From Damp Wood to Ashes and Rubble

The Rev. Leah Schade

Texts:  Jeremiah 23:23-29; Luke 12:49-56

Aug. 18, 2013

[The video of this sermon can be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j9H94cPuxpQ]

Last weekend at our family camping retreat I tried to start a fire at our campsite.  I gathered sticks, piled up the wood, and lit the newspaper on fire.  At first I got excited because the flame seemed to really catch.  But then I watched it grow smaller and smaller until it was just smoke sputtering around the edges of the wood.

It took three or four tries to finally get a good fire going.  The reason it took so long, I realized, was because the wood was damp. All the kindling I got from the ground had been rained on the day before and was wet.  But with my kids all whining about how hungry they were I knew I had to start a fire.  Eventually I had to send Rachel up to the Shearers to ask for some of their nice dry kindling.  And then we were able to start a fire.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus wants to start a fire, but not the campfire kind.  He’s trying to get people fired up.  He knows things need to change.  He knows people are stuck, complacent, lazy.  But Jesus is filled with a sense of urgency.  He wants to light a fire, but the wood is damp because people keep dousing the flame.  Everyone from his own family to the religious authorities to the Roman government and military officials are trying to do everything keep the wood damp. 

Oh, you don’t want to do that.  Don’t rock the boat.  Don’t draw attention to yourself and the family.  Don’t embarrass us.  Keep a low profile.  What will people think? Mind your own business.  Who do think you are trying to start a fire here?  We don’t want change.  We want nice damp wood.  Sure we’re shivering in the cold, but fire is too dangerous.

Jesus gets angry by these attitudes and responses to his mission.  In fact, so does God.  The readings today are filled with words that tell us how angry God can get with us. 

We don’t like to hear this.  We like Jesus to be our friend, comforter, a warm blanket, not an out-of-control fire.  But the Bible is very clear that there is an aspect of God and Jesus that is not the cozy teddy bear we want them to be.  In Jeremiah God pulvarizes like hammer to a stone, burns hot with judgment that sears through us.

Why?  Because we let ourselves get lulled into a state where we’re nothing more than damp wood.  We douse our creativity with video games and screens that sap our energy and make us obsessed only with our own pleasure.  We believe the false prophets talked about by Jeremiah who seduce us into thinking that everything’s fine.  Don’t worry, be happy.  It doesn’t matter how you’re  conducting your life; God’s going to bail us all out in the end.  You don’t need to change.  You don’t need to stop smoking or start exercising or eat healthier food or confront your addiction to alcohol.

As a society: you don’t need to change.  God’s going to clean up our messes like a good daddy should.  It doesn’t matter how you conduct your economy.  You don’t need to stop polluting, or start conserving or change how you produce food, or confront your addiction to fossil fuels.  Don’t you worry about a thing. 

In our relationships: we get lulled into damp wood.  Some of us have serious issues in our families but we try to ignore them in hopes that somehow God will just make them go away or resolve them without any effort on our part.  The mental or physical abuse keeps happening, but we just grit our teeth and hope it stops.  The addiction has taken over the whole family system but everyone tries to cover for it rather than confront it.  The unfaithfulness or cheating with pornography is going on right under our noses, but we turn the other way and hope it just ends without our having to say anything.

But here’s the painful truth.  God’s got a hammer and is about to shatter our illusions.  Jesus has a pack of matches and is about to light a fire that will burn away the layers of denial.  We are stressing Jesus out – he says it right here in Luke.  And he’s not going to sit idly by anymore and let our damp wood just sit there and rot. 

I know that’s hard to hear from a pastor who wants nothing more than to bring a word of comfort and peace and good news.  But part of a preacher’s job is to tell the hard truth, especially when the Bible compels us to do so.  And believe me, pastors have to be just as honest with themselves and be willing to hear the hard truth from others just as much as the ones we preach to.

And the truth is, families are being divided whether they like it or not.  The truth is burning through us like a fire whether we’re ready to face it or not.  Big changes are coming in your life, in your family, in our society, and in our planet and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.  Some of it we brought on ourselves.  And some of us are already dealing with the fall-out from the explosions that have blown up in our faces.  We’re surrounded by the broken pieces of relationships and social structures we thought were so strong and secure.  We’re sitting in the ashes of fires that have ripped through our lives, our health and our emotions that have left us with nothing but smoldering coals. 

