Peace Be With You

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.^{* 41}While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence. 44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.

Luke 24:36b-48

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:19-31

I love that our lectionary gospel stories for the two Sundays following Easter find the disciples locked behind closed doors in a room, hidden away from the world, scared for their lives, not believing the stories of new life they have been hearing from the women who stayed by the tomb so long they finally found it empty—not believing until Jesus walks in the room himself, wounds healing a bit, giving his best greeting: “Peace be with you.” Our stories find the witnesses, find the first readers of the gospels as they were written down many years later, and yes, all of us, in a state of disbelief that it all really happened, not understanding how Christ has come back to life, doubting the best news so faithfully shared by the women. Thomas, one of the disciples, is MIA for some reason we are not told, and when he comes back to hear the good news, he stares in disbelief: “No way. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’”

Thomas has been called many things throughout the generations—everything from doubting and stupid and faithless to smart and curious and faithful. I love this story, love Thomas, because he forces us to ask the very same questions ourselves—Are the stories true? Can they be? Is there any way our Savior could have come back to life? And if so, can I truly believe it if I can’t see his wounds and touch his pain? I love Thomas’ story so much because I suspect that a little bit of him lies deep down inside every one of us, the doubt that leads us to deep, tough questions about faith, the doubt that resists easy answers, the doubt that fuels the need for us to truly see and feel and touch and experience to believe.

I think John’s story of Thomas’ doubt, as well as the resurrection story of doubt that Luke gives us are crucial stories for us to hear as folks who claim Easter resurrection. Sadly, doubt has become a maligned concept in some of the more narrow and shallow theology we hear nowadays—that if you are a follower of Christ, you cannot express any doubt, that faithfulness and doubt are complete and total opposites, that you can’t express any doubt in God or in God’s world if you’re a “real” Christian. I’ve listened to our students share stories of folks who have told them they are unfaithful when they dare to express doubt—which is heartbreaking if you’ve ever spent time with them and know how truly faithful they are.

I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it’s because we live in a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional world where there is much gray area, so many moral questions to be faced each day, so much happening that it’s tempting for us to shut down and ignore it all rather than delve deep into the hard questions and tough possibilities. Maybe, when there’s so much hard stuff in the world that tempts us to shut down, we feel that it’s sinful to question God’s actions or non-actions as the case may be, God’s purpose or intention for creation. Where was God when the poorest country in the Western hemisphere suffered an earthquake that destroyed the country and killed 200,000 people? Where is God in a world full of Boko Haram and ISIS killers? Why does God allow good people to suffer? Why couldn’t God have stepped in to save a Son from a ghastly death on the cross? These are hard questions, tough stuff—and I think it’s tempting for the world to see them as faithless questions of shallow doubt instead of faithful questions of crucial, thoughtful doubt to our Creator—our Creator who can take anything thrown his way.

The world encourages us, tells us not to ask these big, huge questions of God, not to question God’s activity in the world. The world tells us that it’s not ok to doubt, that it’s unfaithful. But Thomas tells us otherwise. Thomas has seen so much that is unbelievable over the previous few days—prophecies and violence and murder at the hands of the authorities. He doesn’t believe what the disciples are now telling him, that Jesus is indeed alive—he simply says, “I need to see it, to touch him, to experience it myself.” The world would tell us that Thomas is unfaithful in expressing this disbelief, this doubt—that, as a popular song tells us, Thomas is “of little faith.” But I think the world has this one wrong. In saying that he needs to see Christ for himself, to touch the wounds deep down in his side, Thomas is acknowledging the horror of what he has seen, the awfulness of watching his friend and leader die. He is saying that he can’t allow himself to believe, to live into the possibility of the best news of all, until he sees it, feels it, believes it in his bones. Only then can he open himself back up to the hope of resurrection. This is not a denial of faith, but just the opposite—a deep, abiding, encompassing hope of faith encased in a healthy sense of doubt.

