Mindful God

Text: Psalm 8
Other texts: Proverbs 8:22-31

It is partly a question of scale.

In the scheme of the universe, from the very largest, oldest thing we know, to the very smallest, most ephemeral thing we know, we are somewhat closer to the smallest than the largest. Yet the range and quantities above and below us are incomprehensible. There are sextillion stars in the universe. And there are a thousand times as many atoms in a human body—that’s one octillion—than that.

So we wonder with the writer of the psalm: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are humans that you should be mindful of them?” How can God even know about tiny us?

But mindful is more than being aware of. How can a God who created all things—galaxies and stars and atoms and quarks—understand our thoughts? The taste of coffee, a comfortable chair, fear of thunder, remembering the smell of the soil where we grew up, knowing that a friend is safe, picking tomatoes in the summer. Plus grief at bombings, tornadoes, factories in Bangladesh, warehouses in Texas, and fears of war and poverty.

We know so much more now than when the eighth psalm was written about how big the universe is and how small its parts. Even if God can comprehend it, we cannot. And even if God can comprehend our worries and pleasures, how can we be more than one piece of data in a huge store of it?

Yet we understand that God can, and does. We understand even more—that God is near us, with us. Even more—that God comprehends us because God exists in Jesus, a human being on this earth. And that God inhabits us in the Spirit, breathed into us, breathing life into us, and praying our secret prayers.

The Trinity is often considered to be a way to characterize God. God is three-in-one, God is triune, God is inherently relational, and so forth. When we start doing that, we get into arguments about proper ways of thinking—and talking, and praying—and generally get tangled up at some point. But we should always be suspicious of statements that begin “God is …” God is such and such. Even when it is we who are saying them. It is hard to know whether we ever have enough information to make “God is” statements.

But we can say what God is for us. Especially for us individually, but also things we might agree with others about (which sometimes thus becomes dogma). In this way, the Trinity is not about the nature of God, but about how God seems to us. And about how the universe that God made seems to be. We can speak then with authority. And we can use all the sources we have that reveal God to us, including scripture and Jesus and the Spirit felt within us.

And we can also use ourselves as sources. The delight we take in things, our appreciation of beauty, our love for others. This is all useful information. So is our urge for justice and peace. We can see these things as our nature—in God’s image—or as gifts from the creator, or the presence of the Spirit within us, or fortified by our trust in Jesus.

It seems like there are a few portraits—three, what a coincidence!—that people paint of the world in which we live.

First, the world is created. You do not have to imagine God’s fingers actually forming the world out of clay piece by piece to see it as organized, beautiful, and awesome. There seems to be order in things, rules that we are learning about. Amazing structures seem to emerge from first principles. It is majestic. At the same time, it is incredibly complicated—maybe even beyond our knowing (how smart can we be, after all?)—and very mysterious. It is an object of and occasion for wonder.

Second, the world is intimate. Or maybe personal would be another word for it. Though we seem to ourselves to be independent entities, we also know that we are fundamentally interconnected. That is, we cannot exist physically or spiritually without the amazingly elaborate network of things—maybe even the network of all things—of which we are a part. So in one sense we are just one of many. But in another sense—in our own sensations—it is all about us. Individual humans matter. The universe creates more than humans in general. The universe creates me. God is not vague. God comes in a particular person unlike any other but connected, as all are, with others.

And third, the world is lively. Everything moves. Matter is waves. We are not all one blob of universal stuff, because objects zoom around suns and particles zoom around (or wave around) nuclei. Locally, all this motion seems inevitably to produce life. Things love to grow all over the place. Bacteria and plants in the sidewalk and tubes at the bottom of the sea. Nothing is static. No Platonic inanimate perfection.

God is not, as one person said, a “nondescript sustainer.” The world is spirited. Life-bringing. Full of wind and fire, moving us this way and that, we not knowing where to next. But forward, it seems to us. Not progress, necessarily; not purposeful, necessarily; but in a direction. God is not timeless, meaning only that the God we know lives in time, too. God to us is a story that has unfolded over time and that we are convinced continues to unfold. God is a god of memory and of hope.

