Let All Creation Praise God!

Let all creation praise God! Let all creation praise God! It’s such a strong message in the Christmas season. The angels sing it. We sing it. And we want so much for the whole world to join in. Let all creation praise God!

The Psalms frequently testify to creation singing God’s praises. The Psalm for today (148) does just that... This Psalm calls on Earth, sea and sky to be filled with celebration and singing… [T]he psalmist calls on all the components of creation to praise God because all creation has the creative impulse of the Word of God as their source [In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.] The psalmist calls on Earth, the elements of Earth and the creatures of Earth to praise God. This colourful list includes sea monsters, fire, wild animals, humans, and birds. Everything from ants to atoms seems to be included. [Excerpted from Kinship with Creation by Norman C. Habel as found on the Season of Creation website. Seasons of the Spirit Year A Advent/Christmas/Epiphany 2010-2011]

But tragedy is never far from the Christmas scene; just as it is never far from the scene of creation, the very scene of our life. The cross looms over the horizon of our celebration of the birth of Jesus. The real world of pain and hunger, sickness and need is barely hidden below the surface of our celebrations; and the very day after we celebrate the joyful birth, we hear the story of the slaughter of the innocents. Let all creation praise God! But in Ramah, there is “wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel [is] weeping for her children; [and] she refuse[s] to be consoled, because they are no more." (Matthew 2:18)

How can we sing the Lord’s sing in this foreign land?

And yet that is what we are called to do: to sing God’s praise, to honour God in the midst of life whatever that is. Perhaps it is not easy for us in our comfortable setting to understand this calling, this vocation as it is for those who have less, who know their need more closely.

Taizé is a village in southern France that is home to an ecumenical Christian community. The community began in 1940 by Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche (Brother Roger), a Swiss born theological student studying in France. When it first began, the Taizé community offered a safe haven to refugees during the Nazi occupation of France. After World War II, the community slowly established a mission to promote peace across Western Europe and eventually around the world. This mission is most evident in the international, ecumenical gathering of thousands of youth each week in the summer. Daily worship includes short, musical selections that are sung repetitively and often use a variety of languages. [Indeed, many of the songs are sung in Latin, a language that belongs to nobody now.] It is said the meaning of the songs transcends any particular people represented by the language, furthering the evidence of peace within all creation. Many congregations use Taizé prayers and songs in their worship, some offering a monthly service of Taizé prayer. The minister of one church tells how people ask him why the church continues to offer such a prayer service, as the attendance is low. [After all, why do we bother to continue to praise God when our numbers are small or when the world is in need of such proactivity?]

“Two of the brothers took part in prayers in many cities in Germany throughout nearly the whole of November. After the prayer in Hanover, a woman doctor shared this story: ‘I’ve just arrived today from Faluja, Iraq. I accompanied a seriously wounded American soldier. After these very difficult weeks in Iraq, I wanted to see something beautiful: a concert, a theatre performance, or something in a church. During the flight I asked the pilots what was on in the city this evening. They told me there would be a prayer with songs from Taizé. ‘I have never been to Taizé. These last weeks I have been working as a doctor in the emergency service in Faluja. One day during the fighting I had to operate on a man who would probably need to have both legs amputated. During that difficult operation I heard a melody with words in Latin. I didn’t understand, for I had to concentrate on the operation. The song became louder and louder; it sounded like a chorale; my colleagues – French, British, American, German, and Iraqi – were singing together. ‘Carried by the melody, I calmed down, and could even see a chance of saving the man’s legs. And finally, we succeeded. After the operation was over, I heard the French doctors saying that it was a song from Taizé. I had never heard of Taizé until then. From then on, the Taizé songs often accompanied me during operations and I felt protected by God in very dangerous circumstances. This evening, I discovered that the song I heard for the first time in Faluja was Laudate omnes gentes. [Let all the people praise God!] And there were others that we sang back there too. I am so grateful.’” [Fraser MacNaughton has been minister of St. Magnus Cathedral,Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland since 2002. He also has served as minister in Ayrshire, University of Dundee, and Glasgow. Seasons of the Spirit Year A Advent/Christmas/Epiphany 2010-2011]

The prayer and praise of God’s people sustains them in hope. It forms them in love and it upholds them in the most extreme of difficult times when in Ramah, there is “wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel [is] weeping for her children; [and] she refuse[s] to be consoled, because they are no more." (Matthew 2:18)

Even in the midst of life, let all Creation praise God! Because as we turn to God and recognise that we are created and sustained by God, we may catch a glimpse of the reconciliation that God desires for the whole of creation—wherever there is need; wherever there is conflict; wherever there is illness; wherever there is pain, it is in recognising the God who calls us to something beyond the immediacy of our own situations towards God’s promised realm of justice, love and peace, begun in Jesus and being brought up through us the people of God as part of God’s mission in God’s world. Truly, may all creation praise God!

God Has Sandy Feet!

