GPS for Christians
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
We have begun our Lenten journey. Whenever you take a journey, it’s a good idea to know where you want to end up, and it helps to have some inkling of how to get there. Lent is no different although, like most journeys, sometimes what happens on the way is just as important as reaching the destination. You never know what adventure you might have.
Take, for example, the call that Baltimore Gas and Electric received from a traveler heading down a rural road outside of town. The caller asked for a crew to come out to repair some damaged power lines. “Oh,” the caller said, “they need to bring a very tall ladder to get the deer off the telephone pole.” Well, the customer service rep had a good snicker at that but guess what the technicians found when they got out to the address? Evidently, a speeding train hit the deer knocking it high enough in the air to land on the pole and short out the power. Can you imagine driving past this and being so intent on your destination that you missed something like that?
Probably most of us have considered ourselves on a journey with God for a good portion of our lives. I want to suggest to you this morning that it is often the case that our journey hasn’t taken many of us very far in some important ways. Most of us have moved away from some of the ideas from our childhood. The angry, vengeful God many of us were given as our starting point no longer fits our understanding of who God is and what God is about now. Yet it is so easy to hang on to other parts of those former images without knowing it. The result can be devastating.
Bishop John Shelby Spong does a great job, I believe, of putting into words how our understanding of God shapes us and as a result informs how we engage the world. In his book, A New Christianity for a New World, he talks about his own journey away from a theistic concept of God as this Supreme Being who is wholly other and separate from the world – who rules from a heaven somewhere in the clouds making sure all loyal subjects follow the rules of their particular religion. He notes how common it is for people of many religious faiths to turn the faithful stories of their traditions into literal accounts that must be believed as fact or one risks being either excommunicated or damned to hell. He speaks compellingly of the reality that we humans are the only animals on the planet who understand our own mortality and that this knowledge is so onerous and difficult to grasp that we have created all sorts of scenarios for God to be the one who rescues us from ourselves or is ready to throw lightning bolts when we fail, or commands us to destroy those who are different from us. He notes that we Christians, in particular, are guilty of reading the Bible as if it were a camera taking a picture, when we should be thinking about our faith story as painting a portrait. (pg. 143) How you read the story changes everything.
By the way, I plan to lead a study group on this book later in the year because there are lots of ideas that will stretch us and challenge us, and perhaps even anger some of us. For now, I would like to use Spong’s insights as signposts, along with Psalm 91, to point a way ahead as we begin our Lenten journey into the wild places.
So, is there a better way to understand the reality we call God? Is some version of an old white father-figure meting out judgment and punishment our only choice? If the first thought that comes to mind when you consider any other option is that to do so puts you in danger of being struck down for blasphemy, then I believe that makes my point of just how shallow our understanding of the presence of God remains.
This Lent I invite you to join me in stepping into the wilderness toward a deeper understanding and relationship with the presence of God. This will mean a willingness to step outside that which is familiar and comfortable to meet the Spirit of the Living God who most powerfully resides in those places outside the familiar and comfortable.
Spong suggests three ideas that I believe are helpful for Christians in a 21st Century world as we re-cast the vision of our faith and the purpose of our ministry:
The God of love must be transformed into the love that is God. (pg. 71)
Somewhere along the way Christians have forgotten that all of the images and ideas we use to describe our understanding of God are in fact symbolic. God is like a rock but God is not a granite boulder. God is like a father but God is not just like your human father. God is like a mother eagle who helps her young to fly, but God doesn’t have feathers. The only clear definition of God in the Bible that isn’t based in allegory or symbolism is that God is love. And the Bible is also clear that going the other direction is just as true. Whoever loves is of God. It doesn’t say whoever loves like a Christian is of God. It doesn’t say whoever loves like an American is of God. It doesn’t even say whoever loves like a heterosexual is of God. It says whoever loves is of God. In all the jargon out there to use one’s relationship with God as political power or influential purpose, this basic profound truth has been trivialized and often dismissed. Yes, God is love, we are told, but you have to love the right way. Well, no you don’t. Could it be that the very act of expressing love is in fact the essence of God – that when you love someone or something you are expressing the reality we know as “God?” Wow! That’s an idea you can really chew on for a while because it takes God completely out of the realm of some distant despot to be assuaged and into the reality of our experiencing God in our lives and world.
