Yup, it's been a month since I last posted. During that time I've stepped foot in all of the time zones in the continental U.S., preached to over 1500 folks, took the kids to Disney World, and helped to produce the worship for the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts 2009 National Convocation. What a summer!
Below you will find the manuscript of the sermon I preached at AUMC on August 2 during our AUMC At the Movies sermon series. I hope you will find it stimulating! Of course, I deviated from the manuscript quite a bit!
Tomorrow I will post the manuscript for a sermon I preached this past Sunday night at Custer Road UMC in Plano, Texas.
Script for Our End is Our Beginning
Voice 1 (Recording of): Tammie Nuoci
Media
Djembe ensemble
Media: House lights and stage lights fade to black—Eno’s Under Stars begins
Live djembe groove begins
Media: Moving images of creation, transitioning from rural to urban scenes
Voice: Now it’s time for a story. Many of us in this place know the beginning of this story, but, many of us, perhaps, don’t really know its end.
The story begins like this…
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And God called the creation not only good, but very good! From the smallest particles that constitute every thing, to the largest interstellar event, God called all that God had made very good!
Media: Begin Wall-E clip at around the 1-minute mark (without sound)
Voice: And then, as you know, because of our own selfishness, humanity messed things up. And we messed things up pretty badly. The earth, a key part of God’s very good creation, began to change in ways that God had not intended. Life cycles and ecosystems began to fall out of balance. The kingdom of death began to expand, separating creation from its fullest life. It all began to change.
(dramatic pause, djembe crescendos to a loud stop!)
It was in a time like this that the prophet Ezekiel was led to a vision.
Media: All Light’s Full
Joe reads The Valley of the Dry Bones passage, Under Stars continues…when the passage about the bones coming together begins the drums make lots of random noise and stop at the end of that section. When the breath part begins a rain stick slowly plays to a crescendo to simulate breath.
Can these bones live?
It is a question that has been with us for thousands of years, from Ezekiel’s time, to the time of the Israelites when Christ was alive, to folks imprisoned, oppressed, and enslaved throughout all time.
Can these bones live?
Can you and I, imprisoned as we might be by our addictions, by personal choices, by circumstance, by regret and disappointment, can we live again. Not just survive but LIVE!
This question, "can these bones live" is posed by the film Wall-E about the Earth. Can these bones live again?
Can the earth live without proper care, without love and stewardship from those who have been given dominion of her?
In the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 2 we find that God created humanity to till the earth, to be it’s steward. But over the course of thousands of years, we have traded, myself included, the amazing responsibility of being stewards of God’s good creation for things that are all together lesser than the gift we’ve been entrusted.
Friends, the science on climate change is firm: the earth is warming because of the emissions from burnt fossil fuels. Every other possible reason for the warming of the earth has been examined thoroughly by the global scientific community, including our own U.S. National Academy of Science (a non-partisan group of the nations top scientists that has over 200 Nobel Prize winners at the moment that is highly respected by folks on all places of the ideological spectrum) and found to be untenable. The best minds in the world say we’ve got problem on our hand in climate change.
Friends, this is real. The debate about whether climate change is fact or fiction is closed. But the debate about where we go from here is just beginning. As followers of the way of Christ we must have an important voice in this debate.
It would be easy for us to relegate our responsibility to other people, to the scientists and engineers, to the activists, to the politicians. It would be easy for us to ignore the groaning of creation itself and to believe that our primary goal as Christians is to be about “spiritual matters” to the exclusion of all else. To choose to follow that road would be to disregard the Bible in a massive, massive way.
Did you know that there are over 3,000 verses in the Bible that talk about how we are to care for the poor? There are over 1,000 verses in the Bible that deal with creation. There are 530 verses about love, and 490 verses about heaven. It is clear where God’s priorities are!
Can these bones live?
The apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans 8:19 when he says (read Romans 8:18-23)
Do you see it? God’s salvation is for humanity yes, but it is also for the entire cosmos! As N.T. Wright has said, “The whole creation—sun, moon, sea, sky, birds, animals, plants—is longing for the time when God’s people will be revealed as God’s glorious human agents, set in authority over the world. And if one dare say it like this, as God sent Jesus to rescue the human race, so God will send Jesus’ younger siblings (you and me) in the power of the Spirit, to rescue the whole created order, to bring that justice and peace for which the whole creation yearns.”
That’s bold claim! Given our track record, why would God trust us?
But why would Paul say something like this? He said this because Paul knew of God’s ultimate will: God’s dream’s for Creation will ultimately be fulfilled. What God began in the garden in Eden will be transformed and perfected in the New Jerusalem.
In the end of the Bible, we see glimpses of God’s ultimate dream for the fulfillment of his creation.
Read Rev. 21:1-5
Friends, God’s ultimate will is to dwell with us, in the new creation here on THIS earth, just as God dwelt with Adam and Eve in the garden!
Our final resting place will be back on this earth, where God has not made all new things, but rather, has made all things new. God will choose’s to dwell with us in this place, as newly resurrected beings.
Can these bones live? God gives a resounding, absolute YES!
So what we do on Earth and to Earth matters. How we conduct ourselves as stewards of God’s creation matters.
If this earth is to be our final resting place, if all of God’s dreams are pinned upon the reclamation and transformation of God’s creation through the life, death, resurrection and sending forth of Jesus Christ, and his people, we need to get on board with what God is doing in our midst!
We must align our priorities with God’s priorities; we must put our story into God’s story, and not the other way around.
God desperately wants us, God’s creation is groaning for us, to reclaim and to live out our original roles as stewards, as tillers of God’s creation.
And so even though the science of climate change is less than comforting and, perhaps, your personal situation might look bleak right now, we must remember that:
GOD IS IN THE TRANSFORMATION BUSINESS
And we are called to participate with God in transformation!!!!
When we participate in what God is doing in the world around us, partner with God in the transformation of this creation we ourselves are transformed!!! We do this by aligning our priorities with God’s priorities, just like we heard last week.
We can be transformed into the people God has made us to be! We can be made new! Regardless of what we are coming out of, God can transform us! And God will transform and renew his creation.
So are you ready? Are you ready to partner with God? Are you ready to put your story into God’s story? Are you ready to reclaim one of the roles you were made for? Are you ready to serve in ministry with the poor? Are you ready to become a better steward of all that God has created? Are you ready to cease doing that which separates you from God, and to be made new? Are you ready for your ending to become your beginning?
Sometimes our ends and our beginnings are magnificent! And sometimes they are culmination of small steps. One of the spiritual practices that we are going to embrace as a church is the wasting of extra bulletins. (Walk back to the church and encourage people to participate in the new recycling project by giving money for the program.)
Friends, let’s us give up the things that lead to death, and embrace that which leads to life! As you come to God’s table, be fed by Jesus, be welcomed and loved by him. And, if you are called, which you most surely are, put your story into God’s story and be ready to be transformed!
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