January 20, 2008

The New Way

by Julianne Stokstad

You might think it's the middle of January, but here in the church we are in the middle of the Season of Epiphany. Epiphany, the time of seeking the light of Christ, revealed to us as it was to the Magi following their star to the baby Jesus. We too are invited on a journey to find a new way, a new perspective, a new and stronger faith and Jesus. I've always found one of the best parts of any journey is coming home, because upon returning home, for just for a little while, one sees it with fresh eyes.

Returning home just a few days ago from my Antarctica adventure to sermon writing, I have found the task hugely humbling. How can I possibly speak of God, for who knows God? Surely not me. How dare I do this? The task is so daunting, that anyone who tries can only fall short. And yet at the same time I know my task is to try and also to allow God to use me in ways I cannot fathom. So here I go, leaping into the unknown, come along with me.

It was quite an adventure to go to Antarctica even if it was a cruise. Our ship was a very small one. As most of you know, I was very concerned about the trip because I am highly prone to motion sickness, even in a car or an elevator. How could I make it through the roughest sea passage in the world, the Drake's Passage from Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctic Peninsula? It is a two to two and a half day journey depending on the seas. Charles Darwin wrote in his diary in 1833 of the passage: "The sight (of the waves)...is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril and shipwreck." When we got on the ship, I noticed thick steel plates with dinner plate sized holes secured over the front facing windows on the fifth level, the very top of the ship. I asked the Expedition leader what they were and she told me they were for the strong seas. In fact she said on the last voyage they hit a hurricane with 100 mph winds and waves of 90 feet. Only two people on the whole ship were not seasick. It was so bad that they locked everyone in their cabins to prevent them from harm. Oh boy, I thought, but we were blessed. We had fabulous weather-we had calm seas on both our passages to and fro and also two completely bright sunny days while in Antarctica, which is highly unusual. The captain remarked our group had great weather karma, I said we had a whole church praying for us.

Aside from the challenge of getting there, Antarctica is truly other. It is like no place I had ever been. It is the last place on earth to be explored, only for the last hundred years at that. It has no permanent human settlements, other than a few decaying whaling stations and a couple of very small research stations. The Antarctic Treaty has designated it as a place of peace and science. It is a vast wild unexplored continent, stretching human imagination. It is a place of extremes---extreme cold temperatures, rapidly changing weather even in the height of summer when the sun hardly dipped below the horizon for a brief two hours. The mountains rise right out of the sea, dark and black, with glaciers creeping off their flanks, calving with great loud cracks and booms into the waiting icy waters. The bays are filled with icebergs of fantastic sizes and shapes and eerily glowing turquoise blue even on gray cloudy days with a kind of inner light I'd not seen before.

The Antarctic Peninsula is the banana belt of Antarctica. We were taken to bays and islands where there was lots to see. Because our ship was so small, we were able to get into places where other ships couldn't. We made twelve landings in six days seeing lots of wildlife, especially penguin rookeries, with baby penguins. The first place we landed in the South Shetland Islands, the beach had lounging seals, many Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins and the very first thing I saw was an Antarctic skua (a brown seagull-like bird) flying right in front of me carrying a baby penguin in its beak. It landed up the beach and we watched it consume the penguin as we walked by. Life is raw here. Yet, surprisingly, the animals are not afraid of humans here. They have no memory of being hurt by us. We had up close and personal encounters with a variety of seals, even the dreaded leopard seals that lay snoozing on icefloes. We saw humpback and Minke whales and were thrilled by three curious Minke whales who played around our zodiac boats. While we saw lots of living things, there are only a very few species who are adapted to live in this harsh unforgiving environment.

Perhaps one of the most incredible experiences was to go to a place where humans have had hardly any impact. It was a pristine environment. As we spoke to each other, trying to absorb what we were experiencing, we found we couldn't really put it into words. I called it stark. We all found its pristine, the untouched beauty incredible. It was raw, mysterious, dangerous, and extreme. From my journal, " I feel there is danger lurking around each corner-the skua patrolling the penguin colonies, watching for one moment of carelessness. I know if I fall in the water, hypothermia would set it quickly. There is a thin yet tough thread of life here. This place is pure, pristine, unaffected by humans except for climate change. In some ways the feeling I have about this place is like I have about God-awe for the grandeur, a sense of mystery, a clarity about how much bigger this all is than me."

When I thought about God in Antarctica, the God I found was rather like the Old Testament God, distant, huge, awesome, powerful, and very much other. This God is big and scary, silent and POWERFUL. Upon returning home I find the Antarctic as a metaphor for God not at all comforting. The God I found there points to the Great Beyond. It was no cozy Mother/Father God there. The wildness of God I felt there was not sweet or tame.

As we humans try to grasp, understand and explain God, we use our own experiences to do that. When we think of God as the patriarch in a throne in the sky we are projecting images from our own experiences of power on earth on to God. Growing beyond this, it is too easy to make God not human, abstract, like a physics force or a philosophical concept. When we describe aspects of God: energy, love, mystery, life, ultimate cause, I find that not satisfying. I want more. I need God-Revealed to me in a way that in my humble humanness I can grasp and understand.

I want connection. I want relationship! I want Jesus!

And so let me go back to our scripture from John. Earlier in the first chapter of John we read words paralleling the creation passage in Genesis. We hear this familiar passage on Christmas Eve. It is God's word creating the universe, the earth and us. We celebrate that God's word takes on human form in the person of Jesus.

As Christians, we believe that God is more than an abstract force. We believe that God became incarnate in human flesh. We know God is not only out there, distant, cold and powerful, but God is in here (in our human heart) closer than our breath. Not only is a relationship with God possible, it is essential for us. It is this relationship through Jesus the Christ that brings the infinity of God to us. I want Jesus. I don't understand this but I know that I yearn for this relationship.

Jesus is the God-Revealer. Our scripture tells us about this. But perhaps more importantly we have human experiences of this relationship, witness we call it, that also tell of the living God, here with us, NOW. The Holy Spirit, energy of God, whenever we encounter it, brings change. Whenever anyone meets Jesus, lives change, lives are healed, lives gain meaning and purpose and God's peace comes.

In the scripture Jesus asks those who will follow him, "what are you after?'

Come and see and make up your own mind. Whatever it takes to get you to listen, when you find you are seeking something more stop and recognize what it is.

Consumerism, the latest gadgets, wealth, power, position, all these things of the world fail us. That which sustains us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, is the relationship with the living God, the God incarnate, the light that never goes out.

For me, it was the trip to Antarctica that brought forth my deep yearning for Jesus, for the living way to God. Perhaps it was the metaphor of the cold, distant powerful God that didn't feed me. I want a relationship. I want closeness. I want Jesus.

Our Expedition leader's last word to us was this quote from Doris Lessing:

"The world is only tolerable because of the empty spaces in it. Millions of people all crowded together, fighting and struggling. But behind them, somewhere, enormous empty places. Man needs an empty space somewhere for the spirit to rest in."

The Antarctic empty spaces made me recognize I need relationship, connection with the living God. What is it you need and yearn for?

[HOME PAGE] [SERMON INDEX]