Today's Sermon

 

“What I Find in Nature - Talking About God 3"

 

            To begin, let’s play a little game of “fill in the blank.”
           It’s the start of a school year, how about “Never run with _____” (scissors).
            “Look _____ _____ before crossing the street” (both ways).
            Finally, apropos to today, “I don’t go to church. I find God _____ _____” (in nature).
            We’ve covered this before, but do people think we don’t find God in nature, that we hate sunsets? Clearly, we have failed, I have, if the wider world has gotten the message we think you have to come here to find God.
            As we continue a series on how to talk about God, moving beyond just what we don’t believe, today we consider God as, “who or what we find in nature,” and we get into why this matters. Our scripture for today reveals the great tradition of knowing the Creator through the created. Listen to God’s intimate involvement in creation as described in Psalm 104. 

            Psalm 104
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul.
    O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
2     wrapped in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent;
3     you set the beams of your[a] chambers on the waters;
you make the clouds your chariot;
    you ride on the wings of the wind;
4 you make the winds your messengers,
    fire and flame your ministers. 

5 You set the earth on its foundations,
    so that it shall never be shaken.
6 You cover it with the deep as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
7 At your rebuke they flee;
    at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.
8 They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys,
    to the place that you appointed for them.
9 You set a boundary that they may not pass,
    so that they might not again cover the earth. 

10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
    they flow between the hills,
11 giving drink to every wild animal;
    the wild asses quench their thirst.
12 By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
    they sing among the branches. 

13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
    the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

14 You cause the grass to grow for the cattle
    and plants for people to cultivate,
to bring forth food from the earth
15     and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine
    and bread to strengthen the human heart.
16 The trees of the field are watered abundantly,
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17 In them the birds build their nests;
    the stork has its home in the fir trees.
18 The high mountains are for the wild goats;
    the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.
19 You have made the moon to mark the seasons;
    the sun knows its time for setting.
20 You make darkness, and it is night,
    when all the animals of the forest come creeping out.
21 The young lions roar for their prey,
    seeking their food from God.
22 When the sun rises, they withdraw
    and lie down in their dens.
23 People go out to their work
    and to their labor until the evening. 

24 O Lord, how manifold are your works!
    In wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
25 There is the sea, great and wide;
    creeping things innumerable are there,
    living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships
    and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. 

27 These all look to you
    to give them their food in due season;
28 when you give to them, they gather it up;
    when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
    when you take away their breath, they die
    and return to their dust.
30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
    and you renew the face of the ground. 

31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
    may the Lord rejoice in his works—
32 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
    who touches the mountains and they smoke.
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.
35 Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
    and let the wicked be no more.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord!

            The Bible is nothing if not economical with its words. Rulers and their entire reigns are summarized in a verse or half a verse, yet here the psalmist goes for 35 verses, longer than the Genesis account of creation. They sing praise to God’s imprint in nature, God spreading out the skies like a tent with the winds as angels (messengers), and fire and flame God’s ministers, the original clergy! That’s in the first stanza before the animals, land, sea, and sky wild and domestic, the streams and the plants and on it goes. All of nature points the biblical writer to God.

            Your experience of God in the sunset is not separate from your worship of God here, but the implications are far greater than resolving a mistaken subtle tension. Let’s turn to today’s reading from Matthew Fox, our companion theologian for this series, to deepen the inquiry. Fox writes this in his entry, “God is the All”:

St. Paul, the mystic, says “God is all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:28) God’s presence is without absence. Where? Everywhere. In what? In all. But isn’t the All expanding, isn’t the universe expanding, and with it space and time? Yes, and God en route also, expanding and honoring the expansion. As Meister Eckhart puts it, “God is delighted to watch your soul expand,” and, if our world and our understanding of our world is expanding, so too is God’s delight at our growing bigger. And the universe growing bigger.

Fox says because God is in the all, is the All, the all of creation is more than mere backdrop. It is the drama. It is not mere classroom; it is the teacher and the students. I remember walking in the woods one time with someone who really knew nature. It was back in the Midwest and we came across a poison ivy plant. We all knew what that plant did, makes you itch—“leaves of three let them be”—but then he pointed to a plant right next to it, likely jewelweed I’ve since figured out, and do you know what it does? It relieves itching. This is how Native Americans treated poison ivy. Isn’t it true that sometimes right next to the wound is the balm? If we pay attention to the problem it leads us to the solution. Brokenness reveals where we need mending or growth.

