Reflection: “The Harmony of Living Systems”

In the Scripture passage and reflection, you may have an emotional reaction to the use of the word Israel. Please remember that Jesus was born into the Jewish tradition in the land of Israel, which at that time was a small country occupied by the powerful Roman Empire. The powerful modern state of Israel, which is illegally and unjustly attacking the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza, is very different from the ancient Israel that we read about in scripture.

Hebrew Scripture: Psalm 19

The Good News: John 2:13-22

To begin with, I’d like to acknowledge Dave Hodgson for this beautiful image of the splendours of the night time sky.  At Cumberland United Church, Dave was a constant inspiration to me to listen for God’s voice in creation, just like the psalmist encourages us to do at the beginning of Psalm 19.

Today’s readings from the Hebrew scriptures link the cosmic laws of Creation to the laws that govern our lives as community.  

Psalm 19 gives us two different answers to the question “How do we know God?”.  Verses 1-4 tells us that God is speaking in creation, and verses 7-13 tell us that God also speaks in the covenant rules that God gave to the Hebrew people during their exodus time in the wilderness.  

The challenge to us in the first verses is to listen to what God is saying in creation.  The psalmist tells us that day and night, and all the natural rhythms of creation, are speaking to us, but we do not hear their voices.  The sun is strong in the heavens, and we cannot hide from its heat.  

Then the psalmist makes a sudden change in focus, from the universal law and harmony of the cosmos to the much more intimate gift of God’s law or Torah to the people of Israel. These verses speak of the covenant God of the Israelites, the God that brought them out of slavery in Egypt into a new land and gave them new rules for living together as God’s people.  This law revives the soul, leads to wisdom, warns the people when they transgress, and rewards them when they obey.  Following this law is not a burden but a joy.

Biblical scholar Mark Stangler tells us that Torah is not really “law” the way we think of law, but “a template for exodus living in covenant as God’s free and faithful people.  It is a pattern of life individually embraced and shared with the community as a guide and goal.”  In other words, it is a guide to living in harmony with God and with each other in difficult conditions.

In our dualistic modern society, we have quite a bit of trouble reconciling these two types of law.  Our scientific mindset tends to divorce natural law, the rules governing the universe, from the moral and ethical guidelines that govern our lives together in human society, and it can be hard to see or hear God at work in either one.  

I’ve used the word harmony a couple of times, and I believe it is what links the first part of Psalm 19 to the second part of the Psalm. In music, harmony is what happens when individual notes are sung or played together to make a beautiful musical sound.  In harmony the result is always more beautiful than the individual parts that contribute to the whole. Harmony is the sun and the planets moving through space in an intricate ballet. Harmony is people living together in peace, friendship, and concord. 

The Whole Earth Catalog was a counterculture publication published in the late 60’s and early 70’s that combined articles with product reviews, aimed at encouraging self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education and a wholistic lifestyle. I have wonderful memories of writing for free pamphlets on all kinds of wonderful topics. For example, I spent quite a few weeks thinking about adopting a wild, Spanish, mustang horse. I also loved flipping the corners of the pages to see the little animated story there about the young hippie couple who travel across America in their Volkswagen microbus and finally settle and marry on an old homestead in Appalachia. I blame this story for my stubborn insistence on having homemade fried chicken at our wedding reception. The church ladies said, “Couldn’t we just buy KFC?”

The catalogue began in 1966 when founder Stewart Brand lobbied NASA to release the first photos of the whole earth as seen from space and photographed by the crew of Apollo 17.  I’m sure you’ve all seen that photo, sometimes known as the Blue Marble.  Brand saw that image as a powerful symbol of shared destiny, and many others since the 60’s have been inspired by the same photo to understand the earth and all of its people as one system in which no one part can change without affecting the rest.  The universal rules that govern the earth and its place in the universe also govern all of us who live on the earth, and Creator God is the composer of that great song of creation.  Harmony.

Many Indigenous cultures understand this relationship better than we do.  For them, there is no separation between the world of the sacred and the world we perceive through our senses.  Being grounded in that understanding changes the rules for how communities live together.  When a rule is broken, it destroys the harmony between the person who breaks the rule, the rest of their community, and the sacred.  When that happens, the priority is to restore all to harmony, to heal the relationships with the victims and with the community, to live again in harmony with the sacred.  

This is also the theme that runs through Psalm 19, a song in which the harmony of God’s creation inspires harmony in human society.  Living in harmony with God and God’s creation inspires us to develop a code of behaviour for living together in community.  The specific rules will change as societies change, but ultimately the specific rules matter less than the harmony they are intended to create and maintain.

The challenge for the world today is that society has changed so quickly and so radically that we no longer know how to live in harmonious communities.  The old rules aren’t working and we have yet to develop new rules to return us to wholeness. The institutions and structures that served us during the age of colonialism and imposition of western culture on the rest of the world no longer serve us, and they never served the non-Western world.  We continue to try to separate divine and human laws, but looking at the harmony and balance in Creation can give us some insights into how to work towards harmony in our relationships with God and others.  

There is an organizational facilitator named Chris Corrigan who teaches a really inspiring model for understanding organizations as “living systems” rather than mechanical systems.  

Mechanical systems work best to accomplish specific, known objectives in a limited environment. A living system model looks at the rhythms of the natural world, where a new organism is always emerging from the old.  An old tree falls in the forest and becomes a nurse tree for small plants and fungi.  Salmon spawn and die, and become nourishment for other animals and for the forest floor.  Herring spawn and feed the salmon, the gulls, and the seals and sea lions, who feed the magnificent orca. The plants from last summer’s garden are composted and nourish next year’s growth.  In a living system, nothing is redundant.

Applied to organizations, this model tells us that the new is already here, growing out of the old system.  Chris calls them “legacy” and “emerging” systems, and the two types of systems are part of a constant cycle.  A legacy system doesn’t have to die or rust in a junkyard in order for an emerging system to take its place.  Instead, like a nurse tree, it can nourish that new system.

I think Jesus also understood how change is organic and old systems nourish the new, and he understood that old laws may not continue to serve God’s purpose. Although he was always rooted in his Jewish faith and traditions, he spent his life urging his followers towards a new understanding of that law, an understanding that constantly challenged the old rules when they served established power instead of God’s love.  

Jesus was not always patient and gentle in his message that change was necessary, as we see in his anger at the misuse of the Temple and its traditions.  Sometimes a crashing dissonant chord tells us when harmony is lost and points to a new musical theme. A legacy system doesn’t always morph naturally and gently into an emerging system.  There is a point where people of vision and courage need to step out of the old system into the unknown, to help others see that something new is possible.  

This is what Jesus does for us.  In his words and in his actions, Jesus helps us to see that God’s new world is constantly emerging from the old, but we are sometimes called to take bold steps into the unknown.  Jesus is like the comet in Dave’s picture, breaking out of old orbits, streaking across the universe and across our lives. Jesus is a disruptor. He blazes with passion and transforms everything by his light.  Even after he disappears from human sight, the universe is changed in big ways and small by his presence and so are we.  Jesus the Human One becomes the Cosmic Christ. Thanks be to God!

Let us pray:

The heavens sing out your glory, Creator, and your grace shines new each day.  Help us live out such grace in our harmony with one another, and experience again the blazing wonder of your presence; in Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Silent Reflection

Where are you experiencing harmony in your life and in the world?

What kinds of laws build harmony?