One worships this God by loving wastefully, spreading love frivolously, by giving love away without taking time to count the costs.
I love that phrase, “loving wastefully” because it does seem like we have somewhere gotten the idea that love is best when rationed out in small quantities. We act as if we have a finite source of love and therefore we must be careful where we place it. And yet the call of Jesus was to step beyond our normal comfort zones and risk loving the enemy, loving the accuser, loving the unlovable, loving when you aren’t loved in return. I’m not talking about becoming starry-eyed doormats upon which every cad or Casanova can wipe their feet. I am talking about loving as a decision in how we live and are in the world – loving even when we gain no apparent benefit from our love. The decision to live “Love” means we refuse to act or respond to another in any way that is not in their best interest or for their ultimate good. What greater act of worship is there than to participate in the act of loving even when all indications around you are that it does no good? Well, that would be an example of what living by faith looks like. If you forgive someone who has hurt you, you are expressing love. If you refuse to be caught up in gossip about a co-worker, you are expressing love. If you treat someone with respect and care who vehemently disagrees with you, that is “loving wastefully” and frivolously – and wonderfully – because you can’t guarantee any return for your loving. Yet, in that moment you are experiencing the presence of God and you are revealing the essence of God to that other person. It is an amazing and transforming experience.
So then, if love is God, then:
God is not a being in any sense of the word that we understand “beings,” instead, God is the ground of being.
The theologian Paul Tillich wrote extensively about how God, as the ground of being, is that infinite essence, which we experience in our finite existence. We understand the personal presence of God in our lives because God is part of us, calling us deeper, making us whole, healing our wounded-ness, inviting us on the journey. That is not something that is happening from somewhere else. It comes from the reality of God that is part of you and surrounds you. It comes in diverse and unexpected places in your mind and heart and experience.
The psalmist uses a variety of names to address God in our text this morning. We have “the Most High” or ‘elyon in Hebrew; “The Almighty” is el shaddai in Hebrew; “The LORD” is the most common English way of designating the sacred name of the God of Israel which is the translation for Yahweh; and finally the word that our Bibles translate as God which is the word ‘elohim in Hebrew. Did you notice that every one of these terms was used in our passage for today to address the divine? (www.homileticsonline.com One Big Fat Polluted City, February 2007, biblical commentary.) Sometimes people are confused when they worship with us for the first time because we don’t exclusively use names for God like “father” or “he” all the time. There is an important reason we do this and that is that God’s presence is so much greater than any of the names we use. Plus, when we overuse any name we are in danger of making that name into God rather than letting the name tell us something about God. Maybe that’s why the psalmist used all of these different names when talking about God in our scripture for today.
You may be asking yourself right about now, “So what?” Let’s say, preacher, that I give you the benefit of the doubt and accept everything you’ve described. So what?
Lent is a journey into the wilderness called “uncertainty” to discover the presence of God in the unknown. There is so much more to this faith thing we share together than simply gathering on Sunday to sing some hymns, hear a sermon, and take communion. There is so much more to this reality we call God than the surface scratch that satisfies so many. I don’t want us to be satisfied with that. I want us to discover the thrill of stepping into the unknown and trusting that God meets us in the darkness. I want us to stretch our willingness to consider new possibilities that in turn will transform our understanding of what it means to be Christian and to follow the ways of Jesus. What does it mean for us today in 21st century Minnesota to be called to tread upon lions and cobras, as the psalmist suggests? The snakes we usually have to deal with are the two-legged kind, not the no-legged kind. I want us to allow ourselves room to not always have the answers but to trust the One who leads us through the questions.
We have some amazing possibilities ahead of us this year – the “Would Jesus Discriminate?” campaign, a capital appeal campaign that we are crafting even now and you will be hearing more about soon, plus facing the on-going challenges of being faithful people in the face of either shrill or subtle opposition. The concepts of God most of us have been given will not carry us through the turbulence or the uncertainty. So we need new and better understandings of God. The God whose presence fills this place, who is found in the essence of our wasteful loving, who stretches our lives and fills us with joy, who soothes our wounds and who is an integral part of your very being – your soul – will.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com One Big Fat Polluted City, February 2007, biblical commentary.
Spong, John Shelby. A New Christianity for a New World. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco) 2001.