I love how writer and theologian Frederick Buechner describes the scene in that room when Jesus first appears to everyone but Thomas, and then Thomas several days later:  

…in the next few days all the things that everybody could see were going to happen happened, and Jesus was dead just as he’d said he’d be. That much Thomas was sure of…There was no doubt about it. And then the thing that nobody had ever been quite able to believe would happen happened too. Thomas wasn’t around at the time, but all the rest of them were. They were sitting crowded together in a room with the door locked…scared sick they’d be the ones to get it next, when suddenly Jesus came in…he said shalom and then showed them enough of where the Romans had let him have it to convince them he was as real as they were if not more so…When [Thomas] finally returned and they told him what had happened…[Thomas] said that unless Jesus came back again so he could not only see the marks for himself but actually touch them, he was afraid that, much as he hated to say so, he simply couldn’t believe that what they had seen was anything more than the product of wishful thinking. Eight days later, when Jesus did come back, Thomas got his wish…Even though [Jesus] said the greater blessing is for those who believe without seeing, it’s hard to imagine that there’s a believer anywhere who wouldn’t have traded places with Thomas, given the chance, and seen that face and heard that voice and touched those ruined hands (Peculiar Treasures, “Thomas”).

What a fabulous description of that scene! Jesus says to the disciples that it’s more blessed to believe without seeing because he knows the bigger picture, that this story will be told through thousands of generations of Christians who will never be able to see and touch and feel Christ’s wounded body for ourselves; he knows that the story will be told despite doubt, through doubt and because of doubt. But for that moment, for this day, Jesus affirms Thomas, his doubts and all, affirms Thomas as he proclaims resurrection life. Jesus comes to Thomas, opens himself up to Thomas and his doubts and questions and faithfulness, meets Thomas where he is and affirms him. And in doing so, Jesus affirms that there is a bit of Thomas deep down inside every single one of us—affirms that doubt is natural and necessary and vital to our life of faith, affirms that we, too, are all folks who yearn to feel, see, and hope for the great news of resurrection in our lives.

In their stories of the days following the resurrection, Luke and John both tell us that Jesus breaks in to find us where we are, just as he found the disciples, finds us asking deep questions of doubt, expressing our faith in so many different ways. Just as Jesus was determined to get to the disciples then, he is determined to get to us when are asking the deep, profound questions, the ones peppered with doubt, when we are desperate to see him and feel him and touch him and sense him in our midst. He is determined to say to us, “Peace be with you, no matter wherever you are, no matter what you are feeling or believing, no matter what is happening in your lives.” This is fantastic news. But here is the best news of all—although there is a bit of the skeptical, doubting, probing, faithful Thomas in all of us, we are all a bit different from him simply by the fact that we are not bound by our conceptions of who we think he is, what we think he looked like. Unlike Thomas, we don’t know because he lived 2000 years ago. Sounds like yucky news on the surface, but think about it. It opens up a new world of possibility to us; a new world of possibility where the affirmation “peace be with you” can come in so many ways. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, says it beautifully:

It is good news, indeed. In the different seasons of our life, Jesus’s appearance is certain to change, and we will not always know him, particularly when hardships have given us many reasons to doubt. One moment he may come to us dressed in golden garb, calling us to celebrate joyously the richness of spirit faith promises. The next, however, he may come wearing beggar’s rags, reminding us that the love which saves is vulnerable and costly, and that the glory which awaits us is humble in texture and well worn in feel. At still other times, he may come to us wrapped in the wool shawl of the wise old grandmother who simply holds us as we weep. Whatever his appearance may be, though, we will know it is he if inside those golden garbs, street-faded rags, or warm knitted cape, we find not a logically argued response to our questioning faith but a surprising proclamation of peace and touching love that is stronger than even violent death itself. In the wonder of those wounds he finds us (Feasting on the Word, Year B)

In the wonder of those wounds, he finds us indeed. Thanks be to God.

Mandatum (Maundy Thursday sermon)

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” ¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. ³¹When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:1-17; 31-35

In 2007, Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who at age 47 still had so much life to live and so much love to experience, received the awful diagnosis of pancreatic cancer; he was told that he only had 6 months left to spend with his family and friends, with his students and community. He decided to spend his remaining time being with his kids who were way too young to lose their dad, but he did something else. But, facing his own mortality, he also did something else—he taught. In his professor way, teaching until the end, he wrote a final lecture, sharing the most important things in life, the most important things to remember when all else is stripped away, when all pretenses are gone, when the most important things in life seem to make their way to the top.

