RCL Proper 27A
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Fifteen years or so while I was still teaching at Vancouver School of Theology, Archbishop Lawrence of the Diocese of Moosonee invited me to lead the fall clergy conference in his Diocese. If you’re not familiar with the geography of the Anglican Church of Canada, you may not know that the Diocese of Moosonee is in north-central Ontario. That autumn was beautiful in this part of Ontario where lakes dot the countryside.
There was one such small lake right in the heart of the retreat centre with the clergy conference was being held. Every day was bright and crisp. The trees were beginning to change colour and the horizon was filled with yellows, reds, purples and every hue in between. Because Moosonee is quite large and the clergy often live at some distance from each other, Archbishop Lawrence always built in a lot of quiet open time for the clergy. Friends could meet over coffee. Opportunities to discuss matters privately with the Archbishop were plentiful. What I remember of that conference was the sense of space and quiet.
One afternoon there was a long break after lunch. The Archbishop had scheduled time for him to meet with various regional groupings of clergy. He sent me off to enjoy some quiet time for myself. I sat down on a large comfortable rock on the lake shore. All the tall grass around the lake had dried and was waving in the wind. I noticed two insects, some form of crane fly I think, flying in and out of the stalks of grass. They were linked together, obviously a male and female mating. Every once and a while they would land on a stalk for a minute or so. I watched them for more than an hour, I in silence in the warm sun, they flying around. They landed at roughly the same height every time they stopped. I was fascinated by this dance of life.
When I shared this experience with several of the clergy at dinner, one of them from an aboriginal community in the region told me that the elders looked closely at where the insects had bored a hole and laid their eggs. It was, he told me, a reliable indicator of how the snow would be that winter. And a voice said, “Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard, their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world.” [1]
When the Psalmist declares that “(the) heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows the divine handiwork”, the memory of those insects in Moosonee came flooding back into my consciousness. How do they know how high on the stalk to bore and lay their egg? They weren’t haphazard in their actions but quite deliberate and regular in the height they chose from the ground. But the other amazing thing is the patient observation of aboriginal people who put two and two together. Who was the first person to realize that the emerging larva in spring were all emerging from locations above the winter’s highest snow line?
One of the disadvantages of urban living is that city dwellers often fail to observe the signs all around us that reveal the glory of God. True, many of us have gardens, some large, some small, some boxes on our balconies and patios, but, for the most part, we rely on things we can control such as heat, light and other aspects of our environment. Is it any wonder that for many of our peers the world does not declare the handiwork of God?
I am always amazed at religious people who see faith and science at odds. To me being a scientist is as holy a vocation as being a theologian. Both the scientist and the theologian are probing the mysteries of the kosmos, the evidence of a God who, for reasons still not fully known to us, chose to make room for us. All things, seen and unseen, reveal the self-giving and steadfast love of a wisdom beyond our ken.
But human beings, of all God’s creatures, have both the capacity and the propensity to work against the balance that God has embodied in the kosmos. For that reason, we need something more than the natural law to understand how we should live in this wonderfully inter-dependent creation of the Holy One. Today we heard the ‘ten words’, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, the foundation of Torah, God’s Instruction, Wisdom and Law. For us it is not enough to know that we are made in the image of God, we have to know how to grow into God’s likeness in our hearts, our minds, our soul and our strength. The Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law of Moses that flow out of them were meant not as boxes to be checked off, but as guides to shape us into fully alive human beings.
For Christians the heritage of Moses and the People of Israel is not denied in Christ. Christ himself says many times that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. In Christ we see a human being fully alive, a brother who became a servant for our sake, so that we might find our true selves. The Law, the Prophets, the Christ guide us just as surely as God’s wisdom continues to guide crane flies in Ontario to lay their eggs safely. We’re just a little more difficult to guide, not because, unlike crane flies, we a lot more stubborn and stiff-necked.
Life in a religious community such as ours, following a tradition that reaches back over a thousand years or more, opens us to recognize the self-giving love made known to us in creation and how day by day that same love remains constant in calling us into right relationships with one another, with the creation, with the Creator. But all human beings need
· the perfect law that revives the soul,
· the sure testimony that gives wisdom to the innocent,
· the just statutes that rejoice the heart and
· the clear commandment that gives light to the eyes. [2]
So let’s find a comfortable rock to sit upon so that we can watch nature reveal the glory of its Creation. And then may we find a company of saints with whom to live, work and pray so that we may be as faithful as the least of God’s creatures in showing forth the wonders and the love of God.
