I am the way the truth and the life.

Isaiah 43: 26-21. If the sea represents the forces of chaos in Hebrew iconography, a path or way through it - the “new thing” prophesied in verse 19 – should resonate with Christians as being the way of Christ – the water in the desert, “the well springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)

Philippians 3: 4-14. Paul explains how knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection has made everything he once prized “rubbish” in comparison and provides the impetus propelling him forwards in his ministry.

John 12: 1-8. In an act of extreme gratitude for the raising of her brother Lazarus, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with extremely expensive perfume. There is a parallel here with the foot washing at the last supper indicating loving service and gratitude towards Jesus outweighing present concerns for the poor voiced by Judas. The gospel is at pains to point out that this concern was actually self-interest because he stole from the common purse rather than any genuine concern for poor people.

Putting on our spiritual glasses it becomes easier to understand this passage because both the sea and the desert wilderness represent the chaos and barrenness of life as it is experienced by all too many of us.

The sea has symbolised the forces of chaos in the Bible. The creation story for example is of God hovering over the waters and bringing life and order out of it by dividing the waters. Similarly Jesus walking on the water symbolises God’s power and authority over the world’s unruly and chaotic appearance; And the desert wilderness speaks for itself as a dry and inhospitable place for people to inhabit.

But the message from both scenarios is the same. God will do a new thing by providing a way or a path through the sea and the desert and in the desert,  God will be as refreshing water that keeps us alive and refreshed. Water transfigured from something dangerous and threatening to something life giving and essential to life.

This reminds me of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel where He offers her water that will become in them “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)

In that same exchange Jesus says those immortal words “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must do so in Spirit and in truth” (V. 24)

Words which I think fairly describe Paul’s understanding of faith and order in our second reading. Everything Paul had known before is reduced to what the NRSV describes as rubbish but actually Paul uses the word “dung”.

His whole religious life had been turned upside sown by the earth shattering revelation that this man who had been crucified on Good Friday had appeared to him in a vision on the road to Damascus and Paul understood with every fibre of his being that this was the new way, the path through everything that life could throw at us and would lead you through the wilderness to an oasis that would connect you directly with God.

Paul had met with the reality of God on that road and he came to see that Grace was the defining feature of God’s relationship with humanity. He no longer had to earn God’s love and neither do we.

The only qualification needful to make God’s grace effective in our lives was faith. Not circumcision, and not slavishly following every dotted “I” and crossed “T” . Paul had found freedom in Christ. He had been overtaken by his reality, which he describes as the “Power of his resurrection”.

The power of that resurrection is the living water that gushes up to eternal life made present to us by God’s Holy Spirit and Paul wants to know more of it.

For here’s the thing. Often Christianity is preached as the answer to all of our problems and questions. Paul doesn’t see it that way. Actually it upset everything he had ever known and believed and set a completely new set of questions in front of him.

And that is just the same for us. Christianity provides some specific insights into the nature of God and the nature of humanity and our future after death but that opens up a completely new set of questions about how we can and should respond and about some of the deeper questions of disease, wars and disasters etc.

Rather than answer the questions we have about life it simply changes them.

It is just before this extract we have today that Paul says in Philippians “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that is at work in you, enabling you to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2: 12-13)

One major response to the power of resurrection life is exhibited by Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who Jesus raised from the dead. Not the same resurrection as Jesus because Lazarus was in a sense just resuscitated only to die again, but God had demonstrated his command over life and death as a prelude to the miracle of raising his Son to eternal life as an eternal sign and source of power for us all.

Mary responds in what is a mixture of devoted worship and loving service reminiscent of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet when she anointed his feet with oil and dried it with her hair.

This is as fine an image of true discipleship that you will find anywhere. Humility, Love, Devotion and Service.

And there is always an honoured place for that even as Jesus points out a truth we all know that in fact the poor will always be with us, even if in just a relative sense, and Jesus knew he was near the point of being crucified so the devoted love was being directed to the right place.

