Amanda Gorman's We Rise and Real Women in Romans 16

  

Amanda Gorman is a dancing poet. And with great grace she moves and moves us with her chant: Here lies, but does not rest, the best / Of tested women who call us all to rise. The Apostle Paul also moves us with great grace. (You can watch her perform her poem We Rise by clicking HERE)

His letter to the church in Rome is perhaps his finest masterpiece. And while many people pay careful attention to the theology that Paul shares in this amazing letter, few wait till the end, Romans 16, to hear him, like Amanda Gorman, speak of “tested women who call us all to rise.” Unlike Paul and Amanda Gorman, I didn’t grow up in a church “rooting” for “women whose silence is broken.” No, armed with Scripture they believed that women couldn’t be leaders and shouldn’t be allowed to speak during worship, read Scripture, or even pray from the pulpit. They kept women’s silence perfectly intact. So I’d like to explore Romans 16 this morning, and ask if Paul wishes to “to bring freedom,” “to bring volume,” and “encourage women who dare to stare fear square in its face.” We’re going to discover that 1) Paul talks a lot about real women in leadership; 2) Paul is gender-inclusive with respect to leadership roles; and 3) that we should read the Bible in freeing way in which women’s silence is broken. This is going to be a fun, deep dive into Scripture. Ready? Let’s get to it.

1.    Paul talks a lot about real women in leadership.

In an important and distinct way, Romans 16 is very different from our poem. Unlike Amanda Gorman, who is addressing and praising all women, the Apostle Paul is speaking directly to specific women, by name. And yet both Poet and Apostle are celebrating women, thanking them, for who they are and what they do. The names and numbers in Romans 16 are important.

Twenty-nine people total are mentioned in Romans 16. But this passage is not a dry list of names that we can skip over but gives insight into the roles and relationships of actual Christian women participating in ministry. Of the twenty-nine people mentioned, ten are women. What is especially amazing is that seven of the ten women are described in terms of their ministry activity and leadership (Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis). By comparison, of the nineteen men mentioned, only three are described in terms of their ministry (Aquila, Andronicus, Urbanus), and two of these men are ministering alongside a female partner (Aquila with Prisca, Andronicus with Junia). Think of the significance of the numbers in this way: Romans 16 greets over twice as many men as women but commends twice as many women as men.

Let’s look more closely at three of these women:

16 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. ² I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.

Paul refers to Phoebe first as both a “deacon” and “benefactor,” of many, including himself. We’ll talk more about the role of a deacon later but it’s important to note that Paul uses the exact same Greek word [diakonos] for himself and other male religious leaders. The word, in other words, is not “deaconess.” It’s not feminized or differentiated from the word that Paul uses for himself or other male leaders. Also, because Phoebe is mentioned first, we know she was the one who brought Paul’s letter to the church in Rome and that she would have been the one to read the letter and then answer any questions that Paul’s words might have elicited.

³ Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. ⁴ They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. ⁵ Greet also the church that meets at their house.

After introducing Phoebe to the church at Rome, Paul goes on to ask that certain Romans be greeted. And who is the first on this list? It is another woman. She is even mentioned before her husband, a designation that most likely indicates that she was more prominent in ministry than him. Priscilla and Aquila were friends of the Apostle Paul and are mentioned six times in the New Testament. They had worked, travelled, and ministered with Paul for some time, and Paul refers to them with his favorite term “co-workers.” When Paul greets the couple here, he also mentions the “church that meets in their house” (16:5). In Ephesus, a few years earlier, Priscilla and Aquilla were leading a church when Apollos, an up-and-coming apostle, arrived with some mistaken notions about baptism. It was Priscilla and her husband who “explained to him the way of God more adequately,” and Apollos accepted their correction (Acts 18:24-26). Again, in this story, Priscilla’s name appears first - signaling that she was the more active one offering the explanation.

⁷ Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

Andronicus and Junia are only mentioned here in Romans. They were most likely a married couple of converted Jews who came to faith before Paul, and had been in prison with him. From the very beginning of Christianity, women, as well as men, were imprisoned and even killed for their faith. Paul himself confesses that prior to becoming a Christian, he had engaged in terrifying violence toward both sexes (Acts 22:4; Acts 26:9-11). The most interesting feature, however, is that they are called “outstanding among the apostles.”

