"with you i am well pleased..."

Anna Blaedel
01.11.09
Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1:4-11

On Christmas morning, I opened a package from my dad. Inside were three light bulbs. Three CFL bulbs, or Compact Fluorescent Lights. My dad is known in my family for occasionally giving strange gifts, sometimes accompanied by cryptic notes requiring deciphering and, often, loud groaning. Three energy efficient bulbs. Ok, I thought. Do my part in a small, tangible way, to reduce my carbon footprint, use energy more efficiently. I value reducing, reusing, and recycling. I have read that CFL bulbs decrease energy consumption and reduce the of the greenhouse gases warming our planet and causing explosively destructive weather patterns. Replacing the bulbs in the parsonage has been somewhere on my To Do list since moving in, not quite high enough to have gotten done, but high enough to be a source of guilt whenever I thought to look at my regular old light bulbs, and each time I pay my monthly utility bill.

Three bulbs seemed like a good place to start. It wasn’t until I was packing up my car after Christmas, ready to return to Osage, that my dad alerted me to the symbolic nature of the three bulbs. And started hauling up from the basement the six bags full of CFL bulbs, enough to fill each light fixture in this big parsonage, enough for every room, every lamp, every chandelier…

Like the abundantly overflowing blessings and blessedness we read about in Genesis and Mark this morning, this Christmas I received the gift of light bulbs, flowing and overflowing. Each day, I climb on a chair or stool or counter, and replace a few bulbs. This has become a prayer time, of sorts. Doing my small part to care for the creation God gives us, to reduce my negative impact on the earth that God calls good. Remembering that I needed my dad, that we need each other, to remind us how we can live more faithfully. Remembering that we can always learn new ways to live more faithfully as stewards of God’s blessings, God’s creation. I could not help but connect this daily practice with our lectionary texts when I read and prayed this first story of creation in our scripture.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” Especially, it seems, when the light comes from CFL bulbs…

Let us pray: Come, Holy Spirit, come. Come as the light and reveal, come as the fire and burn, come as the wind and cleanse, come as the dew and refresh, come as the dove and bless. Convict, cover, consecrate, and care, until we see that we are wholly thine…

Hear this poem, written by Sally Hoelscher, written after re-reading this morning’s gospel text:

“You are my Son, the Beloved,” the Spirit proclaimed
Affirmation descends in the shape of a dove.
Love exists in human form.
“You are my child, the Beloved,” the Spirit murmurs
Reassurance washing over me in moments of joy
Sustenance seeping into me in periods of despair.
“Each person you meet is my child, the Beloved,” the Spirit reminds
Blessing flowing around me in the faces of loved ones,
Challenge beckoning to me in the cries of those in need.

In the beginning…of Genesis, in the beginning…of Mark. In the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in the beginning of our ministry… In the beginning, God creates. And then, God blesses creation. And God calls it good. In the beginning, the Spirit sweeps across the water—the waters of the earth, the waters of the Jordan River, of the womb, of our baptism. God pronounces blessing, over it all, in it all, through it all. And God sees that it is good. And God calls us to see that it is good. And God shares this good news with each and every one of us: “You are my child, Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

I have read these words, heard these stories, of creation and Jesus’ baptism, many times before. You have read these words, heard these stories, many times before. And, I believe, God knows we need to hear these words, receive this good news, return to this original blessing, again and again and again. Let it sink down straight into our bones, seep into every crack and crevice of our fractures hearts and lives and world. Pour into us, the way water pours, moving around every contour, resting and pooling and ready for use.

“Affirmation descends in the shape of a dove. Love exists in human form.”

As I prayed over and poured over and studied these words this past week, I could not help but see their connection to, well, everything. From CFL bulbs to cloth shopping bags, from environmentally friendly ice remover to reusable coffee mugs, from how we see ourselves, to how we see each other.

There’s a line from a play I saw recently. A mathematician, working with high theory and formulas far beyond my comprehension, blessed by brilliance, says, “The whole world is speaking to me.” Everything he saw, every person he met, every event and interaction and encounter, became new data for his formulations, new signs and symbols for his process of meaning making. “The whole world is speaking …”

When, with every breath, we receive God’s blessing anew, the whole world is alive with God’s original blessing. When, in everything we see and encounter, we search for signs of this blessing, we cannot help but see the world differently. The whole world begins to speak to us of God’s blessing—holiness seeping through holes, the beloved, born among us.

