Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Genesis 9:8-17 on March 1, 2009 (Lent1B)
Even if you're not Irish, and the most Irish thing you've ever done is eat Lucky Charms, you know all about leprechauns. The thing everyone knows about leprechauns is they love gold. The thing everyone knows about gold is that in Irish tradition pots of it languish at the "end of the rainbow." At the end of every rainbow, guarded by a leprechaun, is a legendary "pot of gold."
Sounds like easy pickings, no? Except for one teeny, tiny flaw in that equation no one can ever FIND the end of a rainbow. Ever try to follow a rainbow from one end to the other? The "end" always "moves," shifting onward, westward, eastward, somewhere. No one ever finds leprechaun gold, because no one can ever find the end of the rainbow.
Rainbow ends are "movable eats." As you come closer and closer to what looks like is going to be the end point, that shiny summit keeps shifting. Light, reflections, the curvature of the earth, keep transmitting that "end" perpetually forward. The global nature of our world, the roundness of the earth, keeps the end point from ever become a final "end point."
The rainbow is the only celestial body given divine importance, a divine imprimatur, in the Old Testament. And the rainbow is also the only celestial, "heavenly" event that begins and ends upon this earth. The rainbow is the divine, heavenly symbol that intentionally bonds itself to this world, both at its beginning and at its end.
The first Sunday of Lent is usually devoted to looking down the long journey to the still obscured (but we know it is glorious) miracle of Easter. No matter how intentional our Lenten days of prayer, no matter what we may "give up" for Lent, no matter how focused we may be on the tragedy of the crucifixion, we still know we are looking forward to Easter morning, to colored eggs, spring mornings, and the transforming joy of the Resurrection. It is hard to pretend we don't know the ending to Christ's story.
But the fact is, even though we may know the "end," most of us don't even consider the "middle" of this journey. We don't know the story that drives the plot to its glorious conclusion. Here, at the beginning of the Lenten season, is the time to look at the heart of this divine drama.
In the Apostle's Creed it comes to us in these four words that are seldom commented on: "he descended into hell." There are, of course, no first hand accounts of the depths Jesus encountered on that day when he "descended into hell." Traditionally "Holy Saturday" a.k.a. "No-Name Saturday" has been taught as the "day" when the crucified Jesus journeyed into the depths of death. In the Christian tradition we envision those depths as "hell," that agonizing separation from God branded with fire and brimstone. But in Judaism and in Jesus' day that place between heaven and earth was known as Sheol, a dark, shadowy, not-living but not-torturous "place" at the center of the Earth. It was a kind of "waiting room" for souls, not a fiery pit, but definitely deep in the scary bowels of the earth, not part of the heavenly sphere.
It was into this dark, dismal, scary space, a space defined by the ugliest kind of segregation (separation from God's presence) that Jesus voluntarily ventured.
It wasn't over for Jesus after he was crucified. He still had this part of his journey to make. Jesus had to go down before he could go up. The grace of God's redemption was not contained by his death on the cross. Jesus' sacrifice involved much more.
There is no lack of horrific tales of death in human history. Dying on the cross was the science of torture taken to its most artistic limits. But Jesus went beyond death. He journeyed down into the bowels of the earth, to the roots of Sheol, to eradicate that horrible halfway house and enable all souls to journey back to the loving longitudes of God's Lordship.
What Jesus embraced with his birth, with his life, he also embraced with his death. Jesus embraced the world. Jesus embraced the Earth. Jesus was born as an earthly child. He lived as an earthly man. He died, as an earthly criminal. Jesus' life and mission and death as the Second Adam were wholly tied to this Earth, this garden planet.
At the very beginning of this Lenten season, as we just begin to contemplate the significance of the next forty days, the first biblical symbol we read about in lectionary is the rainbow. The rainbow is the sign from God that goes from earth to earth, the prism of light that seems to spring from out of the world and then, just as a dolphin leaps up and over, returns to this world. Where does this rainbow come from; where does this rainbow end?
In both cases the answer is somewhere beyond our human experience, yet still part of our earthliness. The rainbow comes out of, and returns to, the earth, even as we do. But the "end of the rainbow" cannot be found by human means anymore than the "ends of the earth" can be found. The "ends of the rainbow" reach below the bounds of the crust of the earth.
Here is the radical nature of the Incarnation. When God came down to earth, God came all the way down. In death, on Holy Saturday, Jesus was still not beyond the bounds of this world. In Sheol, in the shadowy world of death and separation from God, Jesus brought the redeeming, the re-creating God down into those depths and re-seeded the very heart of the Earth with resurrection energies.
"Down into death he has penetrated," wrote theologian Karl Rahner.
"He let himself be overcome by death so that death would gulp him down into the innermost depths of the world in this way, having descended to the very womb of the earth, to the radical unity of the world, he could give the earth his divine life forever. In death his sacred heart has become the pulse of the innermost heart of the world. And down here, the earth, in her continual development in space and time, sinks her roots into the power of all-mighty God. Now, it is an earth that is transfigured, an earth that is set free that is untwisted, that is forever redeemed from death and futility."
The Prince of Peace took the beauty of God into the very living room of the Prince of Darkness, and there forever redeemed the original beauty of creation.
There was a famous man by the name of Fred Rogers, also known as Mister Rogers. You may have seen him on TV in Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Mr. Fred Rogers is a Presbyterian minister. Did you know that? Every child was a friend in Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Every child was safe in Mister Rogers neighborhood. Is every child safe in Mister God's neighborhood? That is the question our text, Genesis 9:8-17, seeks to address. Is every child safe in Mister God's neighborhood? We know the answer the to that question.
During the next several weeks St. John's will focus on Justice for Children. The focus will begin with a display of pictures of children, prayers for children and articles about children posted around the church. This will be followed by three Sunday night presentations/panels and dinners on April 19th, April 26th and May 3rd. Featured guest speakers include: Robert Sanborn, President of Children at Risk; Barbara Best, Chairman of the Texas Chapter of the Children's Defense Fund; Evan Harrel, Executive Director of Small Steps Nurturing Center; plus six other prominent spokespersons from the areas of child advocacy, child health, education and juvenile justice. The emphasis will include a special project called the Mustard Seed Project. Members of St. John's will be invited to covenant to do something loving and meaningful for a child(ren). These acts of kindness will be documented and shared as we watch the planted seeds grow for the benefit of God's children.
All members of the Presbyterian Community are invited to participate in our Justice for Children emphasis led by the Outreach Ministry Team.
Mister Rogers began each episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood with the same song. The song is called "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." God put a rainbow in the sky as a way of saying to Noah and every living creature on earth what Mister Rogers says in his theme song. Imagine these words being sung, not by Mister Rogers, but God. Imagine these words being sung to every living creature on the face of the earth. Imagine God saying to us all:
''It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
a beautiful day for neighbors,
would you be mine, could you be mine?
Jesus committed his life and his death to the glory of God and to the glorification of God's creation, which is God's earth. In fact, on the cross Jesus did not so much show us how to be a new kind of Christian, but how to be a new kind of human, the original kind of human God created Adam to be. Jesus is your best shot at being human.
What kind of human are you? Are you a Jesus kind of human? Then let's work toward justice for all the children in Mister God's Neighborhood.
Let us pray: Almighty God, creator of the universe, we are humbled to know that you ask us to be your neighbors. Almighty God, we want to be your neighbors. Thank you for the beautiful neighborhood you created. Thank you for the opportunity to be your neighbor. Bless our efforts to work for justice for all the children in Mr. God's neighborhood. Amen.
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This sermon was adapted from Collected Sermons, Leonard Sweet, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., 2009, 0-000-1415
