Part three of "Life" series ...
Ezekiel 34.1-7; Acts 17.22-32
The Lord of the Rings …
Star Wars …
Harry Potter …
Big stories … timeless, ageless, always relevant … provocative … inviting … dreamlike and powerful …
Big stories:
good versus evil …
hope over despair …
life and death … death and life …
We can add to the list of big stories:
The Odyssey, The Iliad …
Beowulf …
Shakespeare’s tragedies … Romeo and Juliette, Hamlet, Macbeth …
Mission Impossible and The Big Lebowski …
And the Bible … this remarkable anthology of faith, hope, and love …
Stories of creation, the beginning of it all … the fall … the death of Cain … the end of Eden … the flood and the ark … Abraham and Sarah … Moses and the people - on their way to the Promised Land … the rise to the top … the slow agonizing grind to the bottom … Israel destroyed … Judah destroyed … where do we go from here?
A star - in the midnight sky … wise men - from afar … shepherds - in the field … to Bethlehem we go …
A new beginning, a fresh start …
God at work, to craft a future for the earth …
But Herod rages … the Roman Empire grows nervous … religious leaders are unsettled …
Christ is thrust upon the cross of human sadness and decline
The powers that be have their way … the Son of Man nailed to the cross … the Son of Man takes one final breath and shouts to the world, It … is … finished!
A chapter ends … a chapter begins …
Paul the Apostle travels throughout the Mediterranean world, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ …
Paul visits the great city of Athens …
The university center of the world …
Home of the great philosophers - Pericles and Demosthenes, Socrates, Plato … Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides.
A city of art, beauty, culture, knowledge … and religion …
Lots of religion - shrines, temples, monuments, to this god, that god, and even the unknown god, just to be on the safe side of things.
And why?
We are spiritual creatures … we are given to big stories, huge themes, mystery and majesty … gods and goddesses, divinities and demons …
We’re creatures of the earth, for sure … we’re body, blood, and bone.
we hunger … we eat,
we thirst … we drink,
we’re tired … we sleep,
we’re threatened … we make war,
we’re moved by beauty … so we paint on the wall of a darkened cave, or on a canvas worked by Rembrandt.
We are creatures of the earth.
And creatures of heaven … eternity flows in our veins … the breath of God in our lungs … we are spiritual creatures …
With a hunger, no bread can satisfy,
A thirst, no drink can quench,
Dreams too big for one lifetime,
Love expansive, hope without a boundary.
We are spiritual creatures:
Paul looked at Athens and saw how deeply religious it was … and of our time, Paul might say the same of us …
From American Idol to America’s Got Talent - we have dreams, passion and power.
Books of fiction and fact … churches everywhere … religion galore … preachers and pundits … megachurches and store-front chapels … America’s got religion … because we are spiritual creatures - we hope, we dream, we love.
But it was Paul who raised serious questions, “not everything passes muster” … it may glitter, but it may not be gold.
Some things bear closer examination … and that’s part of our task here, every Sunday … to give close examination to:
Ourselves … who are we? What do we value, what do we want out of life, and what are willing to give to life.
We give close examination to the news of our troubled world - war and rumors of war … earthquake and pestilence … folks hungry for bread, and folks hungry for the Bread of Life.
We are spiritual creatures … and if properly fed and cared for, our soul leads us down right paths … to green pastures … still waters … to the Table of Grace and Love.
We have a spiritual nature … it’s built into us … from that nature, like an eternal spring, flows the art of Vermeer … Sandburg’s poetry, the novels of Steinbeck … beauty and goodness, music and dance … sculpture and pottery …
Our spiritual nature needs a god … something to claim the soul of life … something beyond and above … something good and utterly gracious … the ultimate concerns of love and hope …
If the good and gracious is missing, if the ultimate concerns of love and hope are lost, the spiritual nature gravitates to what’s broken and poisonous …
And our world wants for nothing on this score … there is plenty of broken ideas and poisonous philosophies …
I’m rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich … Hitler was a monster, and his monstrous ideas still capture the empty souls of empty and desperate people … how many of the shootings of late have been done by souls infested with Hitler’s sickness - Hitler’s fixation on racial purity, hatred of women, the love of power … Hitler’s anti-semitism, his hatred of gays and lesbians … his hatred of trade unions and anything that stood in his way to absolute power and dominion.
Broken and poisonous ideas abound … but so the great ideas of grace, mercy, and peace … the witness of the prophets, the vision of Moses … the love of Christ … and in all the great religions of the world, there is value of the highest kind … to life humanity and restore what is lost …
We are spiritual creatures …
We can feed on the poisons of hell and grow downward into despair and darkness.
We can feed at the Table of our LORD Jesus Christ and grow upward in grace and love …
We can drink the poisonous waters of fear and hate, or bath in the waters of baptism …
We can feed the hungry and cloth the naked … or take up a gun and destroy.
We are spiritual creatures … it our nature to have a God … a God of love … or something less … a God of grace, or something perverse.
Here in this place, we pay careful attention to such things … to be sure that our soul is moving in the right direction … toward the God of love and hope …
The Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being.
Hallelujah and Amen!
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