SAY YES!

Readings : Proverbs    James 2:1-17,    Mark 7: 24-37

There is so much in the readings we heard today, preaching is difficult. But I have chosen to preach through the perspective of the them for this year’s Season of Creation: To hope and to act. 

This is an easy link to the second reading from James, and his famous ‘faith without works is dead’.  To hope and to act, is true to James.  (We will get to this). 

First to admit the Season of Creation, this perspective, is a burden. It is not a happy place. ‘Overwhelming’ is another description.  The more we pay attention to creation the more we can be overwhelmed by the cries of the earth for justice and respect.

This sense of burden coincides with the decline of the church we love, with the way we are growing older and younger generations are not following.   It coincides with the decline of our minds and bodies for those of us who are older than average.  

I feel all of this. And then God speaks.  

You are here. The spiritual practice we have of meeting each week, listening to Holy Scripture is a means of Grace, to receive.  Do not give up the practice of meeting together, is the advice that saves and transforms.

Do you remember, I don’t expect you to, but three years ago the theme of the Season of Creation was the same as my book, A Home for all.  Now that I am researching for the sequel book, I have plunged into some fundamentals of physics, and origins, and discovered that the ancient Chinese understandings of creation juxtapose rocks and water.  Like Moses hitting the rock in the desert.  Chinese wisdom sees water out of rock as a way to describe the creative source of all. The yin-yan of reality. Think of the contrasts in the nature of rock, versus water.  Then the energy of creation is found between the rock and the water, and called chi, like in the practice of moving meditation tai-chi. 

What I want to trace today is how such an attempt to describe fundamentals, ends up in the morality and advice we heard, in Proverbs, James, and the healing ministry of Jesus. 

What connects all three readings is our inherent prejudice to discount the poor and honour the wealthy.  When I say discount and honour, the Bible goes further, Proverbs suggests crushing the poor; James even murder, to make his point in classic hyperbole.  James ridicules Christians who would honour the wealthy, as they are the ones who attack the church; without giving reasons or details, it makes the point that this contradictory behaviour is hard to avoid.  It is human to be like this, not to think about the ethics of how we behave, but rather lurch from one situation to the next.  We see it still with the people who vote for billionaires despite being exploited by them already.  There is something about human nature here to trust the material more than the social or spiritual. When he observes this, James has followed the meanings of the ministry of Jesus. What if it is today’s challenge too.

Mark gives us two stories of healing by Jesus, one, the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, who confronts Jesus and the other, a man born deaf, who cannot speak well either.  Mark puts these stories side-by-side. Both healings are radically disturbing to normal behaviour.  What was it about Jesus that encouraged a foreign woman to speak with him, and when he dismissed her, in normal fashion, to refuse that convention?  Did this really happen or is this Mark telling us foreigners found healing and acceptance in the church of Jesus Christ, OR why not both?  Then the deaf mumbler does not even get access to daily living, his birth put him out of reach of acceptablility, socially and spiritually.

In case we think this story telling around inclusion/exclusion is long ago, I see it every other day, as I go to my gym, that is in a rough part of St Catherine Street.  The fortunate and successful like me, wander past groups of the homeless and addicted. They are busy with their own struggles to get a fix, pay off a debt, find a client.   We pass by each other, just as in the times of Jesus.

We have a woman who says yes to the power of God, whose faith refuses the refusal, like how water finds a way through rock, ‘Even the crumbs…’ she claims. The man born deaf who spoke strangely is unblocked to hear, to speak, because of his friends, and the Grace of Jesus’ gifts.

If you read the whole of Mark’s Gospel, more than once, intensely you will begin to have a sense of the strangeness of his ending.  Its not a happy end; the witnesses of the signs of resurrection are terrified, then sent back to Galilee to meet the risen Jesus.  The radical inclusion of foreigners, of the impure, comes with relocating the home of God, no longer in The Temple, but at the lakeshore.

