Photo Credit: “The Burning Bush” by Ruben Alexander. License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DID YOU KNOW THAT OUR SERMON PODCAST IS ON ITUNES AND STITCHER? SUBSCRIBE SO THAT YOU’LL NEVER MISS A SERMON!
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
“Call me Ishmael.”
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
These are all first lines in famous literary works. But today’s sermon is about a different “first line”: the opening to the the book of Genesis. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…”
In baptism and communion, these gifts of the Sacraments, through water, bread, wine and the promises of God, we are joined with God and with the whole body of Christ. We are given the gift and the responsibility of community.
Image: Alek Rapoport. Trinity in Dark Tones (Genesis 18), 1994. Tempera on cotton, 48 x 63”. Collection of the artist’s family, USA.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Latin term Incurvatus in se means “to turn or curve inward on onesself.” Martin Luther explained this state in his Lectures on Romans:
“Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works – righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake.”
How can we uncurve our hearts and open our arms to others?