Beginnings
September 7, 2014 | Patrick Preheim
It is a week of beginnings. Some of us began school and work at school again this week. The fall schedule at church has begun again. The preaching assignments have us making our way through the Bible once more—starting at the beginning with Genesis. I hope your beginnings have gotten off more smoothly than our Biblical story. Genesis does not begin in a very pleasant way. The earth is an empty wasteland. Darkness absorbs everything. A wind howls over the water. Bleak, dark and blustery—not ideal camping conditions. “But God does not abandon that world. In the midst of that darkness and wind we can find the power of God. That Power creates life. Indeed, the word create (bara’ in Hebrew) in the Old Testament allows only God as the subject. God never ceases to create: bringing a livable world out of one too dark, too wet, or too dry” (Eugene Roop, Genesis in the Believers Bible Commentary Series, p. 26). The rest of Genesis, the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the rest of our New Testament, the rest of our lives follows the pattern of chaos giving way to a good creation.
Consider the series of train wreck stories we have in Genesis. Shortly after the creator creates creation (Walter Brueggemann, Genesis in the Interpreters Bible commentary, pp 16-17) the creatures take action deserving of death (3.3), but God paroles them to parenthood (perhaps a quick death might have been more merciful). Next chapter: in a show of brotherly affection Cain murders Abel which, once more, deserves a death sentence, but God remands Cain to the perils of farming (God certainly does have a sense of humour, no?). And it goes on like this story after story. Bleak, dark, blustery with God salvaging twisted lives calling a good creation into being once again. Within the family saga of Genesis there are recurring themes through the generations which give flesh to the abstract concepts of wasteland, darkness, and wind which begin the whole narrative.
Brother often tried killing brother: Cain succeeds in murdering Abel (4.8), Easu threatened the life of Jacob (27.41), Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him (37.18). Infertility plagued Sarah (15.2), Rebekah (25.21), and Rachel (30.31). Isaac had to find his wife in a foreign country (24.3) as did Jacob (28.1) as did Joseph (41.45). On account of business or survival the Royal Family immigrated often: Cain settled east of Eden (in the land Nod which in Hebrew means wandering (4.16)); Abram goes from Haran to Canaan (12.4), Jacob relocated to Aram for 21 years (28.2) and then in retirement moved to Egypt (46.3). Interlacing the challenging tales of family enmity, infertility, matrimony, and vagrancy is the story of a God who creates something good out of the hardships they faced.As theologian Catherine Keller says, “to love is to bear with the chaos. Not to like it or to foster it but to recognize there the unformed future” And God bore with them in the chaos gently calling the unformed future into being.
This life in the chaos awaiting a new creation is, if you are like me, deeply unnerving and disorienting...Even if we have not literally been through the struggles narrated in Genesis...I will go out on a limb and guess that we do all know uncertainty and disorder....Being plunged into the chaos...
when there is unfaithfulness in marriage; when there is estrangement between parent and child; when there is bitterness and anger between siblings, neighbours, or church members. The darkness creeps over us again in the midst of addictions. There is the waterless wasteland that comes with grinding debt or unemployment. The bleak feelings created by rejection or prejudice can chill straight through the bone. There is the loneliness when relocating communities. There are times when the chaos of mental illness is only compounded by the threat of it being found out by others. Suicide unleashes a storm. There is the complete undoing and oceanic depth of sexual abuse or violent trauma. We know the chaos.
We know these waters and I want to suggest that our faithfulness comes not in trying to re-entrench, or privilege some distant ideal, but in attending to one another in the midst of the chaos. For God is not the only one who loves and abides in the midst of the pre-creation landscape, we do this as well. We do it for our families, for our church community, for our colleagues, for our housemates, for our neighbours. Again, as Catherine Keller says, to love is to bear with the chaos. Not to like it or to foster it but to recognize there the unformed future (quotation and adaptation of David Driedger’s, “Wade in the Water” at the Plenary Session of the Mennonite Church Canada Assembly in Winnipeg, MB (Friday July 4th, 2014).
