Is God With Us or Not?

Text: Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42

Their fear obliterated their memory and it erased their gratitude. Without water in the desert, they forgot that God had freed them from slavery, had defeated their foes, and had fed them as they searched for the land to which God had sent them. Now, thirsty, impatient, and terrified, they complained to Moses: where is God? Is God among us—or not?

Fear drives out the memory of God’s good acts and intentions. But we cannot escape being afraid. We have had times in our own deserts, parched, exhausted, lost. We will have them again. That’s why we tell ourselves the story of God and us over and over again. That’s why the God of Israel is named “God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Why Jesus is named in the opening worship prayer as “Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

It is why we hear these stories Sunday after Sunday for our whole lives. It is why we read the Bible, the story not only of God or only of a people, but of God and us, God’s people, together. It is why the Baptism rite that we will soon celebrate starts by recounting God’s creation, God’s deeds, God’s redemption of Israel, and the baptism, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And it is why we relate the story before we share Holy Communion.

Wandering in the desert, the people demand water from Moses. It is not an unreasonable demand, for without water they will all die. And they complain about his leadership. Has he sold them a bill of goods? Has he brought them here only to kill them, and all they have, and even their children? Moses has promised them freedom and prosperity, but so far the freedom has been the freedom to suffer and the prosperity a mirage. Yet Moses speaks for God in this book, and Moses can see as well as we can that it is God’s promise that they now doubt. Where was God?

Is God among us—or not? It is the mark of the Israelites’ despair that they wondered not only whether God was no longer with them, but—with that last little addition: “or not”—whether God had ever been with them. Have they erred in interpreting all of history? Perhaps, after all, God is uninterested in humans. Perhaps, against all the teachings of their faith, God had turned away from them. And they were alone.

It is a tragic moment. And though quickly turned about when God through Moses brings water flowing from a rock and they all drink, the terror of the moment remains in the minds of the wanderers and the tellers of this story. For Israelites are God’s people and God is their God. There is no story of Israel that does not include God. And the deepest sadness of Israel has been—as it is in this story—to think that God—whose existence is never the question—that God has abandoned them.

Centuries later, Jesus walks to the well in Samaria. It is the heat of the day, and he too is thirsty. The fate of Israel is uncertain in these times, divided within itself and occupied by the Romans. It has been a long and at times a dreary story that has unfolded from the time Moses struck that rock in the desert. There have been ups and downs, and now is one of the downs. The years have not been good to Israel. Things have not worked out well, Israel has been torn apart, exiled, resettled, corrupted, and conquered. The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed once and, by the time John wrote this Gospel, destroyed again. Is God among us—or not?

This is John’s question in his Gospel, and the woman’s question, too. Once she decides Jesus is a prophet, and maybe more than a prophet, the first thing she asks is a question about God’s presence. I see you are a prophet, she says. So: where is God? Is God up on that mountain—where the Samaritans worship—or is God in that city of Jerusalem—where the Jews worship? None of the above, Jesus tells her. He tells her: God is here, right in front of you. We are longing for the messiah, she says. Jesus says to her: “It’s me!” The one standing here with you.

Jesus in John, more than in the other three Gospels, is God among us. Jesus is here, in this world, staying here. In John, Jesus resides, stays, remains—the same word used over and over. Where are you staying, the first disciples ask him. Come and see. Come and see, the Samaritan woman tells her friends. And Jesus stays with them awhile. And they come to believe him.

For all his divinity—emphasized in John—still, Jesus in this Gospel is committed to this world, and the salvation that Jesus brings is one that affects this world now, at the moment. In John, more so than in the other Gospels, Jesus has affection for the world. He makes wine from water. He cries for his friend Lazarus. He prays emphatically for the well-being of his friends, the disciples. After his death and resurrection, he hangs around with them, and in the end they all share breakfast.

For John, there is no faith if God is not among us. Our faith and trust in God develop over time in relationship, just as they do between people. How can we believe in and trust a being whom we do not know? And how can we know a being who is not here with us? The story of faith is first: presence; then second: experience; and at last, third: belief.