            I remember slogging through my dissertation on pilgrimage as a spiritual practice, when I went over to meet with The Rev. Nancy Wiens, who has led experiences here from time to time, and has expertise in the area. We got talking about the power of being out in nature to transform us, but I maybe have been stuck still in the notion of creation as backdrop. She reminded me of the ability of the wilderness to teach us. She took me outside and over to a bush and said something like, “Now look, this bush isn’t trying to do anything else but be a bush. Our suffering comes from always trying to be what we are not.” Very Buddhist sounding, but, of course, nature doesn’t care about our different religious constructs.

            Fox offers us an even more expansive lesson, literally. What is the universe doing? This is why it’s a matter of faith to revere science. Best we can tell, the universe is expanding. Since God is the All, we too should be about the work of expanding, broadening our views, growing. That fits quite nicely with building an expansive vocabulary for God, which we said we would do at the outset of this series because we can’t possibly capture all of God with one name. Sometimes people sit stuck with names they learned for God when they were small that they outgrow, but they mistakenly think they’ve outgrown God when they’ve only outgrown the small language they were given for God.

            If God is the All, then metaphorically, shouldn’t we be imitating what that the All is doing? Creation evolves. We should evolve. Creation retains what’s necessary for survival. We should revere what gives life. What about extinction? Plants and animals go extinct. Well, yes, they do and there are pieces of us, certain ways of thinking for example, that should go extinct. Our doors out in the parking lot say “God’s Doors Are Open to All” meaning people, not ideas or ideology. It’s not welcoming to leave unchallenged hatred or ignorance. What about dying? Death is woven into creation. That too. Jesus said you have to lose your life to find it (Matthew 16:25)! The resurrection shows what God does with death, creates life anew, as if God knew with our consciousness we’d need some assurance. Recognizing the Creator in the unfolding of creation teaches us how to be a part of that great unfolding.

            Hopefully, that gives you, gives us a wider sense of God and some expansion for our own place in God. But, expanding our language for God doesn’t just help us reconceive of him, or her, or it, or them. It has implications for how we conceive of us as a church. One form of the church is passing away; there is no denying it. Part of that way may be the form that sees itself as the holders of God, like a central bank that guards this treasure and then lends it out—at cost—to those who would come inside. Even if many of us would have rightly said before today we, too, experience God in nature, we still often operate as if the church is where you find God and then you take it out into the world. We still talk that way. If we truly recognize God is the All, then God is already out there. While we do find God in a special way here, through the holy scriptures, through the practices and traditions of the faith, through the fellowship of fellow followers, the higher calling of the church is rather to help us process that experience, find language to try and express it, through rituals to help sustain us and reinforce the deepest truths we’ve discerned. All of it prepare us to be better participants in this wider story or set of stories.

            Do you see the turn? The church is not a like a bank, but more like, well let’s see, maybe a garden, where we grow all kinds of plants we’ve discovered in the wild, and work with them so they can feed us with nourishment and beauty. Or, the church is not like a lecture series, though it has some of that, and more like a group of thru-hikers sharing wisdom, giving each other new names, and supporting one another in the journey. Or, rather than a place where you come and only memorize facts about which you have no knowledge, it’s the kind of school where you engage in the study of wisdom that both resonates with your life where you are and stretches you to become an ever more loving version, again expanding. You may have a better metaphor. We’re expanding our language. Maybe it is a bank in the sense, we invest in it and what we give over grows and allows us to expand ourselves and bless others.

            Last point, for we often get this wrong once we’ve gotten so much right. Just as God isn’t only in here, creation isn’t only way out there. They’re both everywhere. We are a part of both. Therefore we are surrounded by divine teachers. Listen to the lessons of the All.
            Don’t run with…scissors.
            Look…both ways before you cross the street.
            Great tips.
            Find God…in nature.
            Come here if you’d like the fellowship of others who name this experience as sacred, who want to grow and evolve, who desire to learn how to be a balm next to a wound.
            Amen.