Little over seven years ago I felt myself at the beginning of Genesis all over again. After our ninth year of co-pastoring at Faith Mennonite Church Patty and I faced some big decisions. Patty was feeling a clear leading away from church ministry which impacted the 50-50 contract we had with the congregation. While recognizing that our work situation was changing we still felt a rootedness to the Faith Mennonite and the community. Do we ask the Church Board to simply make me the sole pastor so that we could afford to stay? Do we both resign and look for other employment in the Twin Cities? Do we consider re-location? We visited with the Church Council and proposed an idea. We suggested they consider offering Patty’s half time to a lay woman whose gifts in children’s ministry fit closely with a congregational need at the time. With a half time income from the Church, Patty and I would simply fill in the gaps with other employment. Or not so simply...
Finding other work was not as easy as we thought it would be, and the various part time jobs we did secure led to fragmentation. Our situation was economically sustainability but emotionally draining. Sour cherry Danishes became a coping mechanism. Admitting that we may be in over our heads was painful. Recognizing that maybe we had made a mistake caused feelings of shame. Wondering if we had mis-discerned the Spirit’s leading was troubling. It was the chaos before creation. It was not comfortable. It was time for another sour cherry Danish.
The discernment at this point shifted to whether we should remain in the Twin Cities. If God wanted us there to continue our ministry in the congregation we would be given strength to do so. Part of this testing, then, was to list congregational attributes for which we would re-locate and begin circulating my resume. The c.v. never got filed. Long story short, we found ourselves in conversation with Nutana Park Mennonite Church. This congregation and Saskatoon met 90% of the criteria we had jotted down—the only missing piece was no dry sauna off the pastor’s office. The creation which came into being after the chaos has been good: full of light, beauty, generativity.
I re-tell this part of my journey not to be narcissistic or egocentric. I relate this episode for several reasons. First, for many of us the story of God in here (hold up Bible) only makes sense when described in the lives of people we know and care about. We read about Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Joseph—but what do their stories have to do with the world we live in? Chaos and creation are abstract ideas, but a story helps us understand what this means in real time. Secondly, I share because we need to tell our stories. Retelling incidents of salvation and creation help us wait more calmly in the midst of chaotic situations we are now facing because we remember that God does bring forth light from a darkened void. In addition to providing hope, sharing our stories could also be part of the way we experience healing.
At the pastors gathering prior to this summer’s Mennonite assembly MD Karl Lehman introduced us to some of what happens in our brains when we work through traumatic events. I am speaking from memory here rather than citing literature, so I certainly invite interested persons to research further. What I heard Dr. Lehman say is that the process of making meaning of and giving voice to difficult experiences activates different areas of the brain which bring a wholeness, a fullness to the process. Not speaking our experience circumvents the body’s natural way of dealing with stuff of our past. Verbalizing the chaos and creation we have experienced is part of our healing process (read more at immanuelapproach.com). So if I understand the neurology correctly, we ALL need to tell our stories. It is not just interesting, it is necessary.
So we need to come together as church community and share with each other. We need to hear about those times in the past when we have experienced the voice of God calling forth a good creation in our lives after dwelling in the wasteland. We need to hear about those places we are currently suffering from the chaos so that we can more attentively bear with one another while the unformed future takes shape. We need to speak our experience as part of the process by which we internalize healing and hope.
Over the next couple of years we will again preach through the bible book by book drawing attention to the voice of God which relentlessly calls something new and good into being. The story of God’s creation, though, does not end there. God continues to recreate in our time, in our communities, in our lives. These, too, are the stories of God and we need to hear them and voice them. That means we will be tapping people of our congregation on the shoulder inviting them to speak. We would like to have some kind of congregational sharing at least once a month and ideally twice a month. Anita and I will link the stories of God in here (hold up Bible) with the story of God being enacted in our world.
Also this year we hope to celebrate communion more often. Our speaking about community and God’s presence in our world is great, but sometimes we have too many words in worship. The ordinance of communion communicates our hopes and beliefs through mediums other than words. We hold the bread. We taste the contents of the cup. The elements give off a sweet smell as we take them in. We hear meditative music or familiar hymns. In the midst of chaos or creation the ordinance of communion grounds us in the story of God and Christ. And on a Sunday morning we could do worse than that.
And so we begin again. May God inspire us in the hearing of the biblical story. May God strengthen us in the sharing of the biblical story being lived out among us. May God dwell among us in renewed attention to communion and community. Amen.