In a conversation with Trevor Jones yesterday he noted that we are always being asked to be generous with our time money and talents but generosity only emerges from first being grateful. When you are truly grateful you can be truly generous.

Our show our gratitude today in worship and communion with the God who has provided a way through the choppy waters of life, through the desert of emotional and spiritual desolation to find our peace with God.  

Mum's the word.

Mothering Sunday

Exodus 2: 1-10. Moses as a baby cast adrift in the Papyrus basket and found by Pharaoh’s daughter is a testament to the mothering instinct no matter who is the actual biological mother.  

Colossians 3: 12-17. How Christians of either sex are required to live. The qualities listed might be regarded by some as typically feminine qualities and seen by some as being signs of weakness. But to have the capacity to act differently and yet choose to be humble, and forgiving requires great strength and is characteristic of Jesus himself.

Luke 2: 33-35. The pain of seeing your children suffer in any way is characteristic also of both mothers and fathers, but the maternal link tends to mean that the pain finds greater traction in women.

In the exodus story we read about the miraculous deliverance of a future leader of the Hebrew people within the context that every baby Hebrew boy was supposed to be killed;

But it is the way he was saved and who saved him that is pertinent to us today because jt was down to the determined and resourceful action of particular women; his mother and sister and even the daughter of Pharaoh who flatly disobeyed her father to raise a foreign child.

This story sets the scene for mothering Sunday – celebrating that primal bond between mothers and their children. Now I know that the church’s traditional understanding of Mothering Sunday was a day when you visited your Mother church, but frankly we lost that particular cultural battle many moons ago and to all and sundry this is Mother’s Day, when we celebrate mothers in particular but women more generally.

For obviously not all woman are blessed with children.  For many that is a huge sadness on an epic scale and is not of their choosing; some choose not to have children; but without exception everyone of us has a mother.

None of the characteristics listed by Paul in Colossians is exclusive to women of course, but on the whole society has generally seen them perhaps as dominant in women rather than men.

Theologically of course men and women are created equal but different and complimentary. We are together made in the image of God so it is together that we complete that image.

Characteristics and virtues traditionally attributed to either sex find their fulness when combined as in Jesus – our example of a perfect human being. Perfect not least because he is the complete deal.

Compassion, kindness, humility and patience and forgiveness are for everyone just as traditional male virtues of strength, courage, honour, loyalty and prudence are for everyone, not just men.

Jesus Christ, our exemplar, combined the whole range of virtues attributed to both men and women, in a single person.  

But we are not perfect. Though we aim to be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be – bearing fruit in accordance with repentance – fruit by its nature doesn’t just appear overnight. Fruit grows over time and grows better in good soil with good nutrition, well-watered and with adequate sunlight.

For our fruit to grow I have heard the soil likened to the word of God, watered by the Spirit, and nurtured by the light of Christ.

Simeon with great insight saw what was before him, when Jesus as a baby was presented in the Temple.

He could see that if Jesus were to follow God’s will tragedy would befall him and if there is something that no one would wish on their worst enemy it would be to witness their children suffering or dying.

I do know that there are people in this congregation now who have had to do that and my heart goes out to you.

You know something of the pain that Mary would have suffered on Good Friday when she had to witness her son, her little boy, tortured and murdered.

For whatever happens in the relationship between a mother and her children, she never stops being your mother and you never stop being her son or daughter.

And we have to be realistic. Some relationships can be tense. If your relationship with your mother was difficult; pray for forgiveness for both of you or even reconciliation if that is still possible in this life.

If your relationship was good; Give thanks to God

For solid quality relationship lies at the heart of the Christian faith. Christianity is at its root a relationship with God through Jesus the Son.

A good healthy relationship with your mother and father is a natural corollary of that basic relationship.

