As I posted my last post about a funny video I realized that I have not written anything serious for quite a while.
I am completing Clinical Pastoral Education this summer. CPE is essentially Chaplaincy work, I am at a hospital in Seattle, WA, and am having a great, if really intense, emotional experience.
We have talked about Self Care a lot recently and it reminded me of a sermon that I did for a class this last semester. I expanded on it a little for the group. It was based on Revelation 21:1-6. The specific verses related to what I will talk about are listed below.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
6 Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.
For my sermon the most important line of the whole pericope is "and the sea was no more." Throughout the book of Revelation all that is evil comes from the sea. The people are full of fear of the never ending onslaught of pain. I relate this to the television show, "The Deadliest Catch" which is about crab-fishing in the Bering Sea. For the boats to survive they need to go with the sea, they need to steer into the waves, if you try and fight they will eventually overcome and destroy you. I see this sea metaphorically in our own culture, we can easily get caught up in the "sea" of work and let it drive us where ever it goes. We become overwhelmed with fear, grief and our own inablility to find a solution. The image of water is one that is strong, it is full of mystery and fear, evil and destruction, but then suddenly the sea is no more, the fear, evil and destruction is no more, and God is with us.
In a January interim break independent study I looked at Christian-Islam relations, specifically since 9/11. One writer spoke to me very profoundly. Kabir Helminski is a Sufi Islam Shaikh, in one response he gave a phrase that I still use, "Breathe, and Remember God." In my sermon I used it as the boundary between the pain that we and the people of Revelation were going through and the grace of God. When we get to the point that we feel that we are overwhelmed and there is nothing that we can do, it is at this time that we need to stop, breathe, and remember God.
While not written expressly towards the subject of self-care I feel that it fits the topic very well.
My actual sermon notes are below.
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In the Discovery Channel program, “Deadliest Catch,” the people on each crab fishing boat are completely at the mercy of the sea. They do not have any power to control or force it. The method of survival is not to fight the ocean, but in fact to turn with it and allow it to control you. It is no surprise that their job is regarded as the most dangerous job in the world. In the optimum case, a boat should stay facing the direction that the wind and waves are coming and ride over, and with the waves. To try to travel without regard to their direction and power is to die.
Water is a force in our world. It has the power to kill and the power to heal. Without it, we will not survive more than a few days. It is the supreme force of nature, the cycle of water controls who, where, and how much rain falls in one place, it controls how much wind is in another.
Water transforms our planet; the flat plains of the Midwest were made that way through a combination of Ice Age glaciers, and the massive lake that resulted when they melted. The hills and valleys that surround the city of Dubuque were carved over thousands of years by the waters of the Mississippi and its tributaries.
Water destroys life through its power. In 2004, a Tsunami hit in Indian Ocean, specifically the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, where it killed over 200,000 people. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S. More than 1,800 people lost their lives directly because of Katrina, and the storm caused over 80 billion dollars worth of damage.
In the argument over Global Warming, it is not the concern that the planet will get too warm and we will therefore burn up. It is the concern that it will melt the icecaps and flood much of the world’s inhabitable space.
Too much water is a cause for concern, but even not enough water can cause fear, death, and destruction. In the 1930’s in the central U.S. and Canada after decades of inappropriate farming techniques followed by severe drought, the dry dirt blew away leaving hundreds of thousands without any means of survival.
Water is a cause of concern in the bible as well, while water saved them from the Egyptians during the crossing of the Red Sea, it was a drought that caused them to migrate to Egypt in the first place. Earlier in Genesis, when God decides to destroy the world, God uses not fire, stone, or wind, but God uses water, water so great that it covered the whole face of the earth.
In the gospels, it is Peter’s doubt that causes him to plunge under the water. Most of the disciples were fishermen, but even these men, who had spent their entire lives on the sea were afraid when a great windstorm rose up and blew great waves upon the side of the boat.
Finally, in the Revelation to John, where our text comes from, water is indeed to be feared. The Dragon, who is called the Devil and Satan, made its stand on the seashore. While chasing after a woman it was not fire that the dragon spewed forth like the European Renaissance dragons, but this Dragon, the deceiver of the world, spews forth a torrent of water to sweep the woman away in a flood.
Revelation is not done at that point though. John saw “a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names.” This beast rising out of the sea returns us briefly to the Old Testament and the book of Job; it is from the sea that Leviathan, the twisting serpent rises.
It seems like the end. The onrushing waters are not stopping; the beasts and fears of the water are all around, we get to the same point as the people being written to by John, when we are so in fear of the water, in fear of being overwhelmed. It is then that we need to stop,
breathe,
and remember God.
God has power over that water of fear, of destruction, of death. While we do not, God does, and in Revelation when the new heaven and the new earth appear, we see that the sea is no more, the beast is no more, the fear of the water is no more. When the water is no more and God is with the people, God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”
When Peter’s doubt causes him to fall into the water, it is Christ who saves Peter. Peter in his moment of terror and fear, does that which we should remember, he calls out to Christ. Jesus does not wait to see what might happen to Peter, he immediately reaches out and saves Peter.
While it was a drought that caused the Israelites to go to Egypt, and it was also water that saved them as they crossed the Red Sea. Those waters have the same power, but through the power of God, the water of the Red Sea was moved to protect God’s people.
Finally, there is more water that is promised to us, this is not the water of the sea, the water of fear, this is the water of life. This is the water that is given to the thirsty. We have already tasted of this water. This water of life is the very same water of our baptism. In Christ’s baptism, he heard a voice from heaven calling saying, you are my Son, with you I am well pleased. It is through our baptism that we also hear a call. A call that we are members in the Body of Christ, a call to tell others that they too are members of that body, and a call to care for those who are truly thirsty in this world. We are not called to control the waters of fear, death, and hate. We are called by Christ to turn towards God, and allow the Holy Spirit to control the waters for us, for it is only then that the waters of fear will vanish and we will be drenched in the wondrous waters of new life. This is not a method of survival, this is a method of eternal life.
