The Flowing Love of our Creator
by Sylvia Keesmaat
Artwork by John August Swanson
Readings:
Over thirty years ago,
the story of water turned to wine at Cana
was the reading for the wedding ceremony
where my husband and I were married.
As we were planning it the wedding,
the church secretary asked
if we would like to choose
a wedding-themed bulletin cover.
Now, wedding-themed anything
wasn’t really our style,
so we asked her to just use
one of the line drawings,
based on the gospel reading,
that our church regularly used
for the weekly bulletin cover.
The day arrived and as we stood
at the back of the church together
someone came up to us,
bulletin in hand, and said
“Is this some kind of sick joke?”
We took a closer look.
The picture was of Mary talking to the servants
at the wedding of Cana.
Underneath it said,
“Do whatever he tells you.”
We burst into laughter.
For a wedding it was singularly inappropriate,
and simultaneously hilarious,
especially if you knew us well.
And, out of context,
the implications could be terrible.
Unfortunately,
the verses we sang from the Psalm today
are similarly out of context,
although the implications
might not be so obviously terrible.
In its desire to avoid words of judgment
in the Psalms,
the lectionary often robs the text
of its power to address the difficult circumstances
that so many people find themselves in.
And so in today’s Psalm
the lectionary skips the first four verses,
and the last three.
In those verses the Psalmist
describes a world
where those who are unjust
think that there is no God.
As a result they flatter themselves
and think that their wrongdoing will not be discovered,
they plan mischief—or lawlessness— and practice deceit.
The Psalmist says that they do not act wisely,
they do not do good,
and they do not reject evil.
She is describing a time when people might despair,
for it looks as though there is no power
that can match the strength and authority
of those who are corrupt,
those who repeatedly plot ways
to take advantage of the poor.
Now, it doesn’t take much
to see parallels between
the time of the Psalmist
and our own social and political realities.
Living as we do In a world
where the powerful think that they can get away with anything,
where lying and deception
seem to be the preferred discourse of our leaders,
where homelessness and poverty
are increasingly criminalized,
and where wisdom is increasingly hard to find,
we can resonate with these words.
The Psalmist is describing our world,
our frustrating reality,
the fear that we carry around with us
in the face of deception and evil and injustice.
It is in that context,
that the Psalmist speaks words of comfort
rooted in the living, breathing reality
of the stars, the clouds,
the mountains and the seas.
She describes, first, how the Creator God’s steadfast love
reaches all the way to the heavens.
When our kids were little we had a children’s book called
Guess How Much I Love You?
by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram.
In it, Little Nutbrown Hare
is trying to tell Big Nutbrown Hare
just how much he loves him
—as wide as his arms go,
as high as he can hop,
as far as the river.
But no matter what Little Nutbrown Hare says,
Big Nutbrown Hare manages
to love him more:
as wide as his long arms can reach,
as high as Big Nutbrown Hare’s long legs can hop,
across the river and over the hills.
Finally Little Nutbrown Hare says,
“I love you right up to the moon.”
“Oh that’s far,” says Big Nutbrown Hare,
“that is very, very far.”
Then he settles Little Nutbrown Hare
into his bed of the leaves
kisses him goodnight,
lays down beside him and whispers,
“I love you right up to the moon — and back”.
This is what the Psalmist is saying to us.
In spite of everything you see around you,
all the deceit and violence,
the Creator loves us with
more love than we can ever return.
As high as the heavens,
to the moon and back.
And it would have been enough,
to have an assurance of that love.
But the Psalmist gives us more.
Not only the Creator’s love,
but the Creator’s faithfulness extends to the clouds.
This is not the love of a fickle lover,
not a love that disappears if we do not return it,
no, this love is constant, faithful, never-ending.
It is so high and wide that it is the air we breathe,
the context in which we grow and grieve,
holding us throughout our journey.
This love permeates all of creation.
These images fill our imagination
with the breadth of the Creator’s love and faithfulness
so that when we look at creation,
we are looking at the Creator’s love and faithfulness.