In Christianity that good healthy relationship with your biological mother and father is to be extended to everyone around you, especially to others in the church. Jesus has some very hard sayings on that subject, but those hard sayings find their finest expression when from the cross Jesus says to his mother “Woman here is your son” referring to John and to John he says “Here is your mother”.

We are asked to break through the barriers of biological kinship and extend our scope to include others in a spiritual relationship undergirded by Love.

Undergirding all our relationships is Love, which today we find expression in the role of mothers.

As Paul says today;

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony”

For God so loved the world...

Isaiah 55: 1-9. “Come buy wine and milk, without money and without price” (V1) implies that there is a cost, but that this cost is borne by God. A wonderful poetic description of God’s Grace. The final two verses of our offering this morning describe the thoughts ways and wisdom of God that far surpass anything humans can conceive. A life lesson for us all.

1 Corinthians 10: 1-13. The message for the Corinthians (and for us) is that God’s unconditional love can breed indifference, arrogance and presumptuous ness. We are all subject to being tested and tempted, but we are assured that we won’t be tested beyond our endurance and God will also provide a way out.

Luke 13: 1-9. A passage recalling the universality of sin and the patience of God in waiting for his people to repent and bear fruit. As I have often said, the essential message of the gospel is that we should bear fruit in accordance with repentance.

Today’s readings encapsulate the entire belief system of Christianity – that we are all flawed and separated from God in our humanity – but God has brought us home to him through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the route back or “the way” back to God. It is noteworthy I think that the original name given to followers of Jesus was not “Christians” – that name (which wasn’t supposed to be altogether flattering) was applied to us first in Antioch according to the book of Acts. Before that we were called followers of “the way”, a description I prefer because it implies motion, an active not passive faith.

The way that God chose to bring us back to him we call Grace and we have a beautifully poetic description of Grace in Isaiah today.

“Come buy wine and milk, without money and without price”.

All the good things God wants to give us we can have at no cost to ourselves – we just have to learn to receive as I said last week. But that doesn’t mean there is no cost at all, but it does mean that this cost is born completely by God.

Isaiah’s description of God’s Grace is re-stated in much more stark but nonetheless still beautiful and powerful phrase in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life”

The free gift is eternal life; the motivation is Love; the cost, borne by God was the self-sacrifice of his son.

You cannot buy eternal life; it can only be given and gratefully received.

The message from Paul however is that God’s unconditional love may be received gratefully at first but in many people the very fact that we haven’t had to do anything to receive it, to merit it, can breed indifference, arrogance and  presumptuousness.

We are trained in life to value things that cost us a lot of money rather than things that come free, but take a moment to consider that and you’ll agree that the most important things in life are free – love, relationships, health, and the beautiful world we live in.

Grace presumed upon because it is free has been called by some, cheap grace, but this isn’t a term I like because for God it was anything but cheap. It cost Him everything – the death of his son.

And don’t forget Paul’s great description of Christ, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19)

So God Himself in some mysterious way was present in Jesus Christ as He was crucified that first Good Friday.

Don’t worry if that is a conundrum that makes your brain hurt. This is a mystery that Christians have been trying to comprehend for 2000 years. And I use that word “mystery” in the sense that there is always more to something than we can readily grasp or understand.

Remember what the prophet also said today,

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:9)

We cannot ever fully understand or comprehend the ways of God.

Going back to how God’s grace can be treated so lightly. Paul lists how in Israelite history, they too treated God’s love and care with contempt, and displeased God so we  can learn from their example that God does care about our response.

We know as human beings that in life we are always subject to tests and temptations, just as the Israelites were, but to be reminded of them is to prod us, to give us strength to resist.

Stories of how the Israelites were tested, failed, and displeased God  are supposed to be good news to us if they act rather like a smoke alarm warning us about a fire. “Don’t fall away like they did. Keep to the way of Jesus.”

The message for us is that God does care how we react to his offer of divine Grace. He wants us to flourish and have life in all its fullness. The best advert for the truth of the gospel is a full life where we reach the full potential that God has given us.