We can say that the lively, intimate, creator God is different faces of God, or manifestations, or elements, or appearances, or persons. But we cannot—we do not—say that they are three separately-wrapped gods. The God we see exposed in the universe, from tiny to tremendous, from impossibly far away to intimately within is, is a continuous person, with a continuing memory of creation, and a willingness to be affected by things and therefore open to surprises.

The God we know—and we can say nothing about the God we do not know—the God we know is a kind of ongoing tale which we read about in the Bible and which we experience in our lives in the world.

What we mostly know from this tale is that God really likes us. As it says in the first reading from Proverbs: God rejoices in his inhabited world and delights in the human race. The creation of the world—which is described in that reading and also in the psalm—is closely connected with that delight. Proverbs seems to say that the nature of the world is a result of God’s joy in it and, amazingly, in us. God is mindful of us.

The Trinity is therefore primarily an expression of grace, praise, and gratitude resulting from our observation of what God is. For us. It represents thanksgiving for our existence, for wonder and awe; thanksgiving for being intimately connected to each other and to God through Christ; and thanksgiving for the vitality of a universe in motion. And an acknowledgement that all this is so because of the love of God.

Sweet Abiding

Text: John 17:20-26
Other texts: 1 Corinthians 12

Regarding unity, Paul wrote to the churches in Corinth: “The body is not one part but many. … If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? If they were all [the same] part, where would the body be?”

It is the absurdity of the metaphor that makes it effective—imagine a body made up only of ears, a body made up only of eyes. There is a unity among the people of God—just as there are many parts, Paul says, but one body. But unity does not mean we are duplicates.

Yet we are not independent. The ear, Paul says, cannot complain that, because it is not an eye, that it is not part of the body. There is no ear that is not part of a larger body. A body is not a democracy. A body is not a federation. A body is one thing, made by God. This making, this creation, defines us, and it also defines God. We are creatures. God is creator.

We just overheard Jesus pray in the Gospel of John. This passage is the last part of a long section called the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for the time when he will leave them. A time coming soon for them, for in the next passage in John, Jesus is betrayed and arrested. And he has prayed for them, that though they are in the world, they may be cared for by God. Now he prays that his followers might be one. Not just his disciples, but all those—meaning us—all those who through the word, the story, have come to follow Jesus, that they—we—might be one.

This sounds nice. In a kind of sentimental way, we all think unity is good. Yet this powerful petition by Jesus to God the Father has been used to argue on the one hand for increased ecumenism and cooperation among faiths and on the other hand for increased isolation and the erection of barriers between faiths. Evidently it is not clear to all what or whom Jesus is praying for.

What makes us one? Do each of us feel at one with our neighbors in these pews? We do not share doctrinal unity here. Even in a small community—Faith, this single church—is a church of disparate views on God and Jesus. On the way we are called to serve in the world. On how we enact Jesus’ teachings and commands. Is that OK? Can we still say that we are one?

Who makes up the “them” that Jesus talks about? “I pray,” he says, “on behalf of these”—meaning his followers at the time—“but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” How wide a net is Jesus casting? All Christians? People just learning about Jesus? How about baptized people who have recently become full of doubts? How about Christian denominations with which Lutherans are in theological conflict? My energetically evangelical sister once prayed that my other sister—who is a pastor, a Lutheran pastor—would become Christian. Did her wish conform to or conflict with the spirit of Jesus’ prayer? Maybe “be one” really means “be like us.”

Who is the judge of Christian unity? Perhaps it is the various Christian institutions. Perhaps it is God. Perhaps it is the people whom Christians serve, people in need and suffering who receive God’s grace from followers of Christ. Or who are denied it. Is our declaration that we are Christian sufficient to make that so? Or is it that our actions as declared Christians confirm or refute our claim to be?

