(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Go S.L.O.W.”, originally shared on April 5, 2021. It was the 104th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Streams.
Living. Of. Water. What do these words mean both separately and together? Today
we will consider how S.L.O.W.ing down may be the most important thing that we
can do at this point in the pandemic.
Christian communities gathered in person, in
some form, all over the world, for the first time in over a year yesterday. We
are anxious to get things back to whatever the New Normal is, but we may also
be jumping the gun. Health experts are concerned of a fourth wave of virus
surges and are advising caution.
Yesterday was Easter Sunday. For many, even
some Christians, the emphasis was on Easter Brunch, Easter Eggs, Easter Candy,
Easter Baskets, pastel colors, lighter weight clothes and spring colored
clothing. The SAG (Screen Actors Guild) awards were held and televised last
night, Easter Sunday, as was the Lakers/Clippers game.
For Christians throughout the world, it was
much, much more. It was the Sunday we celebrated The Resurrection of Our Lord. It
was the most important day of the Christian year. It was the focal point of the
day. We went to worship, or we worshiped from our homes. Channel 5 ran a
program called The Unexpected Easter, produced by a church in Wichita, Kansas,
and filmed also in an arboretum in Oklahoma. It featured the kind of
entertaining music one expects from some large evangelical churches, and a
straightforward proclamation of the Easter event, the resurrection of our Lord,
and its meaning, which I really appreciated.
It included an invitation to make a decision
for Jesus, and that’s the part that made me the most uncomfortable. I believe
that the most important part about salvation, being saved from the consequences
of our sin, from death and from all the powers that defy God, is not what we
do, but what God has done for us on the cross. Died. For us. The resurrection
validates what happened on the cross. It tells us that Jesus was who he said he
was, fully God and fully human being, not one of the hundreds, even thousands,
of other people who the Romans crucified, but the cross is the main event of
human history.
I believe that it is more important that God
has decided for us, that we, in our sinfulness, cannot come to God but that
God, in the Holy Spirit, comes to us and makes us a new creation in the gifts
of our faith and of our baptism.
My guess, though, is if I were to say that
before the producers of the 30-minute video, they would say that that’s what
they believe, too. The challenge is how to communicate God’s work of salvation
to the increasing numbers of people who are starting from nothing in a way that
is credible.
How do we communicate the good news in a way
that makes sense to people, especially people who don’t know anything about God’s
work for people’s salvation?
I believe that human beings do have a role
to play in salvation. It’s a mystery, but it’s not random. Who is saved is
unknown to us. How people are saved is not. That’s why we celebrate Easter
Sunday, The Resurrection of Our Lord. It’s the good news of salvation.
Our part is to repent of our sin, the Sin
that separates us from God, to turn away from what is killing us, and to turn
toward God and follow the work of God in drawing us nearer. We can only do this in the power of the Holy
Spirit. We accept the gift of God. We open it up and unpack it. We receive its
benefit. That’s all we do. That’s why it’s good news or, in Greek, gospel.
We call our videos Streams of Living Water.
“Streams” because we were live streaming on Facebook, and because “streams of
living water” is one of the Bible’s metaphors for the Holy Spirit.
We read in Jeremiah, the 2nd
chapter starting at the 11th verse:
*Jeremiah
2:11-13
And in John 7, starting with the 37th
verse:
The Holy Spirit, as 16th century
Church reformer Martin Luther describes it in his Small Catechism, “call,
gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies (NOTE: makes holy) the whole Christian
church on earth and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”
In a time of isolation, at the beginning of
the pandemic, we wanted to point to that work making us Christians and “keeping
us united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”
We are never truly alone when we are united
with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. And, we are bound together with
baptized believers of every place, and even of every time, in our common
relationship with God in the work of the Holy Spirit.
That work continues, especially as we now
move out of the isolation and begin the stages of safe gatherings in what will
be the New Normal. How do we communicate it?
Streams of Living Water could be abbreviated
as S.O.LW. Those letters make up the word “slow”. But, that would make our
focus on Streams Living Of Water. The word order is jumbled, Streams Living of
Water, but the concept still makes sense. In fact, sometimes we have to reexamine
how our lives are ordered in order for them to make sense.
That’s where we are going with our videos, blog
and podcast.
Over the coming weeks we are going to Go
SLOW. To go slow doesn’t’ mean to get lazy or to produce less. It means to reexamine
how our lives are ordered.
We are learning new technologies to help us do
just that. We will be getting out of our home and into the communities that we
serve, the communities of LA County and the nearby counties.
The prophet Isaiah, speaking for God as God’s
prophet, spoke “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and
your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2)
Sometimes we have to go S.L.O.W., Streams
Living Of Water, to see the Streams of Living Water that God has made present
for us if we have the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it.
We want to look both inward and outward to
see God’s work in our culture and our lives and to share it with others. How do
we communicate what we are learning? How do we reorder our lives so that they
make sense?
“Why do you spend your money for that which
is not bread, and
your labor for that which does not satisfy?”
People can work hard but not get very far. Furious
activity is not necessarily a sign of progress. We can be spinning our wheels
or just running in place.
Bruce Dern, the actor (some might know him
as the father of actor Laura Dern) once ran, or attempted to run, the Badwater
Ultramarathon, 100 miles across Death Valley. His wife drove his support
vehicle. I read an article in which he described the point where he thought he
had entered a dark, enveloping fog. He heard a voice that said, “Bruce, stop.” He
thought he was hallucinating. “Bruce, honey, stop.” “Bruce, touch your forehead.”
He touched his forehead and saw blood on his fingers. He thought he was pushing
through the pain, totally focused. But his wife later told him that he had
become so exhausted that he was just running in place. The capillaries in his forehead
had come close to the surface to find air that was cooler than his body. He had
been sweating blood. The capillaries had burst when he touched them.
Likewise, people get thirsty in the deserts
of life. We say we get “dry”. Who do you know that is spiritually dehydrated? Who
do you know that is spiritually thirsty?
We can slow-down or slow-up. It’s the same
thing. Going S.L.O.W., Streams Living of Water, gives us a look at the bigger
picture, an opportunity to reexamine the order of things in our lives and
reevaluate our vision.
You may have heard the advice to “work
smarter, not harder” in your life. Sharpen your axe. Be a life-long learner.
Streams of Living Water allow us to do those
things.
Streams represent an abundance of something
that is rare in a Mediterranean climate. Living water was another way of saying
“rapids” or roiling water. Living water moves fast, it pushes at its banks and
erodes them. We are not longing but moving. Living Water cannot be controlled.
It can be polluted with the things of this world, but it cannot be destroyed;
it’s still there.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit. It creates
something that the world cannot see. We are born again in the Holy Spirit.
Luther
also described the work of the Holy Spirit by saying, “I believe that I cannot
by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to
him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with
his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith.”
The psalmist writes, in Psalm 46:10, “’Be
still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in
the earth.’”
Streams of Living Water, the Holy Spirit, is
God. It embodies not our work, but the work of God, and God is glorified.
Yesterday, early Easter Sunday morning, we
put lilies on our mailbox. Easter Lilies are associated with the Resurrection
because they are bulbs that are hidden in the earth until they bloom, but they
are not death turned to life. They are reminders of the transformed life made
possible by the Resurrection’s validation of Jesus’ giving his life on the
cross and then taking it back again.
Jesus
says, in *Luke 12:27-32
What can we do?
Turn away from that which is killing you, repent of that which draws you away from God; turn around and grow into that which draws you to God and toward life, resurrected live. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water. And go S.L.O.W.
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