And Immediately Sermon

Aristotle described, the way we begin is important. A story opening provides foundation. Beginnings provide a CONCENTRATION on the Characters and the Theological Ideas to be addressed. Beginnings CONFIRM where the story is going, what is God’s Plan for humanity. Beginnings provide CONTEXT of CONFUSION guiding where the reader must fill in the gaps, naming what we are searching for.

Each of the readings appointed for this week are stories of Beginnings. In each, the CONFUSION is brought about by The Divine, God/Christ taking a decisive action… “AND IMMEDIATELY.”
Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John, AND IMMEDIATELY the Spirit threw him into the wilderness. John was arrested AND IMMEDIATELY Jesus came preaching the very word John had preached “REPENT & BELIEVE” for the reign of God has come. Throughout Mark’s telling of the Gospel, the reader is continually trying to play catch up, searching to understand, because the Cosmos has Changed, GOD IS ON THE LOOSE, nothing is as we expect, everything is responding, immediately, everything is different because the Savior, God’s Messiah has come.

We often envision our world as a Rube Goldberg set of interrelated consequences. A harmless act, a snowflake falling, a butterfly flapping its wings, fate, Each inspiring a circumstance, motivating another, etc, etc. And we understand ourselves to be masters of our own destiny, controllers, able to chose and make decisions, to change our world, to succeed.
But in the story from Genesis, and the Gospel according to Mark, the INTIATOR, the Primary CHARACTER about whom everything is CONCENTRATED: is GOD. Many read the Bible as if a Book of History, and there is a chronological order to events that corresponds directly to our understanding of events from other cultures, sciences, and logic. Others read the Bible in the Genre of Great Myth, akin to Aesop’s Fables, Kipling’s Just So Stories, The Poem of Mighty Hiawatha. But whether we could find a fossilized piece of wood atop Mount Ararat and date this with Carbon 14 analysis or not, really is pointless. And while there are Mythic stories of a Flood in every human culture, the point of this story in GENESIS is not about THE FLOOD, or The ARK, or the ANIMALS, but about a new beginning with God.

The CREATOR had attempted to form a perfect creation, an independent, interdependent free world, that adored God for being God and simply lived in relationship and trust. But, at every generation: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, The Sons of God, humanity being free, chooses to rebel against God. Like a Fruedian desire to Kill and replace our Fathers, humanity sought to inherit the world, separate from God, as if God did not exist.
Time and Again, God confronts and Judges and starts over. However, here God looks at all the Creation and determines the whole thing is finally spoilt, corrupt and evil, beyond any attempt at REDEMPTION. One reading of human history is that we are EVOLVING, adapting and maturing as a species. The Genesis telling, is that the One maturing and changing is GOD. Suddenly God remembers, that out of all the creatures of the Earth, out of all humanity, there is ONE who is Faithful and Righteous, NOAH, a new ADAM who listens to God and responds in faith immediately.

There is a trick of story-telling, that has been used rarely, probably more effective because it has. Do you recall the beginning of the Jody Foster Film CONTACT, where all the cosmos, planets and constellations are moving along inter-related courses, and the camera focuses in upon one solar system, in upon one planet and one continent, and one city, focuses again and immediately you recognize all this, all the universe has been seen as a reflection in this little girl’s eye, and the girl grows into an adult, an astronomer.
Or years ago in the final episode of the television show ST. ELSEWHERE, after years of being caught up in the lives of all these people, inside this hospital, inside this city, the focus backed up further and further, stepping outside the window, to reveal the hospital as the snow fell, the hospital as part of a city block and backing out and refocusing, you came to understand, all these events had been the imaginings of what took place inside a cityscape inside a child’s snowglobe.
The FLOOD of Genesis, happened within the heart of GOD. As the creation God wanted to love, was drowned in the evil of human hearts. In that 40 days and 40 nights of chaos, God grew to trust, that IF the GARDEN OF EDEN the Perfection of Creation, Paradise was lost, could be ruined by one, replicated generation after generation, until all the world was spoilt; THEN if out of the whole world God could begin again with one remnant, one righteous and faithful person, living in TRUST and REDEMPTION, replicated generation upon generation, then all the world could be saved.

In ancient times, when a WARRIOR chose to never go to war again, they took their weapon and hung it up as a reminder. SO it is, that God hangs God’s bow in the heavens. God recognized that we probably would disappoint God and spoil Creation, as ancestors had done, but God made a NEW BEGINNING, a New COVENANT IDENTITY for humanity as THE RAINBOW PEOPLE.

A COVENANT IDENTITY, that is our identity in the heart of God. In our baptism, we gave our life, our very existence and identity and self, to God. In marriage, we claim a new identity as being part of this person’s life, before God. The Idea of a COVENANT literally traces back to word “TO CUT”. Like a C-Section, like circumcision, like a sacrifice, like the bow in the heavens during the rain, this is a CUT into LIVING MATTER, the tissue of life. According to Genesis, all the descendents of Adam and Eve, all the descendents of HUMANITY’s FALLEN NATURE were washed away in the flood, the chaos of GOD’s TEARS. God began again with one person, and through that person’s relationships and generations, touched all the world with the possibility of living as God intended.

A COVENANT, like the phrase AND IMMEDIATELY, represents a change, an irrevocable new reality. We can never go back to the way things were before. The world is new and different, reality has shifted, the REIGN of GOD HAS COME NEAR. That phrase from MARK clarifies for us, this reality, this world I try to be a part of, and do my very best with, I DO NOT OWN. No King or Government, or power can take control of our lives, because the REIGN OF GOD HAS COME. Life as we have known it, has been turned upside down, inside out and cross-eyed. The CALL OF JESUS CHRIST is to Change, to RE-ORIENT our Grasp of reality to fit into the Realm of God, to live as if EACH OF US is the one person God chooses to begin again with. What if you, are the means of God’s Salvation? What if you, what you believe, how you live, everything about you represented the means of God changing the world? KNOW that the promise of the RAINBOW is TWO-FOLD,
1)NEVER AGAIN will God attempt to destroy the whole creation in flood.
2)GOD WILL REMEMBER YOU

And the command of Christ to us all, as we struggle with continually re-orienting, REPENTING, being used by God, is: BELIEVE.