go with the flow

from my sermon on 6/19/11 from Genesis 1-2:4a

Imagine that you are an exile in Babylon, more than 500 years before the birth of Christ. All that you counted on has been taken away from you: Jerusalem has been destroyed, the Temple razed, your home levelled. You have been marched 100's of miles away from your home by foreign armies. Once you were a shopkeeper, but here you are forced to be a farmer, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

It is Friday night, the start of the sabbath. You go to worship service next to the Chebar river. How can you worship? What can possibly capture how you are feeling. You sing... you sing Psalm 137:1

By the waters, the waters of Babylon,
We laid down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion,
We remember thee, remember thee, remember thee Zion.

You had your tears to the water of the river. What can the priests do, the rabbis say, the scholars write to minister to your situation. They take the old stories of the creation, and they re-work them, they re-edit them.

To a world that seeem to be without form and void, they say, "God created everything that is, the heavens and the earth." To the disorder you are experiencing they say, "There was evening and morning, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3,..." To the voices that call you slave, Jew, and all kind of names, they say, "God created you in God's own image, and God called you very good."

This is exactly the context in which this first creation story was written down in the form that we have it. The priests, the rabbis, and the scholars did not write a history, they offered hope. They did not offer science, but salvation. They did not present a paper, they offered pastoral care. They did not say how, but who. In the midst of the chaos, they said that God willfully, intentionally created the whole universe and is therefore much bigger than any government or current event.

Can you get into that flow today? That God has created and is still creating? That God is still speaking and creating new possibilities for us?

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when word finally reached Texas that the Civil War was over and that slavery had come to an end. How much sweat and tears had been produced! That is a part of God's flow toward salvation. It flowed through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, sometimes through blood. It continues today wherever people are fighting for their rights.

Today is Father's Day. I remember 27 years ago, Cathy and I were standing on a bridge in Lampasas, Texas, over the Lampasas River. Our older son Joel was 2 1/2 years old. We asked him what he wanted, because you see Cathy was great with child. Joel tossed his penny into the river and asked for a baby brother. Two weeks later on July 10, Matthew (gift of God is what his name means), came into this world. Tears of joy are part of this flow. I ask you dads out there to give thanks for your children. And for all of you to remember your fathers--both biological and theological.

Today, we celebrate Zvonko's 50th birthday. His son Igor dove into the swimming pool here in Austin just over a year ago and injured his spine. Although we wish this never happened, and God didn't intend for it to happen, I would not give up the relationships that have been formed over this past year as we have gone this journey together. I reflected on all this on Wednesday as I visited Igor in the hospital and watched the IV tube drip antibiotic into his vein. This is a part of the flow.

Our baptism is part of the flow. We are caught up in the water of creation, of God saving Noah and those on the ark, of the people crossing the Red Sea, of them entering the promised land through the Jordan, and of Jesus being baptized. All of those saving events are a part of going with the flow.

You will be happy to know that I have good results from my blood work and annual physical. I am in excellent shape. As a part of this review, I had my "wellness conversation," a session with a counselor. It is way to measure how crazy one must be to be a pastor. I have known Sara for years, and as I poured out my story, she said, "As an eldest son, you are super-responsible. You think you are supposed to take care of everything, to be able to fix anything. What you are dealing with as you age is the fact of your limits, that you will not be able to resolve all of the issues." It felt like the truth to me.

That's what I love about this banner that we dedicate today. It depicts the river of life. I am but one little piece of blue cloth from a tie I donated. I am caught up in a community of faith that has gone before me and will continue after me. I am not God. God has partnered with us. I am going with that flow.

I love it that the banner is for ordinary time. When is ordinary time in the church? It is after Pentecost and before Advent, in other words, most of the year. Thank God that God comes in ordinary time! Most of life is spent in ordinary time, getting by, coping, maintaining. We are caught up in this flow, in the river of life.

Therefore we can rest. We can let go. We can worship. This is the most important hour we spend each week, remembering that if God who created everything that is rested, then we can rest also. We go with the flow of God's rhythms of work and rest. We won't resolve everything. We let God be God.

I love how our Christian Bible ends. In the very last chapter of our Bible, Revelation 22:1, it says, "An angel showed me the river of life bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God." From the first words of the Bible to the last, there is a flow of God's creative presence.

The good news I have to share with you today is go with the flow.