A full life is one of enhanced horizons, full of hope and expectation, in which our character and emotions and wisdom grow evermore into the likeness of Christ.

Discovering the sacramental life

The incarnational Tradition:

Discovering the sacramental life.

When thinking about the Christian tradition, all forms of spirituality are subsumed within the sacramental tradition, because Christianity is in its very being a sacramental religion.

When you think about the definition of a sacrament that you may well have learned at Sunday school it is an outward physical sign/manifestation of an inner spiritual grace – a physical enfleshing of an invisible Spirit.

In that sense, Jesus is actually the primordial sacrament – a physical manifestation of God and is therefore the basis on which all sacramental life is based. St. Paul Col. 1: 15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”

You can even take a further step back and say that creation itself is a physical manifestation of the source less source we call God.

As John writes in chapter 4:24 of his gospel “God is Spirit” so creation is itself an emanation of that Spirit.

All Sacramentality finds its source in God as Spirit being manifest – given life and flesh – in our daily lives.

This takes two forms. How this life takes form within our personal lives and in the sacramental life of the church – the church itself being a sacrament.

Let me take the sacraments of the church first. According to the protestant tradition there are two dominical sacraments – that is, ordained by Jesus himself – baptism and the Eucharist.

According to the Western Catholic tradition there are seven sacraments – Baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, reconciliation, anointing, marriage and Holy Orders.

I had my eyes opened completely when I went and lived within the Orthodox tradition in Romania between 2006 and 2009 when they laughed at us and said why on earth do you Westerners count them? Surely everything and anything can be a sacrament.

And of course, taking into account how I opened this talk they are completely right. God as creator, and Jesus as the primordial sacrament means that our puny Western attempts to codify and number what can and cannot be counted as a sacrament owes far more to our Western pre-disposition for wanting or needing forensic accuracy when dealing with the Divine.

We try and codify and box God into a corner instead of letting God be God and luxuriating in His divine mystery.

Mystery is a fundamental strand of Orthodox belief. Mystery means that there is always more than we can ever know or understand or codify.

It is no accident that the Eucharist is also known as the “Divine Mysteries” in the East.

In the West tens of thousands of people have died fighting over what does or does not happen to a piece of bread in a church service.

The Orthodox are content to say “We don’t know – or certainly don’t know or understand enough to pronounce on the subject”.

It is a mystery. And therein lies the root of the other form of sacramental life.

For while we were killing each other over what happens or not, to a piece of bread or goblet of wine we entirely missed the central point that God doesn’t care what happens to a piece of bread or goblet of wine – He cares about the only true change he wants to see – the change of heart soul and mind of the individual believer and of society as a whole.

The whole of the Biblical witness attests to this central fact, from the scandal of the empty rituals of a corrupt religion and state of Israel.

Isaiah 1:13-15

¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

Amos 5:21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals…..”

1 Samuel 15:22 New International Version (NIV)

²² But Samuel replied:

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
    as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
    and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

James 1:27 New International Version (NIV)

²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Just one instance of the letter of James which possibly more than any other writing in the N.T. states the case for sacramental Christianity more succinctly when he writes boldy in chapter 2

²⁶ As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

The entire witness of the N.T. is that we are told to go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last. Faith without works is dead.

The fruit that grows is as much to do with character as with fighting for justice for the poor. In Paul’s famous list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians are  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. ...

One of the most impressive and influential books I have ever read is called “Against an infinite horizon” by a catholic priest called Ronald Rolheiser where he expounds the truly sacramental life, and he writes some strong stuff about the most sacramental thing that almost everyone engages in, believer or unbeliever – the act of sex.

Sex is a sacramental act and can be abusive, which destroys the soul, casual, which trivialises the soul, or sacramental which builds up the soul.

What Fr. Ronald says about sex can be said about a sacramental sensibility as a whole. It builds up the soul when you can discern and experience God in the everyday hurly burly of life. When you can, to quote William Blake  To see a World in a Grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand. And Eternity in an hour.

