(Not So) Highly Illogical

Psalm 145:1-16

Proverbs 8:1-36

John 1:1-17

When Star Trek first aired in 1966, I was nine years old, and I was an instant fan. Right along with The Monkees, this show was, for me, “Must See TV” every week. And that was back in the day when I could not record the show and watch it later – it meant that I came in from playing outside every week in time to see the next episode.

And when the first Star Wars movie came along in 1977, I was right there in line to see it, and each of the movies that followed.

But as much as I loved both of these series, I don’t think you ever could have convinced me that one day I would be preaching a sermon that included one of the more memorable lines from each one of these. But that is, in fact, where the Holy Spirit has taken me this week… and so let us begin with a word of prayer.

Holy Word of God, Force of all that is, may you be with us as we seek to hear your living word. Quiet those thoughts that tell us that what you offer is highly illogical, and help us to not only be grateful for your ways of logic, but also for your call to us to follow you.  We ask this in Christ’s name – Amen.

In the first generation series of Star Trek episodes, Mr Spock is introduced to us as being half Vulcan and half human. This proves to be challenging for him, because Vulcans are known as being ruled by logic, and never experience emotion. Of course, this is contrary to humans, who apparently are ruled by emotion, and never logic.  But Spock, having a Vulcan father and a human mother, has both of these within him, and so he is uniquely able to understand where all these humans that surround him are coming from, emotionally speaking, and also willing to attempt to get them to see it his way – to consider the more “logical” approach. Ironically, it is the medical officer on board who is possessed with the greatest tendency toward emotional responses – one would think that would make it hard to get through med school – but it is in speaking to Dr McCoy that Mr Spock most often would raise one eyebrow, and say to him, in response to some emotional outburst, “that, Doctor, is highly illogical.”

We might think that this half-Vulcan, half-human persona of Mr Spock is meant to be a sort of analogy of the way we understand Jesus to be – because Jesus is both human and divine. But Jesus is not half human and half divine – Jesus is fully human and fully divine.

In the opening words of John’s gospel, Jesus is described as the Word that was there in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Greek word that is translated in this passage as “The Word” (capital W), is Logos. The definition of Logos is “something said, as well as its implication, its motive, its reasoning or logic”. Logos implies sequence, structure, pattern. In the beginning was the Word, coming into the chaos and bringing structure, as step by step, God said the Word – let there be ---- and there was.

In this week’s devotion, from chapter 3 in the book we are using for our Bible Study this year, We Make the Road by Walking, Brian McLaren describes three patterns of humanity – patterns that the universe seems to be ruled by. They are – First, the Pattern or Logic of Rivalry – of competition, of win / lose; second, the Logic of Compliance – of organization structure and hierarchy, of keeping within the confines of the law; and third, the Logic of Mechanism – of cause and effect, action and reaction, behavior and consequence. Let’s briefly consider each one of these.

When we are ruled by the Logic of Rivalry, we see the universe as a competition, a life of win or lose.  This logic is reflected in Bible stories such as Cain and Abel, and Sarai and Hagar, as well as the many wars that are described in there. It is part of human history – it’s behind all wars and conflicts between countries and religions and cultures – and it is a part of everyday business life, where competitiveness drives the global capital markets and the world of sports. It even spills over into the world of faith, where we are so often tempted to say why one church or denomination or set of beliefs is better or more right than another. It is easy to conclude that life is about win or lose – we see it all around us, every day.

When we are ruled by the Logic of Compliance, we focus on organization structures and hierarchies, and on rules and laws that are intended to keep society functioning reasonably. If something isn’t working the way we think it should, our response should be to revise existing laws or create a new law to require people to behave appropriately. And if we just elect or appoint the right persons to be in authority, whether in government, or business, or religious life, then we can be assured of success. This explains why the people of Israel wanted God to appoint a king to rule on earth, even though God told them they already had a king – the Lord of heaven and earth. This explains why Jesus was seen as such a threat to the Romans and the Jews. It is probably why we allow so much money and energy to be poured into our political process – both the electing of officials and the making of laws – because we somehow believe or hope that the logic of compliance will make everything get better.

