Exposed and Naked: We are Hurt

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are hurt, by others and by our own hand; this grieves us. To be out of control is one thing, but to be burdened with hurt, too? Undesirable. Why is it undesirable? Because, as the modern adage goes, hurt people hurt people. Hurt people will do whatever they need to in order to protect themselves; this is why they strike out and hurt others. We can say that trauma traumatizes, pain causes pain, and wounds wound. When someone nears applying any pressure on our hurts and wounds, we react (at times even violently) to stop the pain. It doesn’t really matter if these hurts and wounds are emotional, psychological, spiritual, mental, or physical; hurt people hurt people because hurt people are doing everything they can not to be hurt again. We don’t want to hurt others from our own hurts, but we do. We are stuck repeating old patterns of self-defense and offense to keep our worlds in some sort of stasis. We are trapped and held captive by our pain, so we just move through life going through the motions, just barely surviving. It’s as if we are the walking dead or dried bones lacking life and vitality, too scared and unable to live into life because of the risk of being hurt again and causing pain one more time (intentionally or unintentionally).

So, our lack of control wedded to our being hurt makes us feel lifeless. Watching the events of the state of our world—local, national, and global—we see how situations escalate when pain is at the wheel. Whether it is injured pride, a hurt ego, or a wounded little child stuck in the body of an adult, hurt people hurt people, wounded people wound people, people in pain cause pain in others. Those who have worked through their trauma and faced their inconvenient and uncomfortable past and its accolades of pain and hurt do not resort to reactivity, picking up weapons and arms to respond to perceived threat (even when one doesn’t exist). Those who refuse to look back, deny curiosity her full range of movement, and decline looking in the mirror of self-truth and reflection, react without reasonability and rationality. Our world is filled with these men and women, these human beings positioned with great power and leadership wreaking havoc on the world oblivious or indifferent to the death they leave in their wake. Is it really any surprise to see the world entrenched in a massive dumpster fire right now? Our lack of control bothers us; our hurt grieves us.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The prophet Ezekiel is confronted by God’s Spirit[ii] and brought out (like a captive to divine power[iii]) to a deserted plain,[iv] filled only with bones. As Ezekiel tells us, he is moved by God’s hand[v] “all around [the bones].” The thing that strikes Ezekiel initially is the dryness of the bones and how many there were, “very many” and “very dry.” In other words, these many bones had been sun baked and deprived of life for a long time. Thus, God’s question to Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” seem to demand a negative answer. How could all these very dry bones have life again? Ezekiel’s reply to God is not only humble; it betrays a bit of his human limitation, “O God, you know.” If anything can resuscitate such a lifeless situation, it would be the Lord of Life, Abba God. Ezekiel knows that of his own strength these very many bones will one get very drier.

God then solicits Ezekiel’s participation and commands him to prophesy to the bones,

“‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’”

And, the text tells us, as Ezekiel prophesied, the bones moved and changed, acquiring sinew and flesh and skin. However, they still lacked life; having been formed into a body wasn’t enough, these bones needed another external intervention. So, Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy again, “‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’” As Ezekiel prophesies, before him stood a resurrected and restored people.[vi] Out of nothing, out of dead death, out of sun-bleached and sunbaked dryness, these bones live again by the Word of God.

Ezekiel didn’t have in mind a literal eschatological[vii] resurrection from the dead.[viii] However, he did have in mind a literal restoration of the people Israel out of their current lifelessness. God tells Ezekiel that God has heard the people in their lifelessness, they lack hope and cannot foresee help on the horizon; they feel so stuck that they do not feel any connection to God and God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. The whole house of Israel is caught in their hurt and pain to such an extent that they are the walking dead, the hurting hurt, and the pained painful. God knows that these are so frozen in their pain and hurt that they will become a threat not only to others but also to themselves. Where they are, they will only turn inward more and more, accentuating their isolation and alienation.

So, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the whole house of Israel,

“Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.

It seems that the whole house of Israel needs another Passover event, a Passover event so effective that liberation from death into life by the love of God is once and for all.[ix] It’s this second Passover, this permanent Passover, that will lift the house of Israel out of its curved in state, out of its hopelessness and helplessness, out of its disappointment and despair, out of its pain and hurt, out of its self-imposed grave. The whole house of Israel will find themselves, once again, on the terra firma[x] of God’s love, liberation, and life like they did all those years ago after crossing the sea out of oppression and captivity. But this time, this liberation, this Passover will be once and for all, and God will be even more personally invested than God was before with God’s own body on the line.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their pain and hurt because they believe they are abandoned and isolated from God and God’s life and love; in this pain and hurt they are trapped and held captive, they are not the free ones they once were, way back when Moses led them across the sea basin and through the walls of seawater into liberation from the oppression and threat of Pharaoh and his army. Hurt and pain fester in and grow from the cracks and fractures emerging between God and God’s people (both among themselves and within themselves). Hurt and pain are compounded as those cracks and fractures grow into caverns and fissures creating uncrossable distances. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, this depth of pain and hurt born from deep seated belief that God is against and has forsaken them.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Lent commands us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are hurt creatures bearing immense pain, scared and grieving. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our bond with God even when God feels so far away, in our hurt and pain, and at our most exposed and naked. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain and hurt within themselves and from others, bringing love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 443. “In the prophetic event, where the moment of decision is experienced solely as a transcendent act which the prophet can neither determine nor occasion, no scope is given for the exercise of the prophet’s will. His awareness is one of being subject to a transcendent intensity, to overpowering force, so that he does not merely listen to inspiration but feels compelled to listen to it. He experiences power, not only a word, and is swept into a position in which he can do no other than experience and accept.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 444. “The prophetic moment, as said earlier, was not experienced as the prophet’s long-coveted opportunity to attain knowledge which is otherwise concealed. He does not seize the moment, he is seized by the moment. The word disclosed is not offered as something which he might or might not appropriate according to his discretion, but is violently, powerfully urged upon him. The impact of the anthropotropic event was reflected in the prophet’s awareness of his being unable either to evade or to resist it.”

[iv] Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” 1113. Vv 1-2 “Valley, or ‘plain,’ the location of his initial visions.”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 444. “‘The hand of God,’ a synonym for the manifestation of His strength and power…is the name the prophet uses to describe the urgency, pressure, and compulsion by which he is stunned and overwhelmed…The prophet very rarely speaks of God’s face; he feels His hand.”

[vi] Marvin A. Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1113. “Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones symbolizes the restoration of the people Israel.”

[vii] Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” 1114. Vv 11-14, “Traditional Jewish exegetes find here the idea of the resurrection of the dead before the day of judgment, a fundamental belief of rabbinic Judaism ascribed to Moses…”

[viii] Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” 1113. “Ezekiel is speaking metaphorically in this vision; he was not envisioning an actual physical resurrection of the dead.”

[ix] Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” 1113. “…the restoration envisaged here is interpreted as a second, liberation Passover-like experience or because of the rabbinic tradition that the second, ultimate liberation would transpire on Passover.”

[x] Sweeney, “Ezekiel,” 1114. “In its plain-sense meaning, the image symbolizes the restoration of Israel to its own land.”

Posted on March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 by laurenlarkin 0

Exposed and Naked: We are Unsafe

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are not safe, to others or to ourselves; this angers us. To be out of control is one thing, but to be wildly unsafe, too? Offensive. So, we do whatever we can to create an atmosphere around us that feels safe, that causes us to feel okay, like everything is fine. But it’s not; nothing is fine. As politicians and pundits spin narratives and weave tales causing our attention to be diverted from the real problems plaguing our land and location, we hide behind our own mythologies and cover ourselves up with our various blankets of ignorance. The heavier the blanket, the safer we feel; the taller the myth, the more secure we think we are. We vacillate between having to know increasingly more (the more we know the more we can control) and not wanting to know anything and sticking our heads in the sand (if we can just not know we will regain some sense of safety and maybe even comfort). But this drive to cover up and hide from that which causes us to feel unsafe means that our community with others breaks down: as we hide from and deny the disasters swirling and twirling around us, we—ourselves—become our biggest problem not just to ourselves but especially to our neighbors, the ones fighting for their right to live in this world, the ones most visibly threatened by nationalism and extremism.

So, our lack of control wedded to our being and feeling unsafe makes us feel hopeless. In a world where it feels that World War III is always one strike away, where unstable and erratic egos leave more death in their wake than life, where one’s power and privilege are more valuable than the life of the least of us, our sensations of feeling unsafe surge. Surely, if they are coming for my neighbor…then am I next? In this surging feeling of unsafety, our hypervigilance turns to hyperarousal, and we lash out at anyone and anything. Humans need to feel safe; it’s the fundamental level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The divides and divisions caused by viewer driven news rooms that plague our communities get worse because we must view everyone else as a threat and patch-work some modicum amount of safety no matter how tattered that sense of safety is. But this makes us exceptionally unstable creatures and no mythology (no matter how it glitters and sparkles in the light) will cause use to feel and thus to be safe (to ourselves and to others). We are always just one moment away from complete break-down. We are nuclear weapons charged and ready to go off at any moment. Our lack of control bothers us; our unsafety angers us.

Is there any help for such as these?

Exodus 17:1-7

Moses[ii] begins by telling us of a journey and of a problem, From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink (v1). Being without water is no small issue. Rephidim is the last stop before entering the terrain of Sinai.[iii] Thus, being without water here—about to travel through the terrain of mountains and sand dunes in a climate that is demanding being of high elevation and often cold—is life threatening. In normal circumstances a person can survive 3-5 days without water, add in exertion, a challenging climate, and tough terrain, and that number falls.