Life infused with the infinite, with Divinity, is like making the switch from Black and White to glorious technicolour. Life and creation alive with the life and spirit of God we see the world as it is in reality, as seen through God’s eyes.

When we start to see ourselves as part of the whole and wish to manifest more of the fruit of the Spirit and see God’s reality in a piece of bread we have truly crossed over from death to life.

Amazing Grace!

The second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18

Phil. 3:17 – 4:1

Luke 13: 31-end

How hard it is for human beings to accept that God is going to do something for them, for nothing, purely because He loves us.

Abraham, or Abram as he was still known – Abram means “exulted Father” but Abraham means “Father of many” had been given God’s assurance that his offspring would inherit a great nation already but Abram is still not convinced.

He needs another stronger vision to further convince him and we then have this vision of this strange ritual where animals are cut in two and then in a deep sleep Abram sees God in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the severed animals.

The origin of this vision probably lies within the Hebrew idiom that states that a covenant – an agreement  -  is cut between two parties with the implied threat that if either of the party’s reneges on the agreement they will be cut in two.

This is all very strange to us from a different culture and context but does serve to emphasise that for human beings; receiving things from God is not quite so easy as it seems. Two things seem to get in the way

There is of course the huge power imbalance between us and God and human pride prefers to be in the dominant position dictating proceedings. It takes a certain humility to simply receive something.

Also, nagging human doubts over things that seem just too good to be true kick in as well. In our general experience nothing is ever just given – we have to earn things, so we imagine we have to earn our salvation by God.

The re-discovery of the primacy of Grace – unmerited love – over law is what underpinned the great protestant revolution – a re-discovery that was eventually also accepted by the Roman church but not until so much blood was spilled.

Pride and doubt are the twin poles that affect us all today when we talk about accepting God’s grace, and eternal life just given to us because God loves us seems sometimes just too good to be true. Many Christians today still instinctively feel that they have to work to earn their salvation by being good or doing great service to others or whatever by the greatest gift of the reformation is that we are simply saved by God’s Grace made effective in our lives by faith.

It was too good to be true for many people obviously in and around the church in Philippi to whom Paul was writing.

Most people, then as now were just intent on fulfilling their own worldly interests and desires but Christians are different.

The people Paul is writing to might be living in Phillipi, and be Roman citizens but their real citizenship, as Paul reminds them is in heaven.

Likewise for us, we might be living in London or Paris or consider ourselves British or European or whatever, but actually our primary real citizenship is in heaven. We are children in the Kingdom of God.

We play by a different set of rules and values. Not only that but we live with a certain expectancy that what we have now is not all.

We can look forward to being changed into the likeness of Jesus’ resurrection body – again, a gift just given because God can just give it by divine Grace.

Are we convinced or does our pride, lack of humility, and belief that it sounds too good to be true stop the power of that truth being truly effective in our lives.

Do we, like Abram need a grander, more definite jolt to convince us to truly believe?

That great event, sign or symbol that was given to us is the cross and resurrection.

In the gospel story Jesus is warned to keep away from Jerusalem because Herod wants to kill him.

Reflecting on the fact that his citizenship is also in heaven and despite what worldly torments He must endure He knows He must go to Jerusalem to fulfil God’s will.

In a beautiful allusion to God’s people He refers to us as a brood of chicks being sheltered under a hen’s wings, and Jesus is the hen using a striking piece of female imagery.

But the people of Jerusalem would not be willing to be gathered in that way and would be baying for his death before the story reaches its climax.

Living as we do, post cross and resurrection, we have that huge jolt that Abram would have been looking for, a vision of divine love and sacrifice that encourages us to come to Jesus as the way the truth and the life. It is the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday that seeks to puncture our pride and unwillingness to believe that God loves us so much that he gave his only son that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life. No strings attached.

I am the light of the world.

