Sermon: This Is Good

Rev. Jennifer Whipple
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

June 12, 2011

Genesis 1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13

“This Is Good”

 Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the reflections of our minds and hearts gathered here this morning be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, you who are our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.  

Six…a perfectly acceptable number as far as numbers go.  The reading from the first chapter of Genesis – the very beginning of our story as a people of faith speaks of 6 days in which God worked, calling/inviting the world as we know it through our lens of faith into being.  I have been thinking a lot about something else that begins with 6 questions, takes about 9 months of formation and re-formation, and then ends with the same 6 questions.  Now, if I have piqued your interest enough then I suppose I could just sit down and let you try to figure it out yourselves, but I’m not that mean.  The creative process that I am speaking about is the confirmation process here at the Congregational Church of Brookfield. 

Having celebrated the confirmands’ decisions last week to both confirm their faith and become members of our church, and as programs go, I have been spending some time processing this year’s confirmation experience – the journey that I was blessed to go on with this year’s confirmands, and how they wrestled and struggled and then finally declared who God is to them and for them at this point in their lives.  I have been tied a bit more deeply to those questions these past few days because today is the Sunday that some choose to celebrate as Trinity Sunday – the day when Christians proclaim the mystery and power of God, the three in one.  God the Father and God the Son (on this Father’s Day).  God the Holy Spirit.  /God the Creator.  God the Redeemer.  God the Renewer and Sustainer of life.  /God the all powerful.  God the human – the healer, the source of comfort.  God the gift giver and empowerer.  Whatever names you use for God, and there are many even in our own Bible, today is the day we celebrate all that God is, all that we know about God, and all that we will never know about God – even as we strive to grow closer and deeper in our relationship with God and each other as a family of faith and seek to serve God in our community and our world.

So why did I mention the six questions that begin and end our confirmands’ journey each year?  Well, they are the formation of the confirmands’ own creations - their statements of faith that they make at the beginning and end of our time together in confirmation.  The questions are these:

1.      What do you believe about God?

2.      What do you believe about Jesus?

3.      What do you believe about the Holy Spirit?

4.      What do you believe about the church and who we are to be as people of faith?

5.      What do you believe about your faith journey and where you are now?

6.      What are some of the questions of faith that you have?

Now, as an adult who went to seminary I still have a difficult time some days articulating my own thoughts and beliefs around some of these pieces of my faith, but our confirmands don’t seem to have that trouble.  Perhaps it’s the stage of their lives that they are in, but one of the things that I appreciate most about them is that they are willing and able to lay it all out on the line, are willing to accept that they are loved and cared for by God and our church family no matter what, and are willing to live with their questions.  And more often than not the questions that we are all left with at the end of the confirmation journey are questions about the Trinity – how God is three in one, and questions about human nature and relationships with each other and creation that seem to be so easily pushed aside at times in our “anything goes to get to the top” kind of culture.  Now, I won’t pretend to be able to answer all of the questions of faith that we continue to have today – those that I mentioned, but I do think that our scripture passages for today help guide us in the right direction.

I believe that reading this story of creation in Genesis should not lock us as people of faith in a never-ending battle with science, but rather should allow us to understand and claim how it is that we are to act toward God and the world around us in relation to the gift that we were given in the creation of the world – no matter how or when it happened.  This explanation of creation is not as much about the scientific aspects, which we have a clearer picture of now with scientific advancement than our biblical writers would ever have had, but rather it is about how important creation is to God – and how we are to be in relationship with God, with creation, and with each other.  Being created in God’s likeness is a call and a challenge to us to live in a loving relationship with God and each other – to learn to grow together, to accept one another in both our similarity and difference, and to be good stewards of God’s creation.   

It is that first challenge – to live in loving relationship, to learn to grow together and accept one another that Paul addresses in his benediction – his own words of blessing to the new community of faith at Corinth in his 2nd letter – a community that was in conflict with each other and with Paul about how to live as people of faith.  “Put things in order…agree with one another, live in peace…greet one another with a holy kiss.”  Paul’s words are basically encouraging that early group of Christian folks to learn to live together in community despite the difficulties – because it will be so much better for them in the long run.  It will strengthen them and help them to better serve the world to live from a place of love and respect for each other, for all that is around them, and for God.  And in doing so, they will recognize the love and grace and communion that God provides each and every one of us – but that we only seem to recognize when we have our eyes opened in faith.  This continues to be our challenge in our faith and communal life today.

