January 11, 2009 Voice From Heaven

Genesis 1:1-4
Mark 1:4-11
There are times, when we wish the skies would open up, and a voice from heaven would answer.
All too often the sky is overcast and dark, blanketed by our worries, doubts and clouds of snow. When the heavens do open, it is for rain or snow, or too infrequently in CNY a ray of sunshine. But, these testimonies from Genesis and Mark are not historic weather forecasts or accounts of astronomic climactic change. In each account, the VOICE FROM HEAVEN is a statement of identity, of conviction and of blessing.

In the beginning, when the world was without shape and a lifeless void of waste and darkness, there was not an historian documenting how God created. HOW is not the purpose of Genesis. The Bible is a statement of faith. When a person dies, a coroner performs an autopsy to determine the cause of death, but that determination, that causation does not define who that person has been, what it means to have lived a lifetime, to have fought wars, to have studied and known, to have loved and lost, and given birth to children, to have read stories to grandchildren. An Autopsy only defines HOW the person died. Faith is a statement, perhaps a voice from heaven, that identifies this life lived, intentionally, spiritually, and blessed.

Rather than a cataclysm of gases, the explosion of a star, or the act of extra-terrestrial visitors, the Bible's audastic claim is that Creation was INTENTIONAL. Life was not an accident, not fate, nor even a natural development. In natural form, the world was an uninhabitable waste, a life-less void in time and space. GOD the CREATOR CREATES CREATION.

To Create is not simply to Make, or to Build, to Copy, to Assemble or to Perform. To Create is an act of will, an act of the imagination, to create is to risk putting yourself into life. The act of Creation is the distinction between building a house and creating a home; between going through a wedding and being married; between having a baby and being a family. The act of Creation is an investment of life, and a willingness to back-off, to trust, in order to allow the other to have a freedom of will, a life.

That act of Creation formed IDENTITY, GOD is the Creator and we are the Creation. But more than an inventor, an uninvolved watchmaker, who once long long ago set life into motion, the Creator continues to create. The record of Scripture is that God brooded over and agonized over the pains and frustrations of life, such that God entered in to create new possibilities. When life profaned itself, corrupted itself into something living against life, God created a flood to wash the world clean, to intentionally begin again. When creation settled, was so complacent in a place and time as to attempt to build towers into the heavens to demonstrate power, God created differing languages and alternative possibilities. When life was enslaved and oppressed, God entered in and created a new people no longer enslaved but set free to choose to believe.

The tension of faith, is that act of Creation. The CONVICTION that creation is a personal investment and identification with something outside yourself, in this case outside of God, and yet as invested and involved and in love as the Creator is with Life, there is also the trust to not dominate, to not force, to not control, but to allow the creation to live. Therefore God BLESSES the creation as Good.

We live in an era of REDUCTIONISM. Parts of our culture are developing a language of text, that communicates in seemingly random letters. Parts of our culture choose to do without meat, to live without a car, or television. The irony in all of this is that we have the power to make choices. The difference between poverty and luxury is access to choices. In Poverty there is not a choice between meat and fish, between being vegetarian or not; in poverty the question is whether there is anything to eat or not.

Part of our REDUCTIONISM is knowing there is one God, known to us in three persons, so instead we describe belief in only one nature of God, that is Jesus. This week, the rains fell in a torrent, saturating the ground, running down the street like a river. The next day, the temperatures dropped and snow fell at times so thick all we could see was white. When the bitter winds blew over the face of the water, steam would rise and dance in the air. These are three separate ways in which we perceive water around us, each distinct, yet all basically the same. I treasure this passage from the Evangelist of Mark because it is one of the rare glimpses of the VOICE of HEAVEN speaking to the MESSIAH, and the Spirit visibly descending upon him as a dove. In that moment, all three personas of God are witnessed.

Many years ago, I named the REFORMED CONVICTION that Jesus is fully Human and Fully God, and that at that time we as a culture had become so accustomed to Jesus being the Christ Son of God we needed to emphasize the humanity of his being the Son of MAN. In these last dozen years, we have spoken a great deal about human relationships, we have named the love of God demonstrated in Jesus as son of Mary and teacher and friend. We have reflected upon his compassion and healing of others. We have interpreted his teachings and parables. Going as small groups to watch the Film “The Passion” we witnessed the suffering death of the man for all humanity. Recounting the Last Supper we have sat at Table with him.

But we then cannot ignore or lose sight of the other nature, that he is the Beloved, the Son, God in human life. Christian Baptism as transformed in Christ, as experienced in each of our lives, is not only a claim to wash away sin; not only a claiming of this individual by the Church. Baptism is an identification of GOD in each Person; an identification of this person (of each other) as changing our lives; an identification of this person as BLESSED.

Part of the beauty of this passage, is the realization that with the Baptism of Jesus, the Heavens were ripped and torn, setting God free in our lives, in our reality. According to the Evangelist Heaven was opened not in the Birth of Christ, not in miraculous feeding of 5000 not even at the Sermon on the Mount, or the Crucifixion when like the Egyptian Plagues the Sun was eclipsed. HEAVEN was opened at the Baptism of Jesus, for GOD to be identified as pat of our lives; and as invited by John the Baptizer, for all the world to REPENT, to name what we have done to God and to live differently with God.

I am not sure why we so rarely hear voices from heaven anymore. Perhaps it is because we are listening for BOOMING VOICES in our little controversies. Perhaps we have so filled our world with our own voices and our wars, we do not allow silence to be heard. Perhaps it is because we are waiting to hear a tinkling of bells, or heavenly host singing Alleluia rather than listening for God's Sigh! Perhaps it is because we are not listening.