Symbols

Lent 1B, 2/22/15
Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15

God, you have established your covenant with us, your people. As your kingdom draws near, help us repent and believe the good news.

Have you ever noticed that the church seems to have its own dialect of words and symbols? I like to call it “church-ese.”

When we use words like “sacrament” or “consecration” or “epiphany” or “parament,” we make it hard for newcomers to understand what in the world we are talking about. We sometimes assume that everyone knows how to “share a sign of God’s peace” or that purple is the color of Lent.

In today’s children’s sermon we learned about the paraments and how (and why) they change color for the different seasons of the church year.

So, as you can tell, I plan to spend at least a little  time teaching our children some of the churchy words that they might encounter here.

But I also think it’s important that all of us learn why we have these symbols, and what these words really mean... and at some point it’s important to consider whether we should keep using these words and symbols or not.  

If we know why we follow a particular tradition, then we can prayerfully consider whether we still actually want to do it.

And if we understand the meaning of the churchy words, then we can define them for newcomers who might be confused by our lingo.

So. Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent.

There’s the first churchy word to define.

         Contrary to popular belief, Lent isn’t defined by giving things up.

Lent is a 40-day period of repentance – of refocusing on our relationship with God. Lent helps us prepare for Jesus’ death and resurrection, which we honor every year during Holy Week and Easter worship services.

During the season of Lent, we will encounter many symbols. For those of you who were here for worship on Wednesday, we saw the first symbol of Lent then. On Ash Wednesday, we received the sign of the cross in ashes on our foreheads.

Those ashes remind us that we were made from the dust of the earth – and when our lives are over, we will return to the dust from which we were formed.

The ashes in the sign of a cross remind us that we are children of God, tied to God’s family through our baptism.

The cross is another symbol.

We were marked with a cross of oil or water at our baptism.

On Ash Wednesday that sign gets retraced.

At the beginning of Lent we remember that we are only human – we are not God, but we are God’s – we belong to the family of God and the body of Christ.

Towards the end of Lent we will be inundated with more signs in worship. Palm branches will remind us of Jesus’ kingship when he enters Jerusalem.

The Passover meal shared by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper carries all kinds of symbolism. Some of our children will learn about this at the Communion class today. Each item of food, the words that are spoken, and the very fact of the celebration of a Passover meal all connect the Jewish people with the defining moment of their identity, when God rescued them from slavery in Egypt.

The symbols continue through Holy Week. On Good Friday Jesus will carry a cross – a sign of torture and death – while wearing a crown of thorns – a sign of royalty turned into a painful tool of punishment.

Religious symbolism was nothing new in Jesus’ time, however.

Today’s first reading describes one of the earliest stories in our tradition.

The book of Genesis, chapter nine, has some very important and lasting symbolism.

Today’s passage covers the end of the Noah story. I’m guessing you remember the beginning. God was unhappy with the people because they were constantly being evil and sinful and basically not following the lifestyle that God wanted them to live. Out of desperation, God decides to start over.

It’s like the world is an electronic device that God can’t get to work right – so God turns it off then turns it back on again.

God chooses Noah’s family as the best of the bad people in the world, and tells them how they can save themselves from the destruction that is about to come.

Noah and his family and a pair of each kind of animal enter the huge ship that Noah built, and from there they weather out the flood that God sends to the earth. All other living creatures are destroyed. 

I'm not sure why we use this story with kids - it's really not a nice story.

Finally, after all the destruction, the waters start to recede and the ark comes to rest on dry ground.

Now enter our Bible lesson from today.

God makes a promise to Noah and to Noah’s descendants and to all living creatures. God’s promise is that the world will never again be destroyed by a flood. In other words, God rebooted the creation with Noah’s family, but if people start making God mad again, God will find other ways to deal with our sinfulness. Complete and utter destruction of the world is out. It’s been done once, and it won’t happen again.

And then God hangs up his bow. You know, a bow as in a bow and arrow. Can you see the resemblance in shape between an archery bow and a rainbow?

God’s bow hangs in the sky as a symbol that God is not at war with humanity. God will not destroy us again.

Whenever the rainbow appears in the sky, it is a sign of God’s promise to Noah, and to us.

Now, of course, it is also true that rainbows are what happens when light shines through water, and the various wavelengths of light are separated, dispersing the colors into the full spectrum of a rainbow.

But just because there’s an explanation for something doesn’t mean that it isn’t a sign from God.

Just because we can explain how a baby is made and comes into the world, doesn’t mean that a birth isn’t a miracle.

Just because we can explain how certain species came to be through evolution doesn’t mean that God didn’t intend them to be that way.

And just because we can explain how a rainbow is made, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a symbol of God’s promise.

That’s a lot of negatives.

Basically, something can still be a miracle even if we know how it happens.

You know, it is easy to be jealous of the characters in today’s Bible stories.

         Noah gets to talk with God and sees a sign of God’s promise to all humanity.

Jesus sees the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and is waited on by angels in the wilderness.

         Where are these signs when we are looking for them?

Many of us have doubts about our faith.

Why can’t God give us a sign like Noah and Jesus got, to help us when we don’t know what – or whether – we believe?

Here’s the thing.

We do still get the signs.

Every time a rainbow appears in the sky, it can still be a reminder of God’s promise that the weapon has been hung up and there is no war between God and people any more.

Seeing a rainbow may not always feel novel to us, but the rainbow does still carry that meaning.

Likewise with the sign of the cross, and ashes, and the crown of thorns.

The symbols of Christianity exist to help remind us of God’s presence and God’s promises throughout history.

The reason we’ve held on to all these insider symbols in our tradition is that someone, or probably lots of someones, found it to be meaningful.

Believe it or not, having purple paraments for the season of Lent has helped some people with their spiritual growth.

Obviously, though, the color of the tablecloth is not the most important symbol in Christianity.

There are many other signs of our faith that we encounter on a regular basis.

         Take Communion, for example.

Every week, when we share the bread and wine together in worship, we are reminded of God’s grace and forgiveness, and our own membership in Christ’s body.

As the students will be learning today in Communion class, sharing this meal isn’t something that we do just because we’ve always done it. Communion is something we celebrate because it brings us closer to God.

Communion is another symbol that has multiple layers of meaning.

Is it bread and wine or flesh and blood?

It’s both.

Is it a sign of God’s promise or the actual body of Jesus?

It’s both.

Why do we keep such a confusing tradition alive?

Whether you’re talking about Communion or another religious symbol – the reason we keep them is because they provide ways for us to meet God up close and personal.

For Noah, the rainbow brought him closer to God.

That is always the intention of our Christian symbols, and even of our complicated church-ese language.

When our words or our symbols start separating people from one another and from God, that is when they must be scrutinized.

That is when we might decide that it’s time to change our tradition.

So here is my hope for us during this season of Lent. I hope that we are able to open our eyes and our hearts and our minds to see God in new ways.

When we encounter church traditions, we can experience them deeply, and when we see symbols and signs around us, we can meet God through them.

I also hope that we are able to be attentive to the need of the outsider or newcomer among us. The language of church is not intuitive, so maybe you and I can serve as translators for people who are still learning the language.

Most importantly, I hope that we will experience God’s grace and forgiveness somehow during these next 40 days, whether through a traditional ritual or a brand-new experience.

God does continue to work in our lives, a little at a time, drawing us in and helping us grow in faith. That is today’s good news and that is my encouragement to you this Lent. I hope that we all will be able to see the new and old and exciting ways in which God works in our world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.