The Israelites have every right to be disturbed by this, as Moses tells us, The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink,” (v 2a). Humans without water (assuming they did not have much water to begin with as they embarked on their journey) become easily angered as dehydration sets in; thus, quarreling makes sense as a characteristic of dehydration and the fruit of the fear that is setting in. They feel unsafe and thus they are becoming unsafe to themselves and others. However, Moses appears to be rather unphased by the dire situation. His reply? “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (v2b). Not the most pastoral response.

So, the people ramp up their complaints against Moses, and it’s understandable. With no foreseeable way to get water, and with a leader who seems to consider their needs to be mere “quarreling” and disobedience to God, the Israelites escalate—which happens when fear and anger are not addressed but exacerbated. As the Israelites feel the impending doom of their being unsafe, they respond from that place of fear and anger and the situation gets worse. As Moses, tells us, But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (v 3). If Moses doesn’t act now, he’ll be facing a full-on uprising and rightly so. Can we blame the Israelites for their reply of desperation?

Here, Moses senses just how serious the problem is and does what any good leader of God’s people should do (even if a moment delayed): call on God to help. Our text tells us, So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me,” (v4). The narrative doesn’t really give a glimpse of how bad the situation is until Moses mentions to God that the people “are almost ready to stone me.” The community—the people and its divine appointed leader, Moses—are in a tenuous situation. Death threatens to rear his head, anger and fear are the emotional monarchs, and the situation is far from safe; it’s perilous. So, in this moment, Moses throws himself at God’s feet in desperation; he’s failing to deescalate.

Thankfully, God does step in and instructs Moses to cause water to flow,

“Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called [Rephidim[iv]] Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (vv5-7)

Seems God does not have a problem providing God’s people with water to drink; what if anyone had just asked God? Moses accuses the people of testing God; it seems to me that Moses is the being tested. The people did demand to see that God is present by invoking quarrels with Moses because they were thirsty;[v] thus why Rephidim is then called “Massa and Meribah”, being wordplays on quarreling and trying from v2.[vi] However, the people are also asking a deeper question of Moses: Are you with us? Do you see us? We are about to die of thirst, and do you care? Ignoring and dismissing the needs of the people is not the right way of faithful leadership; it is the slipperiest of slopes to the people devising not only their own solutions and building their case for disbelieving God.[vii] God’s chosen leader must represent God to the people and the people to God; Moses failed this test in this moment. Moses could have heard their cry (the voice of an unsafe situation from people who are scared and angry) and have asked God to help him and them. But now Moses’s leadership is being questioned and doubted. Notice that there are elders to be selected to go with Moses to witness[viii] the striking of the limestone rock that causes the water trapped within to flow;[ix] God is aware that the people need to see (and know) that not only is God with them but God is with Moses thus Moses must be with them. These witnesses will be testament to the reality that both God and Moses are with the Israelites, through thick and thin, in good and bad, when things flow with milk and honey and when water seems scarce.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their fear and anger because the situation they find themselves in is precarious: they are unsafe and they become unsafe to themselves and to others. Fear and anger are born here and cause stones to be lifted to make one’s point known; fear and anger when things are unsafe do not know any limits and boundaries, the rational and reasonable components of the human intellect and mind are bound and gagged. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, their anger and fear born from feeling and being unsafe. Trapped in unsafety, the human being will resort to their primal instincts and fight, like any trapped animal would.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Lent commands us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are unsafe creatures, afraid and angry. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our sure ground when we are at our most unsafe, most exposed, and most naked. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, bringing love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Using Moses as the traditional author because it is both easier and makes for more interesting story telling

[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 142. “Rephidim, the last station before Sinai…and, to judge from v.6, near Sinai.”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “The place, Rephidim, not Horeb.”

[v] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Try. i.e. to test, demanding proof that God was present among them and controlling the events.”

[vi] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Massah and Meribah, meaning ‘The Place of Testing and Quarreling.’ These names, playing on the verbs ‘quarrel’ and ‘try’ used in v.2, became by words for Israel’s lack of trust in God.”

[vii] LW 11:55 “For to tempt in the hearts is something else than tempting in words. The children of Israel in the wilderness always doubted that they had been led out by the hand of the Lord indeed, they did not believe it…They came to this unbelief because they argued form a human point of view: ‘If the Lord were with us, and if we had been led out by the hand of the Lord, would we be bothered with hunger and thirst in this way? Would we thus lack everything? If the Lord had done it, we would undoubtedly have everything we want, and we would be in a land flowing with milk and honey, as He promised us. But no, since everything is opposite, it is not true that the lord has led us out, but you have done it.”

[viii] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Moses is to take some of the elders, perhaps as witnesses, and set out for Horeb (Sinai), ‘the mountain of God’ 3.1), to obtain water.”

[ix] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Strike the rock: In the Sinai there are limestone rocks from which small amounts of water drip, and a blow to their soft surface can expose a porous inner layer contained water. A similar but enigmatic episode, with differences suggesting that its an oral variant of this one, appears in Nu. 20.2-13…”

Posted on March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 by laurenlarkin 0

Exposed and Naked: We are Fragile

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are not unassailable; and this terrifies us. To be out of control is one thing, but to be fragile, too? Unacceptable. So, we do whatever we can to build up our fortresses to protect our vulnerable, fleshy existence. We build silos for storing our resources from cash to crops to armaments hoping to fend of both physical and existential threats. We fortify our homes with surveillance systems geared to satisfy the energy of our hyper vigilance always looking for a threat certain that our neighbor is that threat. Our walls and fences get taller and thicker; both the literal ones built around our properties and the metaphorical ones built around our hearts. We are closing down and in; we are pulling back and away. Our lack of control bothers us; our fragility terrifies us.

Looking around at our world, our lack of control wedded to our fragility makes us feel helpless (like sitting ducks). A few people control all the things and none of them really care about you and me; rather, they care about their power, prestige, and position. Being trapped in such a situation—hijacked and held captive by unregulated egos and tempers—provokes our fear responses—flight, fight, freeze, and fawn; we’ll do whatever we need to keep our fragile bodies and existences protected. The sad thing is that we’re buying—hook, line, and sinker—the myth that our neighbor is our biggest threat and not the kids holding all the toys and starting all the fights in the playground. So, in a meager attempt to have some control and to feel less fragile, we turn our attention to our neighbor, look at them with suspicion, and build our walls and silos, and install our surveillance systems. Our lack of control bothers us; our fragility terrifies us.

Is there any hope for such as these?

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

The two creation stories opening the book of Genesis are not connected stories; Genesis 2 isn’t a further extrapolation of Genesis 1. Rather, Genesis 2 stands alone as its own story. Why are they coupled in such a way? Because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 ask two very specific yet different questions. Genesis 1 asks the big existential question: how did all of this—motions about self—come into being? And, who is behind it all? The answer Genesis 1 provides is that God is the prime mover here; out of nothing God causes all of creation and the cosmos to spin into being from the biggest things to the smallest of things, from the deepest of things to the loftiest of things, from the leftiest of things to the rightiest of things. And if God took so much care to bring into existence these extremes of creation, then humanity—who finds herself right smack dab in the middle—is both the apple of God’s eye and (one of) the main characters on the stage.

Now, Genesis 2 asks a more particular and personal existential question: why am I here? And, why is that person over there here, too? The answer Genesis 2 provides is that community is essential to this particular God’s way of working in the world. And not only community generally speaking—if this were the case, then clearly God could have stopped short of creating humanity for God in God’s self is a community of triunity—but specifically this God created community in the shape and form of humanity who reflects the divine image into the world through all its beautiful variants and differences, amid various interpretations and representations and identifications, caught between crazy similarities and radical diversities. So, where Genesis 1 is impersonal, Genesis 2 gets personal.

So, in the portion of Genesis 2 read this morning, after God has made all the flora and fauna, God takes the man, Adam, and brings him to the threshold of the garden of Eden so that he will have a task: to “till and keep it”—in other words, to have loving dominion and care for it. Before Adam is released to work, God gives him a command (for Adam’s benefit, of course). What’s that command? “‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die,’” (Gn 2:16b-17). At this point, it is just Adam and God. Eve isn’t there yet.

So, Genesis 2 goes on to tell of the story of Eve’s, the woman’s, creation. Adam is lonely; God notices. God makes all the animals to parade by—thus causing Adam’s loneliness only to grow; each time Adam provides a name for each animal, Adam is declaring, “No, this one will not alleviate my loneliness.” Then God intervenes. Adam is put into a death like sleep, and out of this death like sleep God creates woman as (a type of) salvation.[ii] Adam makes his bold announcement, “YES!”! And all is well.

Or is it?

This is where Genesis 3 comes into picture. It answers that little “happily ever after” moment with, “No, everything isn’t fine; it’s painful, it hurts, people feel lost, have guilt, and are unsafe.” Mostly though, Genesis 3 contends with our fragile state, the exposure and nakedness of being fragile human beings in a world where we have no control. The serpent (not a snake) enters the scene and penetrates this vulnerable and fragile moment by addressing Eve and inquiring about the law—the one God gave to Adam back in Genesis 2. The serpent asks Eve, “‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’” (Gn 3:1b). Eve’s response? Sharp and quick; she knew exactly what she was talking about, “‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die,”’” (Gn 3: 2b-3).

Did you catch the difference between her answer and the command God gave Adam?

