January 11, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

      Let us pray.  Amazing God, Creator and Comforter, open our hearts to hear your voice in unexpected times and places. Appear to us in forms we cannot deny. Challenge us in ways we cannot avoid. Lead us in paths from which we cannot turn back. Discipline us that our self-discipline may be better informed and more consistent. Test us that we may test ourselves by the model of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. 

• Lavon Bayler, “Fresh Winds of the Spirit, Book 2” (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1992), 96.

      I want to begin this morning with a short lesson in physics, specifically about chaos, what it really is, and how we could not live without it.

      The word "chaos" comes from the Greek word for formless matter. It does not have a shape that lasts through time. It is not predictable. Chaos is all the random, patternless, haphazard stuff that exists in our universe and that existed at the time of the Creation.

      As an example, heat is a form of chaos. This is an actual definition of heat that you could find in almost any physics book: Heat is the random movement of atoms. The higher the temperature, the greater the randomness of the movement of the atoms.

      Whether you have ever thought about it or not, heat is an essential part of all living things; all living things have heat to some degree or another – no pun intended. Life cannot exist without the heat that is the random movement of atoms. If heat is chaos, and life cannot exist without heat, then it stands to reason that life cannot exist without chaos. You know with a certain amount of confidence that when you put a thermometer in your mouth, you are not going to get a reading of zero. If you did, you would be dead. To put it somewhat crudely, a dead person is cold and stiff. However a live person is warm and flexible.

      This randomness of life heat occurs on all possible levels; chaos tends to behave in a similar fashion whether you are looking at atoms or humans or the universe. You know that randomness occurs in your life at more than just the atomic level, therefore, learn to appreciate the chaos in your life, because chaos is what is keeping you alive.  
(Pam Walatka, "Chaos in Everyday Life," 1996, www.wildhorses.com, June 22, 1999.)

      That’s the end of the physics lesson for this morning.

      Another word that we sometimes use for chaos is confusion.  Although confusion makes us crazy, God can pull order from disorder. The Creator's "Chaos Theory" shows that complete creativity actually craves and demands a certain amount of chaos.

      Do you ever feel as if your life is pure chaos? In a condition of complete confusion?   Disordered and random and disjointed, sort of like the state of the universe before Creation?   Welcome to the club! Most of us feel like that every day, especially first thing in the morning, trying to get out the door to work or school or church. And it may not be such a pathetic place: According to recent research, Club Chaos is the hottest spot in town.

      I suspect that you have seen the books on the subject of chaos. There are currently over 1,200 on the topic, including:

      * Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick;

      * Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos, part of the Foundation Trilogy Series;

      * Absolutely Normal Chaos, by Sharon Creech. Yes, that's right: Absolutely Normal Chaos.  I think it must be a book about the Preschool!

      But there's more. You can also pick up Agent of Chaos, Applied Chaos, Angel of Chaos, Beyond Chaos, Bordering on Chaos, and the best-selling business book, Thriving on Chaos.  For anyone who wants some insight into chaos, there's an abundance of writing on the subject.

      Some of the best thinkers today are straining their brains over Chaos Theory, which is the study of forever-changing complex systems using advanced mathematics. Chaos Theory techniques have been used to model biological systems – which are, as you might guess, some of the most chaotic systems imaginable. Systems of equations have also been used to model everything from population growth to arrhythmic heart palpitations, and from the spread of epidemics to the sounds of dripping faucets. Super String theory seeks to resolve in creative tension the apparent conflicts between quantum physics and Einstein's theories. All of this in an effort to develop a Theory of Everything.

      Not that Club Chaos is all work and no play – it also has a toy department. With the swipe of a credit card, you can have your very own award-winning kinetic sculpture toy called "Chaos, World of Motion." Along with a motorized ball lift, Chaos includes several tracks, curves and stunts, and it teaches children about the physics that governs the world in an exciting new hands-on way. Who really wants Hot Wheels when they could have Chaos, World of Motion? (www.chaostoy.com, June 22, 1999).

      For those of you who are geared more toward appliances, there's even a Chaos Washing Machine.  (I am NOT making this up!) In 1993, the Goldstar Company created a washing machine that utilized the latest in Chaos Theory. The washing machine supposedly produced cleaner and less tangled clothes – although whether it continued to lose socks is anybody's guess.

      As a member of the Chaos Club, you can even find chaos in the stock market – no surprise there – as well as in long-range weather forecasting and in the solar system itself. Chaos Theory certainly isn't new to astronomers, since most have long known that the solar system does not run with the precision of a Swiss watch.

      To make a long story short: Chaos rules.

      Or does it?

      When God gets down to business, the Creator creates ex nihilo.   Latin for “from nothing.” The first step in creatio ex nihilo? You guessed it – Chaos. God creates and "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep" (1:2). This state of the universe before creation is completely chaotic – a kind of raw material that God uses for creative activity, a state of affairs that is not yet in harmony with the divine purposes in creation.

      So this pre-creation chaos is not nothing, nor is it bad. Contrary to several popular perspectives, chaos is not an evil reality that persists beyond God's ordering activity, providing a negative backdrop and potential threat to God's world. The Bible is confident that only God can decide when to destroy things, and it asserts that there is no reality independent of God that can pose a threat to God’s creation. It is only the Creator that can crunch us, implies Scripture – not chaos (Terence E. Fretheim, "The Book of Genesis," The New Interpreter's Bible [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994], 356).

