(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 1, 2019, Proper 17)
A Voice That Changes Everything
Our culture loves a redemption
story, a story where chaos is transformed into goodness and life. Remember
the Titans, The Mighty Ducks, Mr. Holland’s Opus, even Jack Black’s School of Rock—these are just a few
titles from Hollywood that reveal our love for redemption stories. Take Remember the Titans, for instance. When two high school football teams in Alexandria, Virginia
are first integrated, they are a mess.
Players fight. Positions on
the field are contested and confused.
Everything is chaos. But in
steps coach Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington, and his voice changes things.
In preseason, he starts with the simplest instructions. You stand here, you stand there. When this happens, you run this
way. When that happens, you run
that way. Like any good coach, he
always encourages. “Good, very good!”
The rest of the story is
history. This mess of players
becomes a well-ordered team of champions—and all because of the voice of their
coach. Herman Boone can’t do a
single thing himself. He can’t
step onto the field and catch a ball or make a tackle. It’s all in his voice. His words take on shape—take on
flesh—in his players, who know where to stand, who know when to run, who know
that their coach believes in them no matter what.
Chaos into Goodness
This classic story of chaos into
goodness is as old as time itself.
Although theologians proclaim that God created everything out of
nothing, that’s not quite the picture that we see in the Bible itself. In the first verses of Genesis, this is
what we hear: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the
earth was tohu wa-bohu, and darkness
covered the face of the deep” (Gen 1:1-2). Tohu wa-bohu is
the Hebrew way of saying that things are a mess—“formless and void,” as the
English often puts it. The
“darkness” and the “deep” attest to this chaos. They give us the picture of a cosmic storm at sea, which is
about as chaotic a situation as you can imagine.
But then there is a voice that
changes everything. God
speaks. God starts with the
simplest things. God divides light
from darkness, the waters above (the blue sky) from the waters below (the blue
sea), the land from the water. Like
a cosmic coach, God orders the elements into their proper place and
function. By the way, I’d like to
point out that this isn’t God the dictator as much as it is God the
conversation partner. Like
coaching, creation is a two-way street.
God calls out, and then the players respond. So when God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation” in
verse 11, we hear in verse 12 that “the earth brought forth vegetation.” The earth listens to God and
respectfully responds. And there
is always the encouraging word at the end of the day, “And God saw that it was
good.”
So it is that chaos slowly
becomes goodness and life and diversity and collaboration. Not through God intruding and doing it
Godself, but through a voice. “In
the beginning was the word” (John 1:1).
God’s word takes on flesh in the elements of creation.
At the Beck and Call of Pharaoh
If you’ve ever coached before, or
taught or parented, you know that chaos is a wild and unruly thing. You may be able to instill order for a
day, but there’s no guarantee that tomorrow your players or students or
children don’t rebel. There’s no
guarantee that chaos will not return.
The same goes for creation. Through God’s voice, God has
transformed chaos into goodness and life.
But those unruly elements—that tohu
wa-bohu—are not gone. In time,
chaos returns. We see this in
stories like the flood and the tower of Babel. When the creatures of the earth transgress the limits that
have been set for them, when they do not stay in their proper place and fulfill
their proper function, chaos threatens to return and undo the goodness and life
for which God has called.
At the beginning of Leviticus,
the Lord “summons” Moses. That
word “summons” contains within it a dark history. If we explore its similar usage in previous stories, we find
that there is another character who regularly summoned Moses: Pharaoh in
Egypt. The word “summons” reminds
us that Moses and the Israelites were not long ago living in slavery. It reminds us that their history is one
of chaos. When you live at the
beck and call of an oppressor, your life has no real order: your time, your
space, your actions are all subject to the whims of another person.
The word “summons” reminds us
that Moses and the Israelites have only ever known the chaos of slavery. They have lived in one of those times
when God’s good creation has unraveled and chaos has reigned. They don’t know what a well-ordered
life looks like. They don’t know
what goodness really is.
A New Creation
That brings us to the start of
Leviticus. Moses and the
Israelites are in the wilderness.
Behind them is the chaos of Egypt.
In front of them is a new possibility.
You might recall that when God
delivers the Israelites from Egypt, he separates the waters of the sea so that
they might escape. That separation
of waters is an image that recalls the creation of the world, when God
separated the waters above from the waters below and the sea from the dry land. We might say, then, that the splitting
of the sea foreshadows a new creation.
Just a little while later, the
Israelites construct a special tent called the tabernacle. God gives them instructions how to
build it. Not only that, but God’s
instructions occur in seven different
speeches and his final speech concerns the Sabbath day of rest. If you’ll remember, that’s the same
pattern we see in creation: seven days of speech; the final day, a day of
rest. Again we have a hint that
God is working on a new
creation. This tabernacle is the
start of something new, a reordering of the Israelites’ lives. It is a step away from the chaos of
Egypt into the goodness and life that God desires.
This helps to explain some of the
oddities and strangeness of Leviticus.
When most people think of Leviticus and all its laws about what happens
in and around this tent, they think of blood and animal sacrifices, laws about
cleanness and uncleanness, about what you can and can’t eat, what you can touch
and what you should avoid. It
seems outdated and barbaric.
And in some ways, it is. Of course it is. It’s a text written over two thousand
years ago. But if we read it in
its context, we see that God is addressing a people who have lived in chaos. Just as a coach’s voice instills order
in his team, so here in the tent God speaks to these former slaves about the
basics of life, like how you eat, how you treat your neighbor, how you speak,
how you organize your time and space.
That’s essentially what all the instructions in Leviticus are about. It’s the basics that are important to
God when shaping chaos into order and goodness and life. (Remember creation? It begins with the simplest of
distinctions: light and dark, sky and earth, land and water.) If you’re familiar with the process of
addiction and recovery, you’ll see a strong parallel here. Establishing boundaries and habits and
routines can be the difference between life and death. Or we can return to the coaching
metaphor. It’s the little things
that matter: where a player stands, when they run, what direction they’re
facing.
The Gospel of Leviticus
The beginning of Leviticus is
gospel. It’s good news. It proclaims that creation is not just
something that happened in the beginning, and God’s left things to run their
course for better or worse.
Rather, the God whose voice drew goodness and life from the chaos of tohu wa-bohu, still calls today in our
world.
I mentioned last week the idea
that you and I are both entering a sort of wilderness. If life feels a little messy, a little
confused, then at least we’re in good company. That’s where the Israelites were.
What they heard in that mess was
a voice speaking to them about the basics. Food.
Family. Neighbors. Finances. The little things that make a big difference.
I wonder what the basics are for
the church. I wonder what the
little things are that make a big difference. I wonder how God is calling the church. (Personally, as I ponder this question,
I wonder if God’s call to the church has to do with the same Word God spoke
from the beginning: if it has to do with Jesus the friend of sinners and a
table and a scandalously diverse fellowship.)
Whatever the call is, we may
trust that it is ordering the chaos of our world into a new creation. And we may trust that responding to it
will draw us into God’s order of goodness and life.
Prayer
Creator God,
Whose word went out
Into chaos
And drew forth
Goodness and life:
Help us to hear your word today.
Where life feels like a mess,
Help us to begin with the basics
From which your blessing flows.
In Christ, the living Word: Amen.
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