“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.” (Genesis 1:1-2) These are the words that describe the beginning of God’s work of creation. But they could just as easily describe how we humans feel at times, perhaps like some of you are feeling right now. We exist on a planet that is hurtling through space at 107,000 kilometers per hour. We are surrounded by mountains, trees, and rivers, plus buildings, roads and other things humans have built. There are people all around us, and things for us to do and places for us to go. And yet, there are seasons when, for reasons which we may not fully understand, we feel formless and empty, and darkness envelopes the depths of our soul.
Now, at this point, it is important for me to acknowledge that there is such a thing as clinical depression and it may sound like that is what I am describing, but I am not. I am referring to that state of being that happens when we become unmoored from any sense of meaning, being and belonging. When it feels as though everything is meaningless and nothing really matters. When we think that we are all just accidental combinations of carbon-based matter that are seeking to survive, reproduce, and then die in this harsh, uncaring and sometimes brutal world. So we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But after a while, even eating, drinking and trying to be merry loses its appeal, and we hunger for something more. But is there something more?
There is, and we know that because of the next phrase recorded for us in the Bible, “…and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:2) God was there in the midst of that empty and barren wasteland, and he did something about it. God created in the midst of that empty and barren wasteland. He said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. He spoke the sky, the oceans and the dry land into being. He spoke the sun, moon and stars into existence. Just by saying so, God created everything that exists from UY Scuti, the largest known star in the universe with a diameter of 1.2 billion kilometers[i], to nanobes, the smallest living organisms, which are 1/10 the size of the smallest known bacteria.[ii]
And then God did something really special. As amazing as God’s work of creation is up to this point, the Bible does not say the following about any other living creature. Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)
Humans beings may look a bit like monkeys and sometimes we even act like monkeys, but we are not the same kind of being as a monkey, because monkeys are not made in the image of God. There is something profoundly different about human beings. There are certain characteristics that are in us that are not in any other of God’s creatures, and we share those special characteristics with God because he put them in us. God placed human beings in this world to serve as his representatives who naturally reflect God’s love and character into the world as we gently and reverently care for his creation.
This is the ideal and it does not take much of a survey for us to see that the world in which we live is not ideal. There is war in the Middle East and in Europe. The high cost of living means that more people are homeless and dependent on food banks to survive. High housing prices and interest rates mean that the dream of home ownership is becoming impossible for many. The death toll from toxic drugs far outstrips that of the Covid-19 pandemic and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can be done to stop it. And then there are the “regular” things that happen in human life such as illness, accidents, suffering and death. It is no wonder that many people conclude that life is meaningless, because if you take things as they are on a surface level, life is meaningless. We need the Holy Spirit to recreate what is broken.
But let’s go back to those words that brought hope into the world’s initial darkness: …the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God’s Spirit was there when light was separated from darkness and form, structure and life were brought into this world. And the sin, frailty and weakness of human beings since then has not undone the goodness of God or the wholeness and healing he has planned for humanity in the future. Down through the ages, there were always people whose hearts were filled with faith and their eyes were directed upward toward the One whose image they bore. With the Spirit of God hovering over their souls, they clearly saw the brokenness in the world and in themselves, yet they were not dismayed by it. Their hearts were anchored in a deeper truth: God had created the world, God will redeem the world, God will restore the world, and they will be part of that restoration. This was God’s promise to them and they believed it. They lived as if that promise was really true, because it really is true. It was true for God’s people in Old Testament times, and it is true for us today. We know that because of God’s Spirit who creates new things, new possibilities, and new life.
God’s creating Spirit was with God’s people down through the ages, giving them special abilities that were needed, like the gift of leadership for Moses, the gift of craftsmanship for those who constructed the Tabernacle, and the gift of wisdom for King Solomon.
And then God’s Spirit did something unexpected and extraordinary. He descended upon Jesus when he was being baptized by John. I don’t know about you, but the question that pops into my mind when I consider this event is “Why? Why would the Holy Spirit descend on someone who is God the Son in human flesh? It seems unnecessary because God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have always had perfect fellowship with each other.”
But when we ask this particular “Why?” question, we are failing to understand what Jesus was doing when he came into this world. He temporarily set aside all the use of his divine powers to come to earth, wrap himself in human flesh and become like us in every way, including in our need for God’s Spirit within us. As he began his mission among humanity to seek and to save all that was lost, the one and only perfect human being who ever lived in this world still needed the Holy Spirit within him. Jesus could not fulfill the task that God had given him without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, Jesus could not confront evil and drive out demons, he could not teach about life in God’s Kingdom without the Holy Spirit, he could not resist the devil’s temptations, and he could not hang from a cross to pay the full cost of forgiveness for all sins of all people throughout all time. Jesus lived a perfect human life, and yet he still needed the Holy Spirit. That suggests that us less-than-perfect human beings need the Holy Spirit even more than Jesus did.