      Suddenly a "wind from God" sweeps over the face of the waters (v. 2), a divine wind or spirit that begins to work in a creative way with the raw material of "the deep." God does not reject or say no to this chaotic material – God simply uses it as part of the ordering of Creation. With a single word God turns on the first light, goes on to split the light from the darkness and names the two Day and Night. "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day" (v. 5).

      Clearly, it can't be said that Chaos rules. No: God rules.

      But God is not crazed by confusion, nor is God disturbed by material that seems disordered or disjointed.  God moves confidently from chaos to creativity, making something radically good out of the raw material of the primordial deep. God's Chaos Theory holds that order can arise from disorder, and that real creativity craves, no, it requires a certain amount of chaos.

      Perhaps, just perhaps, the same is true for us, as individuals and as a community. In the Lord's unpredictable and unfathomable plan for us, membership in the Chaos Club may be the best preparation for a life of complete creativity.

      Consider this: In an article on building wealth, MIT economics professor Lester C. Thurow points out a number of "new rules" for individuals, companies and nations, including this one: No society that values order above all else will be creative; but without some degree of order, creativity disappears.

      He tells the story of China at the beginning of the 15th century, a tale that is a particularly prophetic parable for the 21st-century church. Half a millennium ago, China's curiosity, its instinct for exploration and its drive to build had created all the technologies necessary to launch the Industrial Revolution – something that would not actually occur in the west for another 400 years!

      China had it all: blast furnaces for making steel; gunpowder and cannon for military conquest; the compass and the rudder for exploration; paper and movable type for printing; rotary threshing machines and mechanical seeders for agriculture; the decimal system, negative numbers and the concept of zero for sophisticated mathematics. Seven major Chinese expeditions explored the Indian Ocean with ships four times as large as those of Columbus.

      But the Chinese rejected and suppressed the technologies that could have given them world dominance. The geographic conquests and the industrial revolution that COULD have happened did not occur. They blew their big chance.

      Why? There is one simple explanation: They became uncomfortable with chaos. New technologies were perceived as threats, rather than opportunities. Innovation was forbidden. Imperial rules and regulations prohibited the building of new oceangoing ships that would take people away from the Chinese coastline. Membership in Club Chaos became strongly discouraged. By the end of the 15th century, the demand for ORDER had overridden intrinsic human curiosity, the desire to explore and the drive to build ("Building Wealth," The Atlantic Monthly, June 1999, 63).

      We as the Church need to listen up! Are we facing this same "China Syndrome" as we embark on ministry in a new millennium? Do we perceive online technologies as threats, rather than opportunities? Are we discouraging musical and dramatic innovation in our worship services? Are we passing rules and regulations that prohibit mission work and spiritual exploration beyond the church's safe and comfortable "coastline"? Are we discouraging membership in Club Chaos, and allowing only participation in groups that have been formed, framed, and fossilized for generations?

      Remember: Creativity demands a certain amount of chaos, like the "formless void" and "the deep" out of which God created the heavens and the earth. The Body of Christ needs to tolerate a chunk of chaos, a healthy measure of really raw and rough material, in order for creativity to happen. The Good News of the gospel is going to fly farthest if we launch it into cyberspace, the joy of the Lord is going to erupt most enthusiastically if we innovate in worship, and the mission and ministry of the church is going to transform more lives if we take it beyond our sanctuary walls. We must not become so obsessed with order that we choke our spiritual growth.

      On the other hand, membership in Club Chaos does not include carte blanche for craziness or an invitation to anarchy. Lester Thurow, who so wisely warns us about China's collapse, also drives home the point that creativity will disappear without some degree of ORDER. Looking back at Russia in the 75 years before the Russian Revolution, he reminds us that an amazing amount of creativity flourished in the chaos of a dying empire: There were great authors, magnificent musicians and artists and world-class scientists.  We all know the names: Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Pavlov and Mendeleev. Their contributions created tremors that still rock the foundations of our world today.

      Russia managed to pull creativity out of chaos during these last years of the empire, but this positive movement was doomed to fail. Why? Without some degree of ORDER, it was impossible for the Russians to use that creativity to develop a successful economy. Chaos led to more chaos, and ultimately to the Russian Revolution. When an oppressive new order was imposed by the Communists, creativity simply keeled over and died ("Building Wealth," The Atlantic Monthly, June 1999, 63).

      Brothers and Sisters, fellow citizens of the Creator's commonwealth: We need the right combination of chaos and order if we are going to help build up the kingdom on earth.  With too much order, we will choke our spiritual growth and end up like China. With too much chaos, we will spin out of control and self-destruct like Russia. Together, our challenge is to balance Club Chaos with the Body of Christ, and to use the raw material of this world to create great things for God.

      The secret is to follow our Creator in not being crazed by confusion, nor disturbed by disorder. Along with our Lord, we can move confidently from chaos to creativity, making something radically good out of the raw material surrounding us, and finding ways to manage the tension between order and disorder that doesn't let either one get out of hand.

      So hang tight to Chaos Theory – God's Chaos Theory that is. Our Lord demonstrates decisively that disorder can be harnessed into order, and the old world of chaos can give birth to a new world of creativity, excitement and unexpected growth. Amen.