We have individual and social transformation, and wholescale new starts.  All of which two thousand years later, with Christianity known as the established religion for centuries, is very difficult to receive. If we are not careful, we miss faith.  Just like James warned.

Then we are left with just burdens of being overwhelmed, by a planet heading to collapse of life as we know it. 

And that’s where I was, as I faced preaching, and listened. God spoke to me through nature, and I share it with you. Just a minute God whispered, this burden is not true: you know more. 

Yes I said, I know what it is to breathe, to say yes to God, to rely on God, now I say Yes again.

James wrote that faith produces works, or it is not faith.  And today we have heard how these works were not about keeping things the same, but safeguarding the least, the common life, the straggler, as if this was easy. 

It demanded more, much. It relied on the creative life of God.   

That I heard this for us, in this Season of Creation is key, and nature provides the evidence to let us have faith.  I have brought in the huge sunflower heads to keep some seeds for next year. Take a germinating seed, to put forth a leaf, the seed must be transformed. I cannot find the seed that grew into the sunflower anymore.  To receive energy, from the sun, the seed has to lose its identity and become a plant.  Only this is too simplistic, I am not a plant.  

I am born from a womb.  I relied on my mother’s milk, on being given solids, and then to feed myself.  To learn where I came from and what will happen as I grow older.  

Another story of Jesus then helps, the parable of the sower, with seeds falling on different ground, including the seeds that grow up with weeds. It is possible to get choked, to fall back into honouring the rich and disparaging the poor. To forget the Grace, 

The sign of this is the burdensome despair of the Season of Creation.  

So instead, say Yes, say Yes to faith, to God again and again. Reject the norms that value the wealthy, sell you fake personal security, or seize power by force. 

For God is our energy and life, God is the source of recreation as well as creation; the Chi, the energy through water and rock.  My life, your life, depends on receiving the energy of God, as the leaf captures the sun.  As new as the dawn, to rise as on eagles wings, to Hope and to Act, in this Season of Creation. 

Say Yes.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

PRAYERS

Sometimes we may feel overwhelmed by the scale of the climate emergency, we may feel helpless as we hear news reports of global natural disasters, we may feel powerless as we recognise the urgency and range of action that needs to be taken by governments and multinational corporations if we are to properly address the climate crisis, but the theme for this year’s Season of Creation ‘To hope and act with creation’ speaks to me of two fundamentals of my faith – to hope and to act.

Rev. Lindsey Sanderson, Moderator URC Synod of Scotland

God of all hopefulness and joy as the Season of Creation approaches enable us to take time to notice signs of hope within creation; wildflowers blooming on derelict land species returning to natural habitats once more days when renewable energy supply outstrips demand. 

May these signs of hope prompt us to act – to uphold the integrity of every living thing within the household of God to make choices which embody the love we have for our global neighbours and in all things to give an account of the hope which is within us for all creation. May it be so. Amen.

God of all hopefulness, we bring before You our concerns for the world and her people. 

Gracious God, hear our prayer

We pray for parents around the world who reach out in hope for their children. We pray for justice: when they struggle to provide food for their families; when they cannot find a place to make a home for their children. 

Gracious God. hear our prayer.

We pray for those who find themselves on the margins of their societies. We pray for justice: that they might confront centres of power with the experience of life on the margins; that they might be allowed to contribute to the welfare of society; that we may all be enriched by the insights and wisdom they bring to our communities. 

Gracious God, hear our prayer

We pray for our common home and all who seek to ensure its wellbeing. We pray for justice: that all nations of the world will work together for the common good of each person and our planet; that conservation will enable habitats to flourish while meeting the needs of local communities; that we each understand the impact we have upon the earth and adjust our lifestyle accordingly. 

Gracious God, hear our prayer

We pray for ourselves, Disturb us and disquiet us with a passion for justice. Challenge us to grasp a vision of Your new world and motivate us to act to birth it into being. Enable us to pass on the gift of hope, so others are empowered to continue the journey of faith. 

Gracious God, hear our prayer.

For You are the source of our hope and the creator of all.

Amen.