A Sermon by Rev. Whitney Bruno – June 20, 2021 – for LCPC – Job 38: 1 – 11
“Creator of Wonder”
Click here to watch this service.https://fb.watch/v/160Nw6wkA/
Our reading of Job today continues. I paraphrase the ancient Hebrew poem:
Have you commanded the morning and made dawn to know its place?
Do you dye the morning sunrise like a tie-dyed sheet?
Have you entered the sea and walked its very recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you; or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you comprehended the expanse of the Earth?
From where does the sun come and to where does it go?
Have you seen where snow is made; and hail?
Where does the East Wind start?
Who cuts a channel through rain for thunderbolts?
Who waters the lands where no human lives to takes care of the desolate land and brings forth the grass?
Has the rain a father who begets drops of drew?
Whose womb does ice come from?
Who gives birth to frost?
Who freezes the ponds and lakes?
Can you change the constellations?
Can you shout to the clouds to make it rain?
Can you send out lightning to light your way?
Who has put wisdom in the inward parts – so bodies are organized?
Who gives understanding to the mind?
Who hunts for the lion, and provides raven its prey? Their young cry out to God for food. Who feeds them?
Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Who sits with a deer when she calves?
Who cares for these babies?
…
And I quote,
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In God’s hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of all humankind.”
Ask the animals. Speak to the earth. Let the fish inform you. Let the birds tell you. God is the God of all creation. God is the father of rain and the mother of ice. The one who dyes the rainbows of sunrises and sunsets and the one who provides for lions, goats, deer, and ravens.
Job is crying out to God saying prove to me there is order and justice in the world you have created! Job has known so much pain, so much misery – where, God, where is there any sense to all of this?
And God answers… the order of the world is relationships.
The order of the world is the way we come to this solstice – the longest day of the year – over 15 hours of sunlight! And then we fall back. We lose sunlight until we come to the shortest day of the year. In the same way, we breathe. We take in all of the good air around us – strip it of oxygen – and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants breath in the carbon dioxide, strip it, and breathe our oxygen. We are one another’s breaths. The sense of the world is that rain falls on cities and crops, and also on barren rocks and deserts. The sense of the world is food for carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores is… one another. We are made in relationships. We are dependent for life in other’s deaths, and others are dependent for life on our deaths. We are each other’s breaths. Each other’s lives. We belong to one another.
In Job, God talks about the sea, the ancient symbol of chaos. Instead of saying chaos is evil and must be banished, God compares chaos to a baby. God places the baby into a playpen to kick and be wild and do what babies do – be chaotic.
Chaos, destruction, and uncertainty are as much a part of God’s good creation as order, creations, and certainty are. Much like a breath in, and out. Much like a season comes, and a season goes. Much like the summer and winter solstices. Relationships. One cannot exist without the other.
We are made for relationships. As Christians, we aim for right relationships. Relationships where we are pleasant seasoning for the earth, a faithful light of hope in the dark, and an abiding presence of love. Part of being in right relationships is… owning when we fail to be goodness and light and love. Owning it. Apologizing. And repenting. Repenting means to turn around. To do a 180. When scripture calls ‘Repent!’ It means stop! Turn around! Now go! It means stop marching away from walking in the way of God and hustle back to God’s path. There, we have atonement. There we are made at-one with each other.
We have heard the calls to repent. To stop. Stop! Stop harming our Indigenous siblings. Stop! Stop harming our climate. Stop! Stop seeking colonial order and sense in the world. We are in a garden, but it wasn’t planted for white humans alone. It wasn’t even planted for humans alone.
So we stop – or we work at stopping. And then comes the moment of bewilderment… where do we go from here? How do we get to right relations? How do we go from an apology to being at-one with each other, God, and creation again?
Living. Walking. Fumbling a way forward. Learning to love better. Living out a life that is changed. Fumbling, humbly, a way forward that is in right relationship with all of creation around us.
Like the seasons, like the time it takes a deer to gestate, like the rise and fall of the lake water, like the passage of youth to old age… the reign of God arrives in its own time, suddenly! … and without a definite moment you can say things are now forever changed. Living into right relations is living into the reign of God. There is nothing we can do, or say, or pray to make it right with our indigenous siblings. We cannot bring their children back to life. We cannot bring their culture back to wholeness. We cannot awake tomorrow free of all systemic racism. But we can live into our apology, and work for that moment when the tide changes, the solstice comes, the breath transitions to an exhale, and a person moves from middle age to experienced age. We can live into our apology and grow forward, together, and over time, with attention to our relationships, and with seeking the good for all creation, we will find ourselves along the path of God.
We, the United Church, ran the Brandon Indian Residential School where 104 graves were found this week. We, Christians, ran the Kamloops school. We, Canadians, ran the schools where untold thousands of children are still missing.
This won’t be healed overnight.
We cannot do a thing to make it right with family’s whose children we’ve stolen, and who died or were murdered under our care.
We instead seek a new beginning on the lot we’ve inherited. Starting where we are, turning, and growing in a new way. We instead transition from one season to the next. We live in a new way. A better way. Towards a healed community. Towards a healed country. Towards a time when being born Indigenous does not give a person a statistical disadvantage in our society. We work to be in the good relationships, on this beautiful earth, just as God has planned for all creation.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 