Jesus calls for unity of some sort among his followers over all time. If we are in fact one, as Jesus hopes, what distinguishing characteristics would enable someone to know that? That is, how could they tell whether one of us is like another? To be one, to be unified, there must be something we all share. Do we, and if so, what is that?

There is. And we do.

Jesus describes in today’s reading what we might call a chain of spirit. A series of links. Or maybe a conduit of spirit. Or maybe better an ecology of spirit. Which relates and connects God the Father, Jesus, and us. There are two aspects to this.

First, God is in us. God abides in us, as John says throughout his Gospel. You, Father, are in me, Jesus says. And I, Jesus, am in them, my followers. The glory that you gave me, Father, I, Jesus gave to them. The love of the Father for me is in them.

It is clear that people saw God in Jesus. He spoke with the authority of God, he forgave sins, he hung around with the prophets, demons recognized him. It was more than that Jesus was a good, charismatic, powerful personality. It was that God was clearly in Jesus somehow. When you know me, Jesus said, you know the Father. God is in all of us, but God was more revealed in Jesus. Jesus was transparent. You could see through Jesus to see God inside of him. Theologically, we say that when we see Jesus do something we see God. Jesus, as one scholar said, draws aside the curtain to reveal God.

Jesus is in us as the Father is in him, he says, so that—for this reason—we may be made one in the same way that Jesus and the Father are made one. I do this, he says “so that they be one, as we”—Jesus and the Father—“are one.”

So, the first way that people might tell that followers of Jesus are in unity—are one, share some special characteristic in common—is that they are transparent to God that is in them. More or less, we have to add, because we are rarely if ever as transparent as Jesus was. This is not such an odd concept. You know that when you see someone who is especially compassionate and self-giving—saintly, you might say—that God seems visible in them (and working through them).

You might have known, also, when it seems like God is in you and working through you.

The second part of the ecology of the spirit is that we are in God. You, Father, have given them to me. May they be with me, Jesus says. They are in us, Jesus and the Father, he says.

So the second way people might tell that followers of Jesus are one is that they are not alone but with other people. And as important, that they act as if that was true.

We are all part of the body of Christ—as Robin said the other week, this is more than a metaphor. We make up the body of Christ in the world. People not only see Christ within us, but the image, the character of the Christ they see is revealed by the followers of Christ, by us.

We are each one of many. We share the habitation of God. We are not just individual souls being spiritual, or even being good. We are no less connected, being parts of the body of Christ, than the eye that Paul talked about is from the ear, the hand from the foot. We are none of us more valuable than the other. We are no less responsible for one of us than for another.

The unity of Christians is an ephemeral gift. We are sometimes opaque to God in us and it is therefore sometimes hard to see God in us. That does not mean that God is not there. We sometimes act as if we could do without our sisters and brothers in Christ. We are sometimes mean and indifferent. That does not mean they are not in God with us. Our unity is sometimes fleeting, but it is persistent.

Paul finishes his instruction to the Corinthians saying this: The eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you! And the head cannot say to the feet, I do not need you! … If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Because God is in us. Because we are in God. Because we are one.

A Scary Moment

Text: John 5:1-9

We might ask: what is wrong with this man? Why is he such a whiner? Why has he been so patient, waiting—it seems—for thirty-eight years? Why has he let more aggressive others cut in front of him? Why has he not asked for help? Our compassion is sadly mixed with disdain. Would we, we think, have acted as this man has? We think not, or perhaps we hope not. We have more gumption.

We might ask also: what is wrong with those other people? Why have none of them given this man a hand? Why have they time after time crowded him out, denying him a chance to be healed? Our disdain is thankfully tempered by compassion. Would we have acted as these people have? We think not, or perhaps we hope not. We are kinder.

What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? He berates neither the crowd nor the man. This is not, evidently, a moral tale. Not a commentary on the character of the man nor of the crowd. Not a teaching about ethical behavior, self-reliance, or the energetic pursuit of progress in the face of difficulties.

