Sermons from The Church of the Covenant

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June 12, 2016 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Sermons from The Church of the Covenant The God of Peace The Reverend Melanie Marsh Baum Until the circle of compassion is extended to

1 June 12, 2016 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Sermons from The Church of the Covenant The God of Peace The Reverend Melanie Marsh Baum Until the circle of compassion is extended to all living things, human kind will not find peace. ~ Albert Schweitzer The Church of the Covenant Presbyterian Church (USA) Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio CovenantWeb.org

2 Genesis 8:1 4; 9:8 15 8But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; 2 the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, 3 and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated; 4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. 12 God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. Philippians 4: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

3 The God of Peace Genesis 8:1 4; 9:8 15, Philippians 4:4 9 When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. Horatio Spafford You may know the story of what took place in France, along the western front, in December of 1914, just a few months after the start of World War I. It was the week before Christmas. Pope Benedict XV suggested a temporary hiatus of the war for the celebration of the Christian Holy Day. Though the warring countries refused to create any official cease-fire, the soldiers at the front lines declared their own unofficial truce. At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allies across noman s-land, calling out Merry Christmas in their enemies native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. A brief moment of peace existed in the midst of the horror of war. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings, sang carols and songs. As night fell on the fields of war that Christmas, some men could still be seen and heard, huddled together in the gathering dark, singing Stille Nacht Silent Night before they returned to their trenches to resume the battle. In the Hebrew language, we have this word, Shalom. Translated very simply, it means peace. But there is much more woven into its meaning. For the ancient Israelites, Shalom meant wholeness, well-being, harmonious relationship between individuals and God, and between individuals and one another. Shalom was also a prayer, a blessing, that wherever they went, God s peace would go with them. This was not a peace born out of the absence of turmoil. Rather, it was the peace which would abide within them and among them in even the most turbulent times.

4 The story of the Flood may seem like an odd place to turn, if we want to talk about the God of Peace. Few other stories in the Bible present a God who appears as angry, as vengeful, or as violent, as the God of this mythological tale. But there is good reason to begin with the flood if we want to know God s peace. In the flood, we see a God who, in the face of destruction and brutality, experiences a striking change of heart. In the end, God chooses to extend mercy, to offer compassion. We can only really appreciate this turn when we know what has gone before. We must encounter the God of violence if the God of peace is going to hold any meaning for us. In the beginning, God called forth life, and set things in order. God called humanity into relationship, making us part of the fabric of creation. But as a friend of mine recently put it, We are all born broken and incomplete, and in our brokenness, humanity turned inward, abandoned God, embraced violence and destruction. When God resolved to send a flood, to blot out from the earth the humans [God] had created, it was out of a sense of grief and anger so deep and strong that for a time God was sorry to have ever created at all. God condemned life on Earth to death, to drown in swirling storm and raging sea. Then God remembered Noah. In Noah God finds a glimpse of wholeness, the original Shalom of creation. God knows that while there is yet a strand intact of that thread which binds humanity and creation to the Divine, all is not lost, there is hope for us still, and so God resolves to begin again to set things right. The awesome, destructive power of the flood, the reality of laying waste to creation, breaks God s heart even more than the wickedness of humanity. As the waters subside, as calm and stillness return to the Earth after 40 days of upheaval, God s heart is transformed. God, our mother and our father, says Never Again. Never again will I strike at you because you have abandoned me. Never again will I destroy you in punishment. God chooses to move forward from this moment of destruction in a different way, and seals the covenant with an everlasting sign.

5 The bow and the arrow were together one of the surest instruments of death that the people of the ancient world possessed. The bow is a deadly weapon: a symbol of the hunt, of warfare, of bloodshed. In the aftermath of the flood, the story tells us that God places the bow, a symbol of violence and war, into the sky. God puts away the bow, where it might remain as a constant reminder that God would, from this time forth, choose the way of grace and peace, instead of violence and destruction, even when grace and peace is not what God s people deserve. Walter Brueggemann calls this shift from retribution to grace A revolution in the heart of God. Faced with our brokenness, faced with the reality of evil, God Changed. to bring Shalom to us. An old artist once held a contest to depict the perfect picture of peace. The challenge stirred the imagination of artists everywhere, and paintings arrived from far and wide. Finally the great day of revelation arrived. The judges uncovered peaceful scenes of mirror smooth lakes, evening skies, and grazing sheep, while the viewers clapped and cheered. When the final picture was unveiled the crowd gasped in surprise. Could this be peace? A tumultuous waterfall cascaded down a rocky precipice. In the midst of the thundering noises and bitter chill, a spindly tree clung to the rocks at the edge of the falls. One of its branches reached out in front of the torrential waters. A little bird had built a nest in the elbow of that branch. Undisturbed in her stormy surroundings, she rested on her eggs, eyes closed, her wings ready to cover her little ones. Death will always be with us. There is still destruction. Evil had not been eradicated. But through the flood, through God's covenant, we are assured that these forces cannot undo God s abiding peace. In fact, God's peace exists most unyieldingly in the face of death, destruction and evil. God resolves to stay with us, to endure, to sustain the world, notwithstanding the sorry state of humankind. God remembered us, and would not allow us to remain broken. Brueggemann tells us that this remembering is an act of committed compassion. God chooses to remember us, and calls us to remember one another. God invites humanity into a relationship through which all creation might be made whole where all might know peace.

6 This covenant with God requires something of us. What is promised is not merely a solace we might escape into and store up for ourselves. God s Peace means we must seek peace for all. In remembering us, God ties us together with all of creation. Our lot is thrown in with those who are in need of peace, not just here, but everywhere; not just humanity, but all living things. To seek it alone is impossible. It is not something we can manufacture by our own power, or rest securely in while we watch the storms rage for others. The Peace of God forces us to let go of ourselves - let go of control, let go of power, let go of comfort and reach out for one another, open-hearted, vulnerable before God and our fellow creatures. It is from this place of openness, of vulnerability that the Peace of God takes hold. It is when we let go of ourselves that we might be able to extend the circle of compassion outward to include all living things. Near the end of the American Civil War, when it was clear that the South would soon face defeat, when the country was exhausted, and torn apart by four years of war, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech on the occasion of his second inauguration. You would expect he might have gloried in the triumph of the Republic over the rebel states. Yet, at a time when victory over the secessionists was within days and slavery was near an end, Lincoln did not speak of triumph, but rather of the immense toll the war had taken on all people, who must now be made whole: With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. The Peace of God is not the easy or comfortable peace of personal happiness. It is not a place we can get to without cost to ourselves. This is a peace that may break our hearts or cause us pain, for that is what connection to all living things entails: compassion suffering with one another. God s covenant with us means that even when we are surrounded by pain, God remembers us, and abides with us. It is this covenant that is made manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, who suffered with and for all humanity. Through this covenant we have the promise, that when we are in turmoil, when we are torn asunder by the violence, the heart ache, the uncertainty of a broken world, God s peace which surpasses understanding will guard us. It will keep our hearts and our minds. It will make us whole.

Calming the Turmoil Within

Calming the Turmoil Within Text: John 14:1-14 Series: Gospel of John [#21] Pastor Lyle L. Wahl April 6, 2014 Introduction The children s book titled The Hating Book opens with a little girl saying I hate,