She added something: nor shall you touch it. I have to ask, where did she get this part from? The only way she was taught the law was by Adam. Therefore, we could say that Adam embellished the commandment not only forsaking eating but also even touching the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. The first error lies not with Eve being backed into this impossible question by the serpent,[iii] but way back when Adam was delivering the law to Eve. Considering that Adam is with her and remains silent when she misspeaks, can indicate that he saw nothing wrong with what she said. Sin had already found an entrance in the mistaught law; the humans are exposed in their (intellectual and spiritual) fragility.

But if that’s not enough, after a few more cunning words from the serpent, Eve sees that the fruit is good to eat and thus she eats first and Adam second. What happens? “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves,” (Gn 3:7). And herein lies the second error. The serpent appears to be unearthing the real reason why God is forbidding access to the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: jealousy.[iv] In this way, the serpent was (easily) able to put animosity between the humans and their creator (at first just spiritually and intellectually and then physically). The humans take the bait and eat; in this moment they acquire the very thing they thought they wanted: knowledge of good and evil.[v] Their first act with such awareness? They are exposed unto themselves and their nakedness receives the judgment: evil. They are ashamed of their vulnerable and fragile state and move to hide it, and from each other especially; two bodies now at perpetual war with the other. Animosity begins to breed in the realization that bodies can be different and thus scary, something to be afraid of. The neighbor becomes the threat. So, they hide; they hide not only from each other, they hide from God (Gn 3:8), and if these two then we can say they hid from their own selves, too. God’s curses, which are to come, don’t really create anything too new at this point; rather, God just leaves them to their plight and predicament because they’ve already cursed themselves by taking the knowledge and judgment of good and evil into their own hands. And this they got wrong from the start; sadly, they will continue to get it wrong…

Conclusion

God’s people are trapped and held captive to their inability to determine what is truly good and what is truly evil. Yet, God knows just how vulnerable and susceptible they are and none of that knowledge dissuades God from God’s covenant. But first the people must come to terms with their own situation and status before God: for they are not in control, they are exposed, they are naked, and they are fragile. If they continue forward without acknowledging who and what they are before God, they will continue to participate in and perpetuate the rampant injustices of the kingdom of humanity, forsaking the justice of the reign of God and being harbingers of death and not life, of indifference and not love, of captivity and not liberation.

As it was for Adam and Eve, so it is for us.

Lent commands us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like a complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are fragile creatures, scared and angry. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our security when we are our most fragile, most exposed, and most naked. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, bringing love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Jackopierce song, “Woman as Salvation”

[iii] Jon D. Levenson, “Genesis,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 16. “His question is tricky and does not admit of a yes-or-no answer. The woman, who has never heard the commandment directly (2.16-17), paraphrases it closely. Why she adds the prohibition on touching the fruit is unclear.”

[iv] Levenson, “Genesis,” 17. “The serpent impugns God’s motives , attributing the command to jealousy. Whereas in the first creation account huma beings are God-like creatures exercising dominion…here their ambition to be like God or like divine beings is the root of their expulsion from Eden.”

[v] Levenson, “Genesis,” 17. “As the serpent had predicted (v.5), their eyes are opened, and they have enhanced knowledge (v.7).”

Posted on February 22, 2026February 22, 2026 by laurenlarkin 0

“Prone to Wander…”: Forsaking the Way

Psalm 91:1-2 They who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, abide under the shadow of the Almighty. They shall say to Abba God, “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.”

Introduction

One of my most favorite hymns is, “Come Thou Fount” (a hymn that shows up in our current season of music. Of the three verses, the third is my absolute favorite.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart; O take and seal it;
seal it for thy courts above.[1]

As I mentioned on the evening of Ash Wednesday, the prophet Joel brings us to the brink and asks us to take a deep, long, hard look in the mirror. The reality is, while we may not think about it often, we are prone to wonder from God. If it helps, please know that I am all too aware of my tendency to want to wander from God, the God whom I love, the God who saved me from myself for others, the God who has given me life, love, and liberation from sin and from human made, harmful mythologies and ideologies. So, if you are having a hard time wrapping your head around this or are feeling that type of shame that leads to condemnation and hiding, don’t worry… you aren’t alone; I’m right there with you.

Sometimes we wander because we forsake the way. There are two types of ways we wander because we forsake. Sometimes, it’s intentional. We’re done. It’s too hard. We just can’t. Sometimes the demand is too great, so we stop participating and we give up. We opt for something easier, something with more give, something with more personal reward seen by others and, more importantly, approved by others. Think about times you’ve tried to “self-differentiate” and the system pulled you back in being stronger and more dominant than your meager efforts—it’s easier to just give up and give in, go back and pick up where you left off, dismissing the work you’ve done thus far. Even uncomfortable and toxic systems can be comfortable even if detrimental. The human mind prefers comfort and ease to the hard work of embarking on something new. I saw a meme once that said the nervous system prefers a familiar hell to an unknown heaven.

Sometimes, though, our forsaking the way is slower and not as intentional. It’s more like forgetting to follow true north and then, OMG, here I am, and I don’t know where this “here” is. neglected to double check, assuming we knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going. And then, nope. This is best expressed when we slide away from our spiritual traditions because of the banality that is caused when tradition becomes traditionalism and boringly oppressive unto death. Blah, blah, blah, I know all of this. So, we stop listening, stop paying attention because we’re convinced we know the what, how, who, when, where, etc. Eventually we are allured away to something sparkly and new, something different and exciting, something that makes us feel special and unique. Yet, by the time that allure and shine has worn off we realize we are nowhere near where we should be; we’ve strayed and in straying we’ve forsaken the way.

We are prone to forsake because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

“‘So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set [the basket of first fruits] down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”

According to Moses, Israelites are ”to make annual pilgrimage to the central sanctuary, bringing the first fruits of the harvest, to thank God for the land’s bounty.”[2] Upon bringing the basket of first fruits of harvest, the Israelite is to recite a short history summarizing the main events bringing Israel to where they are now; it is a confession of faith and is the verbal adherence to the first command of the Decalogue.[3] According to Moses, the Israelite bringing the basket of first fruit concludes their confession of faith with an acknowledgement that even the items they carry in as an offering are an offering dependent on God; even this bounty is not of my own doing. (As we say at the start of the Eucharist, “For all things come of you, o God…”) Finally, the Israelites are to take everything and throw a massive celebration to honor the coming of the harvest season, to honor God and God’s faithfulness, and, notably, to honor those who have nothing. According to what Moses has offered us here, there is no division between those who brought offerings and those who did not. Here, in this moment, there are no lines drawn in the sand; mercy and solidarity triumph over tribalism and productivism. God’s reign is experienced in the midst of the kingdom of humanity.[4]

So here we are in an interesting spot in the book of Deuteronomy; one that doesn’t really have “Lent” written all over it. So, first, let’s go back just a skosh. Right around chapter 14, Moses (using traditional authorial language) reviews all the laws again. (That’s what the name of the book means: Second Law or Law Again.) Moses details all that is entailed in the Decalogue; this task is finished at the end of chapter 25.[5] Before that? Well, a few (fun!) things, right before the recapping of the Law there is a hefty section on the blessings and curses for adhering to the law and the need for Israel to stay pure and focused on God (chapters 6.5-13). The beginning of chapter 6 is my favorite: the greatest Commandment. Chapter 5 is the quick version of the Decalogue much like the one that appeared in Exodus. Chapter 4 is Moses’s command for obedience to God (one of his final ones considering he’ll die at the end of the book). And chapters 1-3 are a retelling of major events of Israel’s history up until that point.

So, when in chapter 26—the “‘Concluding liturgies’” portion[6]— Moses turns to speak of giving the first fruits to the priest and scripts out a response for each person bringing their basket of fruits to the priest, it’s in response to all that has come before. In other words, it’s a confirmation of the covenant that has just been laid out for the children of Israel.[7] It’s also an offering of praise and thanksgiving for deliverance from enemies and for occupation of the land promised long-ago to Abraham.[8] All this to say, chapter 26 is about Israel NOT forgetting and forsaking the who of “Who let the captives out…”[9] Just as the first commandment of the Decalogue is, “‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me,’” (Ex. 20:2-3), this commandment not only aligns the remaining nine to it but is a declaration that Israel must always remember who liberated them from Egypt. In remembering this, everything else falls into place. And, according to our text, this remembrance is to extend to God and the neighbor: [10] the Levites (priests), the orphans, widows and strangers. For Israel and according to Moses, to remember God’s love for Israel is to love others, especially the disenfranchised, unpropertied, the “have-nots.”[11]

Conclusion

None of what is in this passage on Deuteronomy is about Israel forsaking the way and giving up. In fact, it’s all about Israel remembering, remembering intimately, and celebrating and preforming that remembrance. Truly, it’s not about them giving up at all. But here’s the thing, the bulk of Deuteronomy is about asking Israel to exhorting Israel to stay with God, to keep their eyes on God, and walk with God thus walk with their neighbor and correct the wrongs in the world. But why? Why is God, through Moses, telling all this to Israel and, actually, “telling them again”? Because, well, Israel had a history of forgetting and giving up and wandering away. I say this not only because I’ve read the book; I say this because literally a few moments outside of the great liberation from captivity through the wet ground of the parted Red Sea, Israel was ready to drop it all and go back to Egypt so they could have leeks. Whether intentional or unintentionally, Israel will begin to forsake God, to forget, and to wander away from their God whom they love and thus to also forsake and wander away from their neighbor. Israel will get caught up between the allure of the sparkle and shine of the kingdom of humanity (the power and privilege) and forsake God and their neighbor, the stranger, the oppressed, those dependent on help. They will forsake God and God’s way because it grows too difficult and comes with little earthly reward. Moses knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this first week of lent, let us consider our times of forsaking because we’ve forgotten the good story, became bored of God’s good Word, or because it was too hard, too uncomfortable, too weird, ugly, blech. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we are fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this, and God comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 423.

