Sunday, August 21 – 10:00 a.m.
by Rev. James Farrell
When I was a kid
growing up in Sudbury Ontario, I don't recall many big entertainment acts
coming to town and we certainly didn't get the opportunity to take in many even
if some did choose to put Sudbury on the tour. One tour that did come to town
and which my folks took us to was Liberace …the flamboyant pianist. That was
probably about the time my sister and I were enrolled in piano lessons so, I'm
sure my mom thought it would be some sort of "inspiration". I don't recall
much of the concert but I do recall Liberace modeling his amazing wardrobe and
then saying "do you like it? Well you should, you paid for it." I'm not sure how
I felt about that but everyone laughed and I never forgot it. I was hoping to
share most of my sabbatical stories with the Westminster congregation in the
fall…after all, they paid for it. But some of the things that happened can't
wait till the fall and today's message falls into that category for me. Two things
happened that are somewhat linked and serve to point me toward the Job passage. I have always
liked elephants. From early childhood we attended the Shrine Circus…my dad being
a Shriner and so even in Sudbury, elephants were a big deal. I have stopped
attending animal circuses but I still love elephants. So, this summer
on one of the occasions when the circus came to town a friend asked if I would
like to go to the parking lot behind the arena to take photos…I was there! The
enormous animals were kept outside prior to their performance so it was a great
time to take some of those close-ups that I have wanted to take for years. Taking those
photos in the fleeting light of evening was a challenge and a lot of fun but
during that time I also learned something. The large animals had been tied with
enormous seat belt-like nylon strapping that was anchored to metal poles driven
into the asphalt. I didn't think that the poles really held the beasts all that
secure but I trusted the handlers knew what they were doing. During our photo
shoot I noticed something amazing. The Male elephant used his trunk to remove
the pole from the ground and replace it back to its resting place. He was free,
he knew it and he wanted us to know it, but he chose to place the pole back in
the ground to appease his handler and to comply with life as it had come to be
known for him. It was an
eye-opener for me. I'll tell you…I realized that he could have flung that pole
anywhere and at anyone if he chose to…thankfully he didn't choose to. I marveled
at his intelligence, his poise and strength and strength of character…his gentle
sway as he played with that anchor pole…he was just having a good time. The other thing
that I was linking with this experience…and I hope it will make sense in a
while…was my meeting a young woman from Aceh…a small country and former
sultanate, in the northwestern portion of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
Her speaking at a Kairos meeting in Calgary was a big help in my understanding
of
the problems in that region as the world has tried to send aid and offer relief
in the wake of last Christmas' Tsunami. She told us that
the military have been heavy handed and violent with the people for the last 29
years that war has plagued her country and that the choice to use this same
military to distribute aid to the region has naturally been met with suspicion
and fear by those most needy. Few people have trusted the military to offer help
when in the pre-Tsunami reality the military was a violent intrusion in the
lives of most of those who now find themselves needing aid. A wake up call
for us in the west, to say the least. Her main thrust was that we need to be
aware of the problems in Aceh as that country struggles to find its identity and
to live in peace, a country I didn't even know existed before the Tsunami put it
on my map. I selected the
story from Job this morning because of the reference to leviathan that appears
in this text. Job had just told God that he understood why things were happening
to him and that he understood just who God was. God responds
with an illustration…and in essence says, "well, Job, if you know so much I
suppose you know all about and have power over
leviathan, for example…an enormous creature referring to—we don't know exactly
what. A creature of great size and power and over which Job certainly had no
dominion. Job got the
point. We would do well
to remember that the words to Job are words to us…don't presume to place in the
mind and heart of God the rationale for world domination that we have written
into our sacred texts…we are not the ultimate source of power and it does us
well to remember that from time to time. Through the
example of leviathan, Job realized how much was outside his understanding…he was
humbled by the natural world and realized that God is above his thoughts and
understandings… and again, we might do well to learn from the natural world
around us that we, too, can not subdue nature, that it will 'not' be ultimately
tamed by us…for it has also had the hand of God upon it as have we, and it
deserves our respect as part of the creation that is ours only as we are
stewards of it. Nothing in
creation is insignificant before God. God's care for sparrows, finches, eagles,
and elephants serves as a constant reminder that God cares for you, and for me.
What God has made, God cherishes. But we do not have the corner on God's 'care',
even if we think that we do. Consider for a
moment the elephants of the Pavilion Hotel in Phuket, Thailand "Our nine
elephants," writes Pavilion Hotel Group manager Jim France, "are kept chained to
in-ground posts, not because they need to be, but because it makes the tourists
feel better because their children seem safe from a tromping when they're
feeding the beasts." "About twenty
minutes before the first wave of the recent Tsunami hit, the elephants became
extremely agitated and unruly. Four had just returned from a trip and their
handler's had not yet chained them. In a desperate panic, the four elephants
helped the other five tear free from their chains. They all then climbed a hill
and started bellowing. Many people
followed them up the hill. Then the waves hit." "After the waves
subsided, the elephants charged down from the hill, and started picking up
children with their trunks and running them back up the hill. When all the
children were taken care of, they started helping the adults." "God's
elephants" rescued forty-two people that day. Then, they returned to the beach
and carried up four dead bodies, including one of a child. Not until the task
was done did they allow their handlers to mount them. Then, with handlers atop,
they began moving wreckage. We don't know
what animal leviathan was that was featured in Job's conversation with God. What
the story serves to tell us is that God alone had real dominion over the beast
and Job, and we also, by inference. It's a
conversation that we would do well to remember. Creation, is a
mysterious adventure that continues with each of us as mere stewards of parts of
it, and subjects of other parts of it. We may think it
is ours to dominate …we may even think we have been instructed to do so from the
Dominion passages in our sacred texts (Gen. 1:25 and following). Ultimately,
however, we are not the only aspects of creation touched by the hand of God and
we must live as one among many because what we think is ours, is ours, only on
lease. Amen.