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07436 July 19, 2007
Rainbows and butterflies
Noah story sets stage for PYT worship on 'hope in chaos'
by Jerry Van Marter Presbyterian News Service
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN - In song, sermon and drama, the 4,400 teenagers attending the 2007 Presbyterian Youth Triennium grappled Wednesday (July 18) with the question of maintaining faith in world filled with chaos and destruction.
In a dramatic presentation of the Noah story, Goose Creek, Inc. - the highly inventive theatrical troupe that has captivated this gathering - posed the question: where was God in all that chaos.
Goose Creek's Mark Goodman-Morris, co-pastor of Portola Valley (CA) Presbyterian Church, portraying Noah atop the ark after the flood abated, held up an olive branch saying, "It's strange that something so small can bring so much hope. I'm excited about a new start but exhausted because it's so hard to remain faithful in such times. Will the world ever be better? Will my family be able to partner with God to create the world God desires? I don't know. All I want is to get my feet on solid ground and begin the work of rebuilding."
Goodman-Morris's wife, co-pastor and fellow Goose Creeker, Cheryl, portraying Noah's wife, worried about what the neighbors would say as Noah built the ark and how they would fare on a boat with so many animals.
"I didn't want to believe (the coming flood)," she said. "I wondered how we could leave our home and start over? How could God bring on all this destruction? Still, I knew God had never forsaken us and it would all work out.
"Still it was such a struggle."
The young people in attendance were easily able to relate to such uncertainty, doubt, destruction and the struggle to trust God in all of it. A litany during the service noted destruction wrought by the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the mass murders at Virginia Tech, and the daily toll taken by wars abroad and drugs and violence in this country.
And yet, they sang the healing refrain with heartfelt gusto:
Let the rains go, let the healing river flow, let justice roll like water. Let the day begin, let new life enter in, and let your kingdom come.
The Rev. Mark Montgomery, a UCC pastor from Connecticut and Goose Creek member, cautioned that disasters like the destruction of New Orleans and the massacres at Virginia Tech "are not Noah stories because God did not cause them."
But there are similarities, Montgomery continued, "because God was there and is there and is here. Nevertheless, the destruction happened. I think God is telling us not to rush to the rainbows and the animals getting along famously despite the crowding and the other happy endings because there's a lot of bad junk that happens on the way to the redemptive endings."
Christians are eager to jump up and "do something that will fix the bad stuff," Montgomery continued. "Sometimes it's harder to sit down and listen for God's voice so we can know where God is leading us. Sometimes our best efforts just aren't enough and we have to be patient and wait for God."
Montgomery recounted an experience from his work as a hospice chaplain. A friend whose father was dying asked him, "How's my dad going to be with me after he dies?" Montgomery conceded that he had no idea, though he tried various platitudes that rang hollow.
The father died in March and at the gravesite, a single butterfly landed on the casket. "I tried to tell my friend that it was a sign, and he looked at me with eyes like a teen-ager's when he's saying, 'Yeah, right,'" Montgomery recalled. "As I left the cemetery, feeling like I'd failed my friend, I prayed that God would send him a sign."
Before he got home, Montgomery received a call from the friend's mother, asking him to come to the family home. He walked into the house and up to the room where the father had died, and there sat his friend, "surrounded by 40 or 50 butterflies. It was at that moment, and not before, that we both found strength, compassion and God's renewed call in our lives," Montgomery said in a halting voice.
"I wish the Noah story was a one-time thing, but there's pains in our own lives that we have to endure," Montgomery said. "But the good news, which I want you to know with all your heart, is that rainbows come, that God's voice comes, that God's will comes. Listen, and when it comes you'll know what to do."
With few dry eyes remaining in the house, the seven members of Goose Creek reappeared on stage, each carrying a black umbrella. As the yet-to-be-named PYT Band launched into their version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" the black covers were peeled off the umbrellas and they were transformed into parasols in the all the colors of the rainbow.
As the exhilarated crowd filed out of the auditorium, the five giant screens around the stage projected words from Winston Churchill: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
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