The floods have lifted up their voice
Mark 16:14-18
Job 38:1-12, 26-30
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 2nd September 2007
It is Spring – the Season of Creation!  Today, of course, we are acutely aware of environmental risk. The world is a fundamentally different place to what it was. No theology worth the name can ignore the challenge of environmental action and policy. So over coming weeks to the end of September we will be considering our witness to Creation, our stewardship of creation. In the morning services we will be joining in the Season of Creation focused on oceans, fauna, storm, social justice, animals.
Who is the gospel for? To whom is the message of Jesus directed? Is it for the faithful gathered in their places for worship? Is it for everyone? According to the commission of Jesus in Acts 1 the disciples are witnesses to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 sends the disciples out to preach the gospel to all the nations. The Commission to the disciples in Mark’s gospel says that the disciples are to go out and to preach the gospel to the whole creation!
In the children’s talk I asked whether a tree can see. We may also wish to ask whether a plant can hear. And yet, in Mark’s telling of the story Jesus says we must preach the gospel to the whole creation. Some translations have ‘to every creature’ but this means the same thing: ‘every creature’ includes all that God has made – animals and plants, mountains and streams, moon and stars. St Francis of Assisi preached to the birds but many have suspected he might have been ‘off with the birds’ - a little eccentric. If I were to take the pulpit outdoors and preach to the mountains and to the lake I suspect the Deacons may convene a discrete meeting without me to discuss the situation. How are we to understand this strange injunction?
Scholars tell us that the end of Mark 16 is a collection of early attempts to provide a conclusion to the gospel which, as Mark wrote it, almost certainly ended abruptly at vs 16.8. So these are additions to the text. They are still considered part of the inspired Scripture but we usually accord them a slightly lower level of authority because of their secondary nature and because they are from a later date than the main text of Mark.
The late date of the text points to a growing sense of the scope of ‘preaching the gospel’. It was always seen as a universal message. This universality is seen as geographic as in Acts (extending to the uttermost parts of the world). It is seen as ethnic in Matthew (embracing all nationalities and cultures). In Mark it is expressed in cosmic terms as it touches everything that God has created. Now is this just exaggeration, preachers’ rhetoric? Rocks and streams, mountains and clouds cannot ‘hear’ what we preach. Or does this text reveal that the gospel, and our witnessing to it, is significant for all elements of the creation?
The gospel is the message of the death on the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We know that this message addresses human beings in our sin and brokenness. It calls us to change and it offers a message of hope for humankind. But does this message have anything to say to the world of nature and the very stuff of creation?
Romans 8 speaks of the creation being subjected to futility and longing for the freedom of the glory of the children of God. The whole of creation is groaning in labour pains until now, when the gospel is revealed.
Revelation 5 depicts a vision of the heavenly worship. Verse 13 says:
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea,
and all that is in them singing: “to the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb,
Be blessing and honour and glory and might, forever and ever!”
The animals and fish, and the birds of the air all take their place around the throne of God and chant God’s praise.
1 Corinthians 15 speaks of the end time and “all things being put in subjection to Christ”. Jesus the risen Lord will bring ‘all things’ together in a transformed order and present the kingdom to God.  It is clear the gospel is not just addressed to human beings, urging our conversion and faithfulness to Jesus. It is also about the re-ordering of all things into the coming kingdom of Christ. Created order is not something to be left in its original pristine condition. Creation itself is destined for transformation, for renewal. The natural world too participates in the dynamic of death and resurrection in Christ.
So the preaching of the gospel extends beyond human ears and human wills. Many years ago I despaired of the ministry and said to a wise spiritual director that I felt a year’s worth of preaching had done nothing other than bring the congregation another twelve months closer to the grave. My counselor, who had survived several heart attacks and bypass surgery, looked at me gravely and said that for some people that was quite some achievement. He went on to say: “It’s because fools like you get up into pulpits and preach, and because fools like me come along to listen, the world does not spiral down into chaos and meaningless.” The action of preaching the gospel itself contributes to the order of the universe. The effort you take to listen helps make the world. Whether you weigh up in your minds and hearts and respond with assent and belief, or discern something in the words of the preacher that is worthy of rejection, you are part of the cosmos-sustaining activity which is ultimately the work of the Spirit of God. And this is work we do not just for ourselves, but for the whole creation.
In this sense the gospel is ‘preached’ to the whole creation. But the creation itself is not mute! All that is offers praise to God. Consider Psalm 19:
The heavens are telling the glory of God
And the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard;
Yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19.1-4)
Ps 104 celebrates the glory of God in creation, the Psalmist naming the power and wonder of God who has made all this.
These sentiments are not just the hyperbole of the Psalmist. Paul in Romans 1: Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made (Rom 1.20)
We are surrounded by the great chorus of creation. Especially at this time of year as the blossom bursts forth and the morning sun rises before us with warmth and joy, the praise of creation issues forth from all around us.
So creation waits for the good news of God and declares the glory of God. Creation both speaks to us and waits for us to speak.
In the ‘Season of Creation’ today is ‘Ocean Sunday’. Let us ask at what we might say to the oceans, and what the oceans might say to us.
If you kept the cycle of daily prayer (Second Form) from An Australian Prayer Book, every Monday evening you would repeat the words of Psalm 93:
The floods have lifted up O Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice:
the floods lift up their pounding.
But mightier than the sound of many waters
than the mighty waters or the breakers of the sea:
The Lord on High is mighty. (Ps 93)

