The Week of January 16th, 2022

The Good and the Not-So-Good

Sermon Noodles and Devotional Guide

Sermon noodles for the week of January 16th, 2022

Read Genesis chapter 1 with this intention: On which days of creation is there no “And God saw that it was good”?

On the third, fourth, fifth days of creation, the scripture says “And God saw that it was good.” On the sixth day the text says, “and God saw that it was very good.”

What day is it not so good?

Notice on the second day when earth and heaven are separated by an expanse or vault, there is no comment “and God saw that it was good. If I asked you to point to heaven, which direction would you point? If you asked Jesus, he would probably point to his chest, for in Luke 17:21 Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

The division we have placed between heaven and earth is not good. Yes, heaven is a place we go when we pass from this life to the next, but the kingdom of heaven is also within us right now. It is accessible by grace through faith. We suffer the divide of the second day of creation every single day. 

Richard Rohr quote:

Of course darkness and light, heaven and earth, have never really been separate, but “sin” thinks so (sin separates; God and soul unite). That’s the tragic flaw at the heart of everything, what Augustine unfortunately called “original sin” and I‘d like to call “original shame”—or the illusion of separateness. Jesus then becomes the icon of cosmic reconciliation (Colossians 1:19-20, Revelation 21:1-3). He holds all that we divide and separate together as one (which is really the foundational mystery of “forgiveness”) and tells us that we can and must do the same work of reconciliation of opposites (2 Corinthians 5:17-20, Ephesians 2:14-22).