When we are ruled by the logic of Mechanisms, we default to a pattern of “you get what you deserve”. If you work hard, you will make good money and have a happy life. If you lose your job or your house, you probably weren’t doing something right. If you have an accident, or get cancer, or you experience a family crisis, it’s most likely because of something you did – not paying attention, not eating right, not using the right parenting or partnering techniques. With this logic, there is an explanation for everything, and the explanation implies that if you just do everything right, everything will be OK.

Even as we describe these logics, and can see in the descriptions the ways that they fall short of explaining how the universe really runs, these are the structures that we mostly use to run our own lives, wouldn’t you say? If we are honest with ourselves, we see how our everyday thoughts and actions mostly fall into one of these three kinds of logic.

But the creation stories we have heard over the past three weeks reflect none of these logics. And our Psalm this morning, proclaiming the works of the Lord, and our Proverbs passage, describing the work of Wisdom in the world – neither of these imply these types of logic.

Instead, the force of the universe – the logic of God – is love and wisdom – goodness, creativity, beauty. We see it throughout creation – the beautiful patterns of the universe. The picture on the front of your bulletins is just one example of the beauty that is displayed and abundantly provided throughout the universe.

 And as it relates to the rules of the universe for how we live, the living Word of God is completely defined and framed by loving God with everything we have, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus said, on these commandments hang all the Laws and all the words and deeds of the prophets.

So all these patterns for the universe exist – rivalry, compliance, mechanisms, and love. Which of these will we allow to rule our lives? Which of these will have the final Word for us?

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ for us is –

·      love conquers hate

·      light conquers darkness

·      life conquers death.

o  Even though we die, says the Lord, yet shall we live.

o  Those who lose their lives for my sake, says the Lord, will gain them. Those who focus on saving their lives will lose them.

o  In the world you face persecution, says the Lord. But have courage – I have conquered the world!

This is highly illogical. How much do we really trust and believe that love conquers hate, and light conquers darkness, and life conquers death?

Christ is leading us as his followers to live highly illogical lives.

To love your neighbor – highly illogical.

To pray for those who persecute you – highly illogical.

Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness. Christ allowed himself to be nailed to a cross and crucified, when we all know he of all people could have made it go otherwise, could have imposed one of those other logics of the universe to change the outcome. Highly illogical.

But Christ’s life rejected every one of those other logical patterns of the universe.

He lost everything in order to for us to win our salvation.

He broke the law regularly to practice love.

He performed miracles of healing that defied cause and effect.

We just passed the 14^th anniversary this past week of the horrific attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, September 11, 2001. So many lives were lost that day. So many lives have been lost since, as the logic of rivalry, of win/lose, has been pursued. Let us never forget these lives lost too soon, and also may we always remember that the logic of rivalry is a never-ending cycle that propels us deeper and deeper into evil; that an eye for an eye will never be satisfied.

Closer to home – this past week, the Sterling Heights City Council unanimously rejected the building of a mosque, an Islamic house of worship in one of our neighborhoods not so far away from here. I watched the video of long-time Muslim residents, neighbors in this community, who one after another spoke respectfully of their love of this city and their reasons for living here, and their reasons for requesting the approval to build their mosque. I also watched and read about the scene outside the meeting when the vote was taken – as these same Muslim residents, leaving quietly and respectfully, were booed and jeered by a crowd who may be seen as being either angry at their neighbors or jubilant about their victory, but either way were clearly claiming rivalry as the logic of humanity over love.

I’m sure that most of you saw something about this, on the news or otherwise. I ask you to reflect for a moment on what feelings that request for the mosque created inside of you? What feelings the reaction of the crowd created inside of you?

