Menuha

A homily on a Rogation Theme by Evelyn Wheeler, Lector

Delivered on April 27, 2008

Olivet Episcopal Church, Franconia, Virginia

Texts:

Ps 104, vss 1-2, 10-14, 25, 28-29, 31, 37

Jeremiah 14:1-9;

1^st Timothy 6: 7-10, 17-19;

Matthew 6: 19-24

Let us pray – Source of all wisdom and truth, you gave your people your law so that we might live in harmony with each other and with the Earth.  Help us to see that nothing you create is unclean in your eyes.  Guide us into all truth and righteousness, so that our children and our children’s children may dwell sustainably on your holy ground.  In the name of the Creator, the Savior, and Wisdom.  Amen.

[Hold up Bible]  What is this that I am holding up?

Yes, this is the Bible, the book we use to learn about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Scripture, which the Episcopal catechism says “contains all things necessary for salvation.”

This book contains much more than that, of course.  It contains sermons, stories, philosophies, prayers, promises, praise, lamentation, teachings and lessons, historical forays, and it constantly makes reference to the world outside its covers.

Is it the only book that God has given us?  Is it the only source of our information about God?  Is it the only way we experience God with us?  No, no, and no!

You know it and I know it; this book, wondrous as it is, is not the whole story.

This book contains all things necessary for salvation, but its authors knew very well it did not contain all things necessary for life – it could not.  You’ll find the fruit of the spirit in here, even the story about the apple in the Garden of Eden, but you won’t find one of these [an apple] in it [hold up apple] – not an ordinary, red, round, shiny apple you can hold in your hand and you can eat.

This book, and all it contains, has only limited value if we do not heed and grapple with all it has to say.

This book, and all it contains, has no value at all if we do not apply what it teaches us in our own lives.

And by looking around us, at our own lives and each other’s lives, can any of us honestly say we truly value this book in all the ways we live?

I don’t like to admit it, but I cannot.

In the very first story in this book, in Genesis, we read that God created everything.  Day by day, something new, that had never existed before, was brought forth.  Each day closed with God seeing how good it was.  On the fifth day, God told the living creatures to be fruitful and to multiply, just as God told humans to do on the sixth day.  And on the seventh day, God got to sit back, to, metaphorically speaking, put his feet up on his new footstool, and just simply enjoy all that he had made.

The Hebrew word here for God’s reaction to creation is “menuha” – it is a restful state of enjoyment.  We get flashes of menuha when we create something good – if we are artists or musicians or craftspeople or writers or parents and we create something new and it is good work, we take pride and enjoyment, mixed with a little humility and awe and smiles – we are engaging in menuha.  This is how God views the entire creation, and God wants us to be in the same state of enjoyment, as the images of God that we are.

But what happens instead?  We forget who we are!  Adam and Eve were beguiled – as we are sometimes beguiled – into thinking they could possess the knowledge of God.  They were wrong, and if we dare sometimes to think if it had been us instead of them, we’d have known better, doesn’t that make us more like them than we’d care to admit?

They forgot menuha.  They put their own desires ahead of God’s.  They came to desire more.  More than they needed.  More than the garden could support.  More than heaven could support.

The same story is repeated again and again throughout the Bible – people always desired more –

            More power

            More land

            More goods

            More sheep

            More warriors

            More money

And we see God, in those same stories, trying over and over again, to get the people to understand that God is the only true object of our desire, not more stuff. 

In the Old Testament reading, Jeremiah uses a lengthy drought as a vehicle to teach the people that God is sufficient to their needs – and that their duty is to confess their sins and plead with God for rain.  The two acts go together.  When the people were in extremis, turning to God in this way seemed natural and right.  Yet, as we know, their repentance was short-lived and Judah subsequently fell to Babylon as the Northern Kingdom had fallen previously to Assyria.

We turn to God when in trouble, but are we so quick to turn to God when things go well?  Or do we begin to think we have a right to having things go well for us?  Is God’s sufficiency enough for us?