In his lecture, Randy wrote these words:

I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play. Show gratitude. Don’t complain, just wok harder. Be good at something. It makes you valuable. Work hard. Find the best in everybody. … you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.”

What beautiful words to leave for us all as he was facing death—deep to think about, but not deep enough to get us confused and cause us to quit thinking; beautiful in their simplicity and ease of understanding.

And this is where we find ourselves this evening, standing in the shadow of death, worshiping and sharing a meal together, experiencing and remembering Christ’s last day on earth, hearing some of his final words to the disciples, to all of us. The time of crucifixion is very near, the reality of what is coming very real. The disciples and friends gathered there, all of us gathered here, want to hear more from Christ, to take it all in, to make sure we haven’t missed anything before he leaves us. We have sung the words to Jesus, asking for his help in understanding one more time: “Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve, the neighbors we have from you.”

Jesus knows that the hour has come, that his time is coming to an end. And he leaves his disciples and friends and all of us with the most important message of all: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” When his life is coming to and end, when all other hopes and airs, presumptions and pretenses are stripped away, when Jesus and all of us are faced with his mortality, Jesus leaves us with the message of love. And, in case we are too dense to truly understand it, Jesus shows us how to love in the simplest way.

Jesus shares a final, simple meal with his friends. He eats with all of those gathered, with those who have left their lives and livelihoods to follow him, with the ones who will fall asleep on him in the garden and leave him at this death, those who will stay under the cross, shares a meal with the one who will repeatedly deny him, even with the one who has already betrayed him. Jesus invites all of them to the table, opens it to them regardless of who they are or what they have done. He doesn’t turn anyone away, and shares the gift of food with them. This simple act tells those gathered there, tells all of us, that love is about invitation. It is about welcome. That love is about the very hard stuff that comes with forgiveness. That is how you love.

After the meal has been shared, Jesus rises from the table, wraps a towel around himself, and pours water in a basin. He kneels at the disciples’ dirty, tired, and worn feet, taking them in his hands, massaging them clean and washing them dry. These actions are normally reserved for the lowliest of the low slaves among them, actions designed to remind the slaves of their station in lives, reminding them that they are subservient and always will be. In taking on that role himself, Jesus turns the table and shows love to all of them by touching them and their hurt places, by washing them clean, reminding them that we should all serve each other—that love means turning the most menial tasks into acts of love for each other. Through this amazing act, he also reminds them that no one is any better or any greater than any other: “So, if I your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master…” He reminds them and us once again that no one is greater or better than any other, that we are called to treat everyone equally, to love them that way. That is how you love.

And in case we haven’t gotten it already, Jesus loves us enough to leave us with a new commandment, to make his last words absolutely clear to those gathered around the table, to all of us: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” In case there was any debate left on the issue, any debate on what Jesus said or didn’t say, Jesus makes it clear—that disciples, that Christians, that all of us are truly known by how we love. Love means sharing meals with those who have never hurt us and those who have. Love means washing each others’ feet and offering waters of forgiveness. Love means getting rid of the terms “servant” and “master,” seeing and treating each person equally. Love means living by Christ’s new commandment through each and every breath of our lives.

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve, the neighbors we have from you.

Never Again

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you, that 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.” ¹² God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³ I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9:8-17

A couple of beginning thoughts…this is normally our Old Testament text for the first Sunday of Lent, but our college students are leading worship next week, so we’ll use different texts. Nick, Kathy, and I will also be focusing on the theme of covenant during Lent, so we’ll begin today—at the very beginning.

And at the very beginning, God created, looked around at what had been created and proclaimed it good.  A world full of colors and creatures and sunlight and moonlight; green land and blue waters; a creation bursting with promise and hope and life. And it was good. But in that beginning life began to evolve and humans began to realize their sin as they saw each others’ nakedness. There was jealousy and pettiness in those first descendants that led to one brother taking the life of another, murder that continued through generations. God looked around at this good creation that had been marred by the sin of humans—looked around and saw the wickedness of humankind. The description given to us in the 6^th chapter of Genesis is not a pretty one:

The Lord saw the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.

God grieved over them, hated their wickedness, mourning that beautiful part of creation that had been molded with loving hands, regretting the day they had been made.