Scripture which heralds a woman as an apostle has been met with disbelief and often creative translations by those who refuse to believe that a woman could be an apostle. Two comments should be made:

·       Some have argued that Paul was writing to Junias rather than Junia making the name male rather than female. The weakness of such an argument is that there is no such name ever recorded in the ancient world. But the feminine name Junia is very common, found in over 250 ancient inscriptions.

·       Other translators have argued that “episēmoi en tois apostolois” should be translated as “well-known to the apostles” NOT “outstanding among the apostles.” The problem with such a view is that there isn’t one clear biblical or extra-biblical example of “episēmoi en” ever meaning “well-known to.” But the overwhelming evidence is that “episēmoi” means “prominent” or outstanding” and that the preposition “en,” which is used 2,830 times in the New Testament should be translated as “in” or “among” in English (c.f. Matthew 6:9; James 1:1). The New Testament scholar Craig Keener writes, “It is unnatural to read the text as merely claiming that [Andronicus and Junia] had a high reputation with the apostles . . . Those who favor the view that Junia was not an apostle do so because of their prior assumption that women could not be apostles, not because of any evidence in the text.”

2.    Paul is gender-inclusive when talking about real leadership roles.

In Romans 16, Paul offers actual roles that real women and men were performing. So let’s look more closely at the words Paul uses to describe those roles. As we study the Bible we must always remember that words matter. When speaking a different language, it can be difficult to get the words right. I once had a friend who was responding to someone thanking him in French by trying saying, “De rien” [It’s nothing], but wound up saying, “Derrière” [Butt]. He got the word wrong!  Let’s not get the word wrong – I don’t want to be a butt. Three words/roles stand out:

Deacon. The Greek word diakonos is one of Paul’s most common words for describing an official agent of the church, often translated in the NIV as “deacon,” “minister,” or “servant.” He uses this term to refer to himself (Rom. 15:25; 1 Cor. 3:5; Eph. 3:7; Col. 1:23) as well as other male leaders (1 Tim. 4:6; Col. 1:7, 4:7-9; Eph. 6:21-22; 1 Cor. 3:5), and even of Jesus (Rom. 15:8). When Paul applies the word to himself and others, like Phoebe, the preaching of the gospel is central (1 Cor. 3:5).

Apostle. Apart from Jesus’ twelve apostles who are in a special class, an apostle in the earliest churches meant a minister who serves as a church planter or missionary. Apart from the original 12 – others who are offered the title are: Paul, Barnabas (Acts 14:14), Silas, Apollos (1 Cor. 1:12), Timothy, Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25) and Andronicus and Junia (Rom. 16:7). In Paul’s letters, apostleship was based upon witnessing the resurrected Jesus, receiving a commission, and preaching the gospel (1 Cor. 15:5-9, 2 Cor. 11:4-6).

Laborers. For Paul “labor” [kopia] and “laborers” [kopos] are common words used to describe Christian ministry and Christian ministers particularly when coupled with “in the Lord” (e.g. Rom. 16:12). He uses the words several time for himself, and in reference to the leadership ministries of others (e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:8; 15:10; Galatians 4:11; Philippians 2:16; Colossians 1:29; 1 Thessalonians 3:5; 1 Timothy 4:10). In Romans 16, Paul uses “labor” for the ministry of four women: Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis.  He further qualifies this labor with the word “hard.” These women were hard workers. Christian ministry could be difficult and even dangerous work in the first century (Paul himself was almost killed numerous times). Even now encouraging women to rise up, means calling them sometimes to “stare fear square in its face,” Gorman reminds us. In 1 Cor. 16:16, Paul tells the Corinthians to submit to everyone who is “laboring” in service to the Lord. He would say the same to us today.

Here's the point: All of the roles and titles for ministry and authority that are given to men are also given to women. None of the ministry roles that Paul discusses are specific to a particular sex or changed for women. It makes sense that God’s kingdom would mirror the original relationships of creation – men and women with the same job description.

3.     Women being freed and their “silence broken” is the redemptive story the Bible wants to tell.

In her poem, Amanda Gorman moves and chants: “In this hour, it is our duty / to find the brave beauty / In rooting for other women / So they too know we are not victims, / We are victors, the greatest predictors / of progress. We press for change, / A new dawn drawn into the open / By women whose silence is broken.”

