Today's Sermon

 

“I Am Available” – Talking About God Series

 

            Jesus said to them, “And, who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 15:16)

            Who do you say that I am? It is a defining question of the New Testament. Christians have wrestled with it from the beginning. Theologians have offered sweeping treatises on Jesus’ identity, substance, and the accompanying implications; it’s a field called Christology. Everyday churchgoers come with both strong convictions and real uncertainty about who we call God’s son. For those of us in churches such as this, we are a little more reserved in making demonstrative claims about Jesus out in the wider community.

            We are far better and more practiced at professing who we are not or what we do not believe than we are at who we are and what we do. We are, after all, Protestants; we were named for what we originally stood against. That list has evolved over the years and so while our primary opposition may no longer be the Roman Catholic Church, we still most comfortably about what we’re not. We’re not anti-gay, not anti-science, not anti-women, not against other religions, not anti-intellectual. We are not dogmatic. We are not fundamentalists or biblical literalists. There is merit in all of those negative declarations, but who do we say we are? One of the reasons we struggle to say is because we struggle to say who God is. Again, it’s easier to say who God is not—an old guy floating in the clouds, though there is some value in the idea of a personal God. There are limits, however, to only saying we think God is not. We can understand more fully who we are and how we should live if we can say better who we think God is?

            This is the question we will be exploring in this next series, “Talking About God.” The point is not to come up with a singular bullet proof definition, but rather build or rebuild a vocabulary for talking about God. In order for our faith to grow beyond mere negations, we have to develop a lexicon of affirmations. I’ll make the case for an expansive vocabulary for God, not because it is fashionable, but because I believe it is most true. It is also plenty traditional; people have been giving God many names as long as people have been naming God at all.

            We recognize from the outset this is an impossible but necessary task. To paraphrase the great theologian Karl Barth, we can’t really talk about God but we have to talk about God.[1] We can’t talk about God because it’s too big a concept. Yet, we have to try and give expression to this reality which has been experienced across time and cultures, even if our own experiences vary. Our words are all approximate, so we get at it from as many angles as possible, systematically through theology, experientially through story, metaphorically through poetry, song, and prayer, nonverbally through art. Our attempts are always incomplete representations of what is ultimately ineffable. The task is further complicated by the sense that God is not always the same or at least we don’t experience God the same. Sometimes God seems this way, sometimes that.

            But, on this fool’s errand we will go because it can help our faith and render the God on which it relies more accessible. Therein lies the importance of this series. So often people lose faith because they can no longer relate to the names they were given about God and they therefore think they must abandon the whole endeavor. What if the problem is not with God, but how we have named God? This is not about telling you what to believe, but helping discover language that might help you access what is happening around and within you and therefore might help drive your life.

            Each week, I will also pair the scripture reading and teaching with a contemporary reading from Matthew Fox’s book about names for God aptly titled, Naming the Unnameable, restating Barth’s conundrum.[2] In it, Fox draws on Christianity, other traditions, science, and human experience to offer up 89 names for God. Each name gets a chapter of only a page or two, making it quite accessible. The point again is not to push his list as definitive, but hold it up as a model of how we all can engage in this project fruitfully. Fox called this his most controversial book—and this is someone who was expelled by the Catholic Church by at the time Cardinal Ratzinger. He called it his most dangerous book because it turned the naming of God back over to the people rather than keeping it the exclusive domain of the church hierarchy. You can see why that would be threatening. If the church doesn’t own the naming rights for God, what does it have? Well, to me it has the blessed charge of teaching people the loving way of Jesus, but that’s another sermon series. Fox understands that if you return the naming of God rightfully over to the people of God, then their faith becomes their own and it comes alive. Just as it was through the encounter of Jesus that transformed the disciples, it is through our own encounters that we are transformed.

