(107) Of

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Of”, originally shared on April 15, 2021. It was the 107th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What do Joseph of Arimathea, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Sienna and Simon of Cyrene all have in common?

   While you’re giving that some thought, we invite you to join us to consider another question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” And to consider that maybe they’re the same question because everything is connected. Today we’re going to stretch your imagination. Prepare to have your mind. Blown.

   The Johnson and Johnson one-and-done COVID-19 vaccine is off the table for the time being. You are twice as likely to be struck by lightning as to have a single adverse reaction to the vaccine, but scientists are checking to see why the very few reactions have taken place and what can be done to prevent them.

   Speaking of Johnson & Johnson, what does the name “Johnson” mean? Son of John. “Of” as in “descended from”, “belonging to the family of”, “a part of”, like Frederickson, Davidson, and Jefferson mean son of Frederick, son of David, and son of Jeffrey.

   D’angelo means of the angels, Darcy means of the French region of Arcy, and DeMille means of the Hamme-Mille region of Belgium.

   Look up the word “of” in a dictionary and you’ll see things like a preposition, “expressing the relationship between a part and a whole” as in “the hem of his garment” or “belonging to, relating to, or connected with someone or something, or the depravation of something.

   The word “of” expresses the existence of a connection.

   So, what do Joseph of Arimathea, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Sienna and Simon of Cyrene all have in common?  Same middle name. (I crack me up. 😊)

   No, they all belonged to something greater than themselves.

   “Of” is a very small word, but it is cosmic in its meaning.

   It means that there is something greater than me that I am a part of and connected to. It means that I belong. We were, in fact, created for belonging.

   Have you ever wondered why anything exists? Not how everything was created, but why.

   The Bible’s book of Genesis, in my opinion, is not interested in how things were created. Ancient people were not interested in the “how?” questions of a scientific age. In Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7, we read:

*Genesis 2:7

   The ancient world would have been way more interested in the fact that God breathed life into the dust of the ground and it became a living being than what process God used to accomplish that.

   They would have been more interested in the “why?” and “what?” questions about the beginning, or Genesis, of human existence. That is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” “What can the answer to that question teach me about my nature and purpose?” and “What am I supposed to do with my life?” 

   The Bible begins and answers those questions at the beginning.

   In the beginning, God created everything out of nothing. And when I say “nothing” I mean nothing. No matter, no time, no space. It’s impossible to wrap our heads around that. It’s mind-blowing. Human beings only encounter nature in time and space. Things have substance. Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But God started from nothing. Nothing. God created everything that exists as an act of God’s will. God spoke and it came to be.

   There’s an old story about the devil challenging God to a test of power. The devil says, “The Bible says that you created humans from the dust of the earth. So what? I can do that, too!” And as he leans down to scoop up some dust God says, “Woah! Make your own dirt.”

   If the universe was created with the Big Bang, where did that exploding mass come from? Can something come from nothing?

   God made us for a living relationship with God, unlike anything else in Creation, and made us to be good managers and caretakers of everything else. But, for our “Yes” to that living relationship to be real, we had to have the ability to say “No”. And we did. And evil entered the world.

   We are the rebellious children of God. We belong to God, and God loves us, even when our deeds are evil. God’s desire, and God’s will, is that we the children of God, return to that living relationship with the one true living God, the relationship for which we were created and live in-accord with that relationship. When everybody but one family forgot about God, God destroyed humanity and started over. When people built a tower to reach into heaven as a monument to their greatness, God destroyed their tower and confused their languages.

   When the world, except for one couple, Abraham and Sarah, forgot about God, God did not destroy it but built a great nation from their faith so that that nation, the nation of Israel, might proclaim God and be a blessing to the nations. God liberated that nation from its slavery in Egypt. People still did not return to God.

   God gave them the Law in order that they might know what a relationship with God looked like and they mostly ignored it. God sent prophets, priests and kings to the people of God to virtually no effect, at least not for long. But God gave them the promise that a great liberator would arise as a suffering servant. Then God went silent for 300 years.

   And then the liberator appeared in Jesus Christ. But the people expected someone to liberate them from the Roman Empire that had, like many empires before them, occupied the land that God had given to Israel. So, when Jesus announced that he had instead come to liberate them from the effects of everything that separated them from God and to restore them to the living relationship with God for which they had been created, their leaders balked. And when the Romans saw him as a threat to public order, they conspired to crucify him.

   But Jesus was fully God and fully human. They didn’t take his life. He gave it and his death was the means by which the forgiveness of our sin was accomplished, and the relationship was restored not because human beings restored it, but because God took our punishment and restored that relationship at the cross.

   Our acceptance of that gift, and our baptism means that we are now all adopted. We are now children of God. We are connected, and we belong not by our actions, but by God’s.

   We are one body with many members, the Body of Christ, the Church. All of us throughout the world and even beyond time are one Body with many members. Christ is the head of the Body.

   We belong to the Lamb of God. This is the one of whom John the Baptist said, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29b)

   The Streams of Living Water that flow within us, the Holy Spirit, creates the Body of Christ and calls us to our true selves in a living transformative relationship with the living God and in the lives of service that results from the indwelling presence of God.

   Paul writes in the third chapter of his letter to the Galatians, starting with the 27^th verse:  

*Galatians 3:27-29

   I saw a cartoon once where two professors were looking at a blackboard filled with a long equation, but in the middle were the words, “Then a miracle occurs.” One of the professors is saying, “I think that middle part needs some work.” We can’t solve our problem, our separation from God. We need a savior for that, and he does his work in the miracle of the cross, for God didn’t destroy us but loved us so much that he gave his life for us so that everyone who believes in him might be saved. That is the miracle of God’s love, God’s suffering and death. The ultimate statement that we belong. We are loved.

   “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ”, Paul says,

   Paul continues that section of Galatians with Chapter 4 in these words:

*Galatians 4:1-7

   “Of” is a little word, but when it points to what God has done and is doing, making us children of God and heirs of God’s promise that we are put right with God by faith, by the living relationship with the one true living God that Jesus, the Lamb of God, makes possible at the cross, by the streams of living water that is the Holy Spirit at work within us as the Body of Christ, “of” is everything.

   This pandemic has left many of us wondering where we fit anymore.

   Open your heart and receive God’s gift of relationship or be renewed in it today. By God’s grace through faith and baptism, you belong. You are a child of God.