2/19/2018 0 Comments Beloved is Where We Beginpreached on February 18, 2018 (1st Sunday in Lent)
at the First Church in Sterling, MA by Rev. Robin Bartlett Sermons are meant to be seen to be experienced. “Beloved Is Where We Begin” by Jan Richardson If you would enter into the wilderness, do not begin without a blessing. Do not leave without hearing who you are: Beloved, named by the One who has traveled this path before you. Do not go without letting it echo in your ears, and if you find it is hard to let it into your heart, do not despair. That is what this journey is for. I cannot promise this blessing will free you from danger, from fear, from hunger or thirst, from the scorching of sun or the fall of the night. But I can tell you that on this path there will be help. I can tell you that on this way there will be rest. I can tell you that you will know the strange graces that come to our aid only on a road such as this, that fly to meet us bearing comfort and strength, that come alongside us for no other cause than to lean themselves toward our ear and with their curious insistence whisper our name: Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. Last week, I preached about your belovedness. I reminded us to gaze upon each other the way we gazed upon little baby Ryan: as a sign of God’s light in the darkness. It is Lent, our wilderness journey, and beloved is where we begin. In Genesis, beloved is where the world begins. In the beginning, God lovingly created the universe, and called it beautiful and good: the humans, the plants, and the animals….all part of the interconnected web of creation. And then, things started to go wrong. The humans started truly messing it up. I know we just told the story of Noah’s Ark to the children, but I’m going to admit to you now that this is not a cute children’s story. I don’t mean to shame those of us who have Noah’s Ark themed nurseries, and beautiful Noah’s Ark children’s books like the one we just read to the children this morning by Peter Spier. After all, my favorite summer camp songs are both about Noah’s Ark. My favorite is “Rise and Shine, and Give God your glory, glory!” And “There were green alligators, and long neck geese, some humpty back camels and some chimpanzees…” I mean, the story of Noah’s Ark has animals and rainbows! And apparently even unicorns! On the surface, it absolutely seems like it might be one of those beloved bible stories for the kiddos. The problem is that it’s really not a sweet story at all. Noah’s Ark is the story of a God who is so horrified by human sin that God destroys the whole world. Yes, we begin with beloved. God creates the world and all of humanity and calls it good. But then humanity betrays God with grievous sin. In Genesis 6, verse 5, it says: God saw that "every inclination of the thoughts of [human] hearts was only evil continually." Humanity is so broken and so destructive, God decided, that God deeply regretted creating us in the first place. God sorrowed over how lost we truly were, and sent a flood—tears of grief poured into an endless river; tears over the rending of the relationship between humanity and God. Let’s just say it plain: in the story of Noah’s Ark, God is so aggrieved with humanity that God commits mass murder. God is so flooded with sadness—by the sinful nature of humans, that God wipes out almost the entirety of creation. The destruction, of course, is not total. God takes a remnant of what God created to re-build. The flood, therefore, is not sent just to destroy, but to begin again. God even uses some of the original source material. We learn some important things about God here: God is not simply a genocidal maniac. God is deeply sad when we are lost in sin; when we are separated from one another and from God. We also learn that God is in the business of not just creation, but re-creation. We learn that this is a God who makes all things new; who turns death into life. It is at this point when we arrive at our reading from the Genesis in the Hebrew scriptures this morning. It is at this point that we pack up and set out on our Lenten journey in the wilderness. Our journey begins today with the new beginning: the re-start of humanity and the earth. Earth re-boot. Earth 2.0. We begin again with the same source material, so we humans are no better than we were before, but God has changed his strategy this time: from destruction and mass devastation to extravagant love. This time, we begin with a promise from God. God seals the newly-restored relationship between us with a covenant. The flood does not cleanse the human heart of sin. However, God promises to never destroy God’s people again, and puts a rainbow in the sky as the signature on a promissory note. God is determined to find a new way—beyond violence and destruction—to get through to us instead. By promising us fidelity and faithfulness, forgiveness and unconditional love. What’s more, God makes this rainbow promise to ALL flesh. Black people, brown people and white people, Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, Buddhists, and Hindus, Republicans, independents and Democrats, prisoners and criminals, politicians and parents, sinners and saints, gay and straight, rich and poor, all along the gender spectrum. All flesh begins with beloved. God promises to love us into restoration rather than retribution. God “hangs up his bow”, retiring from battle. God picks up a lantern instead, heading up a search party to find us as we stumble around in the darkness of the wilderness. God promises to seek us and seek us, and never give up until we are returned home. God knows we are lost in the wilderness of destruction and gun violence; fearful for our children; separated from each other. God promises relationship. God promises return. God promises us steadfast love. God reminds us we aren’t alone. The rest is up to us. Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Toward the beginning of our Ash Wednesday service this week, we took water, and, using the sign of the cross, we blessed each other with it, saying, “you are God’s child, the beloved. In you, God is well pleased.” We say this before we rend our hearts. We say this before we confess our sin. We say this before we come to the cross. We are reminded of this before we receive the ashes of our humanity, the knowledge that we are but dust. We begin with beloved. Our Ash Wednesday service is beautifully intergenerational, which is how it should be. I trembled as I put ashes on the heads of children, including my own. “You are God’s beloved dust, and to dust you shall return,” I said to children just born this year, and the children I created in my womb. I shake at the truth of this: “To dust you, too, shall return.” The day I gave birth to Cecilia was the day I realized I was going to die, and so would she. I wept at the thought of it. We would one day be rent from one another. (And please God, let it be me who dies first.) “How could I have brought this beautiful child into this brutal world, knowing this horrible truth?” Was my first thought upon seeing her. I was instantly filled with terror and awe. For the first six weeks, I hid the 12 month onesies people gave me because I was terrified she wouldn’t make it that long...so close was the fact of death to the fact of life. Some people call that postpartum depression. I call it postpartum truth. There’s also a strange sort of comfort in knowing your mortality. A strange humility in knowing you’re no different. A strange sameness to placing ash on the 92 year old forehead, right after the 2 year old forehead. Both the 92 year old and the 2 year old know better than you do what it’s like to be close to God. You can see it in their faces as you gently remind them that they are God’s beloved dust. They already know. But there is no comfort in knowing that the mortality of our children can be acted out in vengeance upon them with weapons of mass destruction. There is no comfort in knowing that the beloved children God knit intricately in the wombs of their mothers could die, terrified and confused, as if they were targets in a video game instead of perfect creations of the holy. All of those victims on Ash Wednesday in Florida— every single one—began with beloved. They were stolen from the earth by a perpetrator who didn’t know his own belovedness, so he couldn’t have known theirs'. Meanwhile, the mothers’ weeping is echoing throughout the land right now in this season of repentance. I can hear it from Florida to Massachusetts. It is ringing in my mama ears. I want to tell my children that I’m sorry. Not sorry they were born, but sorry that I can’t protect them from the truth of their dying. Sorry I can’t protect them from the truth of America’s sin; the truth of America’s taste for their blood. It is time for Americans to turn back toward God, which is what it means to repent. It is time to beat our swords into ploughshares. It is time to know the nearness of God’s kingdom on earth. It is time to be God’s REVOLUTIONARY LOVE in the world. It’s time to spread the kind of Love that is bold and unafraid: Love that doesn’t bow down to politicians or big business or the NRA, but to a God who is steadfast; a God who loves ALL FLESH. Begin with beloved. It is time to spread and share and perpetuate God’s revolutionary Love until we have surrendered our killing machines for the sake of our children’s promise. It is time to teach our American boys and men a thirst for life instead of a thirst for death. It is time —across religious and political and race and class barriers—to cultivate and enervate in us the desire to create and re-create rather than destroy. Repent, repent. Return, return. Restore, recreate. We began with beloved, and got lost along the way. God has sent out the search party for us, and we will be found. All flesh. In the meantime, let us remember this: God promises us that on this path, there will be help. that on this way, there will be rest. that you will know the strange graces that come to our aid only on a road such as this, that fly to meet us bearing comfort and strength, that come alongside us for no other cause than to lean themselves toward our ear and with their curious insistence whisper our name: Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. Amen.
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AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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