"Believing in Rainbows" September 25, 2016

Genesis 6-8 Jeremiah 32: 6-15 Luke 16: 19-31 This morning, in addition to new members, we welcome Amour Aleer from South Sudan to America. In 2001, this church became sponsors to Andrew Chol. In recent years, we grieved with Andrew as the last of his birth family were killed in civil war, and he declared "You, this church, are my family." But also, Andrew found and married Mary Nankiir, and together they have five children. Both work full-time. So Amour, Mary Nankin's mother, has come to be Grandmother. A few months ago, Andrew came to me saying that Immigration and Naturalization Services needed an American to sponsor Amour, which meant my sending my taxes and all financial information to Nairobi... not for millions of dollars, but for the treasure of a grandmother! As we open the Scriptures and attempt to be a people faithful unto God, we have an impediment to address. Everything about our culture and relationships today is immediate, transitory and disposable. We tend to think in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, commitments a week from now, or on next Month’s calendar, the longest commitment we can imagine is marriage or children or a mortgage. While mortgages tend to be written for 20 or 30 years, even this is a changing definition, because many pay off their mortgages, where the word Mortgage was used because “mort” in Latin refers to “until death.” Generations ago, we described our “Word as our Bond,” and bonds defined our identity in relationship, as: Parent to Child and Husband and Wife, Slave and Master, Lender and Indentured Servant, between Nations, between a people and King, between God and Creation. A Bond not only defined what was owed to whom, for what and how long, but more, created our identity in relationship. We named this as an impediment, because the Biblical Bond of Commitment is not in days or weeks or years, but “Covenants” which last forever. Covenant literally means: cut into, as stone in the case of the 10 Commandments, or our intimate flesh in the Circumcision of Abraham, into our hearts with Jeremiah, or Written in the Blood of Jesus in Communion. Covenants are binding relationships, generation after generation, between humanity and God. But at times, both God and we as humans, suffer from Senior-itis, knowing there was something to remember but we cannot call it up until reCalled. At those later times, there appears to be a great reversal, as the enslaved are set free, the lost are found, the suffering are nourished. But do we foolishly stumble through life, or do we live intentionally trusting the Covenant, believing that the last will be first and first will be last? One of the earliest stories we learned as children is of Noah and the Animals, but this story is not about Noah. This is not the Arky Arky Song of children. Remember as we read in Creation, that God did not destroy chaos and darkness, but balanced these with order, light and land. Instead of 1¾ inches earlier this week, or the half-meter of rain that falls each day in South Sudan for the rainy season, imagine God unleashing chaos! God removing the firmament …the waters of the heavens above, and the waters of the Oceans, lakes and streams, all merge until everything is washed away. This is chaos and darkness. Did it happen? At one time, this region of Skaneateles was a great Salt Sea with choral beds and reefs, and that choral was fossilized as Ram’s Horn Corral; similarly where I came from in N. Michigan we had Petoskey Stones that also were Salt Water Corral fossilized over time. This is the Biblical story of God having created us with a Will of our own, and that Will choosing selfishness, hate, hurt, destruction in order to try to win / dominate; rather than choosing relationship with God and one another. If you make a bad bargain, if you purchase something corrupt, spoiled, cheating you, we try to return it, or we throw it out. This is the Biblical story of God destroying Creation, but over time, 40 Nights and 40 Days, God’s Anger is tempered by God’s Love. And God as Warrior elects to hang up God’s weapons of mass destruction, God hangs up God’s Bow, God makes a cut in the heavens, as Covenant to never again destroy all life. I Believe in Rainbows, not simply as refracted light, not as pretty colors, with pots of gold at the end, but as God’s Covenant to Love, forgive, hope, instead of destruction . In all of human history, there never seemed so foolish a bargain, as Jeremiah made. The Nation of Israel that came to the Promised Land with Moses and Joshua, settled in the land, but instead of replacing the Canaanites, the People of God adopted some of their practices. Under Kings David and Solomon the Nation grew in prosperity, until the Nation was so large as to divide into Israel in the North, Judah in the South. 150 years before Jeremiah, the Northern Nation of Israel was destroyed by Assyria. The Prophet Jeremiah preached that if Judah did not learn the lessons of faith, if Judah did not take to heart what had happened to Israel, Judah would be destroyed. This was not received as Good News, but as Treason against the Nation and King, and blasphemy against God, because in Judah was the City of Jerusalem with the Temple of Solomon, the House of God. Jeremiah was thrown into the dungeon, when the attacks from Babylon began. The armies of Judah were destroyed. The walls of Judah were crushed; when this vision came to Jeremiah, that he was to purchase his family’s ancestral land from his cousin. Imagine your buying land in Syria today, after years of constant bombing and killing. Now it is not God destroying Creation with the Chaos of Water, but people destroying each other with the Chaos of war. I say Chaos of war, because if you remember the earliest ancestors of Israel, Abraham and Sarah, were from the City of Ur in the Country of Chaldea. Their Chaldean people over time had risen as new Nations of Assyria and Babylon, today Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. In this time, Assyria had invaded Israel and Babylon was attacking Judah, so this was the people of Chaldea attacking descendants of Chaldea. And in the midst of War, while imprisoned in a jail cell, Jeremiah bargains to redeem his right to purchase this land. Jeremiah has a scribe who accompanied him writing down what the Prophet said. Jeremiah instructs Baruch, his Scribe to write down this covenant of redemption of the land, and to put one copy into an earthen vessel to be buried in the ground in this place, another copy for Jeremiah to carry. That not just a week or months, or years from now, but generations in the future, the world would know there were those who believed this was the Land of Israel, and even in the Chaos of War, there were those like Jeremiah who trusted and believed God would remember and honor God’s Covenants and redeem the land and people. In Hebrew every name has meaning, Baruch literally means “Blessed” which is why every prayer in Hebrew begins Baruch Adonai elehenu: “Blessed is the Lord God!” In Luke, Jesus tells the story of the chaos of poverty and wealth. Dives is a man so affluent he is covered from head to foot in purple silk, he eats the finest of delicacies from the most expansive of tables. Where gates of a dungeon imprisoned Jeremiah, the gates of the wall of Dives’ keep out Lazarus, who instead of being thrown into the dungeon has been thrown outside the wall to be ignored and forgotten. What powerful word pictures, that Lazarus would have gladly licked up the crumbs from the floor beneath Dives’ Table, but instead the dogs licked at Lazarus wounds. Both die, and in his suffering, Dives’ witnesses Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. The irony of this Biblical story is that the poor man who suffers and dies is named Lazarus, just as Martha and Mary’s brother, Jesus’ friend who was brought back from death to life. Lazarus’ returning one from death to life made no impact on the Pharisees and Scribes and the brothers of Dives, but Jesus’ own death was not only the return of one from death to life, but the new covenant sealed in Christ’s blood.