And for those of us who know our Bibles it’s worth asking, “Is women’s silence broken?” What about 1 Timothy 2:11-12? Should we read 1 Timothy 2’s injunction that seems to suggest that women should not teach men as a sweeping command if Paul will acknowledge real women, like Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia, teaching men, and preaching the gospel? Should we read 1 Corinthians 14 that appears to suggest that women shouldn’t speak in church as a general and broad prohibition if Paul acknowledges and thanks real women who speaking and reading Scripture in church?

At Trinity, we understand that the purpose of reading Scripture is always redemptive, to read it in a freeing way, which means we read it sometimes not by where it is but, as Gorman writes, where it is "blowing." The redemptive story of Scripture places male and female relationships at the center. It begins with a creation that finds men and women in harmony given the same job description without any differentiation of roles. Then comes sin which creates disharmony, sexism, and male oppression of women. But even in the Old Testament God will raise up mighty women to lead like Deborah, Eshter, and Ruth. And prophets like Joel will prophesy women’s return to full inclusion, culminating in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and Paul’s own ministry and proclamation, calling both women and men to preach the gospel.

We must read Scripture in a freeing way because women continue to languish under a curse that was never meant for them. They were made to be partners in God’s great wonderful kingdom. We look to the past, in order to live well and rightly in the present. Gorman’s poem is actually an homage to the great African-American poet, Maya Angelou and her poem Still I Rise. Likewise, we’re not simply talking about our sisters: Phoebe, Priscilla, Junia, and others from Romans 16 but also Caitlin Berney, Tammy Mathis, Brooke Anderson, Briella Mathis, Nancy Gordon, Dawn Taloyo, Carmen Bensink-Lewis, Melody Schultze, and perhaps that young woman or little girl sitting right beside you. So let’s rise up and remember this - a picture that I’ve shown you before – an early mosaic of the resurrected, dancing Jesus pulling both Adam and Eve out of the grave. I want to remind you that Jesus did that in his ministry as well - pulling women out of despair and out of the curse. So let’s join Jesus, chant with Amanda, revere Scripture, and join all women in full partnership and preaching of this amazing gospel that redeems the world and makes us rise.

So I invite you to prayer for . . .

more women pastors.

women who have or are currently experiencing being silenced that they might be set free.

the church that we might no longer live with each other as if we are under a curse.

 

Blinding Questions: John 9, Raymond Antrobus' poem "Miami Airport", and Spiritual Discernment (As your own poets have said . . .)

 

I love Raymond Antrobus’ poem “Miami Airport” (click on the title to read the poem). Raymond is a deaf, British poet with a Jamaican Father and an English mother, who explores the dark subject matter of racial inequality and ableism (discrimination in favor of able-bodied people) through the voice of a prejudicial TSA agent he encounters at the Miami Airport. The poem comes to life in a chaotic and uncomfortable way that grips you as if you’re listening while waiting in line, with your shoes off, about to go through the metal detector at the airport. When I first heard it, I truly felt the terror and vulnerability of it; the ominous marriage of power and prejudice in the form of thirty, manipulative questions. It’s poetic gold and one of the only poems in this series that after having heard it the first time immediately brought to mind a passage of Scripture – the Gospel of John, chapter 9. If one where to point to literary genius in the New Testament – John 9 should be top on the list. For it is in chapter 9 that the Apostle takes a historical account of a healing and turns it into a parable for all of us, a parable about truly seeing Jesus, Scripture, and others. I’d like to take us on that journey, like Raymond Antrobus, by considering the “blinding” questions (18 questions) and how they reflect spiritual blindness and how Jesus brings spiritual sight to help us discern and see God and others rightly. We’re going to see that blinding questions occur when you refuse to look at people and suffering, even while reading your Bible. Blinding questions occur when you proceed from a certitude that denies people’s lived experience. And finally, that people who can see are those who listen to Jesus, refuse to judge, speak humbly of their own experience, and can acknowledge what they don’t know.

1.    Blinding questions occur when you refuse to look at people and suffering, even while reading your Bible.

Curiously, being a disciple doesn’t automatically mean that you aren’t – blind. In fact, you should probably count on it or at least determine that all of us, Christian or not, are prone to macular degeneration. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. It runs in the family. The first disciples struggled with it as well.