Over the holidays, I had an opportunity to read one of Henri Nouwen’s books, With Open Hands, which is about prayer. What made an impression on me was that, as Nouwen was writing about prayer, he was also emphasizing our need for conversion. Here is one example of that dual emphasis:
“To pray means to stop expecting from God the same small-mindedness which you discover in yourself. To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, “I am human and you are God.” At that moment, conversion occurs, the restoration of the true relationship. A human being is not someone who once in a while makes a mistake, and God is not someone who now and then forgives. No, human beings are sinners and God is love. The conversion experience makes this obvious with stunning simplicity and disarming clarity.”[iii]
Dear friends, the challenges we face, no matter how big or small they may be, are not our biggest problem. The fact that we are trying face those challenges with only our own strength, wisdom, and resources, that is our biggest problem. We need the Holy Spirit.
We need the Holy Spirit to give us faith to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of all our sins and the promise of resurrection life. We need the Holy Spirit to help us to believe that we have a Father in heaven who truly loves us, who only wants what is best for us, and is actively working to make all things work together for our good. And we also need the Holy Spirit to help us believe.
The end of one year and the beginning of another is a time when many people are open to change. A review of the year gone by can reveal things that need to change and the New Year offers hope that those changes could happen. Weight loss programs and fitness clubs offer solutions, but by the middle of February about 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions tend to give up on them. Trying to improve your physical, mental, financial, or social well-being is all well and good, but trying to address them at a surface level will never work. We may desire a better life and commit to new habits to help us get to that better life, however if nothing changes at the core of our being, none of the improvements we try to make are going to stick.
That’s because our identity needs to change. And our identity is shaped by the core stories we tell ourselves, especially the stories we have in our heart about God and about ourselves. So what stories do you tell yourself about God? Is he a distant Father that shows up from time to time but is never around when you really need him? Is his main role to point an accusing finger at you when you have done wrong, but you have to look elsewhere for the love, encouragement, and affirmation you need? Do you tell yourself that God’s main goal must be to make you miserable because things are not working out the way that you want them to? Some of our stories about God are so dark and buried so deep within us that we are not even aware of what they are. It takes God’s help and some brutal honesty for us to dig up those stories, bring them into the light and admit that we have been holding them in our heart. But we need to do this hard work so that the healing we need can begin.
And it is for healing that we really need the Holy Spirit. We cannot heal ourselves. We need the same Spirit who brought light into the world as it was being formed to bring the light of God’s love into our dark and gloomy hearts. We need the same Spirit who enabled Jesus to do what God the Father was calling him to do, to enable us to do what God the Father is calling us to do. We need the same Spirit who changed the course of history by working in the hearts of people like Bezalel, Oholiab, Moses, and Solomon, to change the stories we believe in our heart so that the story of our life can be set upon a new and better path, with a much greater and grander conclusion.
On the evening of November 26th of last year, Iris Paguia-Portillo, along with her husband, Josafat, her daughter, Natalia, and her brother, James, were traveling toward their home in Whistler after attending a church gathering when they hit a patch of black ice. The car spun out of control, hit a tree and Iris was the only one who survived. How does one carry on after such a traumatic event? For Iris, it was her faith in God and the love and support of her church community that made it possible for her to do that.[iv] Last Sunday, a mere five weeks after the accident, Iris gave the message at her church, Christ the Living Stone Fellowship, in Whistler, and her theme was “Pray, Trust, Release, and Have Peace.” That’s an important message at any time, but it is especially profound when it is being shared by someone who lost 3 members of her family just five weeks before. She ended her message with these words, “May he use us, may he walk with us, O Lord, may we see things through his eyes, for he is so good… it’s eye opening when you start to see things through his eyes. It’s different. And that’s why, you know, a lot of people always ask me. “Why? Why are you so happy? Why are you not depressed? And I say, because God is so good. … God is so good. And he is almighty, and he is sovereign, and his words are absolute. Amen.”[v]
The challenge that I am setting before you today is to see things through God’s eyes. To do that you will need to stop measuring God’s love for you by your circumstances and start asking the Holy Spirit to help you look at your circumstances through the lens of God’s love. And when you are able to see your life and the world through God’s eyes, it will transform your life for the better. Because that is how we live the rich, full, abundant life that Jesus has for us, by having the heart, the mind, and the eyes of Jesus Christ. Amen.
[i] Olivia Munson, “What is the biggest known star in the universe? Its radius is 1700 times larger than the Sun’s”, USA Today (Internet; available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2023/02/16/largest-star-universe-red-hypergiant/11075755002/; accessed January 3, 2024).
[ii] “Nanobe,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (Internet; available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobe; accessed January 3,2024).
[iii] Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands: Bring Prayer Into Your Life (New York, Ballantine Books: 1972), 54.
[iv] “Sole survivor of Sea to Sky Highway crash on how faith, community are helping her unimaginable grief,” BC CTV News (Internet; available at: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/sole-survivor-of-sea-to-sky-highway-crash-on-how-faith-community-are-helping-her-unimaginable-grief-1.6670397; accessed January 3, 2024).
[v] “Pray, Trust, Release, and Have Peace,” Christ the Living Stone Fellowship (Internet; available at: https://fb.watch/pllSi36CYR/ [starting at 1:26:38]; accessed January 3, 2024).
(This message was shared at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church on January 7, 2024. For more info about our church, please go to wglc.org.)
Farewell to Shadowlands 