Jesus asks the man: Do you want to be made well? The man has been ill for thirty-eight years. Though maybe not for all those years, he has been sitting by the pool for a long time, and Jesus knew that, it says. Do you want to be made well? This is often a trick question that implies some kind of disapproval, as if the man were ill by his own fault, laziness, or ambivalence. But Jesus is not judging him. He is warning the man that something might happen if the man agrees. If you want to be made well, Jesus seems to say, I can do that, but I want to make sure that that is what you wish.

The man realizes in this moment, I’m convinced, that Jesus has the power to heal him. Jesus has a tendency to elicit from us our true desires. (Confronted with pure compassion, we feel things clarify.)

This is the moment of the miracle in this story. It is a thrilling moment. It is a scary moment. Scary to be in the face of such life-changing power. Scary to think what that change might entail.

The man’s answer, in spite of what must have been a lifetime of longing by the man, is slow in coming. Instead, he tells a story about his past life, about obstacles and setbacks, and about the wrongs done him. He never answers the question that Jesus has put to him.

What is he thinking? Why does he hesitate?

Maybe the man was afraid of hoping. Of getting his hopes up, only to have them sink again. Maybe he had become cynical, tired of making plans that never worked out, or believing in others who were not trustworthy. Maybe he was exhausted by disappointment.

Or maybe the man did not trust his own ability to survive in a future different from the past he had known. What skills did he have? A resume that reads Experience: 38 years of frustration on a porch by a pool. When we are called to unknown journeys, there is no guarantee that we will have the abilities we need; we might not be good at what a new future requires of us. It might be confusing, or shocking, or dangerous. We might not be able to cope. Perhaps we will fail.

Maybe the man was ready to say Yes. But he hesitated to answer because he was overwhelmed by grief. His life’s work, the focus of his day, the preponderance of his thoughts must have been—seem to have been—how to be the ill person he was. Now, that would be gone. Freed from it, you might say, but maybe he would say instead taken from him. No one leaves the past without looking back. There is no dark life so black that there is no light in it. We cannot simply set aside years and memories as if they never were. There is sadness in every leaving.

The man grieves, perhaps, that his identity will be lost. We confuse who we are with what we have and what happens to us. I am the athletic person, the artistic person, the wealthy benefactor person. I am the responsible person, the socially adept person, the good-looking person. I am the struggling person, the person who acts out, the unlucky person. I am the sick person. Who will this man be once he can stand up and walk? How will others see him? How will he know himself? He will be a stranger to his friends and to himself.

And maybe the man did not answer because he was uncertain whether all this real loss would be worth some undefined gain. Even if he trusted Jesus to heal him, and even if he was able, how could he know that his new life would be better than his old one? Maybe this was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Better the devil you know. Counting chickens. And so forth. This situation is ripe for proverbial advice. We cannot know the future for certain. And just because our hopes are fond does not mean that they are right. What we think will fulfill us may not.

It is not helpful for us to judge this man as being of poor moral character. His fault is timidity and fear of the unknown, characteristics we all share with him. We are all timid in some way. We all shun adventure sometime—or most of the time. Change is hard. Transitions are hard. Even the ones we have sought. Even at the brink of the most longed-for changes in our lives, we balance joyful anticipation with secret dread and with real grief.

Jesus knows the man. He speaks without hearing the man’s answer. These imperatives—stand up! walk!—act more like offers. Which the man accepts. The man, it says, is made whole. What was broken is restored.

Today after coffee hour we—those who wish to—are going to talk about baptism. Central to baptism is that God has both the interest and the power to bring us to new life. This new life is not a thing of the moment, any more than the man’s healing was. It is ongoing, continuous. Even in our anxiety and grief, the uncertain future becomes a new future as the man—as we—live daily in new ways. God makes the promise of baptism to us constantly and also the power to accept this promise.

We are not able to nor are we required to live the same moment over and over. Jesus makes us an offer of new life. Stand up, walk.

Something might happen.