Goodness me ... if we look at the world around us, we can be
tempted to say: “What chaos, what a mess!”
I don’t even know where to start. Just in the last few weeks
since I last preached at our evening service and spoke about fear, we’ve seen
the chaos, the mess of ... Fire ... Terrorism ... Hung parliament. On the
international front: the so called leader of the so called Free World embroiled
in controversy; a crazy dictator testing ballistic missiles as he pleases; On
the religious front: Christian persecution gaining momentum at such a pace that
it hardly makes headlines anymore ... more than 20 Coptic Christians
slaughtered at the end of May ... dozens in April at a Palm Sunday service ...
at least 25 at a service just before Christmas. On the individual front: chaos
and mess in personal relationships ... in personal health ... in personal finances
... in personal life, in workplace, in church .... in all these and many more chaos
and mess so often seem to be just waiting to break through.
Where does one begin to try and understand all this? Perhaps
“at the beginning.” Now I’ve been spending a great deal of time in Genesis 1 as
I’ve been preparing for our Creation walk. I’m almost sure you all know what
the first thing was to be created ... but remember, don’t shout out because you
might embarrass yourself. Let’s look at Gen 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
What exists before God speaks His first creation word?
The words “without
form, and void” ... tohu and bohu, are words which signify wasteness and emptiness. The
word “the deep” ... tĕhôm, comes from a word signifying
confusion or disturbance. Biblical scholars point out that all this is an
ancient way of describing chaos. Later in the OT this word “the deep ... tĕhôm” will be called the abyss, the
dwelling place of the angels who were cast out of Heaven with Lucifer ... so we
can understand the chaotic, writhing mass of this “deep.” And we are told that the Spirit of God hovered over these waters.
Remember all this comes before the first creation word.
And then, over this chaos ... God speaks and says “Let there be light.” Then,
on the second day we have these words:
And God said, Let there be a firmament in
the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And
God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from
the waters which were above
the firmament: and it was so.
And so in modern language we see that on this day God
creates space (show with hands) ... and the rest of creation takes place in
this space, which has “waters below” and “waters above.” Now, the ancient Jews,
even up to Jesus time, were very afraid of the waters of the seas. They didn’t
go swimming or playing in the water for fun, because their understanding was
that these waters contained elements of the chaos, of the abyss. A few weeks
ago we looked at the story of the demons in the man called Legion, and they beg
Jesus (Luke 8:31):
And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to
order them to go into the Abyss
Even demons that have escaped the abyss don’t want to go
back into it. And they beg to rather go into the pigs, which Jesus allows ...
but what do the pigs do, they immediately run over a cliff into the abyss ...
the waters of the sea of Galilee. To the Jews, because of their understanding
of creation, the waters of the seas were to be avoided at all costs. You only
went onto these waters for fishing ... never for playing. You see, these waters
could erupt into chaos at a moment’s notice, as they often did. We have some
stories in the Gospels of the Sea of Galilee doing just that, turning from calm
to storm just like that.
Perhaps you can now understand why they are so amazed
when Jesus calms storms and walks on water ... it is as though He is stronger
than the evil that lurks in the waters waiting to erupt. It is as though He can
walk over evil, trample the devil underfoot .... and so they ask “Who is this
man?” We read these miracles and say “Jesus has power over nature” ... the
original witnesses realised: “This man has power over evil and the chaos it
gives rise to, which so often erupts from nowhere.”
This man could trample on the chaos of stormy upheaval, the
chaos of 1000’s of hungry people or the chaos of a few hungry fishermen after a
night of no catch. This man could speak a word of healing into the chaos of
disease, even into the chaos of death. He brought order into lives made chaotic
by being labelled “outcast”, or “sinner” or “prostitute” or “widow” or “orphan”
or “foreigner” or “prisoner”.
I said earlier that we’ve seen the chaos, the mess of ...
Fire ... Terrorism ... Hung parliament; the so called leader of the so called
Free World embroiled in controversy; of a crazy dictator testing ballistic
missiles as he pleases; of Christian persecution gaining momentum; and of chaos
and mess in personal relationships ... in personal health ... in personal finances
... in personal life, in workplace, in church .... in all these and many more chaos
and mess so often seem to be just waiting to break through and flood us. But
remember this:
the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters
You may sometimes feel like the depressed Psalmist in
Psalm 42 who uses the creation language we have been looking at when he cries
out:
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Why so disturbed within me?
...
My soul is downcast within me;
...
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
...
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
When it feels that way, remember this:
the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters
It’s as if the Spirit is attracted to chaos and
hopelessness like iron filings to a magnet ... only He hovers and then raises
something good from the mess. He hovers over the waters of a world He has
destroyed by flood ... he hovers over
the chaotic family of a man called Jacob ... He hovers over a nation living in
slavery in Egypt ... He hovers over the mess of the life of a prostitute called
Rahab ... over the hopeless situation of a boy with a sling standing before a
giant ... must I go on ... over a den of hungry lions into which a man is
thrown ... over a nation living in exile in Babylon ... over a young unmarried girl
with an unbelievable story of how she has fallen pregnant ... the Spirit hovers
over the grave of that girls Son after His crucifixion ... He hovers over murderous
Saul ... and so on we can go ... He hovers still ... He hovered over a wall
that sprang up overnight in Berlin ... over a nation destroying itself with a
policy of apartheid.
We have to believe, we have to believe, He hovers over
the ruins of Grenfell Towers; over a hung parliament and confused nation; and
over your personal and perhaps our shared chaos ... hovering over the chaos,
waiting to speak a re-creative word. And that word can only come from God. The
difference that needs to come to our nation, to our cities, to ourselves ...
can only come from God and from the Spirit of God. How do we pray at a time
like this ...? I can think of no better prayer than the ancient prayer of the
church: “Come Holy Spirit”
We need order from chaos. We need the Holy Spirit,
because we can do nothing with our own strength, our own love and our own ideas, to change the things we know need to change. We need the power of the Holy
Spirit to make the difference Jesus makes, to be the difference. There is
nothing more involving, more life-changing, more life-giving, more freeing than
to receive the Spirit of God ... because the Spirit doesn’t simply change us,
the Spirit changes the world and gives hope to the world.
I started with these words: Goodness me ... if we look at
the world around us, we can be tempted to say: “What chaos, what a mess!”
I close with these words: Come Holy Spirit.
