1 Lent B February 18, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Genesis 9: 8-17 + Psalm 25: 1-10 + 1 Peter 3: 18-22 + Mark 1: 9-15
Grace and peace to you from the One who journeys with us, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
What would have happened, if when God called Noah to build an ark, Noah had decided to do nothing? It’s safe to assume that Noah wasn’t just sitting around with no life, idly waiting on God to call him to some grand task. And as we remember the story, God is unhappy with the whole human race, calling them wicked. And God determines that the only way to fix this….the only way to correct a people gone so terribly wrong….is to obliterate them from the face of the earth. All but Noah and his family, who God would save in this unlikely and labor intensive way. Noah would build an ark and lead two of every living creature onto it. They would reside there for 40 days while it stormed around them. But what if Noah had said: No. This isn’t my problem. It’s too soon to talk about this, God. It’s political and I just don’t want to deal with it.
After all, building an ark would not be easy. Look how complicated it is to build a building. An ark would need to float and hold all of those animals and how does one contain both giraffe and skunk?
Not to mention what the neighbors would say. I mean, we know how some neighbors reacted when we began to talk about putting up affordable housing….imagine how they might have responded to an ark going up in the back yard of Noah and his family? They probably called Noah crazy and talked about him behind his back and stopped inviting him to the backyard barbeques. They probably avoided his wife at the well.
Speaking of his family, how did Noah convince them that he needed to do this because God had called him? No one was going to pay him to build that ark. And it was surely going to take a lot of his time. How did he talk them into agreeing with him, because it seems likely that they might have needed more than “God told me to do this.”
And what if, when God explained to Noah that God was planning to destroy the earth and was going to need Noah onboard to keep all living creatures around…what if Noah just figured that God, in working some holy magic, would simply figure out a way without Noah actually being involved at all?
And then, when they were on the ark, what if Noah decided that it was just too much work to actually care for all of those animals. What if he just said “you know, God will work this out. God is in control. God didn’t call these animals or me to anything we couldn’t handle so I’m just going to trust that God will feed, clean, and care for them.”
And what about all of these letters that Paul and Peter wrote to believers and worshipers in Rome, and Ephesus, and Phillipi, and all of Asia Minor? Letters that would guide and support them through much difficulty until they could be there themselves. Letters that were designed to undo division with a reminder of the hard truths of the Gospel. Letters that addressed confusion and disagreement over what it meant to live and walk the earth as followers of Jesus. What if Paul and others had just sent a quick note or a clever meme….hey, I know it’s hard but #thoughtsandprayers.
And what of Jesus? In today’s Gospel reading we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism by John, after which he went out into the wilderness for forty days. He did this because he knew, at this inaugural time in his life and ministry, that it was, as they say “about to get real.” He knew that the path ahead and the way forward would be filled with difficulty and hardship. Even while in the wilderness Satan tempted him by calling for him to just rejecting all that was ahead. And what if he had? What if he decided that rather walk forward, baptized and renewed, he would just sit and pray. Pray for salvation, and pray for God’s people, pray that they would learn to love and live together. Pray for peace and pray that the violence and oppression and injustice that was permeating the society Jesus lived in would stop. What if, Jesus who knew so well the power and value of prayer….decided that that was all he was going to do?
Where would we be today?
What would the story of Jesus look like?
Would there be a story to tell at all?
We could certainly argue that if Jesus had taken the safer route and just stayed put and prayed he wouldn’t have angered the Roman authorities and the cross might never have made an appearance.
Beloved community, prayer and trusting in God is a necessary and valued part of who we are as God’s people and how we tend to our relationship with God. You will never hear me say otherwise. We pray our prayers of gratitude and relief, of joy and thanksgiving, of doubt and questioning. Every week your prayer requests are held with careful reverence by a group of faithful intercessors here in this place. We pray for healing. We pray for transformation. We pray in crisis. We pray in the daily. We pray our lament.
Dear Lord, I am so tired of the ongoing need….the sickening pace at which we must pray for victims of mass shootings. I am running out of ways to stand before you Sunday after Sunday…..and remind you of how contrary to God’s call to us it is that we live in a nation where it has inexplicably become acceptable that our beloveds….by the hundreds….are gunned down.
There is no prayer for these days that is acceptable to God unless it begins with confession. For we are complicit and a part of this unless we are working and speaking and standing against it.
We must never imagine that God is some genie in a bottle or magician with a wand who will magically eradicate evil from the earth. God has tried it once before. To quote Dr. King, (loosely) “As long as we believe that this is what God will do, though, we will pray unanswerable prayers. We will ask God to do things God will simply not do. The belief that God will do everything for humanity is as untenable as the belief that humanity can do everything for themselves. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith, but superstition.” [1]
Dear Ones, we have a problem. We’ve had a problem. And it’s not just a gun problem, but it is a gun problem.
We also have a broken health care system that doesn’t adequately provide mental health services for all people.
We have a culture formed of toxic masculinity that has created a society where it is acceptable, and has been acceptable to abuse, harass, and assault women. So many women that entire movements have risen up in opposition.
We live in a society that lacks compassion and empathy for the oppressed and marginalized but also for neighbor and friend. Somehow, it’s become acceptable, on days like today, to gather on our respective sides and shout our arguments at one another without ever really sitting down and listening. Without ever asking….”How is it with your soul?” “What makes you afraid?”
When Jesus left the wilderness, he came to Galilee, proclaiming the Good News of God and saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.” In Mark’s Gospel the word for repent means to literally turn around….turn around and try again. The kin-dom of God is before us and we must turn around, away from what has turned us into people who attack, hurt, and kill one another over and over. We must turn around and be the change we want to see.
None of this will happen through prayer alone. Real solutions to these urgent issues that threaten the very fabric of who we are, will require action. Some will require legislation. Some will require teaching differently. Some will require acting differently. Some will require listening differently. Some will require dismantling the systems as they are and constructing something new. Something better.
This cannot be done through prayer alone. God won’t stop the killing of innocent children at school. God won’t stop the killing of innocent beloveds at concerts, and nightclubs, and movie theatres, and churches. God won’t stop men from abusing the women they have promised to love or attacking them on the street. God won’t take away our machine guns and automatic weapons. God won’t fix our health care systems. God won’t do any of this. At least not without us.
Because God can do this, but only with our participation, only with our willingness to care enough to do more than pray.
God called Noah to build an ark and Jesus to leave the wilderness. God called Jonah to Ninevah and Mary to bear a son. God called Paul to turn around and guide the early church. And God is calling us. This Lenten season and every season may we hear that call and may we follow. Thanks be to God and let the church say…Amen. [2]
[1] King Jr. , Martin Luther “The Answer to a Perplexing Question” March 3, 1963
[2] This sermon was birthed out of the writings of the Rev. Elizabeth Rawlings and those ideas were used heavily with her permission.