Do you know God?

September 11, 2016

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

For my people are foolish, they do not know me…

So – here we are! Labor Day is well and truly behind us, and the summer is a fond memory – as borne out by the increasingly variable weather we are experiencing. The schools are all back, offices seem full not empty, and in many parishes around the country, people speak of today as being ‘Rally Sunday’ – the day we rally around to celebrate the new program year in our common life together.

Could there be a better day, therefore, for asking the question –  do you know God? Or, if you prefer, What’s the God you think you know like?  Who, or what kind of God do you believe in?

Now, I hope that’s not too crazy a question to raise this morning. You might be sitting there thinking, Well…. God’s just God….But while that’s undoubtedly true, it’s not entirely helpful – and it’s certainly not that helpful if you ever find yourself wanting or needing to talk to others about God, let alone respond to other people’s questions or concerns – that’s that little practice we call evangelization, and it’s not just for evangelicals! – it’s really not that helpful if, when we need to do so, we find we can’t really talk about God.

For we are living in an age when there is manifest confusion about who and what God is. Indeed, I think one has to go further than that – there’s more than just confusion out there – there is, in some places, blasphemous hijacking of what the notion of ‘God’ might actually mean. The most dangerous and desperate example of that is to be found with the so-called Islamic State movement, for whom God is viciously and murderously an exclusive and evil God – a god very far distant from the true tenets of Islam, let alone any understanding of God one would hope to find on the lips of a 21^st Century Christian.

It is not always easy to speak about God with clarity or precision, and people of faith over centuries and millennia have used countless turns of phrase and images in their attempts to do so. Already this morning we have spoken or sung of God as being:

Invisible
Unresting
Silent as light
Ruling in might
Reigning in glory
Heavenly king|
The one in the company of the righteous
The refuge of the afflicted
King of the ages

And that’s just a few. And most of those are turns of phrase that are so familiar, and perhaps so comforting, we don’t really think about them or about their implications very much. A relative of mine had an antique plate with the words Thou God sees’t me which he had hanging on the wall in his toilet so that it stared you in the face as you sat there – how’s that for an interpretation of the phrase I just prayed that from you no secrets are hid?!

More seriously, when we sang of how God rulest in might in the opening hymn, perhaps we should ponder just how that talk of mighty rule plays out with our sister and brother Christians living in terror in Syria or Iraq. 

Truly, how we speak of God or think of God matters – a lot – and it is not always straight forward. And even from this point on in the service there are many more images, statements and claims yet to come before we get commanded by Judy to Go in peace to love and serve this Lord…

And I’ve not even made us look, yet, at the two most striking, astonishing, bewildering claims about God that we heard. Two claims about the nature of God, either one of which we could, live with, but which, taken together, should really make us think, pray and reflect.

For – apparently – according to one deeply religious writer, God is a God of fierce anger. God is a God who will make the fruitful land a desert and lay every city in ruins before the Lord. God is the God who says The whole land shall be a desolation…the earth shall mourn…the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented now will I turn back.

Was there anyone here who did not utter the words Thanks be to God at the end of that portion of the prophecy of Jeremiah just now? But is there anyone here this morning who believes God behaves like that? That God did behave like that? That God could ever behave like that?

And then, not more than about three minutes later, this other deeply religious writer, the one we call Luke, he’s quoting Jesus as comparing God to being like a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep on their own in the Judean wilderness to go and search out one more sheep that happens to be lost.

Are any of you wondering if this is the same God? Because I hope you are not taken in by the idea that I was once foolish enough in my teens to utter before a wise priest – the idea that the ‘God of the Old Testament’ is an angry and violent god, but that somehow, around the time Jesus is born, he turns all cuddly and nice, and sort of becomes like Father Christmas. I’ve heard other people say that over the years – but let me tell you something of which I’m certain: God is not fickle. God is God, and that’s a constant reality in the life of the world, not something open to whimsical change.

But how is it then, if God is not a fickle God – how is it that sometime around the turn of the sixth century before Jesus was born, Jeremiah was citing ruin and desolation at God’s hands, while Jesus is recorded as portraying God as a shepherd whose inclusivity goes beyond anything normative, sensible or economically wise? For let me tell you one more thing I know – if your Chapter neglected 99% of the value of the endowment, and left it in an economically precarious position, I can write out for your right now the script and the outcome of the next annual meeting!

Well, the truest words, perhaps, in that fierce and scary portion of Jeremiah are when he says My people are foolish, they do not know me…And you might say that the story of the Bible – the over-arching story of the whole sixty-six books of God’s holy Word – the big picture of the Bible is the story of how humanity woke up and discovered the real nature of God. And this revelation, this journey, is a gradual process – a fact we need to remember when people throw at us poorly digested, bleeding chunks of Scripture taken out of context.