But, even in the midst of that madness and chaos and disorder, there was a ray of hope in the midst of darkness—a part of that creation that remained good. There was a man named Noah, a descendant of the murderous Cain. God loved Noah and entrusted him with the little part of creation that would be left after God sent a flood to wipe the chaos away. God planned to start over and created Noah to preserve that new creation. God told him to build a boat strong enough to withstand the flood waters that would soon wipe the earth away, big enough to take in 2 animals of every kind, precious enough to hold Noah’s precious family who would be saved with him. You know Noah must have been good, because most of us would have questioned God about this one. I, for one, would have protested and said, “Maybe I’ll do this God, but only if I don’t have to bring the snakes with me.”

You know, we so often tend to sanitize this story—to not deal with the harshness and severity and destruction of it. Instead of dealing with the reality of what happens here, we want to make it the stuff of nursery walls and camp songs; the cute animals coming on in twosies, twosies, elephants and kangaroosies, roosies—but it’s not. The ark must have been awful and hard to build, with Noah feeling lots of guilt for his family being the last one on the earth. The ark would be burdened with the smell of animals and the territorial fights that were sure to ensue between them. It must have been awful and hard for Noah, knowing that he and his family would be the last part of God’s creation standing after the flood, awful knowing that they would see everyone else washed away to their deaths.

And it was awful. Just as there was nothing good about the Earth that God could find, there is nothing good about this part of the story. The flood was horrible; the death all around was horrible. And God sensed that. After God blew breath and the flood waters receded showing the barrenness left of the earth, God looked around. God made a promise of new life in the middle of the nothingness, a promise never to do it again. God made a promise: “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.” It was a beautiful promise to be sure, but, as we all know, promises are easily broken. And God knows us and knows that we can’t help being broken and acting broken because sin is in our hearts from the beginning. So God took it one step further and made a covenant, a promise to be sure, but something more binding—a covenant is a promise, an oath, a hope that comes from the heart, a promise of hope between God and all of us, something that is deep and meaningful. A covenant bears the promise to all of us that God will never break God’s word to us, and so it is lifelong and necessary for us to live in the world. God said to Noah, “I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you…that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood to destroy the earth…I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” God made that covenant with Noah, makes it with all of us since we are all descendants, God’s children together. Never again, God says.

The covenant, that original covenant with God and with all of us, is binding for God, a promise and oath that will never be broken by our Creator. This covenant reminds us that God is good to us all of the time and always will be. But God also knows that we will not always be good back, knows that we are so prone to breaking covenant. It even happened with Noah—God made that original covenant with Noah after Noah built the ark out of such overwhelming faithfulness. Noah and his family were fruitful—they multiplied and filled the earth just as God asked. But it wasn’t easy. Can you imagine how heavy all that was for Noah—for he and his family to be the only humans who were picked to survive a flood that would wipe out the rest of the earth? Can you imagine the survivor’s guilt? Although he honored the covenant with God, he lived a broken life, weighed down by guilt, one that culminated with him being drunk and naked and having to be covered up by his sons. Even as he continued to spread life as he planted in the vineyard, he was ultimately broken by survival, broken by life. But despite all of that, God’s promise of life, of creation, continued.

There is a lot of darkness in Noah’s story, a lot of broken earth and broken people. I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt a lot of times lately that maybe we are there again, in a place where God looks at the world as broken and broken down, heavy with the weight of sin and violence, heavy with the burden of people who tear each other down and hurt each other without even a moment of hesitation. I’ve felt several times in the last few years that we might be in the time of Noah again.

When I heard the stories from an elementary school in Newtown, stories of 5 year olds who had up to 12 bullet wounds each in their little bodies, I looked to the sky and wondered and asked, “What kind of world are we living in, God?” So many times lately, as I’ve heard of hundreds of school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria, girls who have been raped and held for ransom and have become not suicide bombers—but suicide bombs—as explosives have been strapped to their bodies, I wonder. When I see us all become so convinced that we have the market on truth and everyone else is wrong, and when I see the ways we tear each other down over social media, I wonder. When I hear about three twenty-something Muslim students who are executed in their apartments in Chapel Hill, I wonder. When I watch our elected leaders of all parties act like children who threaten to take their toys from the sandbox and go home instead of talking and compromising, I wonder. And, of course, as I watch the spread of ISIS—a group who kills all the men in Iraqi villages and keeps their women and children, raping and pillaging them; a group who kidnaps foreigners, holding them for years until they know the world is watching, murdering them brutally in increasingly barbaric ways, I wonder. I wonder how the world will deal with these people who kidnap a young refugee worker from Syria, hold her and do God only knows what to her, only to set her up to be murdered. Folks with no conscience certainly won’t listen to reason or suddenly be overcome by compassion and we are left to wonder if even bombs will stop them. I honestly thought this this week after hearing about Kayla Mueller’s death: “Maybe it’s time for God to go all Old Testament and send those flood waters into this broken world again, wipe the slate clean, and just start over.”

