Find Me, Find Life
The Perfect Summer After a Year of Lockdown • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 4 viewsNotes
Transcript
Today we wrap up our series on the perfect summer after a year of lockdown. Summer officially began last Sunday and I have just one last recommendation on how you can spend the rest of it. We saw in our first week the importance of connecting with other people and all the benefits that come with that. Next we looked at connecting with God and how opening ourselves to a sense of awe can transform our world. Last week we celebrated our dads and grads, and looked inward. What has God placed inside us? What gifts and talents do we have that can be a blessing to the world around us? We saw the talents of an artist, of a member of our congregation, Natasha and of a softball coach, Darren White, who many of you know. His team won the Bergen County Softball Championship in large part because of Darren’s commitment to use the gifts God has given him to encourage and cheer others on.
Now we look at our final area of connection after lockdown and that is connecting with nature. We are going to hear our scripture for today from Proverbs 8. This is a book that offers lots of wisdom, lots of little short saying to keep us on the right path with God, but here we see a little bit longer saying that tells us how wisdom was there at the very beginning of creation, and that if we find wisdom, we will find life. Hear now Proverbs 8:22-35
Proverbs 8:22–35 (NRSV)
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth— when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. “And now, my children, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord;
And from
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
Let’s pray: Lord may we be an inclusive community passionately following Jesus Christ. Work in us your will through wisdom, power and strength. May our hearts be transformed as we embrace the connections you have for us. In Christ we pray. Amen.
Now I know some of you, when I say we need to connect with nature after the pandemic, might be thinking that’s the last thing you need. For many people going out in nature was about the only thing you could do during the pandemic. Our family went out hiking on so many weekends at one point my wife Emily stopped me and said, “Brian, I’m sick and tired of hiking. We have got to find something else to do.” She was right, of course. We did need to find a different activity to do as a family, but I think maybe the problem wasn’t being out in nature; its that we were constricted to such a small part of nature. I think its time for us to start thinking big!
When Emily and I got married it was on December 24th, 2009 - yes, Christmas Eve. Half the family hated it, half the family was delighted by that, and Emily and I got all the best discounts because nobody gets married on Christmas Eve! We actually picked the date in honor of Emily’s deceased grandparents who had been married themselves on Christmas Eve, but what I really want to tell you about our wedding is how Emily and I wound up in Hell. I’m not kidding; stick with me. We really got married and within a week ended up in hell. We had initially struggled to pick a destination for our honeymoon. In the end we had settled on Disney World, but because we were married just before Christmas, we had agreed together that, for that year, we would give each other free Christmas gifts. My gift to Emily was a switch! Instead of Disney World I had actually booked a trip to the Cayman Islands.
Now I don’t recommend any newly weds to do things the way I did. I found a great little bungalow on the island, but I had to get us there, too. I booked the bungalow first, then had to find a flight that wasn’t outrageously priced. I waited until December 23rd to book the flight. Somehow, miraculously, I found a reasonable price. The draw back was that we had a few stops in between; our layovers were all over the map. We had to fly from Philadelphia to Cincinnati where we would change planes before staying overnight in Atlanta. From there we would finally fly directly to Grand Cayman on a once a week flight to the islands. I know what your thinking. You think I’m cheap for not booking a direct flight. You’re thinking that the money I saved wasn’t worth the inconvenience of all those extra flights. Well you’re wrong. It was far worse than that! Our flight out of Philadelphia was just a little bit delayed so when we landed in Cincinnati it was like a scene from a movie. We grabbed our carry-on luggage, tried to politely scoot past everyone else deplaning and ran as fast as we could through the airport to our next gate. When we arrived we watched our plane slowly back up and taxi out to the runway where we waved farewell to our perfect honeymoon.
It was getting late at night and we thought there was no way we were going to make it to Atlanta in time for the only flight going to the Caymans. We talked to the airline agent, they typed a few things into their computer and voila! Two gates over, a mere fifty feet away was the next flight to Atlanta only an hour later. We arrived later than we thought we would, but made it without a problem. The next day we were happily on our flight to the Caymans. When we landed the first thing we had to do was pick up the car we had rented. It wasn’t until I was pulling out onto the road that I realized the Caymans were a territory of Great Britain, which means everyone drives on the other side of the road there. I hadn’t even checked if I was legally allowed to drive there with my US license. But anyways, one of the first things we did was drive around the island to get a lay of the land. Its not terribly large, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in beauty. The beaches were gorgeous, the sea was enormous. Seeing tiny boats pull up to the island only to realize as they got closer that they were actually cruise ships that dwarfed their surroundings was an incredible sight. But the part of the Cayman Islands that will always stick with me was when we traveled to a tiny town on the island called Hell. The first time we went there it was quite by accident. We were trying to go somewhere else and realized we were in the wrong place, so we decided to follow the signs to Hell.