It’s the disciples who ask the first blinding question and it’s a question of Biblical blame: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” They are trying to understand what’s right in front of them, work with Scripture (always a critical element of discipleship) but forgot to look at the person. In Leviticus 21:18, for example, states that no priest can serve the LORD if he is blind. Deuteronomy 28:28 identifies “blindness” as a punishment for disobedience to God. The priest Eli (from the book of Samuel) is depicted as losing his sight because he has been disobedient to God, failing to rear his children rightly (1 Samuel 3:1-2). This is in the Bible – they are not spouting off without Scripture in hand, and Jesus won’t have it.

Don’t read Scripture without the Word of God (c.f. John 1:11, 5:36-40). Jesus will state such a position quite strongly: “³⁹ You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ but you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40). It's meant to point to him, should be read like him and with him in mind. And Jesus always read the Bible with a focus on people’s wholeness, their inclusion, their embrace, the belief that every person, no matter how blind, is a site for the “works of God” (vs. 3). If your question is about some issue or doctrine in the abstract, without thinking critically about the teachings of Jesus and people’s lived experience, you will read the Bible blindly – I guarantee it. You will address people blindly. So read the Bible with Jesus glasses, which are tinted to help you see and love God and neighbor. That’s what we mean by stating as a church that we are first and foremost, “grounded in Jesus” – HE is the Word of God who reveals God - what God wants and what God does. It’s what we mean by stating that we are “freed by Scripture.” If your reading of the Bible, doesn’t free you to love God and others, you are reading it wrongly.

But it’s not just the disciples who suffer from a spiritual nearsightedness, the crowd also asks a question revealing their own myopia - that they never really saw the blind man or paid any attention to him. A 2018 poll showed that 67 percent of Americans find it “uncomfortable” to talk to a disabled person, who are 25 percent of the American population. I know we’re talking about first century Palestine and not twenty-first century America in our story but doesn’t it feel right that this same uncomfortability is at work. Think about it. Why doesn’t the crowd recognize him (vss. 8-9)? Why don’t they know his name but call him “man” (vs. 8)? They don’t because they always looked away rather than looked upon. This is why those who advocate for rights for the disabled point out that disability is a social construct. People are not disabled because of bodily differences but because of systemic barriers in a society that "looks away." And that social construct of fear and arrogance, or is it ignorance, make them truly the blind ones like our TSA agent who talks down to Raymond Antrobus and wants him to “prove” that he’s deaf.

If we return to John 9 notice that the only person who “saw a man” was Jesus, even though the disciples were present. It doesn’t say “they saw a man blind from birth” because they didn’t see a man – they saw an issue, they saw a Scripture passage, they saw an idea, but not a man. Funny enough, the only person in John 9 who sees Jesus in return (vs. 37) is the one who was blind. Get it?

Spiritual sight proceeds from a curiosity and ability to listen well to all truth and sources of wisdom. Jesus is the authority and source of wisdom, so is Scripture, and so is people’s own lived experience. If you don’t look to Jesus, read Scripture carefully as that which frees people, and can’t see real people and listen to them, you will be prone to many kinds of macular disorders that will leave you blind and asking the wrong questions. It’s recognizing that when Jesus says, “Humankind wasn’t made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for humankind,” he was teaching us how to read Scripture and see.

2.    Blinding questions proceed from a cynical certitude that denies people’s lived experience.

The disciples and the crowd, we’ve seen, suffer from poor vision. The Pharisees, however, have a much worse problem. They are blind because they simply choose to cover their eyes.

The Pharisees asks invalidating questions, cynical questions, questions that shore up what they already believe to be true. The problem isn’t so much the questions they pose as the position of absolute certainty that they hold. They aren’t merely skeptical – willing to have a conversation and observe evidence with an open mind. They are cynical – refusing to change because of a closed mind. How do you know if you are blind like a Pharisee?

Well, here’s your eye exam in the form of four questions?

Do you make up your mind before you’ve heard all the facts? Do you ever change your mind?