“From a distance, God is watching us,” Julie Gold wrote (1985) and Bette Midler (among others) sang. The song described the way in which a beneficent, a good, a caring God envisioned the world that God had created—a world of peace and harmon and environmental sustainability. It hinted at the disappointment that the real world may have become for God, with its litany of conflict and pain.

From a distance we all have enough, and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every [one].
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

Even at Christmastime, God can seem somewhat distant from our lives, hoping for something grand and being disappointed with what God has ended up with. Sometimes, this picture of God seems the only possible one when we claim God’s goodness and look around us at the mess of God’s creation; or experience something particularly traumatic and difficult at a time when we’re supposed to be celebrating.

Have you watched children on a beach playing from a distance? It can all look so idyllic, so pleasurable, so inviting… and then you walk over and get involved… and the scene is not nearly so serene. There’s a need for give and take—whose road goes way and which tower gets built and how? From a distance, the castle rises from the beach; but up close the builders are not just working with their hands, but also with their hearts and their hopes and their dreams; and different designers clash, and sometimes there’s tears, and maybe even a temper tantrum or too. Watching from a distance is not where the real action is, although it can sometimes be somewhat more serene.

But watching from a distance can also be lonely and boring. If you don’t get down on your hands and knees on the sand, you can’t discover the feel of the building material; and the way that you can gently drip mixtures of sand and sea water to make walls and towers of astonishing complexity and beauty. And you can get so much more done before the tide comes in when you have helpers—a small sand castle can mushroom into a medieval city in no time at all when a few people get together to work the sand.

Another song-writer, Eric Bazilian (1995), and another singer, Joan Osborne asked a slightly different question from Gold and Midler. Not “What is it like watching from a distance?”, but “What would it be like for God to be in the sand with us?”

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?

This is a God in the midst of the construction of sand castles with the kids—in the joy, in the tears, in the tantrums, in the sense of achievement, in the disappointment when the waves wash it all away, and in the anticipation of the next sand castling building expedition tomorrow. This God is with us! This God is in the midst of it all, getting hands and feet sandy and messy, windblown and sun-tanned, in the fun and the learning to share, and the discovering of injustice and the trying to get along with each other.

In reflecting on the lyrics of the song “One of Us”, liturgical theologian, Brian Wren writes:

What if God was one of us? Not watching from a distance, but taking the risks and having the inside knowledge of being born, being human, living and facing death? This is the good news of Christmas… Every one of us, and everyone on earth, is born into a particular time, a particular place, a particular language and tradition. It is the only way of being human... In the song refrain… the line “just a slob like one of us” seems to have a slightly self-mocking tone. It suggests that the singer and her peers, or human beings in general, are average, ordinary, and unappealing. More often the word “slob” is an insult, a term of abuse for someone who is coarse, lazy, dirty, or rude... the adult Jesus was a controversial prophet, loved by many but also insulted and abused, treated as worse than a slob… (Advent/Christmas/Epiphany, pp. 126, 127, 130-131).

But even as a child, the story isn’t such an idyllic one.

God, fully human, fully with us, fully within God’s own created order—as a vulnerable child, at the mercy of authorities who take censuses and kill potential rivals, in inadequate housing and facing an uncertain childhood—the incarnation (God becoming human) is the great doctrine (teaching) of the church that we celebrate in the Christmas season.

This doctrine is one to blow our minds—God becomes human—the Creator enters the creation—the all-powerful becomes all vulnerable to the vagaries of creaturely existence. God just doesn’t watch us from a distance; God lives our life. God just doesn’t empathise with us, God knows what it is to live as a mortal being.

When I was a small child, on holiday with my family at the beach, one evening as we were walking along the beach, we were writing with sticks in the sand. I wrote in the sand what nearly everyone writes at some time in their lives, "I was here". It was a celebration of the great event in time of which I was a part, walking along the beach with my family without a care in the world.

A man came up to me. He was smartly dressed. He even had shoes on his feet as he walked along the beach. I don't think he really saw me or really understood what my sign was saying. For he gravely bent over to read the words and jauntly said, "Ah, but where are you going?" Politely, I responded, "I don't know" but I felt terrible inside. Didn't this man see this wonderful place we were in? Why did it seem not to matter to him?

The man smiled smugly and without another word he continued his walk along the beach. As he walked away, I wondered to myself, how differently he might have reacted if he had bothered to take his shoes off to walk along the beach so he could feel the sand and the water on his toes.

In Jesus, God has taken off his shoes to experience our life. Everything we experience, Jesus experienced. God was prepared to give up all the perks of divinity in order to show us just how much we are loved—in order to stand in utter solidarity with us, God’s creatures, God’s beloved children. God knows the frailty and the fragility, the vulnerability and the suffering, the wonder and the joy of being human just like us.

