SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST
BENTLEIGH
ORDINARY SUNDAY 12 (June 19th
) 1988
Come thus far, I said, and no further: here your proud waves shall break.
(Job
38:11)
There is an awful lot of water in
today’s readings. And yet we should not be surprised at this. There are few
symbols in ancient thought more powerful then the two great symbols of fire and
water. Both are symbols pregnant with meaning, pregnant with the daily
experience ancient cultures would have had of those elements as simultaneously
powerfully destructive and powerfully creative forces. Few symbols could more
accurately convey to rustic tribal peoples the oar and majesty, the creativity
and terror of God.
Water, which shall be our focus
today, is for example both the destroyer of the world at the time of the Flood,
yet at the same time the means by which the world was redeemed from its bent
towards degradation and self-destruction at that time. Water at the time of the
Exodus is the agent by which the Egyptians are destroyed, and at the same time
the agent by which the children of Israel are delivered. In Christian thought,
water is a vital symbol of our death at baptism, but it is also a symbol of our
rebirth. In water we die to sin but are reborn in the possibilities of the
Kingdom of God.
As an aside it should also be noted
that rivers represent a powerful symbol of the experience of death and
judgement in Greek and in mediaeval Christian thought. At death one descends to
the River Styx, or to the Lethe, the first a river that must be crossed, and
the second a river whose waters induced forgetfulness of the past, deep within
the underworld.
So the sea was frequently a thing
of terror to the people of Israel. It is no accident that the great apocalyptic
vision of the coming world in the Apocalypse of John affirms with joy,
The first heaven had disappeared now,
and there was no longer any sea.
More, then, the surprise when the
psalmist rejoices,
and follow their trade on great waters,
these men have seen the works of God
and his wonders in the deep.
What the psalmist has recognised is
terribly important. So often we seem to see God as present only in the things
we see to be good. God created, shall we say, the sunshine but not the
hurricane, the butterfly but not the European wasp. So often we want to see God
only at the level of all time nice guy, the God of “all things bright and
beautiful,” but cannot cope with the notion that seemingly bad things occur
within the creativity of God. So many Christians lose their faith when all is
no longer sun and roses.
It is imperative that we accept the
bad with the good within God’s creation. To return to our symbol of water, it
is obvious that water is an element that we cannot survive without, and yet at
the same time water has the power to destroy us, even to destroy our economy.
There was a dark side at creation as well as a light side; life can and must
consist of suffering as well as joy.
And yet the doctrine of creation,
the belief that God created all things, implies for us an enormous message of
hope. If God created all things, made possible the processes by which the earth
and the universe have come to take the shape they now have, then God is equally
in control of all things. God is the source of the energies of the universe, the
source of the orderliness of the universe.
I hear so much that passes for
Christian teaching that is no more than some Pagan belief in a struggle between
a good God and an evil demon-figure. Proponents of this kind of teaching claim
to believe that they know the outcome of this Titanic struggle in advance, for
it is written in scripture, but it is an outcome known only to the elect, and
of benefit only to the elect. The remainder, according to this form of teaching,
will remain unfortunate prisoners and subjects of a powerful and evil being,
the devil.
Such thought gives far, far too
much kudos to the power of evil in our midst, far too much glory, ironically,
to the being we might know as the devil. Tragically it also detracts from the
magnificence of God.
So once more I draw your attention
to those few lines from the Book of Job. The speaker asks,
when it leapt tumultuous out of the womb,
when I wrapped it in a robe of mist,
and made black clouds its swaddling bands?
Come this far, I said, and no further.
Here your proud waves shall break.
Even the catastrophes of nature
then, even the most terrifying forces of the natural realm are within the
control of the creator. Now as Christians we must add to that clear Old
Testament message the New Testament message of the Cross. To the good news of
Jewish theology that God is utterly in control even of the most terrifying
forces of the world is added the Easter message that even the seemingly utter
disaster of death is transformed into resurrection, transformed into unendingly
good news.
That is why our gospel reading today depicts Jesus as having command over the elements, over the storm. Jesus the Son is to be identified with God, has control over creation in the same way that God the creator has control over nature – and shares likewise in the power to transform the tragedy of death into the mystery of eternal life.
That message can, sadly, be turned
into something cheap and facile. Because God has absolute control, absolute
power, we can choose to neglect the important social, economic and political,
even the environmental issues of our day. We can say as some fatalistic Muslims
do, “it is the will of God.” To do so would be irresponsible. God has given us
the responsibility to tend this earth, as we hear in one version of the great
Eucharistic Prayer at the Communion. God has given us the responsibility to see
Jesus in our neighbour, as we learn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. God has called us to continue the work of
Jesus in his absence, as we learn from our belief that the Son ascended to be
with the Father. He has sent us his Spirit to empower us for continuing the
work of the Kingdom, as we learn from the events of Pentecost. But he has also
given us the sure hope that all shall be most well, as TS Eliot would say,[[1]]
all shall be well.
On a smaller than cosmic scale that
is the message for us, too, as the community of faith that we know as St.
John’s. The message as we trust our nominators and the rest of the incumbency
committee to seek a new priest to continue the ministry that Ken [Hewlett] has
shared amongst us is quite simply that the work of the Kingdom is continuing
and will continue to continue, both during the interregnum and following the
new appointment, whenever that shall be. God is in control.
It should of course also be
remembered that it is you who are the Church in East Bentleigh. Those of us who
are called into your midst to serve you are in the end only here to make
possible your ongoing life of worship, of evangelism, of care for one another
and of the community. It is for that that we are called into your midst, that
and to stand as a sign of your being a part of the wider Church. That is why
eventually we must move on.
As you hold that understanding,
that it is you who are the community of faith, that it is you who are the Church, then I believe that it
will become increasingly apparent to all of us that God indeed is in control,
that all things do indeed work together for the good, and that “the terrors of the
seas” will be kept wrapped in swaddling clouds.
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