¹⁹ “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”

²⁰ “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. ²¹ But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” ²² His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

John acknowledges that the parents know that the Pharisees have no interests in getting at the truth. They had “already decided.” Our TSA agents questions come from the same posture: “I know what English people, Deaf people, and teachers look like, and you don’t look like any of them. In fact, he’s so certain that he knows that Raymond must have drugs on him that he is utterly mystified by the fact that he doesn’t find them and still believes him to be guilty.

Do you cynically invalidate any experience that is not your own?

A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

²⁵ He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

When I was a young pastor I used to mercilessly mock Gospel tracts as theologically stunted, spiritually vacuous, and hopelessly ineffective. In one instance, I was seeking to impress a group of pastors with my wisdom and wit by lampooning such tracts only to be stopped by an older pastor who interjected and said, “O I wasn’t aware of this. Perhaps it was a mistake that I came to faith by reading a gospel tract that was on the floor of my jailhouse cell.” The irony and deception is the same. I knew the truth with certainty, had great reasons why these things didn’t work, and told them to people often. Too bad, I couldn’t see because I was covering my own eyes.

I’m not saying that experience is always the final arbiter of truth-telling. I’m saying that a lack of experience can often make you blind because of what you haven’t seen.

Do you always presume to teach and refuse to be taught and when in doubt, badger people and use insults?

²⁶ Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

²⁷ He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

²⁸ Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! . . . . ³⁴ . . . how dare you lecture us!

Having been called out for their own blindness, the Pharisees resort to that typical practice when one finds oneself against the ropes. Insult the witness. He turns the tables on them and playfully asks if they want to hear it again so that they can become disciples of Jesus. They erupt at the thought that they need to be taught and instead resort to insults rather than admit they have something to learn.

When you hear something you don’t like, do you want to throw people out?

³⁴ To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. ³⁵ Jesus heard that they had thrown him out . . .

There is currently a sort of anti-curiosity at work in the world. We see it in our political discourse on both sides of the aisle. We see it in our churches, erecting fences over secondary doctrines. We see it in our families, who we no longer visit because ideological conflicts. I recently read about an author I truly like, named Brad Jersak, who commented that on his most recent book tour, he was only cancelled twice. Once, by a group a far-right conservatives who thought that his talk on “loving enemies” reflected a liberal agenda and the second time, by a group of far-left liberals who thought his talk on “loving enemies” reflected a conservative agenda of agreeing to support oppressors. It’s interesting to me that Jesus doesn’t reappear in our story until the one who had been blind has been thrown out. We must learn to sit in the messy middle while we hammer out and discern all that is going on in our world. We will never be able to be the people God wants us to be if we consistently refuse to be for and with one another. If we choose to cling to ideas over people or against people, we will imagine the Pharisaical reality that throwing people out is the only way. Then we will become a community where people hide any and all differences and real experiences for fear of losing what we all care about the most – relationships.

I can sort of hear the Pharisees echoing ominous power of the TSA guard. You think you are healed? You think you are restored? What have you not heard? It moves beyond an inability to see and becomes a willingness to denounce and destroy.

3.    The one who can see is the formerly blind person who listens to Jesus, refuses to judge, tells the truth of his experience, and acknowledges what he doesn’t know. He’s humble and teachable.

We’ve seen that faithful theology must always hold space for unknowing. An unholy reading of Scripture develops when we say the Bible alone without a spiritual center focused on Jesus and a refusal to acknowledge our own lived reality.

Some Christians cynically operate under the premise that humanity is so thoroughly wicked and corrupt that we can’t trust anyone and that the only solution is to have an answer for everything and win every argument. The assumption is that anyone who ask real and honest questions is part of the devil’s plot to sabotage the church’s faithful witness and God’s truth. In opposition to that, Henri Nouwen describes a thoughtful Christian as a teachable person who practices “learned ignorance” (NOTE: the only seeing person in our whole story is the Blind guy who refuses to judge whether Jesus is a sinner and who confesses what he doesn’t know, vs. 25):

These “are not individuals who can tell you exactly who God is, where good and evil are and how to travel from this world to the next, but people whose articulate not-knowing makes them free to listen to the voice of God in the words of the people, in the events of the day and in the books containing the life experience of men and women from other places and other times. In short, learned ignorance makes one able to receive the word from others and the Other with great attention.”

