Over many years I have been nourished and strengthened by what used to be named as “Process Theology”. In part, this theological dynamic finds its energy in the opening verses of Genesis as we see beauty and order, diversity and richness created out of chaos, disorder and mess. This has become important for me in my personal life and pastoral ministry; maybe in this cataclysmic political year, it will take on a new importance?

The sermon text follows the sermon video.

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Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington, NC; Sunday January 7th
The Reverend Alan Neale; “The Brevity of Mess”

I find that these past two weeks have been a little messy, chaotic… I have found myself actually wondering “What day of the week is it” as Christmas and New Year celebrations seem to mold into one another upsetting the regular sense of a week. Please God, I hope to begin afresh tomorrow with Monday January 8th 2024!

This general sense of mess, chaos, being misplaced is actually found in all our readings for today. In each reading – chaos and mess; and in each reading – beauty and order restored by the power of God, the Holy Spirit.

Our first reading (Genesis 1:1) begins with these primal words “In the beginning” – and here I think the Genesis writer presents us with a road-map of our deepest, psychic and primal being and introduces us to what often confronts us in life… chaos and mess.

Many read these opening words of Genesis, and discern in them what is called “creatio ex nihilo” (creation from nothing). But these triumphal verses are patient of another reading altogether, a reading I find more exciting and more relevant. This alternative reading argues, and remember these are primal myths portraying primal truths, that God creates a stunning, beautiful, varied universe out of chaos and mess… described in the text as “without form or void” (which, by the way, is sometimes used to describe sermons… but not here at Zion!).

Here we see God not as some child who, having made a mistake in art or math, screws the paper up and begins anew; no, here we see God as the One who dives into chaos, who plunges into mess, and from that mess creates and devises something almost unimaginable but nevertheless real.

Friends, this is the intrinsic nature of God, this is an insight into the deepest divine psyche… and this is God semper eadem – always the same.

In our second reading, St. Paul comes to Ephesus (Acts 19) and discovers a mélange, a hodgepodge, a mishmash of theological truth and Christian experience. The Ephesian dozen are engaged in a totally chaotic pattern of Christian initiation. What does Paul do? Well, like the Divine Master, Paul begins where they are… chaos and mess, he dives into the maelstrom and something of order, beauty and power emerges. Baptized… check, yes; filled with the Spirit… check, yes; speaking in tongues… check, yes… and then… he leaves.

And in our Gospel reading (Mark 1)… surely there cannot be a more quintessential embodiment of chaos and mess than John Baptist? Before he ever opens his mouth, his vesture and diet disturb the orderliness of sterile and predictable religiosity.
The chaos continues as this wild man is designated to baptize Jesus, prompting John Baptist to declare “I should baptize you, not you baptize me… this is nonsense, this is chaos, this is mess.” But in this chaos the Holy Spirit hovers (as in Genesis 1 and Acts 19) and creates something amazingly, unexpectedly, unbelievingly orderly, pulsating, powerful.

I wonder how you and I have looked back on 2023, from many different perspectives? I am reminded of words that were spoken in 1992 “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis”. Who spoke those words? Her then Majesty Queen Elizabeth II!

And already 2024 has brought anguish and pain to friends near and far.

Genesis 1, Acts 19, Mark 1 permit us, no they urge and encourage us to identify mess/chaos for what it is AND then remember with faith and trust, with gratitude and thanks that God excels in dealing with mess – this is the divine raison d’etre (the divine reason for existence).

It is the perturbed and troubled soul that is the fertile ground for diverse, productive spiritual life; that has about it the aroma, the sense of eternity. Oh you can find rampant orderliness and constant conformity in a graveyard but no-one in their right mind wishes for that as a solution to chaos and mess.

I suggest, gently and carefully, that maybe we should feel a little shame when we allow chaos and mess to have the last word, to strip from us remaining shreds of hope. I suggest, gently and carefully, that we should feel some shame as people of God when we dismiss ourselves, or others, as hopeless, beyond help; destined ever for chaos and mess, to live as “without form and void”.

I want to make it a resolution, will you join me, that in this coming year (oh, let’s be honest in this coming day, week or month) I will not allow chaos or mess to have the last word. It is inevitable that we will find ourselves living in a world (personal, local, national or global) that has no shape, no content; indeed, a world “without form or void” but that is the very stuff which, in the economy of God’s handiwork, can be recreated “as in the beginning”.

To the chaos at the beginning, to the chaos at the baptism… the voice of the Lord (extolled in Psalm 29) thunders words of affirmation as re-order takes place… THIS IS GOOD, THIS IS MY BELOVED.

Please take time to hear and receive this voice, this power… day by day by day.

AMEN