It took only
12 mins. 12 mins for the blasts of fire –
pronouncing a quickly arriving day of judgement; a judgement of the way
humanity is living. Friday night’s National news sent my head spinning, my
heart wretched apart. Judged. Culpable, all of us. Guilty.
10mins into
the news cast, the clip was shown. A
scene of a starving polar bear caught on film; at an abandoned fish camp,
scavenging for food. A furry skeleton, weak
and shaking with each step; its legs buckle and the once majestic animal
collapses, and with his last breath disappearing, closes sad, pleading eyes,
and is no more.
This is it ---
the hell, fire, and brimstone—of the scriptures. The scary scripture prophesies we have been
reading and hearing these past six weeks.
Dread, doom, destruction, the Day of the Lord. A day when stars will
fall from the sky, elements will be destroyed by fire, elements will melt away
in a blaze, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Yes, the words
are true.
The images of
the passages, the tenor of the words, has many quaking in their boots – and
many others who want to believe it is not true, and only metaphor. Have you heard
people jokingly say that they are “afraid to be struck by lightening” if they
were to walk into a church; or words that refer to being smote by God for some
infraction or other. Is it simple jest,
or a deeply routed idea with truth behind them?
Images and words play on the imagination and form theology that speaks
of punishment at the hand of a judge, who determines the merits of one’s life
on a spectrum of good/bad, and right/wrong.
Humans at the end face punishment where God inflicts vengeance, punishment
for wrongs committed throughout our lives. Someday we will pay the price for
our actions or non-actions.
And as if the
dying polar bear was not enough, I am in a terrible wilderness, as it was my
non-reaction to the rest of the news that is extremely disturbing. Crowds of Palestinian protestors and rising
tensions in the Middle East, the disappearances and murders in an LGBTQ+
neighbourhood in Toronto, the rise of nuclear threat, were all trumped – by
spooked thoroughbred horses being let loose to try to find safety amidst
fanning flames of fire in the California desert. No passion or anger or fear
was kindled by the stories of people, thousands of people in desperate
wilderness conditions. I felt nothing. Not like the emotion I felt for the horses,
and the sadness and grieve over the polar bear. Later on, after reflection, I
feel guilty and ashamed that I have judged animals to be less understanding,
than humans, and judged humans as responsible for their own circumstances, and
the cause of the crisis in the animal kingdom, no fault on the part of the
animals. I judged people as if every person, in wicked situations, deserved the
plight and wilderness in which they find themselves. What sort of retribution
can be expected for a person, or a people, with hardened hearts? My heart is
hardened.
Polar bear
scientists tell us what many of us already know, that shrinking ice, the loss
of habitat, the inability to get to and find seals and other food sources, are
causing the extinction of polar bears.
We have heard this news before and we have been told that global warming
is the biggest contributor to the current crisis. There are no humans in North America that are
excluded from the indictment of contributing to the death of the polar
bear. Society – made up of all of us-
lives large, even when some of us try to live a small footprint, our feet still
sink, as creation fights the fires we stoke. The video of the polar bear dying changes
everything – not the plight of the polar bear, or the situation—for it has the
potential to change human response, in so far as it is a call in the wilderness
pleading with human beings to repent, turn around, make straight the way of the
Lord. The scene is forever emblazed on my heart, burned in my mind. And because my heart was burned, --- not
completely destroyed, not thrown into the fiery furnace for eternity; my heart
remains smouldering in the wilderness because I have been chastened, and face a
reckoning.
Chastened,
having been inflicted with suffering for a greater purpose, compelling a moral
improvement
Reckoned with
-- called to account for my actions; a call followed with a pregnant pause…
This point must not be overlooked, dear friends. In the Lord’s eyes, one day is as a thousand
years and a thousand years are as a day.
The Lord does not delay in keeping God’s promise—though some consider it
“delay.” Rather, he shows you generous patience. God wants none to perish but
all to come to repentance.