[3] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 424. vv. 8-9 “The thanksgiving prayer recited by the pilgrim provides a precis of the main narrative line of the Pentateuch and Joshua (the ‘Hexateuch’). For that reason, the verses have been seen by some scholars as an ancient confession of faith, or creed, that is olde than its present context. Strikingly, this summary of the main events of Israel’s religious history makes no mention of the revelation of law at Sinai/Horeb. The same is true for many similar confessions in the Bible…”

[4] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 424. v. 11 “Enjoy” “or rejoice” “specifically in a festive meal consumed at the central sanctuary…which must include the Levite and the stranger for whose benefit (along with other disadvantaged groups) the following law is directed.” The law in v. 12

[5] LW 9:254

[6] Bernard M. Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 423.

[7] LW 9:254 This portion “confirms the covenant between God and the Children of Israel.”

[8] LW 9:254

[9] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 423-424. V. 5 “This verse is deployed in the Passover Haggadah (just following the section on the Fours Sons) in a famous passage that emphasizes God’s miraculous sparing of Israel from a long line of persecutors, beginning with Laban’s attack on Jacob (Gen. 31).”

[10] LW 9:254 “So he also treats the tithes to be paid every three years, teaching that they are to be given to the Levites, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers, with the affirmation that they are a fulfillment of the work of love.”

[11] LW 9:255 “… it denotes the confession of faith and the thanksgiving of the righteousness the sprit, where we acknowledge at the same time that the Lord has freed us from great evils to which we have been subjected, and that we have accepted many good things by faith. But bringing of tithes denotes that we are wholly given to the service of the neighbor through love…”

Posted on March 9, 2025March 9, 2025 by laurenlarkin 0

“Prone to Wander…”: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Psalm 103:8-11 Abba God is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness. … Abba God has not dealt with us according to our sins…. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is God’s mercy great …

I recently received a pin from a very nice person in the New Dimensions class I’ve been teaching on Tuesday afternoons. The pin is a green dumpster, top open with a fire burning within it. The dumpster has a face, it’s smiling and there’s some sweat forming at the corner of the dumpster’s “brow.” Right below the smile is a white sign that is, when you look closely, being held by two tiny dumpster hands. The sign reads, “It’s fine. I’m’ fine. Everything is fine.”

I love this pin for two reasons. The first is that it’s my running joke/motto (?) while teaching this New Dimensions class on “Resistance and Love” that “It’s fine, everything’s fine.” It’s my way of inserting laughter into a discussion that often takes a serious posture and tone. The second reason is: it’s flat out lying. If I’m walking around saying “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine!” then nothing is fine, and I’m trying to convince myself that everything is fine when it positively, absolutely is not fine.

Tonight, on this Ash Wednesday, let’s be completely and painfully honest: things are not fine. People are scared. People are hurting. People are dying. Everything is not fine.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

Through the prophetic words of Joel, God is shedding light on Israel’s past.[1] This may seem like an odd thing to say, considering Joel mentions a day that is coming. But by mentioning this coming day—this coming day of divine judgment—it’s an indictment on what the people in general and the leaders in specific have been doing. God, says Joel, is on God’s way, and when God gets here, it’s not going to be great because the leaders and thus the people have not been oriented towards God’s will on earth as in heaven.

Notice that Joel does not say that a day of gladness is coming. Rather Joel is announcing a day of gloom, requesting that the inhabitants of Israel—everyone within the range of the blowing trumpet and wailing alarm from the holy mountain—come together and tremble because of this coming day of God. Like a thermometer, Joel’s words demonstrate that Israel is not well and judgment draws nigh.

In other words, everything isn’t fine, and God is going to contend with Israel through a plague of locusts that will come like thick darkness and consume everything in its path (this is the “army” referenced by Joel[2]). This event, while common (locust plagues were common), will outperform any other locus plagues that have come and will come; it will even outperform the one form long ago when Israel was still held captive by Pharoah in Egypt. Keep in mind that that plague was the 8^th plague to hit Egypt to convince Pharoah to let God’s people go; a plague of locusts indicates a people and leadership stuck and set in their hard-heartedness, refusing to listen.

But, as there is with God and God’s dealing with God’s beloved, there’s a glimmer of relief…maybe.

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

For Israel, according to Joel, there’s a possible way out, but it will demand a level of faith that Israel hasn’t displayed recently. If Israel not only hears Joel but really listens, like shema type listens (Deut. 6ff), they will turn from their errant ways and return to God. There’s a catch though, according to Joel, It must happen before God comes;[3] thus, why Israel will have to press into their faith. They will have to believe the words of Joel, and that they are fromGod. Thus, it will demand that Israel self-examine and realize they fear humans more than they fear God. They must find their way back to their love of God which results in being unafraid of the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of humanity.[4] Joel continues:

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

Joel declares that Israel needs to be sanctified: everyone. From the old to the young, even those invested in profound ritualistic events (like marriage). Everyone must stop what they are doing, gather, and fast together, to be sanctified together. But that’s not all. Joel shines the spotlight on the people of Israel first, and then turns that light on the leaders, exposing them, especially the priests…

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'”

Here the religious leadership of Israel is exposed and called to turn back to God, too. The priests are to “weep” for their own part in straying; they are to pray for the people, and this is a confession that they’ve participated in/helped along the people’s and the leadership’s straying because they, too, have wandered away from God. They, too, have preferred their own power and privilege while the people were sacrificed by the rulers; they, too, have forgotten that they serve God thus serve the people and not their own whims and desires. Thus, they must now pray before it’s too late.

There’s a risk here in Joel’s words: God won’t show up, and Israel will be left to its own devices, left to being lost, left in the shadow of God’s departure. Joel wants his reader to imagine this horror, this gloom, this potential obliteration and feel the impending fear and identify with his voice, thus God’s merciful calling to them. Joel wants his audience to make his words their words, to step in faith, and a commit to making these actions their own so to secure their future with God and with themselves.[5]

Conclusion

Joel is setting us up to enter into this moment of Ash Wednesday with honest self-reflection to see that our tendency is, like Israel, to lie, to stray, to turn our backs, to think we know better than God, to be more afraid of other people (what they think of us, what they may say about us, losing our status and privilege) than considering loving God with our whole heart. We conflate God’s love for us with the thinking that God winks at our complicity with evil, human ideologies and actions that threaten the lives of the least of these among us (our houseless siblings, our queer siblings, our black siblings, our poor siblings, our immigrant siblings, our native siblings, our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and the flora and non-human fauna of creation). God is merciful says the entire bible,[6] but God does not relish when human beings harm other human beings through war and genocide, through inhumane laws and policies, and through the creation of deeper and wider lines in the sand making the “in-group” smaller and the “out-group” larger, colder, hungrier, thirstier, more naked, less safe.

Joel advocates for the mercy of God in our passage, but between being caught in the death of our sins and the life that is promised in God there is a call to repentance, a call to penitence, a call to take a deep, hard, long look at ourselves in the mirror and for once…FOR ONCE… be completely and brutally honest with ourselves before turning that judgmental eye on anyone else. Ash Wednesday prepares us to come face to face with our mortality, with our own death so that as we can prepare ourselves to enter this moment and this season with the fertile ground and nourished soil of a heart eager to see God.[7]^,[8]

We must come to terms with how prone we are to wander and leave the God we love who is the source of our love, our life, and our liberation.

Welcome to Lent.

[1] Zvi, “Joel,” 1166. “The lack of references to specific events in Israel’s past (locust plagues were not uncommon) and the overall imagery of the book encourage its readers to understand it against the background of Israel’s past in general.”

[2] Zvi, “Joel,” 1169. “Military imagery is pervasive in this section; in this context, the army is a personification of the locusts…”

[3] Zvi, “Joel,” 1169. “On the need to turn back to the LORD, and for a communal lamentation. This must be done before the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which is near or close…otherwise Israel too will be the victim of God’s power. “

[4] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[5] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “The readers of the book of Joel are asked to imagine a terrifying plague of locusts and its horrifying impact on society and the natural environment created by the human society. Then the locusts become a mighty army sent by the Lord against Judah. As the text leads the readers to sense that human society and culture in Judah are at the brink of obliteration, it asks them to identify with a prophetic voice that calls on them to return to the Lord, to fast and lament. Then the book moves to Judah’s salvation and to a range of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Merciful and gracious…are qualities which are never separable in the Bible from the thought of God.”

[7] LW 18:96 v. 13 “Return to the Lord. It is as if he were saying: ‘This will be the means—where you have come with your whole heart, with a true heart, then you are returning to the Lord. Otherwise, it will not happen.’”

[8] LW 18:98 “The righteous…use them correctly, for they are bruised and cast down by the angry threats of God; they bear divine judgment; they recognize their sin and their damnation So, when they hear these promises, they turn to the mercy of God. In this way their conscience again are lifted up and become peaceful.”

Posted on March 5, 2025March 6, 2025 by laurenlarkin 0

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Community

Psalm 130:5-7 5 My soul waits for God, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, wait for God, for with God there is mercy; with God there is plenteous redemption, and God shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

Introduction

A byproduct of our habitual consumption is a growing inability to stick with a community beyond what it can give to and do for me. With my focus on me and my happiness and comfort, I’m less obliged to stick with something when the rubber meets the road. Now, I’m not saying that someone should stick with a community that is violent in any way—be it socially, physically, emotionally, or spiritually violent. What I’m saying is that we have a consumer attitude toward our communities; as long as I’m getting what I paid for, or what I want, I’m in. If that changes, I’ll leave. I am irreplaceable, but this community? Replaceable.

