(Sermon audio available here.)
We open our Bibles to the book of Genesis and find ourselves at the beginning of an epic story. It's all here: excitement, daring, love, risk, reward, a drama that causes strife, heroes and heroines who set things straight (for a time), hope and redemption.
This is The God Story. But it isn't just a fairy tale of what might have been or a history of what was: it's a story that continues, and we all have our part to play.
In Tolkein's epic story, The Lord of the Rings, two young hobbits, Sam and Bilbo, find themselves in the scariest place they can imagine, charged with the task of saving the world. "I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?" Sam wonders.
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We may wonder the same thing. We know there is much that has come before us, we wonder what will come ahead, and we wonder what our role is in this story.
The first chapter of Genesis tells us of creation: how God created the earth and the sea and the stars and the plants and all creatures. And how God created man and woman in the image of God and called them good. We read these words and we seek assurance that this isn't just some story. That our lives are not just some random act of the cosmos, or some cosmic mistake. And then we see glimpses of something so extraordinary that all attempts to assure us that God is a myth fade away.
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We are beloved children, created in the image of our God. And God desires a relationship with us. Here, at the beginning of this epic drama, we see the goodness that is bestowed upon creation. We learn of a God who desires to be in relationship with us. Read on, and you'll learn of the sin that keeps us from being in right relationship with God.
Keep reading. You'll hear many tales of our failures and our moments of clarity as we strive to be in right relationship with God. You'll read of God's disappointment in us and God's deep sadness over our mistakes. But you won't find the chapter where God stops loving us. You won't find the verse that says, "And God loved them no more." Instead, you'll find that God loved us so much that when we turned away and our love failed, God came to earth in the form of a man, our Savior, Jesus.
It's an epic story. This Lent, we'll take a little piece each week. This week, you are invited to follow the thread that says that God desires to be in relationship with us. How are you building your relationship with God during this Lenten season?
Frederick Buechner writes:
The season of Lent invites us to consider anew our relationship with God and our part in this epic story."It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name....That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.”
May we play our parts well.
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