A Faith in Recovery, March 1, 2009

Genesis 9:8-17
Mark 1:9-15
On this first Sunday in the Season of Lent, we do not have the luxury of questioning whether life is basically good or evil? Whether life is a romance that is destined to all work out in the end, or if life is a divine tragedy where everyone dies? Instead, on the first Sabbath in the season of Lent, our vision of life, is like the opening of the Movie WALL-E.

In the whole of the cosmos, the blackness of empty space, there is this bright blue spot, this world , like a blue glassy marble swirled with white clouds, that is Earth. Coming ever closer, we see a spectacular Grand Canyon, mountains and hills, skyscrapers, but allowing our vision to focus, we realize this is not the pristine planet in balance. What we thought we saw as Canyons and cliffs, mountains, hills, and cityscapes of skyscrapers, were all piles of compacted garbage. Creation it seems has been reduced to a lifeless waste and void, where there is no humanity, no life, no bird in the sky, no sound. But then there is movement, and we recognize the one and only thing that has survived all our pollution, is a cockroach, and later that the companion of that roach is an automated robot trash-compactor called WALL-E. And WALL-E discovers, quite by accident, that as toxic and corrupt as the planet had been for two thousand years, life has begun again.

The Genesis story of the Flood, is not a Darwinian debate of Creation versus Evolution. Instead, Genesis 9 provides a basic GIVEN, that the 6 Day Created Order of Life and Sabbath has been destroyed by human chaos, then drowned for over 40 days and 40 nights by God's chaos. As human creatures, we had struggled against our created identity, we fought against God, against ourselves, we corrupted all of life, and GOD ALMIGHTY, our Creator, our Companion, our Parent, our Love, our Foil, our Adversary; the Warrior GOD in whose image we were formed, making us god-like, finally resolved in anger to destroy all life.

BUT, and this is the SURREAL POINT of Genesis 9, in the tumultuous battle for Control, in the Flood of Chaos, in every family intervention:
be it the parent who leaves their child at a detox center, or
the adult child who takes their parent's car keys and house, or
the spouse who cuts up the credit cards,
the broken-hearted lover, the divorce, or
the Nation addicted to consumption,... There is an AFTERWARD.
The Bible does not suggest FORGIVENESS. When relationships are raw, when we are wounded, we are not ready to FORGIVE. INSTEAD After the Flood, there is a new beginning, A new GENESIS. Not Adam and Eve in the Garden, Not the birth of Cain and Abel, or after killing one another the Birth of a New People; but a different and new Genesis our New Normal is FAITH IN RECOVERY.

After the 40 Nights, after The Flood, after the Detox, after the Divorce is final, after death, according to Genesis, the Partner had not changed, Earth had not changed, Humanity had not changed, the one who did change is God. Almighty Eternal God, the Creator and Judge, Alpha and Omega determines NEVER AGAIN, NEVER EVER AGAIN and hangs up the Warrior's Bow. The fighting, the flood, the 40 Nights, was more costly than being Right.

Like the Prophet HOSEA who put away spouse and children as harmful, hurtful, then reclaims them as more precious for having been missed; We are redeemed. Humanity is not perfect, None of us is perfect. BUT God has claimed and reclaimed us. Our FAITH is in the RECOVERY of an All Powerful God who cannot bear to end. We are Forgiven. We are Redeemed. We are LOVED, not because we are so beautiful. Not that we are so wise. Not because we WON the war, or got what we wanted in the divorce, or even because we were so weak. But because God loved us so much. The painful, very real question we struggle with, is whether we can forgive? Can we forgive the one who did not allow us to do what we wanted? Can we God? There are times when life is too close, when we are too much in the moment to see and make choices, when we need to step back and like a pot of tea we need faith and life to be allowed to STEAP.

The COVENANT OF THE RAINBOW is a Promise underlying all future promises. Circumcision and Kosher foods, the 10 Commandments, Jeremiah's Law Cut into our Hearts, Jesus at the Table and upon the Cross: ALL are founded on this Promise, the unConditional Grace of God, the Love of God to be in Relationship with us in Recovery.

The Gospel, is that at a specific time and place in history, that is not in an ancient oral legend of a time before history, but in a specific REAL time and place, that is in Galilee of Judea of the Roman Empire of the Caesars, when John called all the world to be BAPTIZED for the FORGIVENESS of Sins, Jesus knelt down and was Baptized for the sins of the world. And Heaven itself was irreversibly ripped open. What happens in Jesus' life & Ministry is a microcosm of the whole history of humanity in relation to God.

The first recorded memory of the people of Israel is that after they crossed the Red Sea they went into the wilderness for 40 years. After Baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 Nights and Days. But where the people had complained and doubted and feared whether God brought them out to kill them, Jesus trusted God and was provided for.

The people came into the Land of Milk & Honey to take Possession, to wage wars and create Monarchies, witnessing the rise and fall of their own Empire. Jesus came out when John had been arrested and proclaimed “REPENT AND BELIEVE for the Kingdom of God is at Hand”.

Neither OLD or NEW TESTAMENT describe a mythic utopia where everything is love. The Bible takes as GIVEN that life happens, real life is very real. The Call is whether we will continue as we always have, or the DUAL NATURE of REPENTANCE as described by John Calvin: to ACCEPT and Name the Broken Nature of what has been, Turning to CHOOSE something about to be. Will we continue to curse God and curse the RAINBOW for changing our definitions of our world, or will we embrace the possibility that as unloveable, broken and hurtful as we are, God loves us?

How awesome it would be, if instead of believing in Fairy-tales of Happily Ever After, we claimed the reality that we have lived broken lives. As righteous as we may have tried to be, we are not perfect. Even so we are loved, not by a Prince Charming, but by God and by one another!