Remember in the Exodus when there was no food, God even fed the Israelites heaven’s own food in the wilderness of Sinai, and they craved the gardens of Egypt.  They would have given up all they had won and gone back to a hard life of slavery, just to have “more.”

Let’s face it – people just want more!

More variety, more excitement, more new things, more options, more independence, more freedom … more authority … more power, more riches, more status, more importance…

Greed and pride, or, in the old words, gluttony, avarice, and arrogance, are all too obvious attributes of being human.

We are the people we have striven so long to become in our endless quest for more – we are the destroyers of God’s creation.  We negate God’s creative acts. The land is desolate, with whole mountain tops removed for coal and soil washed down the rivers through industrial agriculture.  The seas no longer team with fish or the air with birds or the land with wild herds.  Creation itself is in extremis and all life – our own included – suffers.

In this morning’s excerpt from the letter to Timothy, we learn again the dangers of wanting too much.  We are urged instead to be satisfied with enough – with food and clothing.  The desire for anything further is suspect and dangerous, and the overweening desire to be rich simply leads to ruin. 

And God wants it to stop.

And how does God tell us to stop?  In Jesus’ own words, which we heard read just a few minutes ago – “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” where it cannot be lost, destroyed, or stolen from you.  The Matthew passage contains several answers to this question. 

“Where your treasure is, there your heart is.”  Our “treasure” is the thing we expect to see us through – kind of like a pension fund or a savings account.  If we think it’s going to be our only means of support, we’re going to be giving it a lot of our attention.  Maybe to the detriment of other things that might see us through – like our families, our friends, or our relationship with God and all God has done for us.

Jesus goes on, “The eye is the lamp of the body.”  In the day, the eye was considered to be like a window, letting light into the rooms inside the body.  An eye that was healthy and clean meant a soul well-lit; an eye that was unhealthy and not clean meant trouble – deceit, jealousy, and prejudice – in a body, and soul, “full of darkness.”

Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters.”  With the unclean eye, deceit, jealousy, and prejudice give us a distorted vision of what has value.  We are unable to understand or appreciate what God offers, and we value the wrong things – all those “mores” I spoke about earlier.

How do we make sure our “eyes” are healthy, that our “windows” are clean?

I said at the beginning of my talk that the Bible is not the only book that tells us about God.  Remember the enjoyment God has for the Earth, his menuha that he invites us to enjoy as well?  Creation is the second book, the one God wrote without humans, the second book humans are to read, mark and inwardly digest.  Jesus himself said, when asked about the Kingdom of Heaven, “Consider the lilies of the field, look to the birds of the air.”

As far as we know, we are the only creations that see creation, that are able to “consider the lilies” and “look at the birds.”  Scripture tells us about the importance of creation, because creation tells us and constantly reminds us about God and God’s continuing, sustaining love for all that – and whom – he has made.

All we have to do is remember who we are, to recall who made everything, and that our calling, like God’s, is to engage in menuha – and, like God, to work to ensure that every part of God’s creation – including ourselves but not excluding everything else – is given the chance to fulfill the mission God gave it as well as us – to be fruitful, to continue in life.

To love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves means to love and care for the earth that we live on and are a part of, that sustains us, and that we all need – including the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the homeless, the victims of war – to care for the creation in which we are fellow creatures, but made in the image of God.

Made in the image of God – let’s just think about that concept for a moment.

To my mind, to be made in the image of God means…

§  We have the desire for good – for all of creation

§  We have the ability to see and appreciate beauty

§  We have the capacity to love and care for one another and for all the world

§  We have the power to change our perspectives and our lives

§  We have the obligation to do the right things

§  We can engage in menuha!

As we leave Olivet this morning, we are invited to do just that – enjoy creation!

Let us pray:  Lord our God, you renew the face of the earth and bring newness to our world:  Restore the waters, Refresh the air, Revive the land, Breathe new life into all your creation, and begin with us.  All this we ask you, through the Holy Spirit, and in the name of the one who came to save all your creation, Jesus Christ.  Amen.