When the world falls apart what do we do?
What are the words that need to be heard?
What can be said to make things better?
What can be spoken to bring holiness to desecration?
The liturgy that brings restoration of things profaned?
This is a sermon I won’t be preaching, the Bishop has his visitation so I won’t be preaching. It is a wonderful gift, he will be at the early liturgy as well, I just found out, so I get to just “go to Church” for a change and to participate but not to lead. A rare Sunday for me.
This is also that rare Sunday when we hear the reading from Exodus with the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, the Ten Words.
The Word is spoken, the word is speaking creation back together when it is falling apart.
God speaks and creation begins again over and over.
Ten words that bring creation back together again.
I used to treat them like ten rules, that if I get them right then God will like me.
I don’t think that now.
I think they reveal God, the God who brings life back when death has taken over.
Ten words that bring life back, that restore what was profaned.
Ten words that reveal God, that fill the world with holiness.
What do we do when things fall apart?
I see that word speaking, a community giving blood, carrying the wounded to safety, honoring the dead, putting things back together, not like before, never like before, more deliberate now about the gift of living and honoring one another as gifts from God.
The Ten Words are alive. Can you see them? Can you hear them? They are speaking creation out of the nothingness that always seeks to devour us.
“The word of God came to so and such”, one of the prophets, scripture says that over and over again. God speaks and life happens. The word has come to us. Be that life that happens when things fall apart.
This is a sermon that I won’t be preaching, it isn’t finished. Finish it for me.
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