So the invitation for you is to become a person who can see. But perhaps you should first determine which group you belong to? Are you a disciple who has blindly used Scripture in ways that blame and alienate? Are you the crowd who looked away from those in need, turned a blind eye to those who are suffering and need recognition? Are you like the Pharisees? You refuse to change, to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong and have something to learn? I invite all of us to come to Jesus with humility and hope and offer the prayer – Lord Jesus, help us see.

Wonder and Praise (Psalm 104:24-35, the Message) and Li-Young Lee's From Blossoms (As some of your own poets have said . . .)

  

Our poet this week, Li-Young Lee, could not be more aptly nicknamed. In fact, his nickname works for King David himself who wrote so many psalms. He’s called “God’s Hungry Poet.” And Li-Young Lee, a Chinese immigrant to this country, whose father had been Mao Zedong’s physician only to convert to Christianity and become a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania, is a Christian poet with an almost “holy madness” for he watches, watches, watches, looks into things, and finds God everywhere – joy everywhere – a holy message everywhere – even in peaches. His poem From Blossoms (you can read the poem or hear it read by clicking HERE)is the perfect doorway into our sermon text this week: Psalm 104:24-35 (you can read Eugene Peterson's translation HERE), which explores and celebrates a “wildly wonderful world” that God has made and oversees with joy. In the same Spirit of that Psalm, I recently read that Li-Young Lee offered a poetry workshop and instructed all of the participants to go out into the day whispering to themselves the phrases O my Love; O my God; Holy, Holy, Holy—in order to explore the poetry of prayer, the prayer that is poetry, and the poetry of nature that is filled with the grandeur and love of God. Both King David and Li-Young Lee believe that poetry helps us see. I want to help you see three things today.

Go outside – curiously eat a peach – have church!

All this week, the children have gone outside and been spiritually curious. We learned that in God’s wisdom an octopus has three hearts, that butterflies can smell and taste with their feet, and that bamboo can grow three feet in a single day. We dissected owl pellets, conducted experiments with water, and practiced botany identification. What I’m trying to tell you, in other words, is that “We had church.” Psalm 104 was not words on a page. It was our practical call to worship, our liturgy, the sermon.

A curious exploration of nature in which we revel in all that God has made will lead us to praise. When David recognizes that the world is a “wildly wonderful place” made with wisdom, it leads him to sing. That’s exactly the experience of Li-Young Lee who is also writing a hymn of sorts. Notice that both writers offer an “O” of song and praise. The Psalmist announces, after all of the exploration and taxonomy, “O, let me sing to God all my life long . . . O, let my song please him . . . O my soul, bless God” and Li-Young Lee will echo: “O, to take what we love inside . . .” To enter a world that God has made, cultivate a sense of wonder, and enjoy it - IS to worship. In fact, to do so is to join with a God who himself enjoys creation (vs. 31).

From the Jerusalem Talmud there is a quote from Rabbi Moshe that says, “Everyone will be called to account for the all the legitimate pleasures which he or she has failed to enjoy.” To joyfully delight in what God has made, what God enjoys, is to worship which makes the opposite also true. To refuse to enter creation with a sense of awe, wonder, and curiosity is a sort of anti-worship. It’s to be, the Psalmist tells us, a sinner. Likewise, to imagine a world that’s only worth is in being exploited is not a Biblical view. The story of redemption told by Scripture is one which spawns from God’s creative delight for all that God has made and NOT its worthlessness.

Do you want to know God and delight in God? Read God’s second book. That was how the late medieval church described the natural world. That it could serve as a means of knowing God and knowing ourselves. Do you want to know yourself and God better? Delight in a peach, pet a dog, go fishing, take a hike. Do you want to encounter the wisdom of God? Curiously attend to an earth overflowing with wonderful creations. That’s a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. To run around the earth screaming, “Look! O wow! Look!” That’s why Jesus will teach us about the love of God while looking at birds and describe the work of the kingdom while talking about plants (Matthew 6:25-33, 13:29, 31-32).

