This morning we awoke to 5 inches of new fluffy snow with more falling, blanketing our world in quiet clean. The wind is calm and the temperature a comfortable 29 degrees. So, we made plans to go downhill skiing tomorrow before the predicted warm-up arrives on Tuesday.
Steve and I each started skiing at the age of 4. The first time we skied together was a delight, neither of us had to wait for the other. Both of us volunteered as instructors and we traveled to the mountains as often as we could. Not being able to ski has been one of the few downsides of spending our winters in Mazatlan. There is such beauty in fresh powdery snow. The feeling of swooshing down the slopes rivals any other experience for its freedom. Just anticipating that sensation makes me smile. Floating in the ocean, the waves rocking and suspending my body so that I am part of the vast movement is strangely a similar feeling. There is a oneness with the world, a flow that reveals my smallness in the scope of creation. The rhythmic waves and the softer sound of the sand’s movement when my ears are underwater express both the power and the gentleness of the sea.
When I was in high school my pastor at the time introduced me to a practice of biblical reflection that involved reading a text a few times and then re-writing it for myself as a prayer. He suggested starting with the psalms. It is a practice I have used for 40 years and has helped me claim the scripture for myself. Recently I discovered a wonderful book, Psalms for Praying, by Nan C. Merrill that seems to have originated in just that practice. The book is not a translation or even a paraphrase of the psalms, but a personal and evocative reworking of them for contemplation. I share with you her version of Psalm 34: 4-8.
When I searched for Love, the Beloved answered within my heart, and all my fears flew away.
Look to the Beloved, and your emptiness will be filled, your face will radiate Love.
For when you cry, the Beloved hears and comes to you, your troubles disappear.
The Beloved sends angels to those who call on Love to awaken them from their fears.
O taste and see! The Beloved is within you! Happy are all who dwell in the Beloved’s heart.
Psalms For Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness, Nan C. Merrill. (c) 1996 by Nan C. Merrill
May you open your senses to the Creator who blesses us with such majesty and wonder.
2.21.2021; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; Genesis 9; Yellow Lake Lutheran Church, Danbury WI
“Never again! I will never again use my hands to strike my child,” he declared, as he came down the stairs, after administering a spanking to his 3-year-old son. “Never again! All I ever learned from corporal punishment was to fear my father and to do whatever I could not to get caught. We will find another way to raise our child. I will not be that kind of a dad. Never again!” It was a sort of covenant he made and kept, a promise that was unconditional. No matter what his son would do, that father vowed to use his hands for love, to build up and to teach not to hurt or tear down.
Whenever I read or hear the story of the end of the flood, I remember that day, now 31 years ago when my son’s father changed, when he proclaimed, “never again!” In today’s lesson about the end of the flood we hear God’s declaration of those same words, three times. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Never again.
Even the non-religious know something about the story of the flood, the animals coming two by two, the building of the divinely commissioned ark. The story comes from the first section of Genesis, the pre-historical part where we find the cosmic stories of creation, the garden, the tower of babel, the great flood, and the mingling with the giants in the earth. These fantastic stories speak to the nature of reality. Nearly every culture has them, stories of origin and identity. Instead of being literal history, they provide archetypes; they describe a world view.
Many countries have their flood stories. For example, the Babylonian flood story that circulated in the ancient world at about the same time had many of the same elements. But that story explained why life is filled with tragic loss and depicts gods whose actions are whimsical and capricious, whose disregard for human beings demonstrates a great expanse between gods and their creation.
The story of the great flood may start the same, with destruction, but it ends in a completely different way. Several of the stories in this first part of Genesis work this way. They mimic the surrounding cultures’ patterns by using the same structures but then put a totally new twist on the portrayal of God and the purpose of life.
In the story of Noah’s Ark, the unconditional and unending promise of God is displayed for all the world to see by the sign of the rainbow. Even though the problem of sin survived the flood, God’s response would never again be total destruction. God’s weapon, the bow, is put aside forever. Never again! Instead, like a loving father, God’s response to sin will be forgiveness and restoration.
I know a thing or two about floods. I grew up in Moorhead, MN, on the banks of the Red River. Perhaps you know that the Red River flows north past Winnipeg where the snow melts later. The forces of nature work against the drainage of that fertile valley. So, every year the whole community copes with the rising waters. My family’s home was just two blocks from the river. I remember a wet basement in the spring. I remember getting excused from high school to help fill sandbags. There were road and bridge closures. The damp dirty smell of melting snow and ice led to the even wetter, dirtier smell of rotten sheetrock and saturated insulation left in piles on the boulevards. In fact, one of my first real jobs was working for the parks and recreation board, on a post-flood clean-up crew. Yuck.
Floods are destructive and devastating. Their filthy aftermath lasts a long time. I’ve always thought it strange that Noah’s Ark is a popular theme in Sunday School and children’s books. It’s not a children’s story, after all. No, the destruction of all life, except for what fit on the ark is a theme for mature audiences. Gustave Dore captured the chilling horror of the flood in his 19th century engravings called The Deluge or The Great Flood. A lone rock, the tip of a high mountain is the only land that rises above the heaving waves, with frantic and fearful bodies clinging and climbing over each other to grasp a final moment of solid earth.