The irony here is that if your community is easily replaceable—being able to easily switch one community out for another—you are, too. If you can slip in and out of groups easily, if you’re always on the hunt for something better, then you do not allow yourself any time to cultivate interest in the group or the group to develop interest in you. Remember from the Lent 2 sermon on identity, irreplaceability is hinged on someone or something taking an interest in you, loving you, desiring you, missing you when you’re gone, wanting you to return. As more of our communities fall to consumerism, the more we become lost in the sea of replaceability. In fact, our relationality is further compromised; how relational can we be when our communities are fleeting? And if our relationality is faltering, then so too is our identity because will anyone take an interest in me long enough to stick around? And if that, then we are destabilized because we’re left with only ourselves and our own skepticism where nothing is permanent therefore nothing is permanent.

We’re consuming our communities and nothing seems to satisfy.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am God, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, God, have spoken and will act,” says God.

Our prophet is Ezekiel, a prophet and priest of Jerusalem. He lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, he’s a prophet during the exile to Babylon. It’s from this context Ezekiel speaks; it’s to the exiled people, those having lost their land, their temple, their community, Ezekiel brings the living word of God.[1] Ezekiel’s prophecies engage the imagination through the abstract and absurd. In this particular prophecy, Ezekiel speaks from a valley of dry (dead) bones, where God dropped him off. Ezekiel’s story invigorates attention being more than acquired knowledge and “quiet insight”; “It is a startling event: a thunder in the world and a lightning in the soul.”[2] Those who have ears to hear begin listening: What about these dry bones surrounding our prophet who bears the weight of God’s divine hand?[3]

Ezekiel is commanded to speak to the dead bones, to prophecy to them the word of God. An absurd request, but nonetheless Ezekiel does. Ezekiel speaks the promises of God over these dead bones: I will, says God, bring breath to you, add sinew and ligaments, I will put muscle and flesh on you, and I will bring you back to life. As Ezekiel speaks these words promising life, the bones begin to move, come together. As they come together, they are being covered with sinew and flesh just as God promised. What once looked dead and dried up, alienated and isolated, too far gone to be of any good, are now bodies lying before Ezekiel.

Then Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy to the breath, to summon the four winds to come into these new bodies. And he did, and as he did the bodies became animated and living, standing up before Ezekiel. Then God spoke one more time: God promises God’s people will be brought out of death, out of dried-upness, out of alienation and isolation and will be made to be God’s people on God’s land once again. God will raise the dead because God will restore the people of Israel and restore them to each other and to their own land.[4] Life will triumph over death just as restoration triumphs over exile, because God’s word of promise doesn’t fall flat, it does what it intends to do. God holds Israel’s future, it’s not closed off; God isn’t distant but close, as close as breath in an animated body; Israel won’t spend eternity separated from each other, exiled from their community.[5]

Conclusion

Our communities seem to be dissolving right before our eyes; people come and go so quickly. The ties that bind no longer hold; this is one of the reasons why the church is suffering so much right now. The consumerism embedded in the fabric of the church creates a competitive environment between churches as they fight over the same group of people and trying to be unique. Sadly, in so doing they cease to be unique communities because they must offer what everyone else is offering and in at least the same but most likely in more entertaining ways. Pastors compete against pastors, worship leaders against worship leaders, youth leaders against you leaders. In this environment, you can’t risk actually being unique, because you may risk your spot on the field, competing against the others. In this environment, community must be forsaken for the bigger goal: bodies and dollars. But doesn’t this mean sacrificing the beloved of God for numbers? Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of being a church when we become just one more spiritual strip mall?

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we oppose this dissolution of community, this threat of consumerism? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for community.

We want community. We want a place where everyone knows our name, sees us, knows us, remembers our birthdays, where we can risk being unique, where we can have our irreplaceability affirmed, where we are needed and where we are missed when we’re not here. I’m crazy enough to think that church was once and can be that place again. Churches came into existence to be small communal events, to share a story and to share a meal, where it was safe to believe and have faith in God incarnate raised again, Christ Jesus; where the Spirit called each person to dare to love like God, daring to love those declared unlovable by the society around them.

Church is where you’re brought alongside that guy you don’t really understand, that lady who never says a word, that person who seems really eager to leave, that kid who likes to hoot and holler during the sermon, that whacky priest in stilettos. In church you’re asked see your similarity with all these various people sitting next to you, people you may not commune with Monday through Friday, but on Sunday you do. Every Sunday each of you sets aside everything making you different and you come to these pews to share in hearing an ancient story, recite and respond with the same words, and confess and receive absolution together. Here we come together and join at the rail, each of us empty handed with each other and with God. Here we are spiritually awakened by the power of God’s spirit and come to terms with our hunger for God.

In our hunger for God, we long for community. In our desire for God we are brought together to feast at God’s table as one body. In this community, we’re brought out of the death of alienation and isolation, and we are brought together; we are summoned out of death and into life with each other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find community with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

(for part 1 click here, part 2 click here, part 3 click here, part 4 click here)

[1] Sweeney, Ezekiel, JPS Study Bible. 1042. “The book of Ezekiel presents the words of Ezekiel son of Buzi, a prophet and priest, and one of the Jerusalemites exiled to Babylonia with King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24.8–17). Like his older contemporaries Jeremiah, 1, Ezekiel lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 and the early years of the Babylon exile.”

[2] Abraham K Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS 1962. 444.

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 444. “‘The hand of God,’ a synonym for the manifestation of His strength and power (Isa. 10:10; 28:2; Deut. 32:36), is the name the prophet uses to describe the urgency, pressure, and compulsion by which he is stunned and overwhelmed. ‘For the Lord spoke thus to me with His strong hand upon me’ (Isa. 8:11). ‘I sat alone, because Thy hand was upon me’ (Jer. 15:17). ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me’ (Ezek. 37:1; 3:14, 24). The prophet very rarely speaks of God’s face; he feels His hand.”

[4] Sweeney, Ezekiel, 1114. “In its plain-sense meaning, the image symbolizes the restoration of Israel to its own land.”

[5] Sweeney, Ezekiel, 1042. “He wrestles with the problems posed by the tragedies of Jerusalem’s destruction and the Babylonian exile: Why did God allow the Temple and Jerusalem to be destroyed? why did God allow the people of Israel to be carried away into exile? What future is there for Israel?”

Posted on March 26, 2023March 23, 2023 by laurenlarkin 2

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Relationality

(for part 1 click here, for part 2 click here, for part 3 click here )

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before God our Creator. For God is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand. Oh, that today you would hearken to God’s voice!

Introduction

Have you gotten out of the habit of communing with other people? I think I have. Well, to be honest, being social is very low on my list of things I regularly think about. When we first lived in Grand Junction in 2014, it took about ten months before I realized that the looming feeling I had was something called “loneliness.” Have you heard of it? I don’t get lonely; I can go for a very long time without any social interaction. A. Very. Long. Time. So, when I had this weird sensation and finally realized that there’s a term for it and that it there’s no drug to take to eliminate it, I struck out to make a friend. Just one. And I did! Lyuda and I have been friends since late 2015.

But this story feels like a distant memory of eras long gone. I’m reminded it’s been awhile since I’ve done something like that: gone out and made a new friend. I think it’s something to do with what we’ve suffered over the past few years. Now, as I said, it takes me a long to get “lonely”, but three years in? It feels especially tangible right now, right on the surface. Do you feel lonely? If you do, you are not alone. We’re all lonely. We’re just now starting to pull together and peek heads out of our shells…three years later. For three years, we’ve been bombarded with the fear of a virus that is very contagious, making it impossible to share place and space with others. Not to mention the caustic socio-political environment, tearing friendships apart, families asunder, and drawing thick lines in the sand. So, we’ve became pros at shutting down and closing off because our lives depended on it; we’ve become experts at speaking vapidly to stave off emotional outbursts, or worse? So, the coming back is hard… at times, too hard; isn’t it just easier to stay in, stay closed, stay distant, stay safe? I’m fine on my own, …right?

I fear we’re losing our relationality and nothing seems to satisfy.

Romans 5:1-11

For if while being hostile to God we were reconciled to God by means of the death of God’s son, much more since being reconciled we will be saved by his life. But not only [that] but even boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we now received reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10-11)[1]

At the core of what Paul is saying here in Romans, is that by virtue of the believer’s relationship with God through Christ, they are given space and time with God and with each other. Paul begins by explaining that in being justified we have peace with God and not only with God but with the world even in the midst of not having peace with other people.[2] During Advent I mentioned, “Peace exists because God is and God is within us.”[3] Herein is the foundation of that peace, according to Paul: God reconciles us to God through God’s son, Jesus. If this peace is done by works, we do not have a guarantee that peace with God exists. However, if it is by God’s doing, it’s secured and constant because it’s promised and God fulfills God’s promises. Every day we are justified and made right with God, every day we have union with God by faith because it’s by God’s mercy and not our own actions and even in spite of them.