I could take the easy way out here and say – don’t worry.  God’s going clean up your mess for you.  Something good will come out of this.  Everything’s going to be okay.  But I don’t want to be one of those false prophets.  I think sometimes we just need to sit in the rubble and take stock.  Sit down in the ashes and just wait.  We can’t move too quickly to rainbows and daisies when God’s Word is putting a hand on our shoulder and saying, just sit down.  Turn off the screens.  Turn down all the noise from all those false prophets.  Just sit and be quiet.

Next week we are having a healing service.  It will be a time when you can bring your broken pieces, your ailing bodies, burned out emotions, and pulverized lives to God.  Or maybe you know of someone else who is sitting in ashes and rubble and needs you to “stand in the gap” for them, as the saying goes. 

Maybe that’s the best thing we can do it those situations.  When we are filled with remorse for not taking the steps we should have when we needed to, and are now paying the price.  When we tried to put a damper on the sparks of change and found that we just made the situation worse.  When we ignored the signs and denied the truth and now are left with nothing but regret.  Sometimes the best we can do is just hold the hand of that person, or accept the hand of the one who has come to be with you, and sit quietly with them in the ashes and rubble.  It’s a hard, painful, awkward place to be.  It’s not the way I like to end a sermon.  But that’s where God wants us.  So, for the time being, that’s where we’ll stay.  Amen.

Sermon to Creation

Sermon to Creation: You Were There When They Crucified My Lord

The Rev. Leah Schade

Preached at an outdoor service at R.B. Winter State Park (Halfway Dam) in the Bald Eagle Forest of central Pennsylvania

Aug. 11, 2013

St. Francis of Assissi, the patron saint of ecologists, preached to the flowers.  He preached to cornfields, stones, forests, earth, air and wind.  He considered them and all God’s creatures to be his brothers and sisters.  He thought of them as his fellow worshipers of God and exhorted them to praise their Creator.

I think it is high time to revive his practice of preaching to our Earth-kin.  So this sermon is not for my human sisters and brothers, it is for my other-than-human family.  You are welcome to listen in.  But as we stand in this cathedral of God’s creation, surrounded by the very presence of God in the midst of this congregation of trees, creeks, hundreds of varieties of plants and wildlife, thousands of insects, and microbes we can’t even see, this sermon is for them. 

Brother Fern and Sister Porcupine; Choir of Cicadas and Altar Guild of Spiders who weave the fair linens of the forest;

 Lightning Bug Acolyte and Lector Bull Frog who reads to us the lessons of God’s Creation as the sun sets each summer evening:  Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

One of the most moving hymns that we humans sing on Good Friday is, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.”  Lest we forget that God’s very Creation witnessed to Jesus’ suffering and death, I want to acknowledge your presence at every point along Jesus’ journey to the cross, and that you witnessed his resurrection before any human eye beheld him. 

Stones, your voices echoed the ringing “Hosannas” shouted by the disciples and crowds along the road to Jerusalem.  Palm leaves, you laid a green carpet for Donkey’s hooves as he carried Jesus into the city.  Olive Grove, you stood sentry over Jesus as he prayed at Gesthemane, knowing the suffering that awaited him.  Sun, you hid your face during those torturous hours Jesus hung on the cross, as Nephesh, the Breath of Life, was forced from his lungs with each passing hour.  And Trees, both of you felled in the prime of your life after having housed countless birds, insects, and children’s playtimes – they lashed you together crossways and forced you to become the scaffolding of death for Jesus.  Each of you was there.  Even you, Rocks, trembled and shook, fractured and split as Jesus breathed his last. 

Yes, you were there.  You suffered as Jesus suffered.  And is your suffering any different today?  Yes, it is different.  For as man’s death-machine has become more sophisticated, so has his ability to violate your life processes become more complex and sinister.  

Brother Trees, you are massacred by the millions every hour to make room for human houses, strip malls, fields of human-designed mutated seeds, and drill rigs.  Sister Rocks, you tremble and shake, fracture and split, as these rigs puncture you, inject you with biocides and chemicals to kill any and every living thing, as the essence of your ancient depths is extracted.  