Exodus 34: 29-35. In Eastern Christendom God is known as the “sourceless source” and the “uncreated light” and this is the light that glowed in Moses’ face long after his encounters with God. But he chose to veil his shining face from the Israelite people.

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2. The reason, Paul concludes (in verse 13) for Moses veiling his face is to hide the fading of God’s glory over time until his next encounter with God. The contrast Paul wishes to make is that the Glory of God in the new covenant never fades so is superior to the old covenant. This is because the Holy Spirit “which is the Lord” is with us constantly changing us into Christ’s likeness.

Luke 9: 28-36. The “Transfiguration” of Christ when Jesus whole being glows with the uncreated light of God is one of the central revelations of Jesus’ affinity and identification with God. In this vision Moses representing the old covenant (the law) and Elijah (representing the prophets) are both subordinate to Jesus who is the fulfilment of both the law and the prophets.

“I am the light of the world” said Jesus

The divine light of God lies at the heart of all three readings today – the light that shines through and unites both the old and new testaments and shines most brightly through the person of Jesus Christ Himself and when we come to believe it we start to shine with that same light through the Holy Spirit.

The first two readings complement each other because Paul refers to the one from Exodus and offers his interpretation of it to explain how this new revelation, this new covenant established through Jesus Christ exceeds in every way the first revelation of the law.

In essence he says that Moses had to wear a veil to hide the fact that God’s glory slowly faded away in-between encounters with God.

This sets the scene for this marvellous revelation that we call the transfiguration of Christ. In a sense this could belong more properly in the season of Epiphany but coming just before we enter Lent when we mark the  privation and temptations in the wilderness that the earthly Jesus was to suffer, it serves to reinforce the fact that whatever the earthly Jesus would suffer, ending ultimately with the crucifixion – He was enduring these things as God’s Son.

One of my favourite sayings from Paul (2 Corinthians 5:19) is that

“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” and this is ultimately what we need to remember as we prepare to enter Lent.

In the Transfiguration Jesus shines with the uncreated light of God  and in this vision, just to make things very clear that Jesus transcends and fulfils everything that has gone before, we have Moses representing the law and Elijah representing the prophets, present at this event and out of the cloud (which represents the presence of God) comes the voice of God repeating the same words that  accompanied Jesus’ Baptism in the river Jordan,

“This is my son, the beloved” and then, “listen to Him”.

The vision couldn’t be more clear. Jesus fulfils everything that had gone before. The law and all prophesy finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ.

Peter, in probably equal terms frightened and confused, misses the point and asks whether he should build three dwelling places, but after God’s voice had spoken, Jesus was found to be alone.

Paul makes it equally clear that the Holy Spirit which is the same Spirit that shone out from Jesus is present to the Christians in the church. The same Spirit that shone out of Jesus is present to us in East Devon today.

This is the same light that enlightens us believers who have been given the power to become children of God.

This is the inner light that guides us, comforts us, and directs our lives and worship today.

This is why we cannot and must not fail in our task to follow in his steps and do his will here on earth.

The church is not just a collection of disparate individuals. We are a body – the body of Christ. It is the light of Christ, the Holy Spirit that forms us into that body and we are always a part of it whether we are together as we are this morning or apart during the rest of the week.

It is who we are. Children of the God of light revealed as dwelling completely within Jesus Christ.

I will end by quoting the last two sentences of what Paul wrote in today’s reading because it is a rallying cry for us to keep together, to be open and pure and keep our eyes on the prize by becoming a sign of the Kingdom of God.

Present Weakness and Resurrection Life

4 Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. ² Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

Genesis 2: 4b-9, 15-end. The second and complementary creation myth in Genesis offers a different kind of truth from historical or scientific truth that speaks of our relationship to God as a unique “God-breathed being” with dominion over the animals and plants in God’s creation. In Hebrew “Adam” means dirt or dust and “Eve” means Life. We are formed from the creation itself and are animated by God’s Spirit.