By faith in Christ we have peace with God because by clinging to the promises of God we declare God to be truthful and true, rendering to God the things belonging to God: honor, delight, and trustworthiness (this is what it means that we “boast on the basis of hope of the glory of God”). In this way our relationship with God is aligned by our union with God; and if the relationship with God is aligned so, too, is our relationship with the world. In this new alignment with the world born from being children of God by faith,[4] we have peace with the world, because reconciliation with God allows us to interact with the world and with other people in a liberated way unencumbered from the burden of using the world and other people as means to an end (i.e. to secure a good relationship with God).

Paul anchors suffering and endurance in this union with God that we have by faith in Christ. Because we stand (“we are established”) in the grace of God, we have hope because we receive the love of God having been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit having been given to us. According to Paul, our union with God is the means by which we endure tribulations, for where we are God is, so, too is God’s love for us and the world. Therefore, our hope does not disgrace or shame because God promises to be present in our afflictions and sufferings and God is trustworthy and honest, because by Christ we have seen God suffer on our behalf.[5]

Paul reminds his audience that if they received all of this while they were hostile (ἐχθρὰ ὄντες) to God and still missing the mark (ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν), then how much more will they receive in their reconciliation and union with God. Now God establishes God’s love for us, yet while we still missing the mark, Christ died on behalf of us. It is our missing the mark that brings Christ to the cross, for our ability to determine good from evil runs askew, as promised back in Genesis 3. Yet, even though we put Christ to death, God resurrects him meeting our demand for death with God’s gift of life.[6] This is love, this is grace: not giving someone what they deserve but giving them that which they do not deserve. Where we had the right to be judged and condemned for Christ’s death, we are given life, love and liberation.[7]

Now, receiving this divine grace and love while we were still hostile to God, how much more do we receive as those reconciled? We receive God, we receive the whole world, we receive ourselves in right relation with God and the World, thus with others.

Conclusion

We are rightly timid to derive our relationality from our own strength, trying desperately to reduplicate past experiences. We are right to be nervous to venture outside and commune with others, putting ourselves in physically vulnerable situations beyond our control. We are far from being out of the woods of the pandemic, and there are new bugs around, putting precious lives at risk. It is right to be cautious with whom you share your dreams and wishes for the world; the caustic socio-political climate that started back in 2016 is still percolating—for many people things are continuing to go backwards, away from what they had, or thought they had. Relationality right now is intimidating: with neighbors, with friends, with family, maybe even with ourselves.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we reverse this trend of losing relationality, this threat of loneliness? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for relationality.

As those who have been encountered by God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are those who have been given life, love, and liberation. We are given union with God, we are given solid ground to endure the hardest tribulations with the most amount of hope. We are not given hope founded on false expectations for the future; rather, we are given hope that is present tense, that calls to mind what God has done, thus remembering what God said God will do. This type of hope is here, it is now, it is in spite of the world, transcends the world, and is for the world.[8] In our union with God we do not need to run away from chaos of multiple relational fractures or cling to what is behind denying the disordered relationality at hand. Rather, we can stand here, where we are, in the chaos and tumult, in the trial and tribulation, and know we are not alone for God resides with those whom God loves, with those who suffer, with those who have the audacity to experience their awakened hunger for God.

In this way, beloved, we are not alone; through God’s love for us we are not alone for we are with God. And if we are with God then we are with each other. It’s here where we’re brought further out of ourselves and our desperate attempts to keep ourselves from the difficulties of this life, from the anxiety of what lies outside the security of our homes, and from fear of the other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find relationality with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 43. “Since we are justified through God’s imputation, therefore by faith, not by works, we have peace the world and with God, although not yet with men and the flesh ….”

[3] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/12/04/peace-even-now/

[4] LW 25, 43-44. “Through whom , as our Mediator, we have obtained access, to God by loving and knowing and delighting in Him, by faith, because there will be no salvation through Christ without faith, to this grace, of peace, remission of sins, and justification, in which we stand, through the firm confession of faith, and we rejoice, not in a present thing before men but in our hope of sharing the glory, the exaltation, that is, the glorification in the future life of the sons of God, those who are of God.”

[5] LW 25, 44. “And endurance produces trial that we might be proved by God and found without deceit and guile and hypocrisy, and trial hope, that is, of ‘the glory of God,’ as has been said (v. 2). 5. And hope does not disappoint us, because it neither deserts nor fails us. All these things, I say, happen because the love, etc.,’ because the love, which creates an insuperable attachment, of God, that is, from God, has been poured, freely poured out, not received by merit, into our hearts, because love performs its works voluntarily; for works done unwillingly and by force do not endure, by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, through Christ from God the Father”

[6] LW 25, 44-45. “For hardly, it is extraordinary, I say, to die for the ungodly, for what is righteous, that is, for the sake of righteousness and truth, will one die—though perhaps, it is customary to die, for what is good, for its usefulness and desired features, one will dare even to die. 8. But God, the Father, shows, He makes it more commendable and worthy of love than all these things, His love, with which He loves us, for us, that is, the love which has been given to us, because on His part, in that while we were yet sinners, which he earlier (v. 6) expressed with ‘while we were still weak,’ at the right time (an expression which is not in the Greek at this point but only above) Christ died for us, the ungodly, so that we might not die in all eternity.”

[7] LW 25, 45. “For if, while were enemies, because of our sins, we were reconciled, so that we were not deserving of perdition, to God, not by our own merits or those of anyone else, except by the death of His Son; much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we, as His own, be saved by His life, in his resurrection to eternal life. 11. And not only so, do we rejoice in tribulations, but we also rejoice in God, that is, because we have a God and He is our own God, because He has given Himself to us, through our Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator, through whom we have now received our reconciliation, the remission of sins, so that we may receive God Himself, through One. I say. Christ.”

[8] I’m reminded here of similar tones in this post by J. Scott Jackson, http://derevth.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-peace-that-disturbs-berrigans.html

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 by laurenlarkin 4

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Stability

(for part 1 click here)

Psalm 32:6-9 6 “I will confess my transgressions to God.” Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin. Therefore all the faithful will make their prayers to you in time of trouble; when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach them. You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Introduction

The past few years and the last few months have felt like walking on water. Now, before you get the idea that I’m either comparing myself to Jesus the Christ, the son of God and humanity, or that I’ve felt so light and effervescent, I need to tell you that is not the case. By “walking on water” I mean: navigating the wind and the waves of life. Thrust upward only to be left falling downward as the surface drops, swept left and then swept all the way right, and smacked forward and backward by liquid turned solid by force and velocity.

There’s no way to extricate myself from this unending sea of waves and wind. It’s water as far as the eye can see. I fear something swimming just close enough but beyond my ability to see through murky water to prickle my skin with its sinister swish-swish-swishes right below my feet. The threat of doom leaves its own trauma. My other fear is becoming so water logged that I forget my real needs, that I confuse swallowing sea water for satisfying hunger, that I just become one with my environment, that I’ll give up or forget to keep fighting. When humans go about just surviving, they end up learning how to just survive and forget that life is so much more than just surviving.

Everything right now feels so unstable and nothing seems to satisfy.

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:1-4)

Here, early in Genesis, we are offered a story. A story well known to us. Moses (the traditionally assumed author) tells us that after God created Adam, God brought Adam into the garden. Here, Adam was to work and care for creation. God gave Adam two commandments: eat from any tree but do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The consequence? “‘In that day you eat of it you will surely die.’” (v.17b) From our perspective this command seems astounding, and the consequence atrocious. Why would God implement such a command and consequence? Why would the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil be punished severely? Why is God keeping this power from us?

One of the issues is our evaluation of good and evil. These are not just moral executive decisions. According to the JPS Study Bible, we have to reframe our understanding of “knowing” away from a post-enlightenment, scientific revolution outlook to one that offers a more wholistic picture of “knowing.” We know intellectually, but we also know experientially; therefore, there is not only knowing about good and evil, but knowing morally good and evil and (even more) knowing through experience things pleasant and painful.[1] And in these experiences, in this knowing morally, and even in knowing about good and evil there is death. It’s not so much a punishment as it is a consequence of finding ourselves suffering in the midst of good and evil, pulled this way and that, torn through with doubt and inner conflict, suffering from (even unto death) the force of evil in the world.

Then, enter the serpent. In chapter 3, Moses tells us the serpent comes along and strikes up a conversation with Eve. The serpent asks a trick question, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”; there’s no yes or no here, and Eve knows it.[2] So, she answers the serpent, and this response opens up a means by which the serpent can attack further. Eve says, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ As she quotes the law differently than it was handed to Adam, the serpent can certainly show her that she can touch it without dying, and here in the chaos of conflict with what one knows and sees and the inner doubt over divine credibility surges.[3] Then the serpent presses further adding in just the right amount of potential divine jealousy: seems God doesn’t want you to have the same power God has…”[4] The deal is sealed when she takes and eats of the apple and hands it to Adam, who was with her the entire time. The one who taught her the law failed to teach it to her rightly, and was himself subject to contemplating another word apart from God’s word.[5] Upheaval was already underway.[6]

Here the couple is thrust into tumult; what was, is now no longer. They were comfortable, now they are uncomfortable. Here they are falling from “true wisdom,” to quote Martin Luther, and “…[plunged] into utter blindness.”[7] They are now saddled with the weight of determining moral good and moral evil, held hostage by the onslaught of pleasure or pain, and chased by the threats of weal and woe. All of their relationships are now upended, their relationship with God, with each other, with themselves, and with creation; the ricochet of the sound of fracturing forever heard in the echo of lightening of the storm clouds threatening doom and in the rumble of their hunger pains.