I think the story is motivated not by anger but out of exasperation that “every inclination of humankind’s heart was evil, continually. The story relates the 40 days of rain, the 40 days of flooding, the 150 days of continuing flooding and then the months and months of waiting for the destruction to drain away. After the water was gone, the debris and the stinking damp soils the whole world and God says Never Again! I will not be that God. I will relate to my creation with only love and restoration!
God unconditional covenant with the whole earth is marked by the rainbow, a reminder, not just to humanity and creation, but to God’s own self—that love is the way, healing and rebuilding are the divine intention.
The repeating pattern spirals through the scriptures, and through our lives too.
We see it in the garden stories. God creates a good thing, humanity messes it up, breaking the rules, lying and hiding. Then God creates a solution and restores the relationship broken by sin. And life goes on. I think of it as a sort of spiral, like a slinky turned on its side. Life is good at the top, human action starts a sinking spin. Then at the bottom God reaches out—God hears the cries, sees the suffering and acts with gracious concern and life goes on.
It happened with Cain and Abel, it happened in Noah’s day, it happened in Babel. The pattern continued with Sarah and Abraham and their descendants. Over and over again, God steps in to fix the muddle created by God’s people. When Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister, when Hagar is cast out into the desert, when Isaac is almost slaughtered, when Jacob cheats Esau, when Laban cheats Jacob, when Joseph is sold into slavery… Each time God restores the situation.
Right there is the gospel. The story of the flood and God’s promise of Never Again, symbolized by the rainbow, sets the pattern. Destruction and devastation threaten each and every generation, not just in biblical times, and not from God’s own command. Humanity is fully capable of bringing about its own wreckage. The good news is that God’s continuing commitment is found in those repeated words: Never Again. God’s perpetual gaze toward the rainbow restores our spiral of ruin, time and again.
You can see it if you look. Consider our world at the moment. Oh, how God’s heart must still break that the inclination of our hearts is still evil, perpetually. Social and economic injustice and racial disparity continue. Displaced persons and refugees are at global all-time highs. Hunger ravages the lives of over 2 million children starving from famines in 7 countries. 111 people have suffered with covid leaving 2.5 million dead. Unchecked ecological damage is catching up to us with weather extremes. Civil unrest and the rise of nationalism threaten our social stability. I don’t need to go on.
The causes for divine despair continue. Sin cannot be wished away or washed away or even drowned. It just comes back. Shortly after the water receded what did Noah do? He planted a vineyard and then got wasted, passed out drunk, naked and exposed. He wound up cursing his son Ham into slavery for leaving him uncovered. Then that story was used to justify human slavery through the generations.
What did God survey after the flood? Not a newly washed world, pristine and ready for a new beginning, as anyone who has lived through a flood can attest. No, it would have been a flood-ravaged world, with stinking piles of soggy, sodden debris and the aftermath of wreckage. As I said, it is an adult themed story.
The good news comes in the change that happened in God’s heart, the commitment to grace and forgiveness, the promise of Never Again! People still cheat and steal and kill and make wrong decisions and fail. The spiral continues, and thanks be to God, the rainbow still proclaims God’s promise.
God keeps forgiving, showing mercy, offering second chances, pointing humanity in the right direction, renewing, restoring, loving. God’s grace made its first big debut after the flood in an unconditional covenant with all people and all creation. That spiral of love continues through the cross to the resurrection. It is repeated in the promises of baptism where we are named for the one who keeps making all things new.
Let us pray. Holy God of the rainbow, God of Easter morning, God of constant grace, you claim us in the waters of baptism. May we remember with every raindrop, every flake of snow, every prism of light, every sip of water, every splash that you can transform you creation with love and forgiveness. Open us to your truth, that only love redeems. Amen.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Thank you, Michaela for reading today. God’s love lived in your Grandma, and her love lives in you, just as it lives in all her grandchildren.
The words you read tell us that “God is love, and those who live in love, live in God and God lives in them.” Truer words were never spoken.
Wendy loved so much. Each one of us gathered here today knew Wendy’s love. It has been heartwarming to read the outpourings of love that have been scrolling endlessly on Facebook for the last 10 days recounting memories of this classy lady. Her gentle and strong spirit reached so many people. Who knows how far and wide this service is being streamed right now? Certainly, Wendy’s love is being felt and remembered in Mazatlan right now. And we can be sure that it is God’s love and your love, and our love that filled Wendy’s life with purpose and joy.
So, we gather today to remember Wendy. Thank you, Wally, for sharing your words today. What we are doing today is an important thing. Telling stories, looking at photos, praying together- this is a holy thing we do. It will be important to keep on with this process, even if that means finding new ways to do that because of the pandemic.
On the very evening that Wendy died, I was watching a show on Netflix when one of the characters recited a poem that caught my attention. I stopped the video and replayed it several times so that I could write down the words of the poem so that I could share it with you all today. It is called ‘Tis a Fearful Thing’ and it was written about a thousand years ago by a Jewish man in Spain named Judah Halevi. He was a philosopher and a physician.
‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch. A fearful thing to love, to hope, to dream, to be— to be, And oh, to lose. A thing for fools, this, And a holy thing A holy thing to love. For your life has lived in me, your laugh once lifted me, your word was gift to me. To remember this brings painful joy. ‘Tis a human thing, love, a holy thing, to love what death has touched.
It is a fearful, holy, important thing we do, to remember the painful joy of loving Wendy, painful only because death has come. Obviously today is just the beginning of naming the feelings, or recounting the memories, of crying and laughing and holding each other through the process of grief. Those feelings will shift and change as time moves on. What we do today is a start.
At times like this we turn to poetry, whether through the words of scripture or the lyrics of songs. I suppose we do that because it is hard to capture, in normal language, the hopes and dreams and love that feed our lives.
Mary Oliver captured the mystery of what we’re doing now when she wrote:
To live in this world
You must be able To do three things: To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your own bones knowing Your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to Let it go,
To let it go.
Oh, how true those words are! Wendy loved deeply. Anyone who ever saw Rich and Wendy together, whether that was on a dance floor, or walking on the Malecon, or even in a professionally filmed advertisement for a condo, could see the deep love they shared. Anyone who ever heard Wendy talk about her children and grandchildren knew how deeply she loved you. Even those of us who simply counted Wendy as a cherished friend felt her loving care, her welcoming hospitality, her generous spirit.
A few weeks ago, when Wendy transitioned to hospice care and Rich asked if I would officiate at her memorial service when the time came, I knew right away that my words would be focused on love.
The words from the Song of Solomon, chapter 8: verses 6-7 came to mind. I know it may be unusual to choose a passage from the love poetry of scripture for a memorial service, but in this case I think it is just perfect. As you listen to these words consider the power of the love that filled and flowed from Wendy’s life.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; For love is strong as death, Passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, A raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, Neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love All the wealth of one’s house, It would be utterly scorned.
Those words ring with an honest truth. Today, we stand in the shadow of death. There can be no doubt that death is fierce and strong. Sorrow can threaten to quench our spirits. There have been and will be days when tears flood our hearts.
But, love is equally strong. Its flashes are of a raging flame that not even death can quench or drown. When it comes right down to it—none of us who have known real love would ever trade even all the wealth in the world for love.
A few days before Wendy died, I was able to administer Holy Communion to Rich and Wendy, via the telephone. I read to them the poetic imagery from the 21st chapter of Revelation about the place that Jesus went to prepare for her and for us.
“God will be with them; God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
It’s impossible for any of us to describe the next place literally. So we turn to images and poetry to express our faith and hope. We say she’s in the arms of the angels. Or she’s somewhere over the rainbow, where troubles melt like lemon drops. We turn to the eternal truths: that in God’s eternal care there will not be the suffering that she endured here. There will not be the mourning you feel now after her death. There will not be any tears or pain or death.
It is a holy thing to love. To live in this world, we must love what is mortal, knowing our life depends on that love. And when the time comes to let go, even that is love, because we trust that love is strong as death and nothing can quench love.
St. Paul put it this way. “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8: 38-39)
Wendy’s pain is gone, and she is now held in the love of God, who is love. And Wendy’s love will continue to abide in each of us. And that is a holy thing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
(Wendy’s obituary and the livestream broadcast of her service can be accessed by clicking the link below.)
A few years ago I came across the writings of a Franciscan monk named Richard Rohr. I was so interested in his mystical reflections that I signed up for a regular email from the Center for Action and Contemplation. Of course, I don’t agree with everything he writes, but I often find myself fascinated with his approach to theology. You can check it out for yourself at: cac.org
Here’s what he had to say this week:
You shall not take the name of God in vain. (Exodus 20:7)
Many Christians think the second commandment is a prohibition against swearing. But I believe the real meaning of speaking the name of God “in vain” is to speak God’s name casually or trivially, with a false presumption of understanding the Mystery—as if we knew what we were talking about!
Many Jewish people concluded that the name of God should not be spoken at all. The Sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was not even to be pronounced with the lips! In fact, vocalizing the four consonants does not involve closing the mouth. A rabbi taught me that God’s name was not pronounceable but only breathable: YH on the captured in-breath, and WH on the offered out-breath!
We come from a very ancient, human-based, natural, biological, universally experienced understanding of God. God’s eternal mystery cannot be captured or controlled, but only received and shared as freely as the breath itself—the thing we have done since the moment we were born and will one day cease to do in this body. God is as available and accessible as our breath itself. Jesus breathes the Spirit into us as the very air of life (see John 20:22)! Our job is simply to both receive and give this life-breath. We cannot only inhale, and we cannot only exhale. We must breathe in and out, accept and let go.
Take several minutes to pause and breathe mindfully, surrendering to the mystery of wordless air, the sustainer of life. Part your lips; relax your jaw and tongue. Hear the air flow in and out of your body: Inhale: YH Exhale: WH
Let your breathing in and out, for the rest of your life, be your prayer to—and from—such a living and utterly shared God. You will not need to prove it to anybody else, nor can you. Just keep breathing with full consciousness and without resistance, and you will know what you need to know.
