God Talk

Sermon

James Baldwin once observed, “To be with God is really to be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward, makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.” (Nobody Knows My Name)

Mary Oliver once wrote,

“And certainly and easily I can see
how God might be one rose bud,
one white feather in the heron’s enormous, slowly opening wing.
It’s after that
it gets difficult.” (from Evening Star)

In a hymn we sang recently, God is described as the “potentate of time” (which never ceases to delight me).

Who do you say that God is?

Rarely, I believe, do we have the opportunity to describe God to someone else. The apostle Paul had many opportunities to do that as he carried the good news of Jesus across the Mediterranean lands. I think it’s fair to say that Paul had more failures than successes; when we meet up with Paul in Athens in today’s scripture lesson, he had just been kicked out of Thessalonica and Berea. Despite the stirring words of his oratory on the areopagus, Paul fails to convert the pantheist Athenians to following the way of Jesus. But at least he tried.

Nonetheless there is something stirring in this scene. Paul is pretty smart, after all, and smart enough to adapt his message in order to best engage his audience. The areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, is on a bit of a hill just west of the Acropolis; it was also where public debates would take place. So, it’s normal for someone to be declaiming there. And declaim Paul does.

Just prior to this story, Paul has been elsewhere in Athens and greatly disturbed by the number of idols he has seen. But he is able to set that aside and rather than condemn the Athenians for the idols, he simply notes all that he has seen, even as he praises the great intelligence of the Athenian people. Then, almost like an aside, he mentions that he saw an altar dedicated to an unknown God, and his foot is in the door, he has an opening, and he preaches.

“You may not know this God,” Paul says in so many words, “but I do.” This God, unknown to you, is in reality the One in whom we live and move and have our being. This God is the source, the life, the creator, the one who cannot be captured in silver or gold, the one who even raises the dead back to life.

Who do you say that God is?

Before you answer that, consider the question. Maybe asking you who God is is like asking you who Madeline Albright is—asking about a public figure whom we can research and learn about, a public figure whom we know, who has absolutely no idea who we are.

Or, maybe asking you who God is is like asking you who your mom is, a person you have known all your life, a person who nurtured you and loved you fiercely, a person who perhaps knows you better than you know yourself.

Or, maybe asking you who God is is like asking my mom (who is here today) to tell you about me and she will respond in delight and tell you what a trying teenager I was and isn’t it still a bit unbelievable that I turned out to be a pastor, of all things.

Who is God? Last week, three of our amazing teenagers reminded us that God is love, and to try out that image, some time when you’re reading scripture or a meditation or even praying, substitute the word “love” for “God.” Like John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Love, and the Word was Love. He was in the beginning with Love.”

Who is God? For some time now I have been done with the patriarchy, and that includes the patriarchy in the church. From denominations that will not allow the ordination of women to the wrong theology that women must be submissive to men, I’ve pretty much had it. Genesis 1 reminds us that male AND female, we are created in God’s image, and so I’ve been trying something out and substituting “she” or “they” for “he” when reading scripture.

Take, for example, 1 John 3. “See what love the Mother has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know her. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when she is revealed, we will be like her, for we will see her as she is. And all who have this hope in her purify themselves, just as she is pure.”

Who is God? Two weeks ago I preached about God and Jesus being our Good Shepherd. Madeline L’Engle tells the story of a dinner party at an old English country manor. Often at those dinners, after the meal the guests would give recitations, or sing, or use some talent they had to entertain others. One year the famous actor Charles Laughton was present, and after dinner he recited the 23^rd psalm brilliantly. Later in the evening, someone noticed a little old great aunt in the corner. She was deaf as a post and had missed what was going on, but the others urged her to recite something. She stood up, and in a quavering voice she began, “The Lord is my shepherd” and recited the psalm. When she finished, many had tears in their eyes. Later, one of the guests approached the famous actor and said, “You recited that psalm absolutely superbly. It was incomparable. So why were we so moved by the little old lady?”

He replied, “I know the psalm. She knows the shepherd.” (from The Rock That Is Higher)

Trying out different metaphors for God can help us widen our own perspective and move more deeply into our relationship with God. Who is God for you, and how has your understanding of God, and your relationship with God, changed over the years? Though it is said that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the same is not true for us. Just as our understanding of the world changes as we grow and mature and experience life, so can our relationship with God.

I’ve been asking who God is for you, but maybe the better question is this: when was the last time you thought about who God is for you?

In the Sunday School hallway of the church I grew up in, there was a set of plates of Jesus and the twelve disciples. Each looked like a white guy in his twenties or thirties with varying colors of eyes, hair styles, face shape, and facial hair.

I studied art history in college, and you can’t get through medieval and Renaissance and Baroque art without seeing lots and lots of images of God as an old white dude with flowing long white hair and a long white beard, not unlike how movies have portrayed the wizards Gandalf and Dumbledore.

About six months ago I decided I wanted to create a triptych—three panels—of the Trinity because I had nothing better to do with my time. I started with God, whom I mostly think of as Creator. Let’s just say I started it six months ago and set it aside five months ago and I’ll get back to you on how it’s going.

Perhaps it’s a hazard of the profession that I think about God a lot. But when was the last time you thought about who God is for you?

Now we’re going to take a wee bit of silence for you to begin to entertain the question. Who is God for you?

I invite you to hold on to that, and not only hold on to that, but to commit it to memory. If you’re a journaler, write about it. If you’re a poet, write it in a poem. If you’re a composer, create a tune for it. If you’re a gardener, plant flowers or herbs that capture it. I tried to think about what you could do with your idea of God if you were an athlete, but somehow “create a winning strategy that conveys your image of God” just didn’t seem to work.

Of course, what’s better than all those things is if you tell someone about it. If you live with someone, talk about it over a cup of coffee or a glass of something bubbly. If you have a walking partner, talk with them about it. You could even go into a quiet corner of the Great Hall during fellowship time and strike up a conversation with someone else who’s hearing this same sermon.

And when you think about who God is for you, and when you talk about that with someone, remember this: there is no right or wrong answer. Just because I am sick to death of the patriarchy doesn’t mean that seeing God as Father isn’t deeply meaningful for you. No one has cornered the market on God; we are all doing what we can to begin to grasp this immortal, invisible, in light inaccessible God.

But I hope for you that God is not unknown, that in your life you have received at the very least an inkling not only of who God is, but of how God loves you. And remember this:

God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God does not insist on their own way; God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

God never ends.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.