Conclusion

How do we find stability in the midst of chaos and tumult? Do we really forego peace and comfort until our leaders figure it out? Do we run from each wave? Hide from the wind? I know there’s power finding stability in yourself, but it only lasts for so long. One strong gust or undulation and it topples. No material object can ever offer us the stability we so crave, all of it is of the dust and to dust it will return. There is no job, no amount of money, no home, no relationship secure enough to depend on no matter what. This is what we learned through skepticism: nothing is permanent; so, nothing is permanent. We are all one precarious moment from a free fall.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we navigate all this instability? We must look beyond ourselves and our consumption. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for stability.

Dorothee Sölle writes this in her book, On Earth as in Heaven,

There is a spiritual that begins with the words, ‘Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart….’ When I hear this song, I ask myself when was the last time I felt the Spirit? And I would like to ask you: When was the last time you felt the Spirit move-on what occasion, where, why, when? The song ‘Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart’ awakens my spiritual hunger, the hunger without which we can, of course, vegetate but not live.[8]

Stability will always be found through and in awakened spiritual hunger, spiritual hunger and need for God. Spiritual hunger will bring us back—time and time again—to the age-old story of unconditional love, resurrected life, and present tense liberation.[9] It is here in this particular story where we are met and reminded of a covenant that runs steady, has no boundaries, and can safely carry us to solid ground over and over again.

Right now, I need God. Right now, God is my constant and my stability because God’s story never changes: God in Christ comes low to walk with those who are hungry, those who crave stability and whispers I will never leave you or forsake you, no matter how bad it gets no matter how scared you are, I am with you. It’s here where I’m brought further out of myself and my desperate attempts at false stability to find true stability…with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 16. “Knowledge of good and bad may be a merism, a figure of speech in which polar opposites denote a totality…But knowledge can have an experiential, not only an intellectual, sense in biblical Heb and ‘good and bad’ can mean either ‘weal and woe or ‘moral good and moral evil.’ The forbidden tree offers an experience that is both pleasant and painful; it awakens those who partake of it to the higher knowledge and to the pain that both come with moral choice.”

[2] Levenson, “Genesis”, The Jewish Study Bible, 16. “His question is tricky and does not admit of a yes-or-no answer. The woman, who has never heard the commandment directly (2.16-17), paraphrases it loosely. Why she adds the prohibition on touching the fruit is unclear…”

[3] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 16-17. “Tragically, this praiseworthy act gave the snake his opening. ‘He touched the tree with his hands and his feet, and shook it until its fruits dropped to the ground,’ thus undermining the credibility of God’s entire commandment in the woman’s mind…”

[4] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 17. “The serpent impugns God’s motives, attributing the command to jealousy. Whereas in the first creation account human beings are God-like creatures exercising dominion…here their ambition to be like God or like divine beings is the root of the expulsion from Eden.”

[5] LW 1 147. “For the chief temptation was to listen to another word and to depart from the one which God had previously spoken: that they would die if they ate from it.”

[6] LW 1 105. “This sermon was delivered on the sixth day; and if, as the text indicates, Adam alone heard it, he later on informed Eve of it.”

[7] LW 1 161.

[8] Sölle On Earth 93

[9] Sölle On Earth ix-x.

Posted on February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 by laurenlarkin 5

Our Stories This Story: The Youth

I recommend reading/listening to the sermon from Ash Wednesday, which functions as an introduction to this Lenten series. you can access it here.

Psalm 91:9-11 Because you have made the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your habitation, There shall no evil happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling. For God shall give God’s angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.

Introduction

“They have no idea what they’re doing. None. I look around and see the violence, I watch these people run the world, and I’m convinced they’re blind. Can’t they see that these old systems just don’t work and that something must change or I’ll lose my future? Do they even care?! …I mean, I think my parents try but…I don’t know…I fear for them, too. How much more will they be able to bear to try to prevent the inevitable from happening? I mean, we’re doomed right? I might be young, but I can at least see that…I’m exhausted. I’m young and exhausted and I fear I’m practically burnt out.”
From the Ash Wednesday Sermon 3.2.22

We’ve become a people who passes on mess rather than story.

We are all born into the beauty and mess of the world of our parents and grandparents. We receive a world that is in process and are told that its progress is due to previous generations, and even if it’s not perfect, the new generation is to move it forward on that line of progress and clean up the mess of those who were here before participating in this process. But that idea is a myth. The problem being that we have a hard time discerning between systems bent against survival and those able to create realms of thriving. By picking up and carrying on while cleaning up—just as they did before—we participate not in the process of making things better but perpetuating systems that are inherently flawed. If this is so, then nothing is actually getting better and we are thrusting the entire kit and kaboodle further into death and despair.

When we just pick up just because it’s handed to us, we receive it as normal and as “always been”. Then, we, the adults, become so far in it’s hard to see what’s wrong. If you are in a building with a foundation that is giving way, it’s the person external to the building, the new person who enters the building, who notices the problem and not those who have grown accustomed to the slow and steady nearly invisible alterations of the building. Same thing goes for our world and society and the systems in place running everything: those who are newer to this world, to society, to our approach to life—the young—see things in a different light. This is why the youth come to dinner tables eager to dream and dare and put words to problems through questions and rough insight. It’s the energy and zeal of the young who surge into rooms and spaces and try to remind tired and burned out adults that there was once a story.

When it’s our perceived responsibility to pass on systems as they are rather than stories of what things could be, then the challenging “Why?” of the youth is met with condescension and rejection. We respond to their questions and inquiries, their challenges and dares by dismissing them as byproducts of overzealous youthful vim and vigor because we despise being waked into our storylessness and being reminded that we’ve long buried our stories in the ground because the world told us to, that such dreaming and hoping was pointless. In this way we cease passing on our stories because we’ve lost our stories to our pain. And, instead, we pass on our pain and wounds and demoralization…we pass on flawed and harmful systems. If I was beaten down, then you will be too, that’s just the way the world works.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”
Deuteronomy 26:3-9

In our passage from Deuteronomy, Moses, inspired by the spirit of God, proclaims prophetically to the people who are about to take up residence in the long-awaited promised land to recite the story of God’s dealing with God’s people. One of the most fundamental and recurring themes here is remembering what God has done. Israel, through Moses, is exhorted to remember and recall and recite the story of God’s great deliverance of the captives. Israel is to hold to this story; not in a dogmatic and dead fashion, but as a living and thriving narrative. This story is to remind them that God is for them, that God is their God and they are God’s people. This story is to be remembered and shared, passed on from one generation to another. And through the sharing of this story, hope and possibility and promise and life are passed on from one generation to another.

Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses exhorts the Israelites to contemplate the revelation of God made known in the giving of the law and the liberation of Israel from captivity in Egypt day and night all the days of their life, and to share these very laws and stories with their children. Discussions were supposed to happen; questions asked and answers given. In passing on this story, the children would then make this story theirs, and in this way this God of their parents would become their God, too—not a strange and unfamiliar God, but one whom they knew from the beginning and into whose story they could see themselves participating and not merely observing. In passing on the story—this story about a God who liberates the captives, unburdens the oppressed, and cares for the homeless, hungry, and naked—Israel passes on the hope and dreams of the story that resonate with the fuel and fire of the youth that this world can be better. In passing on the story, the old share with the young their wisdom and what they’ve learned. In passing on the story, the young add to it offering different perspectives and views on how this liberation, unburdening, and care manifest in their age now. It’s this process of sharing story that is to be passed on; not the death grip to human made systems long expired and past their time.

Conclusion

One of my favorite theologians, Helmut Gollwitzer,[1] argues that age needs youth and youth needs age. Or phrased differently: energy inspires wisdom and wisdom guides energy. In the preface to his book, The Rich Christian & Poor Lazarus, Gollwitzer expresses gratitude for the impact the youth, the students, have on his life and the world. I’ll quote a portion here:

“This book is dedicated to the students of Berlin. By this I mean those who, among many thousands who attend the universities of West Berlin, are responsible for the fact that Berlin has for some time now been censured or praised as a place of unrest. I mean especially those of their spokesmen with whom in recent years I have come in contact, and who go in and out of my house. In contrast with many of my contemporaries and colleagues, who regard them with deep antipathy or at least shake their heads over them in bewilderment, I have come love them for their sincerity, their courage, their feeling for freedom, their sense of responsibility for the future, and their dream of a more human society. I have received from them encouragement, instruction, and the stimulus for new thought, and they, I hope have benefited from some of the things that I and my friends have had to say in criticism and correction…”[2]
Helmut Gollwitzer

What beautiful words of mutual affirmation. Gollwitzer writes, “I have come to love them for their sincerity, their courage, their feeling for freedom, their sense of responsibility for the future, and their dream of a more human society.” I deeply, deeply believe that when we bring our young ones to the table and give them a vital and necessary place to talk and engage with us, we will stop passing on the mess of flawed and violent systems. I believe we will be called back to our stories of liberation and freedom and hope and life and we will be exhorted to dream with them that maybe, just maybe, things don’t have to be as bad as they are. Until then, we will continue to be complicit and held captive in these systems that are killing not only us but also the hope and dreams and future of the young.

[1] A great text on Gollwitzer is Dr. W. Travis McMaken’s text Our God Loves Justice: an introduction to Helmut Gollwitzer. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017.

[2] Helmut Gollwitzer The Rich Christians & Poor Lazarus Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1970. x-xi

Posted on March 6, 2022March 3, 2022 by laurenlarkin 7

and The Sky Opens

Sermon on Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:3-4 Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.