This town gets its name from the eerie formations around the island. There is limestone throughout and wherever it had interacted with a certain kind of algae, you’ll find these spongy looking rocks that appear to have been charred black as coal. Some say the town got its name because people thought these rocks looked the way that hell must. Emily and I saw it and were impressed. It was really cool, but you couldn’t walk on it; you couldn’t explore the area. When we returned back to our bungalow we were walking around and realized that back behind the place we were staying they had their very own version of hell! I know my excitement as a pastor in finding my very own hell must seem so strange, but there it is. I get married and the first thing I do is take my wife to hell. Its just not right. Forgive me!
We have these beautiful memories, though, these beautiful pictures we’ll always treasure of a place we traveled to with nature we’ll never forget. Now I know not all experiences with nature are good. Just this past week I noticed one of the trees in our grove back behind the church was dying and I went and checked it out. It looked like poison ivy had grown up and around this enormous tree, but the ivy was so thick it was like a small tree. So I went and got out my axe because any excuse you can make up to get out your axe is a good reason and I started wailing into that poison ivy. I have dealt with poison ivy time and time again throughout my life and never once have I had any problems so I’ve been saying for a few years that I think I am not allergic to it. You know where this story is going, don’t you? I hit the vine a few times and chunks of it come flying out at me. One of the bigger pieces hit me in the leg and the next day, right when I woke up, I reached down and scratched my leg. “Huh,” I thought, “that’s strange.” Yup, it was poison ivy. First time in my life I’ve ever gotten it. Emily was kind enough to coach me through how to handle it. I’m just glad I didn’t get any on my face - that would have been too unpleasant for such fine folk in this church to deal with! Nature can give us both the good, the beautiful and inspirational, and the bad, the ugly and the itchy.
Yet, despite how mixed our experiences with nature can be, I think it is a fundamental necessity to healthy living. I came across a new term this week called eco-psychology. Its the study of the effects the environment has on our psychological health. Lots of good things happen when we are out in nature: it can lower blood pressure, make our immune system work better and even improve our mood. One study of ten of thousands of people found that there is a clear line of how much time you need in nature in order to experience these benefits. How much? 120 minutes; two hours in one week. The strange finding was that you can spread it out of the whole week, 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there, but if you don’t hit the two hour mark you won’t experience any of the benefits of time in nature. Its almost as if our bodies require us to be out in nature.
I had mentioned this piece of eco-psychology wisdom to a couple of people and they answered back with the obvious, “yeah, I bet that’s why people are so miserable in winter.” (!!) Yeah, you need two hours out there, even if its cold…even if its blazin’ hot! Get outside and embrace the world God has created. It will bring health and wholeness.
In the book of Proverbs we hear many bits of teaching and wisdom. Early one we find that the book is a father, King Solomon, taking down all the wisdom he has learned over his lifetime. He wants his son to grow. He want his son to thrive, so he collects this wisdom to pass along all the valuable advice he can. Unfortunately even King Solomon knows these proverbs are useless if you are a fool. Just because you say wise things doesn’t make you any better. But he does say there are certain attributes that make us wise. The writer names them just before the passage we read today in Proverbs 8:12. Wisdom is prudence. Wisdom is knowledge and wisdom is discretion.
You might be a little less familiar with the word prudence, but it means doing things today with an eye to the future. I learned this week about some of the gifts that people have given to the church over the years. They said invest the money and let the interest fund ministries in the church. That’s prudence; its wise choices for your future. Wisdom is also knowledge; learn what you can! Today our problem is actually the opposite. We have so much access to information we become completely overwhelmed. We don’t know who to trust. Different people have different opinions and so we are likely to trust no one. That’s not wisdom. Wisdom seeks out the best sources of knowledge. And the last part of wisdom is discretion, knowing when to say something or do something and when not to. Wisdom means we don’t just react from our impulses; we consider what is right, what will help build up others and turn them toward God, the ultimate source of wisdom.
So, that’s the background for wisdom and then we hear wisdom herself speak. She says I was there at the beginning; essentially that wisdom was the very first thing God created. And the translation is a little muddy, but its either wisdom was like a master craftsman working along side God, or a playful little child delighting in God’s creation. Either way, I think its a beautiful image of what it looks like for us to join in with wisdom. Its like becoming a master craftsman that is at the very peak of their trade. You create out of the abundance of God’s creation. Or its like a child jumping into a puddle after the rain. Its a complete delight to bask in the creation.