Nephesh, Breath of Life, you are polluted with carbon dioxide, fumes, and the smallest particulates that find their way into our children’s lungs and cause them to gasp for air.  Sun, your heat is no longer simply beneficial, but trapped inside the atmosphere of Earth, causing Brother Ice Caps to shrink, Sea to rise, and Storm to rage with irrepressible anger against us.   The crucifixion of Jesus happened once in history.  But your crucifixion, O Earth, is carried out daily.

It is no wonder that you groan, waiting for those of us who are Christian to claim our birthright and responsibilities as Children of God to finally stand up and say, Enough!  We have done such damage to you, committed so many sins against you and our brothers and sisters, I worry that we may have already reached the tipping point and that we are on a fast track to an environmental Good Friday.

But when I am tempted to give in to despair, I am reminded of a story that gives me hope.  It is the most ancient of stories.  It is your story – the story of the birth of the universe itself.  Cosmos of God, you are nearly 14 billion years old.  The story we hear in Genesis is of your creation, conceived from the great unfathomable depths of God’s tehomic love.  And the set of circumstances for life to begin and evolve on this fragile blue orb is so impossible, it can only be Love itself that would enable it to happen at all.

I am reminded that in Earth’s history there have been waves of catastrophic events which have threatened life on this planet.  But again and again, the resiliency and creativity given to you by God has found ways to push around and through the crises and enabled life to flourish once again.  I have to believe that God, who has brought us through 14 billion years of time, will not abandon us now.  That somehow God is working through even this man-made catastrophe of global climate change, deforestation, massive extinction, and toxic poisoning to find a way for life to push through once again. And so I make the choice to believe – and act on my firm belief – that on the other side of the Good Friday of the eco-crucificion, there is an eco-resurrection waiting to surprise us.

Because when I remember that you were there at Jesus’ crucifixion, I also remember that you were there at his resurrection.  Earth, you took Jesus’ body into yourself, into the very heart of you bosom.  What did you witness there if not a birth from the womb of your body? Great Stone hewn from the cave, how light you were in the hands of the angels who rolled you away. 

Quiet Garden in which the women stood, uncomprehending of the miracle before them, how the Crickets must have laughed, how the Flowers must have glowed with joy, seeing the women’s faces behold the face of the Resurrected One.

What did you see, Sister Flies no longer drawn to a decomposing body?  How did Jesus appear to you, Brother Birds who whistled the first “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!”?  He was the same, yet different.  He was filled with new life, yet with scars remaining.  So, too, will be your appearance, O Earth, when your resurrection is complete.  For God so loved the world – the cosmos – that She gave her only begotten Son, so that all who believe in him will not perish, but will have eternal life. 

I ask you, Sister Dolphin and Brother Arctic Moss, not to give up hope.  Believe in the One who loves you, who created you, who suffers with you, and who will raise you up into new life.  Do not give up on us, O Earth.  There are humans who are teaching their children and others how to see the world not just from a human point of view, but from your point of view.  We are learning how God sees the interrelatedness between all God has created.  We are learning from you, listening to your teachings, reintroducing ourselves to Brother Fox and Sister Salamander.  We are drawing our faith from you, and repenting of our arrogance as that has oppressed you for so long.

You, our Earth-kin are grounding us in the universe story so we can see where we come from and what we come out of – this soil and water and breath - reminding us that we are all indeed one – of the same substance that exploded in that glorious instant of creation.  You will help us to unfetter our imagination by asking: what does the world look like when we live within our means and see Earth as family?  And you will show us what it looks like when all God’s creatures, including these Children of God, praise their Creator through worship and song and quiet meditation.  As we learn to love you, O Earth, and love God, we are being moved to advocate for you and be servants of the Most High God.

O Earth, I must believe that we can look forward to the Resurrected One calling our name and opening our eyes to your crucified body transformed to new life, even as we have done all we could in our faithful witnessing and ministering, and still fallen short.

Pray for us, Earth-kin, as we pray for you.  It is no accident that you are here, that any of us are here.  God has planted you in this place.  God has brought us here to this place with you.  And God will guide you and lead you as you lead and guide us.  Go forth with the faith that will sustain you and assure you that you are doing God’s work with your very existence.  And God’s work never fails.  Amen.