Look back to some of the earliest parts of the Old Testament, and it’s not even clear that people believed that Yahweh was the only god – Psalm 82 speaks of this God taking a seat in the middle of a council of gods. Hardly a monotheistic statement, but it’s there in the Bible. And the trajectory of the Bible story is, in essence, about how humanity starts to recognize in God both the power of creation, but also a concern with humanity itself. A concern initially understood as being in covenant to the children of Israel, but gradually widening itself throughout the Old Testament and into the New, with a concern for and love of all peoples and all of creation. 

And part of that story of growing insight and understanding is the gradual maturity of religious voice and commentary about how God relates to fallen human behavior. That’s what’s going on in different ways in Jeremiah and in Luke – let alone in those early verses of the first letter to Timothy. And thus we see the human understanding of God changing – and I would suggest growing – from the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile six centuries before Christ, which much of the Old Testament blames on the back-sliding and sinful practices of Israelite leaders and people, through to the death of Jesus on the cross, which is somehow understood to stand as the ultimate sign of forgiveness and love for all time and history.

Now, that’s a great story and a great journey. But the next question is who understands that? Who is it that gets this insight into what God is like? Because you should not need me to tell you, that plenty of people don’t get it. Plenty of people walking up and down Michigan Avenue right now, doing something very different with their Sunday morning to you me. And plenty of people sitting in Christian churches right now don’t seem to get it either. It is to the eternal shame and horror of the religion which you and I profess that it has often portrayed God to be a god of anger, exclusivity and violence, even right now in the 21^st Century, let alone in ages past.

What is the trick, what is it that’s needed, to help people discover the nature of God? Well – let me offer you and answer, an answer rooted in the gospel, rooted in today’s very gospel reading, and an answer very fit for the start of a church’s program year. The answer, I believe, is that it is discipleship that helps us discover God, grow with God, and share the Good News of God with those around us.

Look back at the gospel narratives. Those humble, poorly educated fisherman and the like that Jesus calls – they don’t get almost everything about Jesus and about God, at the start of it all. But Jesus turns them into disciples, and then sends them to a waiting world.

And being a disciple involves two things really – it involves a change of heart, and it involves commitment. And one often springs from the other. Because – and this is central to Luke’s message we heard this morning – the image of the lost sheep and the image of the lost coin are linked to repentance. The climax of both of those brief parables is that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…And the word for repentance, as I’m sure you know, is the Greek word metanoia– a word which means a radical, profound, life-affecting change of heart.

And it takes a change of heart to discover that God is even out there searching for you. For those two parables are just the warm-up to one of the greatest parables Jesus ever told. A parable which for many, is really the entire gospel message distilled into a few verses. For the very next words of this part of Luke 15 are Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons… And I am sure you don’t need me to remind you that it is when the younger son has had a radical, profound, life-affecting change of heart that he discovers his father was far away from home seeking him out, forgiving him and loving him.

God loves all God’s children – but it needs repentance, fully understood and live out – for us even to notice this ultimate quality of God’s love. And discipleship – intentional living out a God-shaped, Jesus-shaped, cross-shaped sacrificial and committed life – it is discipleship that helps us know this, recall this (as we so often need to do), and retell it to those around us. Stuff like this doesn’t always happen by chance – it needs the discipline of discipleship, and that’s why God, in Jesus, has called us to gather here today.

You will have read in the e-news that, at Bishop Lee’s suggestion, we are going to be following a theme this year – we’ve called it A year of regula. And regula without the final r – that’s the Latin word for rule – for having a rule of life. And that’s a phrase some Christians use to try and be intentional about making their faith a 168-hour a week, lived out faith – the kind of faith rooted in a commitment which includes, but goes way beyond, one or two hours in a church on some Sundays, as we feel like it.

In the coming week’s at the Dean’s Forum, we are going to hear some more about various different things which can make up an intentional, committed, Christian life – things like studying the Bible, spiritual direction, making a personal rule, praying, staying healthy, and even preparing for old age and death. All of those things are steps to keeping me and keeping you spiritually healthy andregula. 

And the more that is true for each one of us individually, and the more that is true for us as a congregation, the more we will come to understand the full self-sacrificial glory and love of God and be able to share it in the world around us.

Christ, beyond all words you spoke, stories that with wonder glow,
You have shown us on a cross, love that will not let us go.

This year, and throughout your lives, I pray that you will join me in seeking repentance, growing in discipleship, recognizing that love, and sharing it with passion in this broken and complex world. Amen.