The church is a steward of God’s presence. That is, through common action, and through repetition and rite and testimony we remind each other that God is among us—yes. Even in the face of inevitable fear and doubt. So it is that in the ceremony we are all about to take part in, we promise to “join with others in worshipping God.” All together members of the body of Christ.

We cannot remain free of desert times, but our fear need not destroy our memory of God, who is here, in this body, among us.

Tempted to be Perfect

Text: Genesis 3:1-7

It is tempting to read this passage in Matthew as a call to us to be perfect.

We are all tempted by one thing or another, we think, and in this Gospel story Jesus is tempted by the same things. One view is that we all need food, we all need safety, and we all need to have some control over our lives. So those are the things with which the tempter tests Jesus. A darker view of the temptations is that represent our desire to magically force the world to our will, to be the center of something spectacular, and to have power over all who would thwart us.

Either way, in the story Jesus is tempted as we are, by the things we are. But the difference between us and Jesus is that we succumb to temptations and Jesus does not. We are human, after all, and sin. But Jesus, who is supposed to be a model for us, is perfect. We, if you buy this interpretation, are supposed to be perfect, too. But I don’t buy it, and I don’t think Jesus would, either.

Perfection is a tricky sort of thing.

When a couple gives birth to new baby, or adopts one, you hear the parents say, “He’s just perfect,” “she’s just perfect.” The couple’s friends see a wonderful child, but sometimes a little bald or a little flushed or whatever—signs of humanity—wonderful but not perhaps perfect. It may be that the eyes of the new parents are blinded. It may be that they see perfection where the rest of us see only really-good.

It may be that parents see more poorly than others. Or maybe instead they see better. And that perfection is what they see. Their child, though as flawed as humanity can be, is perfect.

When God created the heavens and the earth—in Genesis, before the Garden episode we just heard about—when God created each day, at the end of the day God pronounced it good. God said in Hebrew: It is Tov. Which means a little more than good. It means good like everything is working fine and all the parts seem to fit the way they are supposed to. It means perfect, like when you finish a project and you’re pretty happy about it and you say, “perfect.” God made the world, and God said, “perfect. It’s just perfect.” Perfect for what it is, like a perfect new child is perfect—just so, creation was perfect.

The actions of the man and the woman did not undo that. A child grows and the parents still look and see a perfect child. Even though as people grow up they do things that are messed up, they are no less children of their parents, who see them as at the same time both flawed and perfect. Does God see creation with eyes any less loving?

The story of the events in the garden is a story written from our point of view. The point of view of humanity now. How in the world did we get to this state of affairs? In a sense, the garden story is a story of growing up. And like all good growing up stories, the key moment is the discovery of evil. The story doesn’t so much explain things as name them. We humans feel the force of evil. Something that is greater than our own individual inclinations to be bad. Something more cosmic than that.

The story is a story of discovery. An unfortunate discovery, for sure. The man and woman eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not just the tree of knowledge: this is not about wisdom. And not the tree of evil. The tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What the man and woman know now that they didn’t before is that evil exists, that is causes harm and hurt, and that it is different from good. And different from God. And they discover that humans are somehow caught in the interaction.

What changes is what they know, not what they are or who they are. Which is mortal children of God. This story is not the story of the beginning of sin. We do not learn from this story that sin is brought into the world by the actions of the woman and man, in spite of what the Apostle Paul argues. All we do know is that the are both tempted by a serpent, which most of us, correctly I think, make out to be the devil, the evil one. And that they succumb. They are changed. But they are no more changed in type or nature than we are as children or as our children are.

We often think of sin as some kind of unfortunate add-on. An ugly and burdensome accessory. Or like a few extra pounds that we carry. Something we can get rid of as easily as we can rid ourselves of extra weight by dieting: something difficult but possible. We sometimes look at the saints (or sainted people we know) as we look at the “after” models in diet ads. People who have amazingly prevailed.

But sin is not shed by spiritual diets. That’s what Luther found when he decided that all his good works (all his diet-like discipline) weren’t helping him. Sin is of us. That does not mean we are bad. Only that we are creatures. We sin.