This is the quintessential Psalm for a surfer culture because the metaphor of ‘the floods’ of course refers the waves of the sea. The rhythm of the poetry carries the reality of the surf. If you observe carefully from the beach there are very rarely more than 3 waves formed and breaking towards the shore. Three times the repeated mention of the waves rolls towards us in the Psalm.
But what does the crashing of the surf, the voice of the floods actually tell us? Is there in the sound of the waves and our preaching of the gospel to all creation, a dialogue going on about the nature of reality and the glory of God?
The sea is a powerful metaphor of all that threatens to overwhelm us. The risk of drowning attends all activities on the sea. The place of water in baptism is itself a metaphor for death and rising again.  For the ancient Jewish culture the sea was the place of danger and potential disaster.
In a time of depression and sadness the Psalmist writes of his experience:
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts
All your waves and your billows have gone over me. (Ps 42.7)
Rowan Williams in  a lecture given in Melbourne entitled Living Baptismally referred to a

“classical icon of the Baptism of Jesus as you see it in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. This depicts Jesus naked, up to his neck in water. You see on one side of the river John the Baptist, on the other (frequently) three angels holding Jesus’ clothes. We see the hand of God descending from above, and underneath, in the depths of the river, you frequently see a little figure who represents the ‘river god’. It is a very strange, Classical survival in Orthodox art. But that presence of the river god is often seen, by Orthodox commentators on this iconographic tradition, as a representation of the way in which the Baptism of Jesus is understood as a descent into chaos: into a world of chaotic, unregulated reality, prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it is like the waste and void which covers the face of creation at the beginning of Genesis.

This sense of threat goes beyond just the literal threat of drowning, the metaphoric threat of chaos and despair. The seas are still the ancient engine of life.  So many strange creatures are still coming up from the depths. The seas drive our patterns of droughts and floods. The rising of sea levels may yet still inundate many low lying cities and even sweep whole countries off the face the earth.
All these messages are the powerful voice that the floods lift up in their pounding. What is it that we say to the oceans? We repeat the message of Job:
who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? …
Who prescribed bounds for it and set bars and doors and said ‘ Thus far shall you come no farther, here shall your proud waters be stopped’? (Job 38)
We remind ourselves that
..  mightier than the sound of many waters
than the mighty waters or the breakers of the sea:
The Lord on High is mighty. (Ps 93)

The powers of chaos and disaster are nothing to the power of God. The waves of sorrow that threaten to dump us like the breakers at the beach are much weaker than the power of God to sustain and heal. The sea is one of the great engines of power in our world. It’s seething, restless action of wave and tide one of the great repositories of energy we know in the world, yet they are nothing compared to the power of God.
What then is the gospel that we ‘preach’ to the oceans? What quiet affirmations and hopes do we address to the waves and tides of life? What do we whisper in our hearts as we look out over the Pacific? I think it goes something like this: the threats and powers that seem to overwhelm us will not always in the end win out. That although sorrow might roll over us like billows, joy will come in the morning. That the chaos of rising sea levels and greater storms and seaside damage will not destroy us, for we are the followers of the great creator God, who calls us to co-create with him.

Prayer:
Creator God,
Surrounded by sunshine and blossom, we sense your power and goodness.
In the company of friends and the sounds of singing, we sense your love.
There are also tragedies and sorrows that we carry and that will not easily be lifted from us.
In the power of spring, and the lingering legacy of the cold winter we sensed the rhythm of life.
Help us in joy and gladness or in sorrow and struggle, to offer praise
And find in worship renewed faith, and strength for the tasks of living. Amen

Offering prayer:
Father of lights, from whom comes every good gift,
Accept that which we offer: our work and substance, our joy and our love, our struggle and our doubts. May our living reflect your power, and our giving reflect your generosity, to the praise of your holy name.

Jane Elias and Trevor and Scott,
Lloyd Kershaw
Those who are ill
Our world