|
| |
|
March 12, 2000 This message delivered by Pastor Gene Preston on Sunday, March 12.
"RAINBOWS AND ASHES" Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark 1:9-15
The scriptures for this first Sunday of Lent present us with potent faith symbols - Water as in Noah's flood and the baptism of Jesus; the spiritual wilderness, as in the forty days temptation of Jesus in the desert; Noah's rainbow of hope and Lenten ashes. In the bible, water is a sign of God's blessing and of His judgement. Water, as we all know, is essential for life. The blind and deaf Helen Keller in her autobiography says the first word her teacher, Annie Sullivan, was able to give her was WATER, and she did it by standing Helen under a pump flowing with water, and tapping out on her arm WATER to relate the word to the delightful experience of water flowing over her. We can't live without water. But too much water destroys everything in its path as the million refugees in Mozambique learned in recent raging floods in east Africa. The Old Testament lesson makes a passing reference to Noah and the flood, the flood being also mentioned in today's epistle; and the water theme recurs in God's promise that he would give a rainbow as an eternal and universal sign of his care for humanity. A rainbow, of course, is composed of millions of droplets of water momentarily gathered so as to refract the sun's rays into a spectrum of colors. Divine dazzle! Let us try to bring together into some meaningful analysis of these signs of God's concern for us: water as in the flood of judgement, the rainbow of promised providence, the baptism of Jesus, and the need for repentance and reflection at this Lent. ******** l) Genesis 9:8-l7 was written by a priest in the temple in Jerusalem and it presents a profoundly advanced theological idea that God wills to help, guide and bless all peoples. This is pretty progressive thinking for 2500 years ago when you consider many religious people today think that God blesses only their kind. This priestly writer in the temple has God saying to Noah and his sons that the covenant established way back when the flood took place would provide protection for every living creature. God did not promise that there would never again be floods and disasters caused by water, but he did promise that never again would there be a flood of the primordial strength of Noah's flood which arguably wiped out all life except the eight persons on the ark and the animals gathered there. THIS IS THE SIGN OF THE COVENANT THAT I MAKE BETWEEN ME AND YOU AND EVERY LIVING CREATURE THAT IS WITH YOU, FOR ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS; I HAVE SET MY RAINBOW IN THE CLOUDS, AND IT SHALL BE A SIGN OF THE COVENANT BETWEEN ME AND THE EARTH. WHEN I BRING CLOUDS OVER THE EARTH AND THE BOW IS SEEN IN THE CLOUDS, I WILL REMEMBER MY COVENANT THAT IS BETWEEN ME AND YOU AND EVERY LIVING CREATURE OF ALL FLESH; AND THE WATERS SHALL NEVER AGAIN BECOME A FLOOD TO DESTROY ALL FLESH. When Jews heard or read Genesis, they had in mind a background understanding of God's universal providence because the Jews commonly understood that, further through Noah, God had declared his giving of seven universal laws which he had planted in all human hearts. These seven laws of the human heart conveyed God guarantee of seven providential and saving moral instincts. Six were defensive and one positive. Altogether they are known as the Noahide Covenant. The Noahide Covenant holds that God had willed humanity not to l) blasphemy 2) practice idolatry 3) practice adultery 4) shed blood 5) steal and rob, 6) eat flesh from living animals (which was a pagan practice) and, positively, 7) all people were to establish sensible and compassionate social laws. We recognize in these tenets the moral building blocks of all societies. The stunning implication of the Noahide Covenant, and of Genesis 9:8-l7 which reaffirms it, is, according to one Jewish theologian, that "Judaism does not deny salvation to those outside its fold, for, according to Jewish law, all non-Jewish who observe the Noahide laws will participate in salvation and in the world to come." God's providence, in Jewish theology, is effective even for those who are altogether outside the circle of direct acquaintance with God! That should give us Christians pause to reflect because of our tendency to narrow the redeeming providence of God to only those who have come to agree with certain doctrines and join in certain fellowships which are the correct ones for salvation. The thought in Genesis 9 echoes the original thought given by another of writer, whoever composed Genesis l, that God brought all life into being and blessed it and said "all is good." The promise to Noah, like God's initial creation, is wholly one-sided: God acts and God promises and the very integrity of divinity guarantees God's universal and eternal providence for all humanity and all life. In these two covenants, that of creation and the rainbow covenant of Noah, no human response is required to effect God's offer. These covenants assert the text of the hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness:" "Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, Sun , moon and stars in their course above. Join with all nature in manifold witness To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love."
And the symbol of God's overarching concern for everyone is the rainbow which all peoples may see and enjoy.