God loves us for what we are. I’m sure you have heard that before. But this does not mean that God loves us in spite of our sins. Not that God loves our clean souls that happen to be covered in mud at the moment. God loves us in our sins, not in spite of them. God loves us because we are still perfect, each still God’s child.

We love one another for our vulnerabilities, not in spite of them. That’s why, I suspect, people love you. People love you for your vulnerabilities. Not because you are so great, but because you are great and also you are not always so great. God loves us because we are great and not so great.

The story in Matthew is not about us being perfect. It is not about us at all. It is about Jesus, who he is, his identity, and the life that he is about to enter. It is a temptation story, but the temptation that he faces in the desert and in his life is not the temptation to be perfect. Which is not a problem for Jesus. Jesus feels in the desert the strong urges that all people feel. Eating when hungry, worrying about being safe, trying to keep things under control. Jesus feels, in this beginning of his ministry, what it is to be human.

And the temptation of Jesus is to give in to his desire to be human. To be like an ordinary human. To be only so brave and not braver. To live a long and happy life in the company of his best friends. To avoid his mission and destiny. To avoid the inevitable suffering and the cross ahead.

When Jesus dismisses the tempter: Away with you, Satan!—he uses the same words he uses later to dismiss Peter. Get behind me, Satan! Peter offers what the tempter offers. Human living. Peter and the tempter hold out to Jesus what only he cannot have: a mortal and flawed life just like ours. Jesus, like earthly leaders, only more so, is alone.

The desire to be perfect is Satan’s call. He tempts Jesus and us with the prospect of ignoring, escaping, or dismissing the world. His call appears in many voices of the world suggesting that we can be perfect. They are, as we say in baptism, the devil’s empty promises. They call to us. But God’s voice is not one of them.

Ups and Downs

Text: Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration)

Life has its ups and downs.

On the upside is upbeat. Things are looking up. It’s uplifting because we’re flying high. Up is where the penthouses are and the desks of the big-shots. Upgraded.

And up is where the heavens are. Up is where Jesus went when he ascended, and Elijah went up, too. Jesus rose from the dead and now Jesus is up there, sitting at the right hand of the father. Up on the mountain is where Moses went to get the law. And up on the mountain is where Jesus went with a couple of his disciples to meet with Moses and Elijah. Up is where the word of God came from: up is where God spoke from the cloud and up is where the Spirit came from like a dove. Up is the direction in which we lift our hearts in thanksgiving and hands and voices in praise. Up is where God lives.

On the downside is downtrodden. In the dumps. Where we hit bottom before we turn up again. Down is a downer. Down is where the mailroom is and the basement apartments. Down is the dark underground. Down is where we get down to work and down and dirty.

And down is the place of death. Down is where Jesus went after being crucified. It is where he went when, as we say in the creed, he descended into hell. Down is where the story goes after the mountaintop. Back down to the world of flesh and suffering and joyful desire. Down is where Moses came to find his people worshipping a golden calf idol. Down is where Jesus came to walk to his death. Down is where we live.

Matthew, the Gospel writer, is interested in high places and highfalutin ideas. In Matthew, Jesus’ great sermon is made from a mountain—known therefore as the sermon on the mount. In contrast, in Luke’s version, Jesus preaches down on the plain. In Luke, the ones who are blessed are poor and the hungry. In Matthew, they are poor in spirit and hunger for righteousness. In Luke and in Mark, the followers of Jesus call him master or rabbi, meaning teacher. In Matthew, they call Jesus Lord.

Is Jesus an up kind of person or a down kind of one? Is he mostly a divine creature who lives in the clouds, one who even in his lifetime hung around with the likes of a timeless Moses and Elijah? Or is he mostly immanuel, God with us, down here in an earthly and earthy way? Which is primary?

The dogmatic answer to this is that Jesus is 100% divine and 100% human; that is what we teach. But the dogma is a knife edge from which people—who are not easy with mysterious paradox—tend to fall to one side or the other. As even the early writings—the Gospels—demonstrate.

