Looking Up at Love

Sermons for the Lectionary, Year B, Advent through Eastertide

Bruce L. Taylor

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725261549
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Bruce Taylor's latest publication of sermons for the Common Lectionary (Revised) covers the Sundays and major feast days of Year B, from the first Sunday of Advent through the seventh Sunday of Easter, and includes a sermon delivered for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in an ecumenical setting. Like The Word in the Wind and No Business as Usual, this latest volume is theologically rich, sacramentally sensitive, and biblically centered, while offering a testimony to the unity of the whole church and a deep appreciation of the church's heritage and contemporary relevance. Included here are examples of story sermons, showing how this genre can be used effectively in communicating the biblical witness. Looking Up at Love offers encouragement to preachers seeking to help their congregations discover the treasures of the liturgical year and provides all readers with a devotional companion for faithful reflection on Mark's Gospel and the accompanying Scripture readings commended for use in Christian worship.

First Sunday in Lent

Spanish Springs Presbyterian Church, Sparks, Nevada

March 9, 2003

Genesis 9:8–17 1 Peter 3:18–22 Mark 1:9–15

“Never Again”

It had taken very little time before the first man and the first woman disobeyed God and committed sin. It was almost as if it were in their nature, what happened in Eden, despite the fact that God had judged the whole creation to be good. It had taken very little time before one person killed another—in the very first generation to be born on earth, Cain murdered Abel. It was almost as if it were in their nature, what happened between brothers out in the field, despite the fact that the entire world was theirs to share. And as humankind multiplied, so did the wicked deeds, Genesis says, “[a]nd the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:6 NRSV).

Things had not gone the way that God had intended—a fact that we need to remember when we make sweeping statements about God’s being all-knowing. Presumably, had God foreseen the wickedness of humankind, men and women would never have been created in the first place, just as some parents may regret having brought into the world children who grow up to commit crimes or cause constant heartache. But, having brought them into the world, parental love hopes for the best, looks for the good, agonizes over the hurt and the injury. It is almost impossible for a parent to stop hoping, to give up, to abandon. We have family friends whose alcoholic daughter, now nearing age sixty, has broken her parents’ hearts so many ways, has squandered their loving sacrifices so many times, has hurt so many other people along the way. All logic says, “Give up, you’ve done all you can, you’ve no more to give.” And yet, for the umpteenth time, they seek her out yet again when she has failed to report to a good job, has failed to show up at a family gathering, has failed to respond to calls and letters. A parent’s love.

God once finally decided to give up on human beings and do away with them all, and, in the process, animals, too—to just be done with the whole experiment of creation as a waste of time and labor and, we are led to believe, emotion. “So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them’” (Gen 6:7 NRSV). But even then, a parent’s love, and a Creator’s hope, prevailed over the logic and the pain and the disgust. God decided not to destroy Noah, for, the Bible says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God” (Gen 6:9b NRSV). Would Noah be obedient enough to trust the outlandish task God summoned him to perform?

We know the story—Noah passed the test. “[H]e did all that God commanded him” (Gen 6:22b NRSV). One little shining ray in the gloomy mess the world had become—but it was enough to make God decide that creation was worth another try. And so there came the flood of God’s judgment, but Noah and his family, and two of every species on earth, floated high above the destruction and the chaos in the big boat that God had told Noah to build. The same waters that destroyed all other life were the means by which some were saved. It rained forty days and forty nights, and on the seventh day, the flood came, “[a]nd the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (Gen 7:24—8:1 NRSV). Eventually, the waters dried up. God told Noah to come out of the ark with his family and the other creatures, and life began again on the face of the earth.

Interesting as the story of the flood is, vivid as the images that come to our minds when we hear this tale, the Bible’s main interest in the event isn’t the size of the ark or the age of Noah or the number of days the rains fell. The very fact that we are here to listen to the story is testimony that the most important part of the story comes at the end.

[T]he Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night,

shall not cease.” . . .

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Gen 8:21b–22; 9:8–11 NRSV)

And God set a bow in the clouds to be a sign of the covenant that God made with Noah and his children and with every living creature, for all future generations.

“Never again!” God’s grief at the destruction caused by the very natural divine anger was greater even than the grief God had felt at the wickedness of human beings. And God felt remorse, even revulsion, as when a parent spanks a child too hard, or sees that some administered punishment has alienated a child, justified though it may have been. It has achieved the very opposite of the purpose for which the parent brought that child into the world. And the mother or father thinks, “Never again!” But there is a difference, of course. A human parent may forget the vow that he or she has made. God never breaks a promise, no matter how one-sided the covenant may be.

That was not the last of human disobedience, of course—of evil, of wickedness, of sin, of doing harm to self and others. The righteousness of Noah was not a genetic trait that was passed on to all posterity. Nothing about humankind had changed; the only thing that changed was God’s attitude toward humankind. God acknowledged that the human heart is inclined to evil; that is a hard fact God had to accept. But God’s purpose did not change—the purpose of loving community that prompted God to bring order out of chaos in the first place; that moved God to care about rocks and trees and fish and birds and you and me in the first place; that persuaded God to bear with human sin after the flood, and ultimately to make the supreme sacrifice of his own Son to rectify sin’s disastrous effect. Given our natural makeup, we weren’t going to make everything right. So God determined to make everything right by taking upon the divine soul the judgment we deserve, that any court of law would render, that any other god would impose who did not love the offender as a parent loves a child. Judgment there would be after the flood, but never again would God give up on creation and blot it out. Judgment there would be after the cross, but always for the purpose of redemption, of bringing back the wayward child to the open arms of the loving parent. God would enter the pain and frustration of the human situation, even face the most seductive of human temptations, even suffer fearsome death, out of love for you and me and all creation. No terrible two’s, no adolescent rebellion, no unwise choice in young adulthood, will turn the heavenly parent away from the earthly children. “Never again!” The pain in the heart of God only makes God more determined to save, restore, and take delight in God’s creation.

A lot of people have a hard time with such a notion of unqualified, unconditional, unending love. Their prescription of judgment upon the wrongdoing of others calls for every sort of wrathful punishment God could conjure. There are still some Christians who pray a cure will not be found for AIDS. There are actually Christians who pray for war with Iraq. There are even Christians who pray for the destruction of Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus. The story of God’s change of heart away from destruction and toward faithfulness to the purpose of creation is our assurance that, while God responds to prayer, God will never again abandon the purpose for which the world was created in the first place.

A lot of people have a hard time accepting the notion that God could love them with an unqualified, unconditional, unending lo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• First Sunday of Advent
• Second Sunday of Advent
• Third Sunday of Advent
• Fourth Sunday of Advent
• Christmas Eve (early evening)
• Christmas Eve (late evening)
• Christmas Day
• First Sunday after Christmas
• Second Sunday after Christmas
• Epiphany of the Lord
• Baptism of the Lord
• Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Transfiguration of the Lord
• Ash Wednesday
• First Sunday in Lent
• Third Sunday in Lent
• Fourth Sunday in Lent
• Fifth Sunday in Lent
• Palm/Passion Sunday
• Maundy Thursday
• Good Friday
• Resurrection of the Lord (Sunrise)
• Resurrection of the Lord
• Second Sunday of Easter
• Third Sunday of Easter
• Fourth Sunday of Easter
• Fifth Sunday of Easter
• Sixth Sunday of Easter
• Ascension of the Lord
• Seventh Sunday of Easter
• Appendix
• List of Sources Cited