What is the wisdom of creation? That all of creation can be a way of knowing God and ourselves and offering worship. The earth was made to be a healing community created by God. The earth was made to be church and science agrees.  UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science center, supported by rigorous scientific inquiry, promotes “awe walks” to increase people’s health and overall well-being. An “awe walk” is a stroll in which you intentionally shift your attention toward the natural world instead of inward. You pay attention not to an internal conversation or problems but to the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of creation. You go with a child-like wonder and feel the sponginess of wet leaves under your shoes, or look at the dappled shadows of light on the path, or watch the swaying of a tree in the wind. Scientists noted that a 15-minute awe walk per week created a noticeable change in the mental and emotional health of adults – lowering stress hormones, blood pressure, even creating a less-polarized political vision in participants. But researchers were also baffled by an amazing feature. They asked participants to take selfies at the beginning, middle, and end of each walk. Analysis of these photos revealed a visible shift in how participants portrayed themselves. The awe-walk group increasingly made themselves smaller in their photos over the course of the study, preferring to feature the landscapes around them. At the same time, the smiles on participants’ faces grew measurably more intense. They were visibly embodying a posture of humility and wonder akin to worship. It’s what we were made for. To eat a peach, Li-Young Lee announces, and move from joy to joy to joy.”

“All the creatures” are Spirit-filled.

What comes through Psalm 104 so strongly is what is referred to by anthropologists as TEK (traditional ecological knowledge). And a fundamental element of TEK in ancient cultures is that all parts of the natural world fit together. The Psalmist declares that all created realities only have life because we all share God’s living Spirit. In the Psalm we, and by “we” I mean human beings, are humbly connected to all of creation. We don’t so much receive a special role over creation but must take our place with all of creation. We are “all” of us, dependent upon God for food. We are, all of us, given life by God’s own Spirit. And we are, all of us, grown by God “in bloom and blossom.” Without God, the Psalmist declares, we would, all of us, “revert to original mud.”

That deep interdependence is the realization that Li-Young Lee experiences. He has the deeply spiritual insight that the peach which is he holding comes “from hands” that placed them in a bag, hands that painted a sign marked peaches, hands that picked from “laden boughs,” and peaches that, like us, share fellowship, shade, sun and dust.

Science confirms the Psalmist’s theological truth that humans are part of an shared ecosystem. Our bodies are part of nature and respond to nature in beneficial ways. For example, sound waves coming off of streams, and moving bodies of water, activate the vagus nerve and calm us down. There are chemical compounds in nature, like the smell a flower or tree bark, that activate parts of the brain and the immune system. Our bodies are wired to respond in an open and empowering way to all of creation. Science becomes one more piece of evidence supporting ancient Scriptural wisdom that we are a part of nature, connected to it, interdependent on it. And that leads us to the odd discussion of “sinners” in a passage about the beauty of nature, the joy of God, and the mutuality of all of creation. The Psalmist prays, “But clear the ground of sinners – no more godless men and women!” Who are these sinners and how does God “clear the ground” of them?

One of best Old Testament scholars argues that Psalm 104 reveals that the “sinner” is one who doesn’t delight in creation as God’s work nor find within it a shared existence of mutual dependence. It’s someone who refuses to wonder at the world, live in awe, and worship. And so how does God “clear the ground of sinners”? Well, by transforming them through the same love and wisdom that gives life, food, and breath. The love that creates all wonderful things, like peaches, is the same love that seeks to convert people to love God and love others through Jesus Christ. God clears the ground of sinners by sending Jesus who announces the good God of creation come to set us free, who feeds birds and tends to plants out of love. And that’s my invitation to you now.

“Taste and see that the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

One of the invitations and, I think, perhaps the main invitation of Psalm 104 and this poem, is to go beyond words and ideas and actually come and taste something — since peaches aren’t in season, a strawberry will have to do — and then to recognize the interwoven connections that God is good and that we are all gathered into the taste of this sweetness. Let that taste itself be a poem that you’re living in, an expression of God’s delight and goodness toward you. When you taste the strawberry remember that the love of the Father in the story of the prodigal son is the same love that made these sweet strawberries, the evergreens, and you. We are to experience the physical sensation of delight and to reflect upon the deep recognition of a wonderful God who in the crucifixion and death of Jesus wishes for us to “live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.” The same Jesus, whom we worship, the Apostle Paul declares, created and sustains everything (Col. 1:16).

So we are going to listen to Li-Young Lee’s poem one more time. Hear it as a Psalm of praise to the triune God. Then Harris will sing Creation Song (you can listen to the song by clicking HERE) and, at that time, you are invited to come forward, to take a strawberry, taste it, and give praise and thanks to God.