Thankfully, though, that’s just my view of our broken and sinful world. And thankfully that’s not God’s view. Although I imagine that God is still disgusted and sad and grieved by what we do to the world and to each other, God still says, “Never again.” Although I imagine that God says it over and over and over again and often tires of it, God still stands by that covenant: Never again. Although I imagine we probably often make God mad enough to fill the earth again, God stands firm to the covenant: Never again will I fill the earth with the flood waters and destroy my creation.

Notice that God doesn’t require any promises, any oaths, any words God knows we can’t back up from Noah or from us. God makes the covenant with us knowing that any promises we make in return will be broken because we are broken, because perfection was broken in the garden by us almost as soon as it was created by God. But God makes the promise of covenant anyway. God sets the bow in the clouds anyway as a sign of covenant for all of us.

I love how my favorite storyteller, Barbara Brown Taylor says it:

From now on, God…will bind himself to creation in peace, promising himself to it…God chooses to ally himself with the cantankerous creation whatever the cost…We have all of us got a place in that ark—not because we, like Noah and his crew, are all that righteous, but because it has pleased God to preserve our lives. Because life is sacred to God, and having destroyed it once, God has promised never to do it again. If we go on perishing, it may have less to do with divine fiat that with our own amnesia. We have forgotten who we are and what we are supposed to be doing. We have forgotten whose covenant partners we are and how that covenant—not to mention that God—means for us to be bailing water and handing out life vests as fast as we can, so that every living creature who rides this ark with us may share the unmitigated joy of walking down the rickety ramp to plant a foot, a paw, a hoof on dry land.

“Never again,” says God, promising, covenanting to Noah and each and every one of us that we have a place in the ark. God makes that covenant with us, even knowing that we are broken and that we can’t help but sin. God makes that covenant with us, promising with every breath and every word and every action that we are a part of the kingdom. And because of that amazing covenant, we are called to every single thing we can to honor God, to honor God’s covenant promises to us—to live in thanksgiving as we make sure that every creature is able to set foot on the good soil of the earth.

I love that this story of Noah and God and covenant is one of our lectionary passages for the first Sunday of Lent. As we are about to journey through these long, barren, Lenten days, we are called to examine our lives in every way. We are called to look at this grace God has given the planet because God wants us to live in harmony, honoring the earth, honoring each other, honoring God. Lent gives us the chance to examine and explore how to reach out despite our brokenness; how to break free from what weighs us down and reach out to those in need; how to love deeply while at the same time recognizing our mortality and sin. Let us be reminded of that during this week as we journey towards Ash Wednesday and Lent.

As we close, I would like to take some time to read some beautiful, haunting words from Kayla Mueller, the American who showed her love for God by working with Syrian refugees. She was kidnapped two years ago by ISIS and proved dead this week. These are tough, but necessary words to hear from a woman of great faith—a young woman who had already done so many great things in the world, a woman who could have done so much more if she had not been taken, a woman who loved so greatly while also recognizing her own sin, her own mortality. She wrote these words in a letter after she had been kidnapped:

If you could say I have 'suffered' at all throughout this whole experience it is only in knowing how much suffering I have put you all through; I will never ask you to forgive me as I do not deserve forgiveness. I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator because literally there was no else…and by God and by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall. I have been shown in darkness, light and have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I have come to see that there is good in every situation…I pray each day that if nothing else, you have felt a certain closeness and surrender to God as well and have formed a bond of love and support amongst one another. The thought of your pain is the source of my own, simultaneously the hope of our reunion is the source of my strength. Please be patient, give your pain to God. I know you would want me to remain strong. That is exactly what I am doing.

Amen. Let us pray.