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The Web of Relations
Luke 13:31-35
A sermon by Kathy Toivanen at EMUC, 3/4/2007
On the western slope of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem, there is a small chapel called Dominus Flevit. The name comes from Luke’s Gospel, which includes two stories of Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem. According to tradition, it was on the site of this chapel where Jesus stood and wept over a city that refused to accept his ministrations.
On the front of the altar in the chapel, is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head. Her red comb resembles a crown, and her wings are spread wide to shelter the pale yellow chicks that crowd around her feet. There are seven of them, with black dots for eyes and orange dots for beaks. They look happy to be there. The hen looks ready to spit fire if anyone comes near her babies.
The medallion is rimmed with red words in Latin. Translated into English they read, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" The last phrase is set outside the circle, in a pool of red underneath the chicks’ feet: "you were not willing." The pool of blood from the one who continued to love even those who were not willing.
If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world --wings spread, breast exposed.
Luke includes this story in his gospel to show us that this is the posture of Jesus toward us; this is the posture of the God we know in Jesus Christ toward the world - God stands with arms wide open longing to encircle and embrace all creation; longing to protect the vulnerable; longing to draw us together to dwell in harmony on this planet. The question is, will we walk into God’s embrace or will we be unwilling and walk away?
This question has been on my mind as over the past few weeks a number of us, eighteen in all, have gathered to view and discuss Al Gore’s Academy Award winning documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
Yes, the documentary is about the signs and the impacts of global warming, but it is also for me a compelling confirmation of a world that is the sacred creation of a wise, wonderful and loving God.
Over and over again, I have been marveling at the intricate web of relationships designed by the Creator to nurture and protect the delicate balance of life on this planet. Watching the documentary, reading and researching other relevant sources, and joining in the worship, study and discussion during the last two weeks have firmly dispelled from my mind any belief that I may once have harboured that we can live as independent beings on this earth; that we can turn away from the open arms of the Creator.
Clearly God has created the world as a harmonious and complex organism. I have been amazed to learn about the oceans and their currents and the way they circulate around the world, regulating the climate, bringing nutrients, filtering waste much the same way our circulatory system acts to sustain our human bodies.
David Suzuki in his wonderful book called The Sacred Balance, has a chapter entitled, ‘The Oceans Flowing through Our Veins’. Let me read and summarize a bit of what David writes:
An astounding 70.8 % of the Earth’s surface is ocean…If the solid part of Earth were to be smoothed and leveled, a single ocean could wrap the entire globe to a depth of 2.7 kilometres.
The Ocean - shifting, changeable, mysterious - has a powerful influence on human life…rising and falling around Earth’s shores, it moves to more than terrestrial rhythms. Pulled three ways, by Earth, the moon and the sun, the tides wax and wane day by day, month by month, season by season, beating out the dance of planet, satellite and star.
Basically, each of us is a blob of water with enough macro-molecular thickening to give us some stiffness and to keep us from dribbling away…The water molecules that perfuse every part of our bodies have come from all the oceans of the world…
Together with the sun, the oceans drive the planet’s climate. Whereas the temperature of the air changes rapidly, the oceans absorb massive amounts of energy and release it slowly. Thus, the oceans stabilize the temperature of the Earth…The warm Kuroshio Current flowing from the Western Pacific Ocean south of Japan across to North America affects weather as far inland as the Midwest and from California to Alaska.
Its counterpart in the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream, meanders north from the Gulf of Mexico. South of Newfoundland it meets the cold Arctic waters of the Labrador Current; the meeting of warm and cold currents creates the famous fogs of this region. Moving across the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream divides; the northern branch wraps the British Isles, bringing a milder climate to the whole country than that latitude would otherwise enjoy. The southern arm curves south past Portugal to join the Northern Equatorial Current.
Sweeping over great distances, the currents carry eggs and larvae of animals that have evolved to ride with the movement of the ocean. The currents waft carcasses of plants and animals, as well as minerals and elements and soil, toward the ocean floor.