I saw three of the four forms of logic we discussed today reflected. I saw the logic of rivalry – that we must not let “those people” take over our community. I saw the logic of compliance – that zoning laws either don’t permit it to be built – or if they do, they shouldn’t. And I saw the logic of mechanism – the cause and effect argument that “their people persecuted our people” – and so they should not be permitted the same freedoms that we have, to worship in our community, to build our places of worship without conflict.

The logical pattern of the universe that I did not see was the logic, the Logos, the Living Word of love. I did not see Christian love displayed.

As we move forward as a new congregation to determine our mission in this community, I pray that we will think about where Jesus would have us step in and reflect the Word, the Way, that we claim as our belief, as our way of life. I pray that we will have the wisdom, and logic, and courage to love as freely as Christ loved us, to act out of goodness and creativity and beauty, wherever we find those things to be lacking, to be unmet needs, right around the corner, right where we live.

And may the highly illogical Force of the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - be with us all as we do. Amen.

The Work of God's Fingers

Genesis 2: 4– 25

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

 In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground;  but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—  then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.  And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches.  The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.  The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush.  The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.  And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”  So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called Woman,

for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.  

Psalm 8

O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants

you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,

to silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Mark 3: 1-6

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.  He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.  

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Isn’t Psalm 8 beautiful?  That Psalm we just read responsively?

When I consider the work of your fingers – the moon and stars and heavens – the big, big picture of your universe –

Who are we in your sight?

What is humanity that you are mindful of us?

Why is it that you care for us – mere mortals on this round speck of earth, out in the midst of all your heavens?

Yet –

You have made humanity just a little lower than God, than angels, than divine beings.

You have crowned humanity with glory and honor. Those are divine crowns, crowns that we would normally reserve for you.

Is this what you mean when you say we are created in your image, in the image of God? That we have crowns of glory and honor?

But that’s not all. We also have dominion – both rights and responsibilities, as a sovereign would - over all the works of your hands. Participating with you, we tend the soil, we care for the animals and the birds and the fish and the crawly things. You have expectations for us that come along with those crowns of glory and honor.

We share and participate in God’s ongoing work of creation – and also in the stewardship of the earth and of humanity.

It’s a shared responsibility: it is NOT everyone for themselves – it is NOT a life built on figuring out how to make it alone.

It’s a three – way participation – God, humanity, and creation. And God’s fingerprints are all over all of humanity, and all of creation.

In Genesis 1 we heard that humans are made in the image of God.

In Genesis 2, which we heard this morning, God basically sits down on the ground, gathers up some dirt or clay, and shapes us out of it.  We are created out of dust into the image of God.

I can almost imagine God there, like an artist doing a self-portrait, creating a likeness, but not the real thing; siting there with a mirror, looking up from time to time to gaze into it and to capture the nuances and minute details of the image of God, in order to translate them just right into this lump of clay.

Have you ever tried to make something look like it does it’s supposed to look, using Play-Doh or modeling clay? I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly hard to make clay turn into something recognizable, other than maybe a badly shaped bowl, or maybe a snake….

Take a moment and close your eyes, and try to imagine this scene – God shaping dust or dirt or clay into a man in the image of God. What does this man, and later this woman, look like in your minds’ eye?

Can you see skin color, or hair color, or size, or shape, or the nose, or ears, or smile?

When I try to do this, in my imagination, it tends to look like someone with similarities to me – or maybe a 20-something version of me!

Created in the image of God. The work of God’s fingers. Not just our looks, but our character. Our hearts. Created in the image of God’s heart. Our minds in the image of God’s mind.

This means that when we look at one another, we see the image of God reflected in one another. Take a look now at the person sitting next to you, in front of you, behind you. All in the image of God. God creates us with attention to minute details. And we are all different. There is no one “perfect” image of God – we all are. All our diversities, all those things we might see as flaws in ourselves – they’re not flaws. They are part of who we are as children of God, made in the image of God.