Rather than
judgement as vindictive vengeance, punishment, and penal purgatory, sentenced
by God to death row, we find ourselves in a time of delay. In the wilderness, God’s courtroom opens up
and we are sitting in an oasis of God’s judgement. Much to our surprise
judgement appears in an unexpected way. It is not death. There
is compassion, pardon, and forgiveness. After being chastised and reckoned
with, having come face to face with God – through fire--- we arrive in a pregnant
pause…
The season of
Advent is the gustation of Jesus. Prior to Jesus’s birth the prophet is calling
for us to get ready to welcome Immanuel, God-with-us. We are called to make straight the pathways
of our God, to prepare the way of the Lord, to repent. This is a time of God waiting, for us to say
“yes.” And when hearts are ready, therein God will reside, become immediately
incarnate and then, thanks be to God, we can fulfill our promises, our
obligations, to turn back to relationship and covenant with God and creation.
God’s justice is the gift of generous patience.
When reading
Helmut Theilicke’s book of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, one comes across a break,
with a note, that indicates that the sermon was interrupted by bombing. During World
War II, Pastor Helmut preached a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, for
what else was there to speak into the chaos experienced by his congregation at
the time. The book also has a note when the preaching resumed.
Stars, fire fell
from the sky, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth knocking at the church
door, yet, those present while waiting for
a new heaven and a new earth, were making
every effort to be found without stain or defilement, and at peace in God’s
sight.
Those who
gathered waited with hearts open to the quenching words of God through the
preacher, being held in the sacred through an investigation of the words of the
Lord’s Prayer. As bombs fell, the
people took what cover there was. In the wilderness, God’s courtroom opened up,
and much to their surprise, judgement appeared in an unexpected way. It was not death. It was a pregnant pause.
In the
pregnant pause…
water abounded
in the wilderness; people were at peace in God’s sight as the Word smothered
flames of fear, Our Father who art
heaven, flares of anger and distress dissolved - hallowed be thy name, the fire of uncertainty extinguished - thy kingdom come, sparks of indecision
and apathy doused, thy will be done on
earth as in heaven.
Fire is fought
with water.
John the
Baptizer comes to us in the wilderness of our lives and calls from the past, to
move us into a future of promise; proclaiming a baptism of repentance which
leads to the forgiveness of sin, the residing of God’s justice in our hearts,
in our midst – incarnate. Immanuel.
John stands in
the middle of the Jordan river.
The Jordan
river: referred to as the source that made large plains fertile like the garden
of the Lord; the place of miracles, where the leprous were healed; a
significant crossing of “leaving behind” for a people to enter the Promised
Land; an oasis in the desert where the thirsty came to hear Jesus preach, to be
healed of infirmity; a place where Jesus sought refuge in the wilderness from
enemies who sought to entrap him. This
river in the wilderness is the second largest source satisfying the water needs
of Syria, Lebanon, Israel. This lifegiving river is the place from where John
proclaims repentance, reminding us and calling us back to the promises made in
baptism – ours and God’s. Come repent.
Come see the abundance of the justice of God that resides among us.
Fire is
quenched with water. We find John the
Baptizer in the wilderness standing in the Jordan river, surrounded by water;
offering to quench the fire. Washed with the water of life that runs through
the desert of our lives, we will face our earthly end- the day of the Lord will
happen and God’s justice will be revealed. We will be tried by fire, chastened,
undergo a reckoning – meaning a response is expected. And there will be a surprise; not death, but,
a pregnant pause…
Where a
hardened heart towards other human beings might just melt by the very
compassion of the One who became incarnate, to live as Immanuel, God-with-us.
In the end fire can be quenched by Immanuel’s lifegiving water.
Today I pray
for a heart refined by fire, elements melted to soften it, beyond a care for
polar bears and horses – a compassion to include human beings- a passion to
live in the fires of the wilderness always returning to the rivers of life.
With the
psalmist I give thanks:
You [God} were favourable to your land; you restored
the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the
iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will
[rain] down from the sky.
May this be so
a thousand times over. Amen.
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