Wisdom is written all throughout God’s creation. Romans 1 tells us the creation is the grand reminder of God’s existence. We know God exists because all that we see around us. Whether its the Ocean or the Grand Canyon, Angel Falls or the pockmarked algae rock of the Caymans. Nature announces to us that God is here. I love in the book of Job it describes the Behemoth and the Leviathan. These are two creatures that we aren’t quite sure what they are describing. Some people say sea serpents and dragons. Others think its a Hippopotamus and a Crocodile. Whatever they are, Job says, “[they are] the first of the great acts of God” and as Job thinks about these creatures he is overwhelmed by the awesome power of God. He continues, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me…therefore I…repent in dust and ashes.” Job realizes his own shortcomings, his own inadequacy in comparison to God. You might say this knowledge, this fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Just pondering nature and the creatures in it can do this for us.
One last thing nature does is remind us of Jesus. There are plenty of parables Jesus teaches, short stories that connect us with what real life looks like. I think of Jesus talking about the wheat and the tares. Because most of us aren’t farmers we don’t know that the tares are a kind of weed that looks like young wheat. In Jesus’ parable these two plants grow up together so that the good wheat is not injured. When it finally comes time to harvest the wheat, the tares, the weeds that are not good to eat, are burned up. Jesus reminds us to be useful, to be patient in judgment so that the good is not injured and the bad is properly taken care of.
There’s also the story of the withered fig tree. Jesus walks up to a tree to eat figs from it. It has leaves and is in the right season to bear fruit, but instead of figs Jesus finds nothing. Jesus curses the tree and the next time the disciples see it, the tree is dead. Now something was clearly wrong with that tree to have leaves and be in season, but bear no fruit. His curse may not so much be inflicting harm as it is making clear that something is off. Wisdom helps us draw an analogy from nature to our own lives. If a person is not bearing good fruit, if they are not loving and kind, they are cursed; they are revealing a brokenness in their own lives.
One last parable of Jesus - he is with the disciples after they have tried to cast out a demon and they ask him, “why couldn’t we do it? Why didn’t we succeed?” And Jesus says, you didn’t succeed because you lack faith. All you need is the faith the size of a mustard seed and you can move mountains. Most of us would look at a mountain and say, yeah, no you aren’t moving that. And that’s exactly the point! These immovable objects, this thing that is obviously impossible is now suddenly possible when you are partnered with God.
All these lessons flow from nature, and I think we know many of these intrinsically. We know its good to be patient, that people are broken and that anything is possible with God. That’s why the church said yes a few years ago to a boy scout project to build a garden. I shared some pictures last year of Nancy and Emily working on that garden and the transformation that space has gone through. This year its even better! So many vegetables are growing and they’ve managed to avoid the chipmunks eating all their hard work! We have strawberries galore this year, so if you want some fresh strawberries, feel free to go into the church garden and pick some for yourself. We know nature is good for us. We know gardening and growing plants helps keep us connected with the earth and God’s blessing.
Just behind the garden is my favorite space on our church campus - the Grove. I mentioned it earlier, but its a beautiful space, with benches and three crosses. We had a memorial service there and Vacation Bible School will have a class there. Our church offers this space freely to our community to be blessed, to be filled with God’s love. Later today we will even have our blessing of the animals service over that way. Grace, as a church, knows that nature blesses us, that it invites us to live with wisdom and to learn from it that we might live richer, fuller lives.
How might you engage with nature this summer? How might you allow God to speak into your life through this beautiful world and the wisdom it can teach us? Maybe you will go on a personal spiritual retreat into nature like I will this week? Maybe you will study nature more deeply to learn the mysteries God has for us there? Or, maybe you will care for plants in your yard or garden, just as God cares for all of us?
Francis Collins' is a scientist. He was a medical student years ago, and didn’t think much about God. Then, one day one of his patients told him about her faith, and asked him, "What about you? What do you believe, Doctor?" In Collin's own words, "I stuttered and stammered and felt the color rising in my face, and I said, 'Well, I don't think I believe in anything.' But it suddenly seemed like a very thin answer. He searched and read and one day had a life-changing encounter. He says,
I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.
Francis Collins would go on to be a key player in the Human Genome Project. In 2007 he wrote a New York Times best-selling book, The Language of God, where he shared about science and his faith in God. Nature taught him something about God. Nature transformed his worldview, leading him to a deeper and fuller relationship with Jesus Christ. The same can happen for you. If you’ll spend some time in nature, you’re bound to hear the wisdom of God speak. Its the perfect way to spend a summer after a year of lockdown. Amen? Amen.
Pray. Change the World postcards