In the beginning, God is creating. Sweeping over the face of the waters, covering the face of the deep, shaping the formless void into light and darkness, day and night.

And in the beginning of the Gospel story, we meet John the Baptizer, a strange character wandering through the wilderness, covered only by camel’s hair and a leather belt, eating bugs and honey. In the beginning, through a strange character wandering around, proclaiming forgiveness and new life, God blesses. And like the waters of the seas, the rolling river Jordan, these blessings flow and overflow…

Do you believe any of this? Do you buy into it, any of it?

I do. or, I try to. Our baptismal claiming and naming as God’s beloved children, with whom God is well pleased, is at the center of my theology, the center of Christian theology, the center of our understanding of salvation, offered in and through our relationships with the Holy. And yet, I forget and I fail. I meet someone who is strange, who is cantankerous or pushy or difficult or argumentative or belligerent or arrogant, and I quickly come up with descriptors other then Blessed and Beloved. Do you?

Or, I look at the fields around us, drink the water from the tap, eat the food grown from this land and see the wide open sky and watch the sun fade, and I forget it is the very earth we meet in Genesis. Created by God as blessing, created also to bless us. The face of the deep, the template of God’s handiwork, the canvas of creation.

Or, I face my own failures, see only what remains undone on my To Do list, berate my own brokenness and forget to see myself as God created me. Forget to look for, let alone find, in my own face, the image of God, reflected.

Our creation story calls us to remember. The waters of our baptism carry us still. “Just as Jesus was coming up from the water, the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This is our task, as baptized Christians. Through our baptism, we enter Christian ministry. You are all ministers, all called into ministry. And like the dove greets Jesus as he emerges from the River Jordan, God greets us each day. “You are my child, Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” How do we live into this blessing? Live out from this blessedness?
In the beginning, of each day, remember your baptism, and be thankful. When life seems good, when everything is hard, when the sun is shining and when the ice seems like it will never thaw, when you are prayed up and when you are spiritually deflated and defeated, when you respond with love and compassion, and when you find yourself grumpy, cranky, and cantankerous: remember you are blessed, God’s beloved, called good, with whom God is well pleased.

And remember, when you meet someone on the street, or find yourself cut off in traffic, or are last in a long, slow moving line, or when you encounter someone strange or read a news report or see a mug shot or pray about people living in war torn lands of Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza and Zimbabwe and Congo…this person, that person, the one you know and the one you’ll never meet, is blessed, God’s beloved, called good, with whom God is well pleased.

And, remember, when we are tempted to pump more chemicals into the ground or buy another plastic container rather than reuse the old or use Styrofoam because it is easier or drill for more oil rather than look at why we use so much, so unnecessarily: remember this earth is blessed, God’s beloved creation, called good, our place of residence and worship, with which God is well pleased…

“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, Our God made them all!” Each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings, God made their glowing colors, and made their tiny wings. The purple-headed mountain, the river running by, the sunset and the morning, that brightens up the sky… Beautiful, beloved, blessed. Remember, and be thankful.

Back to the bulbs…Replacing a single regular light bulb with a CFL will keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the bulb’s lifetime. If everyone in the US switched only one light bulb, the greenhouse gas savings would be equivalent to taking more than 800,000 cars off the road, permanently. And, each bulb saves about $30 in electricity costs over the bulb’s lifetime. If you still aren’t convinced, the OMU is offering a $2 rebate per bulb, if you buy it locally. And Hardware Hank’s has a special—5 bulbs for $10. With the rebate, the bulbs are free.

In the beginning…Jesus, the Beloved, love in human form. You, me, God’s children, Beloved. Receive this reassurance, allow this sustenance to seep into your soul. Each person you meet, God’s child, Beloved. Blessing us and calling forth our blessing and challenging us to find sacred connection. The earth, God’s sacred body. Calling us to tender care, good stewardship of the sacred creation.

Thanks be to God. May it be so. Amen, and amen.