cosmic temple of Genesis are all over the descriptions of the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament.

The outer courtyard has the water basin – the sea

And bronze pillars – the pillars of the earth

In the antechamber (further in) were the menorah - the celestial bodies of day 4 in Genesis; and the bread of the presence represented food provided by God.

A veil separated the heavens from the earth – the place of God’s dwelling from the place of human habitation.

Listen to Isaiah 66:

This is what the Lord says:

“Heaven is my throne,

And the earth is my footstool.

Where is the house you will build for me?

Where will my resting place be?

Has not my hand made all these things,

And so they came into being?”

declares the Lord.

This idea of the cosmos as God’s Temple is a big deal for at least two reasons.

One, it tells us a lot about what God is up to in the world today. And it tells us what our job is, as well.

The Sabbath, for example, in Genesis, was not a peaceful reward for hard work. As if God had done all this work of making everything and was exhausted and ready to chill for a while. No, for the ancients, the idea of rest wasn’t about taking a break and kicking back to watch a football game as much as it was about what comes after a crisis. After a crisis, one could get on with the normal routines and business of life. The Sabbath is the climax – everything is set in place, and now it’s time for the grand opening, the deity is ready to rule.

So when Genesis says that on the 7^th day, God rested, it’s saying he had finished his creation work – the labor of creating his temple, his headquarters, getting it functional – and he was now taking up residence in his throne room, the earth, in order to get on with the business of reigning. It’s not relaxation, it’s true engagement. I like how Emily Swan of the Ann Arbor Vineyard describes it: engagement without obstacles.

God, in other words, isn’t a watchmaker God – wind things up and let them go. And he isn’t just keeping an eye on everything to make sure no one screws things up, as we sometimes imagine. No, he’s got his sleeves rolled up, a smile on his face, and a kingdom to rule over and provide for.

TWO: Cosmonauts as Priests and Image-bearers

So what’s our role? Well, we are two things in this story. We are the priests in his cosmic temple. And we are his image-bearers. We are taking care of the business of his temple, carrying out his rule and reign, his emissaries to the far corners of creation. This is why we are commanded to go forth and multiply – Elohim’s influence, his care and his provision, his rule and his reign are to be creatively and faithfully exercised throughout his dwelling place. Love wants to bring order and function to every corner of the earth. The naming of the animals represents the beginning of this task.

Thus the importance of Jesus telling us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. In ancient Mesopotamia, kings would conquer new land, and set up statues in their image to mark the extent of their kingdoms. This is how Genesis describes human beings, as image-bearers. In the ancient world, defacing the image of the king was an act of treason, warranting exile or death penalty. Which means dehumanizing human beings is an act of treason against the King whose image we bear. Anything less than loving other human beings de-humanizes them. It’s an act of treason to hate, to exploit, to use, to disdain, to shame, to do anything that doesn’t hold another image-bearer in high honor, to do anything that violates their freedom as an emissary and priest of God.

THREE: Life as a Work-in-Progress

Did you read Genesis 1 & 2 this week? Perhaps you noticed that God sees each of his creatures, and saw that they were “good.” All of them, that is, except human beings. This is suspicious isn’t it?

Here’s what’s going on with that. “Good” in Genesis doesn’t mean morally good or pure. Good means “functioning properly.” Like when you get a used car, and you might say, “the brakes are good, tires are good, engine’s good, but the shocks need some work.” We human beings, Genesis is telling us, are on a journey. We aren’t yet good (as in fully functional), since we, like God, have freedom to determine if we will take up the function for which we were created. It is a dance with him; God is a gentleman, a respecter of our personhood and our freedom. The enemy, of course, who shows up in Genesis 3, is always a violator of our personhood and our freedom.

The question for us is the same question posed to Jesus, and that Jesus poses to us. What will we do with our freedom? Will we, in fear, put our trust in the one who violates our freedom and promises that we can be gods instead of priests and image-bearers? Or will we, in love, put our trust in the one who made the world for our benefit, and who made us to join him in the life of Love? (this is, in part, what the two trees are all about…)

Our lives can be a cooperation with God, or a resistance. And as we go, so will go the whole of creation. How much suffering in our selves, in our brothers and sisters, in the other creatures, in 0the planet itself has come from our resistance? How much joy might come from our cooperation?

Romans puts it this way:

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Romans 8:19-20

Jesus answered God, of course, with the first wholehearted, wholebodied, wholeminded, wholesouled YES in humanity’s history, which is why he is called our high priest, and the image of the invisible God. And it’s why he calls us to follow him, in the loving obedience that restores our humanity, causing us to be priesthood of believers, and allow us to be re-faced as image-bearers, working together to favor, count, and connect those who have been de-faced through disfavor, discounting, and disconnection.

There is space and mercy for this journey, because God has given us freedom to learn what to do with our freedom, space to grow up as it were; but at the same time, the stakes for our response to his invitations, his vulnerably presented commands are no less than cosmic.

FOUR: God-Connection as Essential for Life

Finally, Genesis 2 shows us that connection to God is required for us image-bearers to come alive.

⁷Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The earth may be the holy of holies, and God may have made us as priests and image-bearers, but without God’s breath, without him coming near and us receiving him within ourselves, we are as functional as dust.

But when the earth and the divine are connected, something happens.

This is why Jesus poured out his Holy Spirit on Pentecost. His wind, his breath, waiting to be inhaled.

Breath comes in and the world looks different. Power is released. A new creation begins.

Do you want in on all of this, this task, this purpose, this journey to new creation? Then ask for God to come near and breathe in you.

The message of Genesis is that we need.

And we have.

The two always together in this world Elohim has made.

We need light, and God provides it.

We need food, and God provides it.

We need breath, and God provides it.

No, there is never a question about our needs and God’s provision. Not since the beginning of time itself.

There is only the question of God’s Love and our response. He is vulnerable before us, waiting. Will we be vulnerable before him, and come to him for life?

Practical Suggestions:

1. Take a walk. Notice everything you see that is functional and ordered, and consider how it came to be that way out of whatever chaos or disorder it originated in. The beauty of nature, trees, plants, clouds, etc. Homes and business and yards and roads. Also notice whatever you might see that is dysfunctional, or disordered and consider what led to it being in that state. Broken down, abandoned cars. Neglected homes. Pollution, trash, etc. Reflect on the role of cooperation (or not) with the creator in both states of being. Reflect on that which is ordered and functional in your life, and what is not, and what the role of cooperation with the creator has led to both states of being.

2. Repent for any acts of treason against the creator. Any ways you have de-faced an image bearer. You can do that right now, here, up front this morning if you’d like. Consider making it right with that image-bearer in the future, to the best of your ability. (Remember, re-creation always begins with vulnerable words and blessing.)

3. Invite a divine to dust connection in your life, to breathe life and power and new perspective into your life.