2) The seven moral guidelines of the Noahide Covenant are not stated as such in either the Old nor New Testaments because they are assumed to be known to the Jewish readers of both. We see this assumption in today's quote from Genesis and we can find it in Acts 15:28-29 where according to Luke, when the early Jerusalem Council met to consider whether gentiles should become Jewish as a part of entering the church, the council essentially said, "No, but the gentiles should observe a lifestyle that is very much like the one advocated in the Noahide commandments: abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from shedding human blood, from what has been strangled, and from fornication." ***** 3) Readers of the bible know that God's covenanting tendency did not end either with the unilateral covenant of divine creation, nor this promise to Noah summarized as the Noahide Covenant. God later entered with Abraham into the Abrahamic Covenant by which God promised to provide offspring to Abraham and bless his generations as a guide to all peoples; then even later, God entered into a covenant with Moses giving moral grounding in some detail to the Jewish people. These further convenants are different because they were bi-lateral, not unilateral; God required a response of faith from Abraham and a response of obedience from Moses, and their offspring. In the first two covenants God gave without requiring anything in return. I must suppose that God changed His terms in the later covenants because of that offsetting condition of our human nature, also noted early on in Genesis, that while we are blessed by God with all we need, we are not satisfied with our situation. We are unable to live in a paradise in which no demands on made on us. And, as it turned out, we were unable to live in a moral relationship as the Mosaic covenant required. And so God gave one final covenant, the new covenant, the new creation of humanity in Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate act, gift and blessing of God and, while our response is expected, our response is possible only because if the divine integrity. Only God can give totally selflessly and totally graciously on the cross 4) This brings us to Lent, the necessity of Lent. While baptism by faith is now open to all, and many of us have exercised that invitation from God, we know that all is not well. We are still inclined to sinfulness and we need the Lenten call to honest self-evaluation, personal reform, and throwing our spirits once more upon the love and mercy of God. The gospels of Matthew and Luke give more detail about the temptation of Jesus, which is the traditional first reading from the gospels on this first Lent Sunday, than does Mark whose temptation account is the shortest. This may be because Mark was writing for a non-Jewish congregation which would not have understood the Old Testament details which in Luke and Matthew are addressed to Jewish congregations. Nonetheless, Mark does convey some details that would have had symbolic power within Jewish tradition. The mention of "40 days" recalls the 40 years the children of Israel spent wandering in another wilderness in another time of testing (Deut 8:2) as well as the forty days and nights of the great deluge through which Noah was delivered. Mark brings the baptism of Jesus into significance at Lent in verse l4 and l5 where as Jesus' public ministry begins, John the Baptist is arrested, and Jesus announced, THE TIME IS FULFILLED, AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND; REPENT, AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL. Mark makes more of the baptism of Jesus as the key sign for our personal journey at Lent. Mark wants to get back to the water! 5) It's useful to remember our baptisms as we begin Lent. Baptism recalls the forgiveness of primordial sin that God has given us; the ever renewed willingness of God to receive us even in our existential state of non-grace back into grace; the renewing powers of baptism faith to refresh us so that like a blind Helen Keller we feel tapped upon our bodies again and again God's promise: YOU ARE MY BELOVED AS JESUS IS MY BELOVED. Lent is the season to do our spiritual check-up, to reflect on our relationships, with God and everyone, a time to grow in our fellowship - go active in church groups,for heaven's sake - a time to get back into routines of regular worship, daily prayer, and to refamiliarize ourselves with those gracious words of Christ which call us to come and follow him. What is our baptismal covenant? It is the promise that God opens up new worlds daily and through the water of faith and grace God changes us constantly for the better. Remember these references: through baptism we participate in Christ' death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:l2), God washes away our sins (I Cor 6:11), God gives us a new birth (John 3:5), God enlightens us by Christ (Eph 5:l4), God re-clothes us in Christ (Gal 3:27), God renews us by the Spirit (Titus 3:5), God leads us on an exodus from bondage (I Cor l0:l-2) and God liberates us into a new humanity in which barriers of division, whether of sex or race or social status, are overcome (Gal 3:27-28). This is the greatest and ultimate covenant. We who are already baptized, let us use this Lent to renew our covenant with God. Those who are not baptized, think about it. And, everyone, have a happy Lent!
Pastor Gene Preston
| |
|
|
The Rev. Gene R.Preston10/F Kai Kwong Commercial Building 332-334 Lockhart Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong Tel : 25516161 Fax: 28922466E-mail : churpstr@netvigator.com |
This page has been visited
times.
This
page hosted by 
Get your own
Free Homepage