And that would have been enough.
But there is more:
creation is not only permeated by God’s love and faithfulness,
creation also shows us
what the Creator’s righteousness and justice are like.
The righteousness of the Creator
—the Hebrew word for righteousness
incudes God’s love and faithfulness,
as well as God’s commitment
to making all things new—
the Creator’s righteousness
is like the steep mountains,
it is dependable, unshakable,
that place where you feel safe and secure.
And the justice of the Creator is like the great deep,
it goes all the way down
to the foundations of the earth.
The arc of the universe not only bends toward justice,
it is rooted in justice,
it is watered by justice
the universe springs forth out of justice.
So we not only see
the love and faithfulness of the Creator
permeating creation,
Creation also shows us what the Creator is like,
gives us insight into who our God is,
imprints on us the dependable salvation and justice
that are at the heart of the Creator God.
And that too, would be enough
But there is more.
The Psalmist continues,
“you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.”
The Creator God
is not focussed only on humanity,
not only on the story of people,
but on all the creatures that inhabit the earth.
And this should be no surprise.
For this is the Creator,
who exclaimed with delight
over the land, the plants, the rivers,
the birds, the fish, and the animals in Genesis,
who called out tov! tov! tov!
it is good! it is good! it is very good!
as all of creation came into being.
Of course the Creator
would want to save that creation
when it is threatened.
Of course salvation comes also for the animals,
for all living things.
But how, exactly, do we imagine
what salvation means for the animals?
Maybe we’re a little caught up
with the language here.
For some of us the language of being “saved”
makes us think of our personal relationship
with Jesus.
For many, the word “salvation” is only ever used
to talk of forgiveness from our sins.
But that’s not what being saved meant
in biblical times. For the Psalmist,
salvation meant being saved in all sorts of ways:
from injustice, from illness, from natural disasters.
For this Psalmist, salvation means being saved from the people
described at the start of this Psalm.
Being saved from those authoritarian leaders,
who think they can get away with anything,
who are plotting lawlessness and deceit.
Being saved from political powers who wreak violence
on the poor and on the earth.
And why might animals need to be saved
from such people?
In the ancient world,
in an agrarian society where land
was your livelihood,
lawlessness and deceit were strategies used
to steal land from the poor
—just as lawlessness and deceit have been used
today to steal land from Indigenous peoples
all over Turtle Island (North America),
and just as lawlessness and deceit are used all
over the world today to steal land from
Indigenous peoples in South America,
and Africa, and Asia, and Palestine, and Gaza.
And when land is taken by the powerful,
suffering is the result,
suffering for the land and suffering for the
creatures who live on the land.
When land and waterways move out of the care and affection
of those who intend
to pass it on to their children and their grandchildren,
when it becomes a commodity,
then the living communities of animals and insects,
birds and reptiles,
amphibians and fish
that live on that land and in its waterways,
become victims of injustice themselves.
And so salvation is needed
This is what the Psalmist says that the Creator God is up to.
Salvation not only for those humans
who have lost their land
and their ability to feed themselves,
but all creatures who are the victims of injustice.
All the fish and birds poisoned
by toxic spills in the waterways,
all the animals who have lost habitat
because of mining and drilling,
all of the creatures forced to move
because of the fires,
all the insects and turtles
who lose their way because of light pollution,
all the creatures starving
because the ice is gone and the tundra is thawing.
These are the ones who long,
along with many of us,
for salvation,
these are the ones
whom God promises to save.
And just in case we missed
the breadth and materiality of this promise,
the Psalmist repeats it in a slightly different way
in the next verses.
In a world where those with the most wealth
are the ones who have enough food to eat well,
and have an abundance of water and fine drink,
the Psalmist describes God’s love as “priceless.”
No one can buy this love,
it isn’t open to the highest bidder.
Biillionaires cannot buy their way
into this love or salvation,
cannot influence God’s faithfulness or justice.
Instead all people, no matter how poor they are,
no matter what their social standing,
are able to take refuge in the shadow of the Creator’s wing’s.