It is the second challenge – to be good stewards of God’s creation both in nature and in one another – that we were called to at the very beginning – the Genesis of our story of faith – that we seem to be struggling more and more with each day as we grow and change and advance as a society.  As we talk and hear in the news about erosion, greenhouses gases, the hole in the Ozone layer, the pollution of our waters, and more – we realize that we perhaps have not fulfilled so well this call or accepted fully the challenge of good stewardship of the world or one another.  What the Genesis scripture helps us to realize is that we have an opportunity to be a part of the blessing of creation.  God calls creation very good, and we are called into this piece of the story.

In listening to Megan Montgomery talk this past Tuesday at Serendippers about her work at and through the ministries of Silver Lake I was reminded that our own denomination continues to work to change our viewpoint from being consumers to being caretakers of what God has created.  Over this past week Megan became the caretaker of two pigs as part of her responsibility this summer as the Nature Lady at Silver Lake Conference Center.  It will be her job to help  the young folks who go to experience a week at Silver Lake to learn about being good stewards of creation and learning how to live more sustainably – by teaching them about her new pigs, about the nature that is around us, about God’s gift to us of the abundance of creation, about things like composting and gardening and learning to live peaceably and make good decisions about how we treat our natural resources, make less garbage, and live a more sustainable creation and other friendly lifestyle.  And the CT Conference of the UCC is working to help churches become better stewards in the midst of their church buildings by teaching churches how to reduce their carbon footprint and to be examples for their congregation members and communities.  God called creation very good, and it has become our job to keep it that way – both in our relationship with others and with the world around us.

This is our God at work in the world, and these are our stories, our history as people of faith – the history of how we came to be blessed as God’s children and the history of our call and challenge – our commission.  And it’s the history of how we came to be called into a Christian family – the struggle and joy of discipleship and learning to live and love and serve in community with one another. 

When I lived and served as a missionary in Chile during college and the Dominican Republic after seminary with people who were at odds with and oppressed by the powers of this world – they clung to the hope that they were claimed as God’s beloved – as a part of God’s blessed creation.  With each group who came down to serve, the best advice we could give as they prepared to return to the United States was to live as if you now had new eyes with which to see the world – to see how our use of resources puts others in situations that are not healthy and thriving – and to share the story.  We give the same advice to our mission teams who leave from this community to serve in other places and return as people changed by their experiences and challenged to truly live into the likeness of God.  Because it is in fulfilling this challenge and living as though creation is a blessing and not a commodity that we get to be a part of the creative, life-giving, and sustaining power of God in the world. 

Over this past month I have wrestled with all of this – with who God is, with creation and God’s order, having lost loved ones in my family of origin while away for the month of May and lived through a few accidents and illnesses, listening to the weather reports as tornadoes and storms have ripped through communities, not to mention returning to our own loss in this family of faith of Harry Gerowe.  And yet, despite all of those things that make me question and wonder and struggle with what continues to happen with the world and where the power of God, the three in One, stands – I have been brought to my knees in awe as I continue to watch God’s creative process take place in nature and in the relationships around me.  I have watched as the buds on the trees have turned to leaves and as our garden has begun to grow at home – experiencing it in a new way through the wondering eyes of my children who are amazed as the leaves get bigger and the flowers and veggies start to appear.  I have seen people recognize their gifts for ministry in this place and in the world and work to put them in to action as we prepare to create new groups and ministry opportunities among us – as we have once again celebrated the work of our Christian Education programs with our children, youth, and adults – and had an opportunity to reach out into the community in service once again with the success of yesterday’s thrift shop.  On this Father’s Day I think about how blessed I am to have a partner who stays at home with our children and juggles parenthood and work with much more finesse and skill than I ever could – and rejoice at the opportunity to watch my children grow and thrive in an environment where they are cared for and aided in their growth by someone who loves them more than words can say.  And I have seen this community band together once again to support and encourage one another in the midst of loss and promise to work together to help Harry’s legacy of growth in faith and a community of care for one another live on. 

It is these things that help me to begin to scratch the surface of the answers to the questions that pop up on my faith journey, to realize who I am to be as a child of God and who God, with many names and many images who lives and moves and works in us in so many different ways, is to me.  So on this Trinity Sunday, with God’s creation growing and changing both outside and among us - who is it that God is to you?  Who is that we are to be as people of faith?  And what are the questions of faith that challenge you and prompt you to grow?  My hope and prayer for all of us is that the God who created us and calls each of us very good will continue to work within us and through us to help us grow together into the questions, to find the answers that are out there, and to love and serve together.  Because what we have here at the Congregational Church of Brookfield…This Is Good!  Amen.