Introduction

Some stories in the First Testament can cause grave internal turmoil. The first five books making up the Torah (the revelation of the law) of the Hebrew Scriptures reveals radical and at times seemingly chaotic stories of God’s relationship with the world, with humanity, and with Israel in specific. It’s no surprise then that “why?” often escapes our lips as we read these stories. Why would God divide humanity by confusing language? Why would God send a flood? Why would God allow Israel to be brought under captivity and thus into exile? Why would God open the ground and swallow not only the guilty Korah but his family as well? If God is a God of love, then Why? Why all this divine disaster and heavenly havoc?

These whys echo a fear living deep in subterranean crevices and crannies of our person and being. As we read these stories they poke and provoke this fear: would I be washed away? dropped into the pit? thrust into exile? destroyed by some theotic whim of a divine bad mood? These questions haunt us as we read through the first testament and contemplate the deeds and activity of God. Under all of it surges what feels like our eternal question on repeat: if God is love how is any of this destruction love?

We get lost in the details of the storied wrath of God and miss the overarching metanarrative of the love-story embedded in and told by the composite biblical story. Truly, because of our human experiences and our self-knowledge and the myths we believe about ourselves and our unloveliness, we identify with the ones swept away and dropped down and not the ones rescued or moved to safety; and these stories terrify us. The seemingly random righteous exceptionalism of Noah becomes the plumbline against which we are shown lacking. So, we get stuck in the flood and forget that the waters recede, we miss the rainbow for the raindrops, and we forget that which God brings to death is raised into new life.

Genesis 9:8-17

“God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth…’”
Genesis 9:8-16

We all are familiar with the story of Noah, the flood, and the ark.[1] A flood of assumed divine origin washes the earth clean of the evil and wickedness that has stained the earth and taken up residence in human hearts. What is less familiar to many of us is that the flood story isn’t solely about God’s anger at evil and wickedness on the earth and in the heart. The flood is ultimately about God cleansing that which God loves. I know it may be hard to believe this especially considering the long tradition in the church of overemphasizing God’s anger over and against God’s love—even going to the extent of saying that God’s anger is God’s love, which is just an atrocity in theology causing spiritual trauma rather than trust.

The story about the flood and Noah and the ark isn’t ultimately about wrath but about love. Looking at the arch of the story line floating through the waters of the text, it’s the promise God makes here with Noah that is solid ground for the reader. The promise is the ultimate point, the flood is only the penultimate point. But we get confused; we get stuck in the waters and caught up with the rising tide of divine wrath and conclude that God is primarily angry and then if we are good God is loving. Rather, it’s that God is loving even when we are weak and frail and covered in wickedness and evil.

For the Israelites, the story of the flood represented not strictly God’s active pathos manifest in anger, but God relenting and promising: never again will I do this thing because humanity is weak. It’s in the flood story where God identifies and accepts the weakness of humanity[2] prone to mishearing, misunderstanding, and misstepping. And it’s in the rescue of Noah and his family, the divinely proclaimed upright, with whom God makes a covenant. This covenant is not strictly with Noah and his sons but with the entire world. From this point on, all of humanity is brought under the arching bow of color in the sky. The “offspring” of Noah is not strictly the Noahic family line sharing the same immediate mom and dad. Considering the story mentions that all humanity—save Noah and his family—was washed away in the flood, this means all humanity that now populates the earth are all Noah’s descendants.[3] By the time this story is formed and passed from story teller to story teller, generations upon generations are included in the covenant.[4] And not only humans, but animals (all of them) from the very, very big to the very, very small, are included in the divine spoken promise of never again.[5]

None of us here or any of our foremothers and forefathers knows a time when the covenant spoken between God and Noah—on behalf of the entire world and every living thing—didn’t exist. For as long as humans have been telling and sharing stories and eras before history could be recorded in writing, God promised never to come after wickedness and evil by washing out humanity unto death. Rather, from this moment on, when God comes after wickedness and evil, when God attends to human kingdoms and structures bent on destruction, and when God seeks us to mend us and heal our hearts, God will do so through God’s self. God will wash the earth and humanity and all creation through God’s love, God’s life, and God’s light. God will do so not by remaining remote but by coming near and intimately identifying with human suffering and weakness and frailty. God will take death into God’s own body and destroy it.

Conclusion

And the rainbow arcs across the sky forever carrying with it the reminder that the earth is not abandoned and won’t be abandoned.[6] The arch of colors scientifically explained, does not lose its mystery and absurdity.[7] While we know how rainbows happen, we don’t know why they need to happen. The world could exist just fine without them, but with our atmosphere and our sun we get to have rainbows. And in that mystery and absurdity we are pulled up out of ourselves as our gaze moves from our navel to that which is above. We are reminded that there is something beyond us, something outside of us, something we didn’t cause and didn’t create. It lies outside of our abilities and talents and paints the sky in beauty whether we’ve been good or bad. And, for those of us who travel this earth tracking with the Hebrew and Christian narratives, it’s a sign of comfort attached to the words of promise from God to Noah and all creation.[8] The rainbow is something tangible, reminding us: life wins, love wins, light wins.

The story of the flood reminds us that Love is triumphant as Life and Light revolt against death and darkness; and so, the story of the flood is foundational story of baptism. Death and darkness precede life and light. It is being submerged into the waters of baptism where we die and receive new life.[9] Baptism is the sign of divine encounter attached to the words of promise delivered to the world through the incarnate Christ. As Christ is raised from death, so too will we be as baptism is “joined with the promise of life.”[10] In the midst of the waters of earth of our baptism, the rainbow arch of the waters of the sky remind us God isn’t absent but present, not silent but beckoning us out and into new hope, new presence, and new life.

As we travel through the season of Lent and self-reckoning in the encounter with God in the event of faith, we are dropped to the bottom of the pit and swept up in the waves of water. The story of the flood reminds us that to this pit and these waters, God will not abandon us. To answer one of the questions of Psalm 88, “Do you work wonders for the dead?” (v 10a), the flood story answers with a resounding yes. And that yes is declared in the sky in manifold color of divine glory: death has not the final answer, life does.[11]

[1] This is a story. A story historicizing a natural disaster that demolished the livelihood of civilization in the “cradle of society” in the fertile crescent (which was prone to floods, and big ones). Was the entire earth covered by one flood? Most likely not. Was this local world swept up in waves of water? Most likely. The story of Noah and the arc isn’t all that unique; we find significant overlap with flood and boat story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. When humans experience a massive natural disaster, we try to make sense of it and at times we ascribe divine activity to it because somehow such a thing brings comfort to us: this wasn’t chaotic but controlled. There’s also a need to explain why some were washed away and others weren’t. When the planes hit the twin towers, I was in midtown. A few months earlier in 2001 I was working downtown; that path train trapped under the collapsed building? That was my normal path train. Because of an event that happened earlier in the year, I was not on that train. From here and coupled with survivor’s guilt and the absurdity of surviving, we craft stories. We can’t handle surviving things that others haven’t so we are prone to ascribe divine activity because it’s the only way to make sense of some seemingly so chaotic. So, we craft story and legend and pass them on as beautiful markers of our humanity. If you examine your own journey, you’ll similar instances of this behavior. For a similar story from the Utes, see the legend: “Rabbit Killed the Sun” which is a legend with significant imagery that seems to be speaking of (both) the solar eclipse that preceded the Clovis comet and the comet itself that hit the earth and decimated an entire people group.

[2] JPS Study Bible “Genesis” annotations by Jon D. Levenson. Eds Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler New York, NY: OUP 1999.

[3] JPS Study Bible Levenson

[4] Martin Luther Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 6-14. Luther’s Works vol 2 Ed Jaroslav Pelikan 144. Promise is not only for those people and those lives of that context and generation but for all generations “until the end of the world.”

[5] Luther Genesis 143-4 “Moreover, because the covenant of which this passage is speaking of involves not only mankind but every living soul, it must be understood, not of the promise of the Seed but of this physical life, which even the dumb animals enjoy in common with us: this God does not intend to destroy in the future by a flood.”

[6] Luther Genesis 146-7 “…this bow stands there by divine pleasure, because of the will and promise of God, to give assurance to both [humanity] and beast that no flood will ever take place at any future time.”

[7] Luther Genesis 146 Natural phenomenon with a divine application “…because of the Word of God, not because of some natural cause, the bow in the clouds has the meaning that no further flood will occur.” Natural phenomenon with a divine application “…because of the Word of God, not because of some natural cause, the bow in the clouds has the meaning that no further flood will occur.”

[8] Luther Genesis 144-5 “There was need for them to have a sign of life, from which they could learn God’s blessing and good will. For this is the particular nature of signs, that they dispense comfort, not terror. To this end also the sign of the bow was established and added to the promise.”

[9] Luther Genesis 153 “…Baptism and death are interchangeable terms in the Scripture. Therefore Paul says in Rom. 6:3: ‘As many of us has have been baptized, have been baptized into the death of Christ.’ Likewise, Christ says in Luke 12:50: ‘I have a Baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!’ And to His disciples He said (Mark 10:39): ‘You will be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized.’”

[10] Luther Genesis 153

[11] Luther Genesis 154-5 “This must be applied also to other trials. We must learn to disdain dangers and to have hope even when no hope appears to be left, so that when death or any other danger befalls us, we may encourage ourselves and say: ‘Behold, here is your Red Sea, your Flood, your baptism, and your death. Here your life…is barely a handbreadth away from death. But do not be afraid. This danger is like a handful of water, whereas through the Word you have a flood of grace. Therefore death will not destroy you but will be a thrust and aid toward life.’”

Posted on February 21, 2021February 21, 2021 by laurenlarkin 1

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