It is a wonderfully maternal image,
reminding us of a mother hen
holding the chicks safe under her wings.
And just like a mother bird who ensures that
her chicks have enough food and water,
so the Creator nourishes all people,
providing a feast of abundance from creation,
the home where God had hoped to live
with us and all creatures.
And in a wonderful image,
the Creator promises to quench our thirst
from rivers that are places of delight
for all creatures.
All of this leading to life in abundance.
These are the words of reassurance the Psalmist brings
to those who are despairing
as they look at the authoritarian leaders
who have brought so much injustice
to their land,
leaders who seem to have all the power on their side,
whose lies and deception can’t be stopped.
In the face of overwhelming and powerful evil,
know that creation itself bears witness
to a love and a faithfulness,
to a justice and salvation
that completely dwarfs the powers
of those who are corrupt and immoral.
Know that creation itself bears witness
to a Creator God
who is working to save all of creation.
Know that even in the face
of death and destruction,
in the face of wildfires and floods
that have wiped out your past,
and sabotaged your future,
there is a Creator God who not only
provides nurture,
but who also promises that even
in the midst of all this loss,
creation will once again be able to provide abundance,
that the waterways will once again
be places of delight.
That even though it looks like there is only water now,
one day their will be wine in abundance.
The Psalm ends in this way
(and again, this is not part of the lectionary reading):
"Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me,
or the hand of the wicked drive me away.
There the evildoers lie prostrate,
they are thrust down, unable to rise.”
What is the end of these arrogant,
unjust evildoers?
They themselves will be the ones
who are beaten into the dust,
they are the ones who will not be able
to rise, doomed to lie in the places
that they forced others into.
[pause]
The problem is,
it’s hard to believe that this salvation
is true sometimes, isn’t it?
At the time of Jesus,
the promises of Psalm 36 were hard to hear.
The land had been ravaged by repeated invasions
and ongoing occupation by the Romans.
The abundance promised in the Psalm
was not evident in the spent farms and the barren landscape,
and the rivers did not run with delight any longer.
And the rulers were as arrogant deceitful and violent
as those described by the Psalmist so many years before.
Even so, life continued.
There were births, there were celebrations,
and there were weddings.
Including a wedding to which Jesus,
and his mother, and his disciples were invited.
And at this wedding the host ran out of wine.
Why might a wedding feast run out of wine?
Could it be because one of the guests
brought some thirsty Galilean fishermen with him?
Perhaps.
Or maybe the host was poor,
and was unable to buy enough wine
so that it could keep flowing throughout the evening.
(This is why people saved the cheaper wine
for later in the evening,
it was too expensive to have good wine
to last the whole party).
Could it be that when Jesus turned
the water for purification into wine
(over one hundred gallons—
an extraordinarily large amount of wine!)
he was demonstrating exactly the kind of abundance
that Psalm 36 had promised to those
who had been suffering at the hands of the powerful?
Just as Isaiah draws on the imagery of the wedding feast
to illustrate God’s enduring love,
so Jesus in the context of a wedding feast,
creates an abundance of wine
to remind the people
of the Creator’s enduring faithfulness and love,
to remind them of the promises,
to remind them that knit into the very fabric of creation
was the love, the faithfulness,
the justice and the salvation
of the Creator God.
So perhaps those words
“Do whatever he tells you”
can be applied differently.
Perhaps they mean that we should
listen to the words of the Psalmist,
should listen to what she is telling us:
that the Creator’s love can be found,
even now, even in the midst of wildfire
and flood,
reaching as high as the stars.
Perhaps she is telling us that the Creator’s faithfulness
is rooted as deeply as the mountains,
that they will spring forth in newness
out of the ashes.
Perhaps she is telling us that the Creator’s salvation and justice,
flow out of the depths of the seas,
to provide abundance for all creatures,
human and animal alike
when we least expect it.
Perhaps she is telling us
that the wings of the Creator surround us
and hold us close,
in spite of all that threatens.
Amen.