Revelation 4. The relationship between this extract from Revelation and our reading from Genesis is found in the closing verse (11) that affirms that God created everything. I talked about the difficulty of articulating spiritual experiences a couple of weeks ago and John uses the imagery that he was immersed in and was particular to Jewish apocalyptic writings which uses fantastic symbolic imagery as a kind of code to convey truths that from our standpoint and culture we find it hard to relate to.

Luke 8:22-25. That Jesus, “God incarnate” should be seen as having control over what God created is not unusual. The theological message of the extract that Jesus as “Lord of all” is the calm centre in the midst of the storms and trials of life is the take home message of this piece, even while we, as did the disciples, find it very difficult to put this into practice.

Today we touch on elemental and fundamental topics like creation itself, and the divine mind behind it all and God’s authority over all things. In fact there are so many themes in this passage it could provide material for countless sermons.

First thing to understand is that the Bible is not a scientific text book. You can’t glean from Genesis a historical account of how things came into being. Genesis isn’t a book about mechanics – rather it provides a source of creation; gives a  reason for creation; and it says some very deep things about creation’s relationship to God and most particularly our human relationship to God.

The Big bang theory and evolution were both products of believers in a creator God. Georges LeMaitre, a R.C. priest and Charles Darwin, and through the scientific method they describe the mechanism of creation and how things develop and change over time.

Rather than mechanisms the Bible deals with agency – something or a person that acts or intervenes to produce a certain result.  

The Bible makes it clear that God created all things, and it also makes clear that he cares about His creation and “He saw that it was good”.

This has profound implications for our relationship with the world around us, flora and fauna, and the universe in which we are set.

This is God’s creation and we are set within it to exercise dominion over it.

According to the Bible we are an integral part of the created order – Adam is like the Hebrew word for earth – so we are made from the earth – in our flesh and blood we are part of the created order.

God breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life and it is no accident that the woman’s name was Eve which in Hebrew relates to Life.

What the story about Adam’s rib forming a woman is meant to convey, is the mutuality and complementarity of the sexes – not notions of superiority as Paul chose to interpret it (1 Timothy 2).

We are different but equal in God’s sight.

But while we are part of the natural order we have a privileged position within it. We have dominion over the world. We name the animals and birds within this created order and thus have a special relationship with the creator. In a special way we are co-workers with God, caring for and stewarding what God has made.

You could say that we are kings of creation but as was said in another sermon only last week by someone else, we don’t necessarily wear the crown very well.

But in our heightened awareness of ecological matters that has grown in recent years,  is good from a theistic standpoint because we see ourselves as looking after God’s creation in a better way than we have previously done.

Another verse that has taken on huge proportions is the one that says that a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.

This simply says that eventually a person reaches the stage when they are no longer dependent on their parents and enter into new relationships and responsibilities. Because man and woman according to the story share the same origin their coming together implies the notion of completion; of squaring the circle.

This God who made all things appeared in a vision to John in the book of revelation. John uses ancient imagery mainly from Ezekiel to describe this vision of God. The four beasts in the vision were eventually taken and used to symbolise the four evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The only other thing I think I need to say about this revelation passage is that it was written at the time when the Roman Emperor Dormitian was insisting on being addressed as “My Lord and my God”. This is John’s powerful statement that there is only one Lord and God and it isn’t Dormitian.

The central belief of Christianity of course is that this almighty God written about in Genesis and Revelation became enfleshed in Jesus Christ and walked this earth as an example of what a human being was intended by God to be like.

The authority of God rested in him which is what Jesus calming the storm is really all about. The man who exercised authority over the waters is the man who you can trust to exercise authority in our lives.

Again, in Hebrew iconography the sea represented the forces of chaos. God is the God of order who brings order out of chaos.

I would summarise the readings today as emphasising that the awesome God of creation written about in Genesis, that John attempted to describe in his vision in Revelation, is present in Jesus Christ and putting your trust in Him will calm the storms in our lives.