By This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (Please feel free to email a response or a question)
June 21, 2009, Job 38: 1-11; Psalm 107: 1-3, 23-32; Mark 4: 35-41

Water is elemental to our survival. Throughout the centuries people have migrated in search of fresh water to sustain their communities.

Never in written history have so many millions of people been impacted by the lack of clean water; and never have so many communities been at such a high risk for having no water at all.

Never in history has one creature so tipped the balance of available water, diverting and using water for just a few individuals, leaving many of thousands of others thirsty; never in history have so many people lost their lives in natural disasters as the power of water surges onto land as hurricanes and tsunamis.

Where is God when we feel we are trapped in the undercurrent? There is tension in the waves- in Job, the sea …”gushes forth like a baby from the womb…”  

Just in time for Father’s Day, I have a Calvin and Hobbes story to share with you that relates to our reflection on finding God in the midst of chaos, even in the midst of the environmental chaos we find ourselves in today.

In the comic strip, Calvin was a young boy with an active imagination. His most frequent companion was his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. In most of the cartoons, you would never have known that Hobbes was a stuffed animal, because he is depicted as Calvin imagines him - a tall tiger (Hobbes walks on two legs) that talks to Calvin, and questions Calvin’s actions.  

However, the strip that comes to mind today involves Calvin and his Dad. Calvin’s dad is sitting downstairs reading the newspaper, when he hears water running. Dad goes upstairs and opens the door to the bathroom. Immediately he gets a face full of water, and cries out, “What’s going on?” He blindly reaches around to turn the water off and begins to look for Calvin. Calvin, wrapped in the shower curtain, hides as Dad yells, “It’s the end of the world!”

What if we are the Calvin, with God as our Dad? Could we be the young child, as we spray God’s earth with our pollutants, spraying the precious gift of water around our lives haphazardly without appreciating its worth? And, now that we realize what we have done, are we tempted to hide behind the shower curtain, to hide from God’s glaring and disappointed gaze?

Does God respond in anger to our actions, as the God in the Old Testament, or does God listen to our shouts and calm the waters, as Jesus does in the Gospel reading?

Do we feel the chaos or the calm in our world today?  

Last weekend I attended the Wisconsin Conference meeting for the UCC, focusing on the theme “Living Gracefully.” The workshops provided opportunities to learn how we can respond as a church to faithfully serve as stewards of God’s environment.  

Water has always had a great impact on cultures and countries. Locally, the Great Lakes have faced environmental challenges and catastrophes, as when Lake Erie was so polluted thirty years ago that it was considered a “dead” lake. Just think, a “dead” lake along the chain of lakes - these Great Lakes - that contain 90% of the fresh water in the United States.

At the Conference meeting last weekend, Lissa Radke, director of the Lake Superior Bi-national Forum, talked about several of the issues impacting the great waters around Wisconsin and suggested that “the Great Lakes are not in great shape.”

Today’s Great Lakes issues include the introduction of invasive species such as the Zebra Mussel and, more recently, the Quagga Mussel. (Now I just love the sound of that word, “Quagga.” However, this mussel, which is native to the Ukraine is not to be laughed at.) These small creatures of God are amazing filters of microscopic plants and animals, but with no natural predators in North America, they are turning entire ecosystems upside down.

What can we do individually, and as a church, to address issues of water quality? Those gathered to hear Lissa speak had an opportunity to share what their local UCC church was doing to care for local waterways. A few of the steps taken included installing low-flow toilets, planting rain gardens, using rain barrels, and organizing a church outreach group to obtain stencils and paint “Drains directly to lake” by storm sewers. 

Just to our west, we are connected to the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River. Listen to this story and see if it sounds familiar: In September of 2002, Bill Moyers reported in a PBS documentary that: “The Mississippi River delta is disappearing. One of America's most vibrant and productive ecological regions is slipping into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate... And, as the coast of Louisiana continues to slip away, tens of thousands of lives are at risk from devastating hurricanes.”

Remember, that was in 2002, three years before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf Coast. There, floating with us on this one ship we share together called earth, God’s elegant design was being pulled off course. And we knew about it. Now, if we had responded…we might not have been able to avert the full destruction of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but we could have been making steps in the right direction. But the storms of economics and politics blocked our response.  

Four years ago, in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina revealed to us not only the power of the wind, but the ravages of the sea. Just this past week, the New York Times reported that there were still around 4,000 families in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and another 16,000 families being supported in apartments. Many of the families own homes that were damaged or destroyed during the hurricane.  

Early yesterday morning, vessels of a different sort were loaded up in our parking lot. In our reading from Mark it was ships in a storm. Yesterday it was a drive from Fitchburg heading to Biloxi, Mississippi. Five members of the confirmation class: Adam and Phillip Bessemer, Elliot Schad, Kerstin Scheller-Suitor and Austin Young; and five adults: Pastor Phil, Janine Bessemer, Michael and Beth Magness, and Mary Kay Scheller-Suitor); will spend the week at Back Bay Mission working to help restore the home of a family in Biloxi.

At the same time there was another type of vessel, an air vessel, loaded in Portland, Oregon, as a youth group from the Cedar Hills UCC boarded a plane to fly to Biloxi. The two church groups will be working on home projects together. Previous missionaries from Memorial have traveled to Back Bay mission to help remove mold, hang drywall, fix windows and paint walls. In their work and in the community of people that they meet is the story of what it means to be a church, and to find calm in the middle of the storm.  

Finally, I want to take a moment this morning to talk about one of the events that will be taking place next Sunday morning at General Synod in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The UCC’s General Synod, which is held once every two years, conducts the business of the UCC at the national level and offers a unique opportunity for members of the United Church of Christ to share discussions on a wide range of issues important in the life of the church.  

When you gather here next Sunday, there will over a dozen different discussion groups held to address the wound of racism in the United States that cannot be, and should not be, ignored. There is story after story to be shared: the stories about men and women that are Arab American and/or Muslim facing daily discrimination and racial profiling. Stories of anger as our unemployment rate continues to rise and the undercurrent of frustration directed at immigrants and “illegal aliens” that rises as well. And not since the Great Depression have economic divisions, with the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer, left such deep financial fissures in our communities.

During the Sacred Conversations on Race that will take place at General Synod we will “trust in the Spirit of the living God to do a new thing in our midst.”

Back in the life waters of our mother’s womb, God carefully crafted us from the mystical clay of our genetic code. Stretching and forming us, cell by cell, until the storm of birth pushed us forth.

Throughout the storms of life, Jesus calls on us to pause and to pray, and there, in the stillness, we find that God opens us to become God’s eyes to see what God needs to have done in the world.

God forms us to become God’s hands to do God’s work in the world.

God quiets us to become God’s ears to hear the cries our brothers and sisters who are broken and in need; and God pulses in our very souls to become God’s heart to do God’s healing in the world. As we begin to move forward in the chaos.

God’s love becomes a burst of water, …”gush(ing) forth like a baby from the womb…” and we find that we can fully “trust in the Spirit of the living God to (burst forth and to) do a new thing in our midst.”