            Let’s begin, then, with an early meeting of God, a passage we have visited already this past year. The story is often referred to as “The Burning Bush” and since we’ve done it recently, I won’t reread all of it. To summarize, Moses is out tending the flock of his father-in-law when he hears God call his name from a burning bush. Moses and God, then, carry on this conversation during which God reports hearing the cries of the enslaved Israelites. That’s telling in and of itself. God tells Moses he should go lead his people to freedom, also telling. Moses, however, has no language for God and here’s what unfolds:

Exodus 3:13-14
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”[b] He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”

            God’s name is “I am”!? What a strange name. It’s as if God is establishing from the beginning what Barth would later put into words. God is who God is. To top it off, it’s more accurately a more expansive form of the verb “to be,” “I am who I am, I was who I was, I will be who I will be.” No limits of human creation on this one who is…well, isness, which happens to be one of the entries in Fox’s book.

            The story does give us some characteristics to go on, however. God calls to Moses, so God is near, at least sometimes, and God addresses us, at least sometimes, knowing our name. God shows up and engages. God notices the cries of harm, injustice, oppression, and God is moved by them. God then charges and empowers leaders to rise up and lead people to freedom. That’s quite a lot in one little encounter. God is available, engaged, compassionate, and empowering if we would but notice.

            The noticing part is critical. Rabbi Kushner, in his book, God was in This Place and I Did Not Know—now there’s a title—says, “The ‘burning bush’ was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether or not Moses could pay attention for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke.”[3] God is the available one. We are to be the attentive ones, that we would notice the love God is up to and be equipped to be a vessel for it.

            What do we notice? Maybe more importantly, what are we failing to notice? How many times are people in proximity and yet totally fail to notice each other, I mean really notice each other? I was walking through a forest the other day at a state park. We heard this big “splash” in the water as we crossed a little stream on a wooden bridge, then rustling in the underbrush. We stopped and watched for a moment, wanting to see what it was. A few moments passed and then a baby black bear crossed the stream before disappearing into the bushes. It was an instant and then it was gone. How many instances are we missing? What bears are lurking that might be trying to tell us something? What is God trying to say to us from the bushes and how can we train ourselves to notice more?

            Here’s an idea for this series. Keep a journal of some sort. Try out the names for God that come to you and journal your experience of living into them, essentially how you notice God showing up in those ways. Start with a reflection about today’s name, God as the available one, the one who calls you by name, charges you and equips you. Then journal on how you experience that throughout the week or not as the case may be. Write about what you are noticing, how you are being addressed, called, and equipped. If God is in the bush, God can be anywhere, in anything.

            Here’s today’s excerpt Fox’s book that makes that exact case, namely that God isn’t merely high above creation on some throne, but rather intricately woven into it, all of it. Maybe his way of naming God here will spark something in you. This chapter is called, “God is the Universe,” and here’s part of what it says:

Thomas Berry tells us that the Universe is the “primary sacred reality” and that we recover a sense of the sacred “only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being.” This is how we become sacred ourselves, “by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us.” Moreover, “the universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communion.”[4]

            In other words, God is calling from the bush, from the dirt, from the stars themselves. It’s all of God, which means all of it can deliver a message from God to you. This is the God of availability. Why does this matter? Because if all is of God, if the universe is somehow a scripture of God, then we are to read the created world for its divine inspiration and treat it as the very body of God. When you limit scripture to a book, you give accept permission to treat everything else as lesser. What if it’s all scripture? You would no more mistreat it than you would tear out a page of the Bible so you could spit out your gum. Moreover, you would learn to read the world for how it is always inviting you into love; every moment is inviting you into love, love which sometimes looks tender, sometimes looks bold, sometimes looks creative.

            Jesus asks his followers, the ones who claim they want to follow this way, “Who do you say that I am” not because he is giving them a quiz. He asks because he knows in order for them to have a faith that is real and alive, relevant and true, they have to be able to name it for themselves. He doesn’t ask, “What does the church say?” or “What do the confessions say?” He asks, “Who do you say that I am?” It is the question that shapes every question.

            We are good at saying who we think God is not. It’s time we develop our ability to say more about who God is and therefore who Christ is and therefore who we are and how we will live in the world. This series is going to challenge us to find God anew. In the process, we will find more of our true selves.

            Amen.

[1] Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (1962)

[2] Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God.  

[3] Lawrence Kushner, God was in This Place and I Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality, Ultimate Meaning (1991).

[4] Fox, 25.