Humans have long taken advantage of the ocean currents: accepting gifts delivered to our coastal doorsteps, fishing in the nutrient-rich zones where warm and cold currents meet, and using these currents as moving highways, routes to profitable trade. But they are far more than that; when we use the currents, we are in touch with the great forces of the planet - its rotation in space, the prevailing winds, the slow, curling drift of ocean water transporting heat, maintaining the planet’s atmospheric equilibrium. Connecting continent to continent, pole to pole, the currents are like a living web, moving and winding and mixing, wrapping itself perpetually around the whole world.
(The Sacred Balance, Rediscovering Our Place In Nature, 1997, 2002, by David Suzuki)
If any one of these strands in this living web is altered, the delicate balance of our planet is changed and life on this planet is affected. The polar regions have a huge impact on temperature control of the earth, and already scientists are noting changes to the depth of the ice and to the mass of ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. If we continue to create greenhouse gases at the current rate from car emissions and the burning of fossil fuels like coal, then scientists predict that with global warming, the Arctic Ocean could be ice free as early as the summer of 2050.
What might be the impact on the oceans and their currents without a polar icecap in the North, and with the increased melting of ice shelves and glaciers in the South?
More frequent and more severe tropical storms, flooding of coastlines due to elevations in the ocean level, and changes in the rate of flow of ocean currents, thus altering the cooling and warming cycle of the earth are just a few of the changes that scientists predict.
And the question we need to wrestle with is not just a scientific question, it is also a faith question; for it is a question that goes to the heart of our relationship with the God, the Creator. Will we choose to act in ways that move us toward the open and embracing arms of God?
Will we choose to gather in the circle of God’s embrace by seeking to honour and respect the strands that weave us and all creation together?
Or will we turn away from God’s open arms and risk endangering not only our own lives, but the entire creation that God brought into being and called very good?
Luke reminds us that even when we turn away, even when we ignore God’s open arms, God doesn’t turn away from us. Like that mother hen, who bares her breast to protect her chicks, God’s posture toward the world is always open-armed - but it comes at great cost; for the suffering of God is not just a one time event in betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth; the suffering of God continues each time God’s creation and God’s creatures are wounded and their lives are threatened.
Will we have the courage and faith this day to move toward the open arms of a God who suffers with us, will we join in God’s work of mending and repairing the torn web of relations on this planet?
Will we listen and heed the voice of Jesus Christ whose lament over Jerusalem calls out to us in our time and place…
Jesus Weeps
Listen,
for Jesus is speaking
and there are tears on his cheeks
for the people who are suffering.
I am crushed because my people are crushed.
I mourn,
I am completely dismayed.
Is there no medicine in the world?
Are there no health care providers?
Why, then, have my people not been healed?
Listen,
for Jesus is speaking.
There are tears on his cheeks
for the people who are hungry.
I weep for the land and the farms
where there is no harvest to make the people glad.
No one is happy now in the fertile fields;
the shouts of joy are ended,
My tears fall for the towns and cities
for the ones who line up at the food bank
I weep for all who hunger and thirst for their daily bread.
Listen,
for Jesus is speaking.
There are tears on his cheeks
for the people who miss the opportunities for peace.
I weep for the leaders of nations
for the soldiers on the front lines
I weep for the people in burned and bombed out cities and villages.
I weep with those who mourn.
If only you knew today the way that leads to peace,
but you cannot see it.
Listen,
for Jesus is speaking.
There are tears on his cheeks
I weep for an earth scarred and wounded by human hands
I weep for creatures and species in peril
I weep for the waters that are fouled
and for the air that is no longer fresh and clean.
If only you would hallow God’s name by hallowing the earth.
How often I've ached to embrace you and your children,
the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,
and you wouldn't let me.
And so I continue to weep for the suffering of my people and the suffering of my world. -adapted from "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" p. 48 in Stages on the Way, by the Iona Community.
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