Some of you had the same privilege I had, of getting to know Ruth Eraybar during the short time that she was part of our community, after moving here from Elkhart, Indiana, and before returning to the loving arms of her creator God. Ruth had meningioma, a disease that creates benign brain tumors. When we first met her, when she first came to worship with us, her face had already been reshaped as a result of the tumors and the treatments she had endured. She looked nothing like she had just two years before. Starting from my first visit with her, she had some challenging spiritual questions. At one point early on, she took off her glasses, and put her face right up close to mine, and said, “Is this the image of God?”

The answer for Ruth is yes. The answer is yes for all of us who feel too inadequate or too flawed or too unworthy of behaving like the human beings that God created us to be, those mortals that God breathed God-life into, breathed the Holy Spirit into.

Because God takes on our suffering as well.  God takes on our suffering and our sin in the person of Jesus Christ, in the life and death and resurrection of Christ. God redeems our suffering and our sin, once and for all time. There is no part of our lives that God does not participate in, does not walk with us through, does not offer the healing that comes from faith, hope, and love, through the work of the Holy Spirit, as it’s  shown in the love and care of others. There is no situation where someone in the community cannot reach out, to be the image of God for someone else in need.

God suffers when we suffer.

God grieves when we grieve.

God longs for us to turn back to God, to live our lives as if we understood that we are God’s children, we all are God’s children, part of God’s family. All of us.

The refugee crisis happening in the European Union is the worst the world has seen since World War II. It’s been going on for months, but this past week the world was shocked into mutual horror and grief by one photograph of one small child on the shore, by the story of his family, by the seeming hopelessness of it all.

While governments are taking and remaking official stands which limit the number and type of refugees they are willing to take in, people all over the world are recognizing this as a humanitarian crisis, and are assembling to offer help in a myriad of ways – collecting and providing food, water, diapers and formula, funding travel costs to sponsor families to relocate to Iceland and Canada, including taking them into their homes, as well as donating to organizations that are directly helping, including Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, among many others. Many who have stepped forward to help have quoted the Word of God as their basis, remembering and proclaiming how God’s people were refugees and exiles, forced over and over from their homes to escape oppression and terrorism. The Passover meal that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his arrest, was a meal specifically to remember God’s providence in rescuing and saving the people of Israel. And as we participate with Christ in that meal today, we also remember not only the times of oppression, but also a time of life-saving redemption in Him.

When Jesus put the question to the people in the synagogue – is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? He was challenging their humanity, putting it right up against the law. And their response – was silence.

Mark’s gospel says “he looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart”. He has the man stretch out his withered hand, and it is restored right then and there.

Jesus shows us what matters. Jesus knows their hearts, knows that they will use this action against him, this action they are taking on the Sabbath will ultimately lead to them killing him; that they will do whatever it takes to try to eliminate him. He is not deterred. He restores the man to wholeness, Sabbath or no Sabbath.

The Lord God has made us just a little lower than God, than the angels. God has given us all the rights and responsibilities of being God’s children, participants in the stewardship of humanity and of creation. Christ has come and saved us already from death, and has told us not to be afraid of what could happen in our lives – but to follow him, to feed his sheep, to trust in him and him alone.

When we look at the faces of those in need, which is all of us, really – do we see the image of God? Or do we default to judgment based on what we think is right? When Jesus looks at our hearts, will he see hardness, or hearts that are breaking open with love and sorrow for the plight of our brothers and sisters? Will he see conditional love, only for those who we determine are “like us”, “part of our tribe”? Or will he see us responding in self-giving love, behaving like human beings, in ways small or large, without letting fear or distrust have the upper hand, the final word?

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Living God, soften our hearts. Give us the grace and courage to be your people, to recognize your image in the faces of others, down the street or on the other side of the world. Give us the generosity and kindness to reach out our hands and let them be your hands, to allow others to experience your touch of healing through our words, through our actions, through our self-giving love. Let us welcome others to this table, and let us go out from this table nourished and ready to serve you.

We ask this and we do this, all in the name of Jesus Christ who gave everything for us and for our salvation.

Amen.