The centuries have not settled the issue. Five hundred years ago Martin Luther and his contemporaries were arguing about where Jesus was now that he had ascended to the right hand of God. The context was a debate about whether or not Jesus was in the bread that we eat in Holy Communion. There were those who said that if Jesus was sitting next to God, then he was up in heaven and could not be down here on earth, in the bread. But Luther said, first, that Jesus could be anywhere he felt like, as often as he felt like it, even if it meant two places at once. But more, Luther had a very down to earth view of Jesus. Jesus was a friend of the earth, of us, poor earthy creatures, and was glad to continue to be with us down here, in whatever form.

This up and down business about Jesus and God is not inevitable. That is, the position of God and us does not have to be along a vertical axis, God high and we low. This notion is not something that is in the nature of things human and divine. It is just the way our imaginations picture it. The home of God could just have easily been off to the unreachable left or right. At the end of the earth, for example, beyond the edge of the sea, as gods sit in some other faiths. Or in a secret cave. Or in the middle of the earth, or an emerald city, or in an alternate reality.

What we think about God is that God is hard to reach in normal life by normal methods of travel. God is separate. Up in the heavens is a good spot because we cannot travel up by our own means. We cannot fly. Gravity pulls us down again. When we try to fly, as Icarus did, we are destined to fail, as Icarus did, a sign of hubris, thinking himself to be above the life of mortals. We cannot fly to heaven on our own.

You may wonder why today’s Gospel story—called the Transfiguration—should merit a Sunday of its own. In the three-year cycle of readings, it appears every year, along with only a handful of other special days like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost. Every other story has to wait three years before it returns. The Transfiguration does appear in each of the three first Gospels, which means that in the earliest Christian tradition the story was considered important and widespread.

The story doesn’t really add much to our or the disciple’s knowledge of Jesus. They already have decided and declared that he is the Son of God. It does not provide decisive new evidence. It does not advance the plot. Jesus has already established that he comes from the spiritual line of the Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets). At best, it confirms Jesus’ provenance, his pedigree, his class of people. So maybe evidence is not the purpose or the point.

People find the transfiguration story to be disturbing and confusing. That is because it seems magical and mystical. It has ghosts in it, and clouds, and bright lights, and voices from God that speak directly to some humans. And Jesus seems comfortable with that. It’s the disciples who are freaked out.

It is not that Jesus does something extraordinary. In all the Gospels he has already presided over some major miracles, healing people, feeding multitudes, raising people from the dead. The transfiguration is not more miraculous.

But it is less earthy. This is not a man of the people doing things with divine assist. What happens is way beyond people-things. It makes Jesus, who seemed to be down here, up there. That’s one reason that Peter wants to build those booths: he wants this experience to be made more mundane, daily, attached. And in the end, Jesus does come back down here. Not only is it not his time to stay on the mountain, as some argue, it is not his job.

The story of the transfiguration says: there are parts of Jesus that are not human, in a major way. We cannot elide this or ignore it. The story of the transfiguration is put right smack in the middle of the Gospels, up on a mountain. It is in the way. We cannot get from the ministry of Jesus to his passion without going through the transfiguration.

There are many who see Jesus in daily things. Luther did, and likewise Lutherans do by tradition and teaching. Jesus is earthy, a person of the earth, as we are. People discover Jesus in events of their lives, in compassion, in stories, in teachings.

But many discover Jesus in a moment that cannot be explained easily, not connected to daily events. Mysterious moments. Those discoveries are powerful. They can support one’s faith life for a long time. Sometimes, when things get rough and dubious, the memory of that moment is all that keeps one faithful and true. It can be all that one has to keep one trying to know God and to praise and thank God. It can sustain us when the life of this earth is too hard, or vicious, or disappointing, or crazy.

We are creatures of the earth, down here. But we need the food of the heavens, up there. We made in God’s image are persons, as Jesus was, of divine and mortal ancestry. Mystery is as essential to us as pragmatism.

We, like the disciples, abide in two worlds. After hearing the voice in the cloud, the disciples fall down in fear. But Jesus touches them. Rise up, he says. And then he says, come back down with me.