Ben's Sermon from Oct. 7, 2007

I wonder how many of you have visited the Grand Canyon? I did three years ago now, and it was stunning. I could barely take it all in, it was so enormous. Nine miles wide, 270 miles long, one mile deep. Formed over 6 million years, this is one of the most stunning parts of God's creation. Containing rocks from the bottom of every ocean on earth, it is a geologist’s dream. A lot of people find it easier to worship God in the great outdoors than inside a church. You might be one of them. When you are standing on the edge of an enormous canyon, you can kind of understand it! But for those who are here, who have made it inside a church today, let me tell you why it is good that you have. For I believe it is only if we come together to hear about God, only if we see what the Bible has to say about the world as God’s creation, that we can understand the meaning of nature.

Jesus used a lot of natural images to teach us about God and the world in which we live. He described the world we live in as permeated by God’s kingdom, as shot through with the glory of God – if we could only see it. “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be rooted up, and be planted into the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Or, in another version of the same saying, with only the smallest faith you could move a mountain. Underlying this seemingly crazy claim, Jesus says that nature belongs to God and that, if you think nature is awesome and powerful, what about the God who created it?

“If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed”: I don’t think Jesus’s words are meant to be taken literally; instead it’s hyperbole, like speaking of a camel going through the eye of a needle. Jesus is telling us that, usually, we don’t have faith. Usually we forget that the God who made the mustard seed or the mountain has a purpose for our lives too. If you could only see it, Jesus is saying, if you only had faith, then you would see God’s awesome purpose for your life – as awesome as the Grand Canyon.

The Canyon is the way it is because water has been running through it over the past six million years. Nature left to its own devices does just what it wants. But think not only of rivers making canyons and glaciers making fjords; lions eating other animals or think of tsunamis crashing into islands. They all do just what they want and it’s dangerous.

But to the Christian, even in the threat of nature we find the promise of God’s saving power. There are two ways of looking at nature. We can look at it as it is in itself – in all its rough and tumble, in all its wonders and horrors – and we can look through it to see our Creator and Redeemer. The first is the way in which geologists and evolutionary biologists tend to look. And I don’t think they are necessarily wrong, given the terrors of the natural world. But that doesn’t prevent you from also looking at it as God’s creation – as the work of a Creator whose purpose is at work within it. We should have faith in God, says Jesus, faith that the invisible God is at work in the visible creation.

Think of your own life. Does your life seem to be part of a world in which everything does just what it wants, that is full of rough and tumble, that’s sometimes wondrous but more often scary?

The language we use suggests our lives are often dominated by the violence of nature. We are constantly told, “It’s survival of the fittest out there” – that we live in a “dog-eat-dog world.” The law of nature, we are told, is that only the strong and clever survive, while the weak and stupid fail. But Jesus tells us that human beings are like sheep: not clever but stupid, not strong but weak, unless they are guided by their shepherd. This is a different view of nature: not survival of the fittest, but of obedience to the God who made creation, discerning God’s purpose for you by following the shepherd. And yes, there will be personal suffering, there will be dens of lions, but that is where growth might happen; as Jesus said in today’s gospel, we will be told to “gird yourself and serve me,” often without thanks, but that is what creatures are called to do for their awful Creator – awful in its original sense of filling us with awe.

The book of Revelation gives us another natural image of what life looks like for Christians. Following the shepherd actually means following the one who became the Lamb slain for us upon a cross. Jesus was obedient to God’s will, Jesus was servant of all, and it led to his death. But the writer of the book of Revelation is granted a vision of the saints, surrounding the Lamb who sits upon the throne: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night within his temple; and he who sits upon the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, nor shall they thirst any more; the sun shall no more strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.”

For Christians, things are not quite as they seem at first sight. Here in the book of Revelation, what looked like a disastrous situation, a gathering of those who have died for their faith, is actually the opposite of disaster. These saints have been washed in blood, but washed clean. The world might seem dog-eat-dog, but according to Scripture this kind of violence can hold the key to salvation. The writer of Revelation sees the invisible creation that is hidden in this one, where saints have sacrificed themselves in delight for they know the ruler of all that is, the ruler of both the visible and invisible creation. They know that service to God and to others, which can sometimes lead to pain and suffering, is the true purpose of creation.

So we must not forget the invisible creation which is hidden away within this one – hidden like the mustard seed – and which, with faith like a mustard seed, we can see in this world. Look around with the eyes of faith: God’s creation is a place of abundant life, life without end. God’s creation is a place of glory, glory that we are offered to partake of in good faith, a faith that will let us see the way creation truly is. Creation is a place where blood is spilled – there is no mistaking that – but, for Christians, the blood of the Lamb does not signify death but the very life of the world.