Sermon for Sunday, Nov 13, 2022
The Rev. Evan G Clendenin
“But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.” Is 65:18
What is God creating? What is God creating? Here and now, in you and among you? Here on Vashon Island, here at Church of the Holy Spirit? As the winds blow through the passages and straits, as the tides ebb and flow…what is God creating? While you enjoy a hot beverage on a cold rainy day, what is God creating? In the lives of the people who live and work, here on this island, or ferrying onto or off of the island to undertake the services, professions, trades, all the building and planting and toil on which our common life depends, in your various holy efforts of simple daily living…what is God creating?
The prophet Isaiah invites the people of Israel to notice that God is creating, and what God is creating now. God, the great I AM, in whose presence we stand, whose breath breathes life into us. God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. We are to actively forget the former things, opening more space in our in our awareness, not for what God has done, or what we think God has done, but what God is doing now. What are some of those things for you right now? In your own life? in the life you share with others, in the life you share with others at Church of the Holy Spirit? Whether they seem smaller or greater: what are you rejoicing in right now?
Isaiah bids we notice what God is creating now. And The apostle Paul offers some further guidance about this in this passage from 2 Thessalonians. Paul offers guidance for looking at and tending at our own efforts, and our shared efforts, as places where God’s creative energies are at work. Paul speaks to a small, gifted community in Christ, anxious about its future. In such a community each person’s presence, each person’s contribution counts, must count! So, Paul is rightly serious, even stern, in warning about what the NRSV translates as ‘idleness.’ Paul encourages the community to work according to the tradition they received and share, rather than to be ‘mere busybodies.’ But the english ‘idleness’ and ‘busybodies’ may mislead us. Rather than ‘idle’, we might say ‘out of order,’ or ‘tending to fray’; rather than ‘busybody’ we might say ‘wasteful of our energy’ or ‘busy at inessentials.’
When I wonder on Paul’s words, an image of some draft horses from years ago: four horses hitched side by side, a steady old mare, two well started horses, and a young horse who had been mishandled by his previous owner. The old mare knew the furrow and how to plod carefully along, without growing weary in doing good work. She would even correct the human at times! The two horses followed her lead. But if she went right, the mishandled horse went left-or down, or up! He bobbed his head nervously; he stepped twice for every one step of the others and wore himself out quickly. He had been bred and trained for show, then sold off. He needed the right place to be, and to learn, to be healed, so as to not waste his energy, to not grow weary, to be part of the work in all his horse-ness.
Maybe Paul means- In Christ Jesus we are healed, we are brought into a place where know and trust that your part, my part in this life and work we share matters. Let us not grow weary in doing good work, indeed let us grow in gratitude for our common efforts and rejoice in what God is creating.
This season of life in which you and I have been called to walk can be an apocalyptic time, that is a time when we can open out hearts in the expectation of things to be revealed. Do you delight in music and prayer that invites you and others to the stillness that helps you draw nearer to God? Or hospitality and seeking the conditions for shelter and dwelling and more satisfying life and work for others on this Island? Allowing the mercy of God to lead you in mending, repairing, seeking right relations among people, and with the earth?
What is God creating? It’s not even so much about the future. Now is when you and I further the gospel, as a full-time congregation, where your part in our shared life matters. let’s take care that we not work too hard at the wrong things. Leave some empty time and space to be more with what is coming to be now. Or as Jesus says in the gospel, let us make up our minds not to prepare what we will say or do ahead of time. You and I- let’s try to bear witness by truth, and care, and gratitude and simple rejoicing to what God is creating in and among us.