Julia Esquivel from Guatemala puts it this way (Bread of Tomorrow, pp. 46-48):

The Word, for our sake, became poverty clothed as the poor who live off the refuse heap. The Word, for our sake, became a sob a thousand times stifled in the immovable mouth of the child who died from hunger. The Word, for our sake, became danger in the anguish of the mother who worries about her son growing into manhood. The Word cut us deeply in that place of shame: the painful reality of the poor. The Word blew its spirit over the dried bones of the churches, guardians of silence. The Word awoke us from the lethargy which had robbed us of our hope. The Word became a path in the jungle, a decision on the farm, love in women, unity among workers, and a Star for those few who can inspire dreams. The Word became Light. The Word became History. The Word became Conflict. The Word became indomitable Spirit, and sowed its seeds upon the mountain, near the river and in the valley, and those of good will heard the angels sing. Tired knees were strengthened, trembling hands were stilled, and the people who wandered in darkness saw the light… The Word became the seed of justice and we conceived peace… The Word made justice to rain and peace came forth from the furrows in the land. And we saw its glory in the eyes of the poor transformed into real men and women. And those who saw the Star opened up for us the path we now follow.

For God indeed is one of us! Our God has sandy feet... and hands... and there's quite a bit of sand in God's hair too!

Glory in the Wilderness!

In the midst of a Venetian orphanage for poor and illegitimate children, Antonio Vivaldi and his choristers (all female) produce the dramatic and weighty proclamation of God’s greatness, “Gloria”—a version of the great doxology of Christian tradition. Modelled on the song of the angels to the shepherds in the Gospel of Luke, the song proclaims;

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will. (ICEL 2007)

The proclamation of the children and the “red priest” from this place of exile from their families and polite society—a veritable wilderness—declares the significance of the God who comes into the midst of God’s own people, God’s own creation. It announces and celebrates weighty matters indeed.

Isaiah, too, is intent on celebrating the weightiness of a God who brings new life to landscapes apparently barren; new hope to people afflicted and infirm; and a God who dares, not to wait for people to travel God’s way, to come in search of them in order to save, to liberate.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom… They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God… He will come and save you (Isaiah 35:1-2, 4c).

This glory is a weighty matter indeed—the Hebrew word, kebod, refers to its heaviness. These are matters of significance. God is a God who matters. God is a God who acts.

From the Babylonian Exile, Isaiah proclaims the significance of God in the wilderness of a people without a place; and the proclamation asserts that God is well and truly aware of the heaviness of the burden born by the chosen people; and of the weighty promise made generations before to Abraham and Sarah and the descendants—the promise of a great land and a great people. And God will do something about it!

The people have been in the wilderness before; and even then magnificent songs proclaiming God’s greatness held God’s promises before them. Miriam and Moses sang in the wilderness: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously” (Exodus 15:21). They celebrated God’s significant delivery of the people from Egypt; but the people still had a long way to go. The wilderness stretched before them. God’s glory, God’s weightiness, wasn’t just about the previous triumph but the journey ahead. It would accompany the people on a pilgrimage that would test their spirits, their faith, their lives. God deals in weighty matters indeed.

From another kind of wilderness, Mary sings her song, proclaiming the significance of God’s action even in the midst of her own intolerable predicament—an unmarried women with child:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant... He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." (Luke 1:46-55)

These are weighty matters. God will bring new life to dry land; new hope to desperate people; and God will not stand back waiting for all this to happen. God will come to bring it about. God will enter God’s own creation. God’s glory, God’s substance, God’s significance will be made known.

The poetry of Isaiah’s proclamation draws attention to its central claim: “Here is your God… God will come and save you.” God is with the people in creation. God is among the people in their despair. God is coming to the people to save them. God is a God of substance who concerns God’s self with substantial matters—the plight of God’s creation and the welfare of God’s people.

Such weighty actions of God deserve a weighty response. Don’t just stand there—start travelling—out of exile back to the land; out of despair into hope; out of waiting for someone else to do something and into taking responsibility for being part of God’s mission in the world now! Take the road made for God’s people through the wilderness towards the promise. This is a journey of significance; a expedition of substance.

I’ve been enjoying the local wetlands coming back to life in the midst of the lovely rain we’ve been experiencing. You can’t actually get into the bird hide at Dangar’s Lagoon because the entrance is under water. I didn’t think I’d get to see that!

The ebb and flow of the waters we share are weighty matters indeed—they are matters of life or death. They affect what birdlife will prevail; what food we can produce; what parts of this country will continue to be habitable. The things of God are equally as weighty. Indeed the ebb and flow of the very creation is a thing of God.

The ebb and flow of God’s living water is also a matter of substance—a matter of abundant life out of desperate death. It affects who we are and what we do; and where we stand before God.

Here in the midst of our own wilderness—the wilderness of living—there will be times when we are tempted to give up the hope of God’s promises. But it is precisely in those times when it is even more important to hold them before us; to remember God’s weightiness, God’s significance, God’s glory; to give God, God’s due; and to be prepared to sing “Glory to God in the highest!” Our God has significance. Our God has substance. Our God is present. And our God is coming to save us! Gloria in excelsis! Glory to God in the highest and peace to people of good will!