Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
Sometimes when
people find out that I am a pastor they
suppose that I’m an expert on God.
I have even been asked a time or two, “what does God think about such
and such?” Well, I have been
studying very hard at seminary, and I do know a thing or two about what a
number of systematic theologians think about God…but they don’t
know what God thinks … and neither do I.
As pastors, we should all be preaching Christ, but there are significant
variations of interpretation. Jimmy Swaggart, Charles
Stanley and I are as different as daylight and dark, and one of the chief
differences is how certain those preachers are about everything they
say, as if they know the very mind of God.
That’s my
first discomfort with any self-defined
"experts on God." They think they have all the answers … but
they can’t. The Bible says as much. This week, I read a marvelous sermon
on the story in Exodus where Moses asks God "show me your ways"
(Ex 33:13). Only the Hebrew verb doesn’t say "show me;"
it says "teach me, make known to me." God answers Moses by
saying "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest"
(Ex 33:14). God won’t give Moses a roadmap or explain the Divine ways;
God only promises to be with him. Then Moses asks God, "Show me your
glory" (Ex 33:18). The verb here does
mean "show me." Moses wants some evidence. Moses wants to see God
face to face. But Moses is told he cannot see God’s face; he can only see
where God has passed. God tells him, "I will make all my goodness pass
before you, and will proclaim before you the name, The Lord; and I will be
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show
mercy. But," (God) said, "you cannot see my
face; for no one shall see me and live" (Ex 33:19-20). The last verse is well known to most of us.
We hear it as a threat, meaning that death is the consequence of seeing God, if
you see God, you will die. And while that is one possible meaning of the
Hebrew, it is not the only possibility. A better translation might be "No
one shall see me while living."
It’s not saying you could do this but if you do you will
die… Its saying, "No person can really see or comprehend me while
living." Ultimate exposure, ultimate understanding of
everything is not forbidden to a human being. It is incompatible… it is
incompatible with being human. We are less than divine, and we
ultimately grow older, live, and die, striving… but limited by our
humanity. And what Moses was seeking was to push his humanity to the greatest
possible level. Much was given to Moses. According to (Jewish) tradition Moses
was indeed the greatest prophet who ever lived. And Moses was granted all that
it was possible for him to see, which was not the capacity to encounter the
presence of the divine, but to be aware of what would be the “after
effect”, what is God’s shadow, what is God’s trace in the
world.
"No one can
see God while living." And that means
that no preacher, no seminary professor, no Pope, no televangelist, no human
being can claim to be the expert on God. "For my thoughts are not your
thoughts," God says in Isaiah, "nor are your ways my ways,
says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa. 55:8-9). The psalmist says "Such knowledge is
too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it" (Psa 139:6). In our gospel reading today, Jesus tells the
disciples they have much to learn, but they can’t bear it now. But he
promises the Spirit of truth will come and guide them, so the revelation he
began can continue (John 16:12-15). And Paul says, "For we know only in
part, and we preach only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will
come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to
childish ways. For we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we
will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully,
even as I have been fully known" (1 Cor
13:9-12).
I like that
passage very much, especially the part
about the differences between thinking and reasoning in childhood and
adulthood. As most of you know, our
children are adopted. Several years ago
Mary Cate felt a strong urge to go and visit her
birthmother. We told her that we
understood her desire, but that we felt that she was too young to do it
then. We assured her that our feelings
were not hurt by her request, and when the right time came we would be very
happy to take her. In order to help her
understand, I said that I was also sure that one day she would want to learn to
drive a car and that I would be available to help her do that when the time
came. While I was patting myself on the
back for such a stroke of brilliance, she said…great, when am I getting a
car? If we can’t understand the
minds of our children how can we presume to ever understand the mind of God?
To put it simply, we can’t! We can’t explain why God lets some
things happen or what God is up to, but we must trust in God to know what is
best. Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than trusting someone whom
you can see and hold. And we can’t
see God, can we … only the evidences of God’s presence and
activity, the shadow, the trace of God. As the psalmist insists: "O
Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at your heavens."
(Psa 8:1,3).
There is a story
that is told about me in my family when we
went on vacation to see the
I suppose we have
all had that experience of awe looking up
at a starry night sky or standing over the South Rim or looking down from
There is a
classical argument for the existence of
God called the "teleological argument" or "the argument from the
end result." It reasons backward that if you have a watch … a fine
delicate instrument operating in a consistent way - the existence of a watchmaker
is implied. No fool would suggest it just happened, that somehow the parts just
fell together and started keeping time. If you look at the wondrous creation,
all the complex systems of life, the vast reaches of the macrocosm and the
microcosm, only a fool would say they just fell together that way. Reason
demands some conscious intelligence behind this creation.
The problem is, even with our amazing scientific discoveries, we just
can’t get our minds around this vast universe we inhabit. Some people
look at natural wonders and say, "Wow! Isn’t God great!?" But
others see the violence, the unthinking and unfeeling processes of the
universe, natural disasters, famine and disease, and say, "What was God
thinking?" or even conclude "There is no God." Because the truth
is, a lot of things in nature don’t work so well after all, as you can
readily see from the maladaptive behavior of many humans. Maybe God isn’t
finished with us yet. But you won’t see God in creation unless you
already trust in God. To use Augustine’s famous dictum: Fides Quarens Intellectum …
sounds like something straight out of Harry Potter doesn’t it. It means, "Faith seeks
understanding." Faith comes first … then reason seeks to make
sense of God. But reason is limited, because in truth none of the classical
arguments for God from reason are conclusive.
Even if they were, none of them comes close to defining the personal
Christian God who is revealed to us in the Bible. The point is, what we know of
God is only what God has told us and shown us, through the scripture and in our
lives.
That’s my
other discomfort with the experts on God.
They keep telling us what God thinks and who God is, but they do not listen to
our own experiences of the living God. We do well to teach what we know from
scripture and seek to understand the God who meets us there. But God is not
just an historical figure of the past. God is, and God is now. God is, and God
is here. God is, and God is with us. God
is, and God is still speaking! This
God-seeking community and the lives we live out there in the world are the
laboratory of our encounter with God. We need to listen to our lives, to share
our stories, to seek together an encounter with the living God. We need not
only to talk about God, but to seek God, each of us on our own and all of us
together, that we might also experience the awe of the psalmist who saw traces
of the majestic glory of God in the starry sky.
We study
God’s resume and think we are
experts on God. But there is a world of difference in knowing about someone and knowing someone. We
may be limited in what we can understand. But we can know God by spending time
with God, by seeing the traces of God’s presence in our own lives. Oh,
our study of God is very helpful. And
our good works matter. We make a difference every week for a lot of people
through our ministries of compassion and advocacy. But we must add to our study
about God … and our work for God … our earnest seeking after
God’s presence through worship, meditation, and prayer. We can only know
God if we spend time with God, that is, focus our attention upon the God who is
with us always.
I have tried to
say to you today: we can know God, but we
cannot claim to be experts on God. We can know God, but we can’t say for
sure what God is thinking. Still, I don’t want to suggest we know nothing
at all about the mind of God, because God has told us what is on God’s
mind, and the Bible and nature and the traces of God we have seen with our own
eyes in our own lives tell us as much. "When I look at your heavens,"
says the psalmist, "the work of your fingers, the moon and the
stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of
them, mortals that you care for them?" (Psa
8:3-4). Do you want to know what’s on God’s mind? You are on
God’s mind … all the time. You are in God’s heart, and
God cares for you. I totally agree
with the psalmist. The realization that God thinks of me fills me with awe and
terror, at the same time. It’s a beautiful but scary idea, isn’t
it, the eternal, ultimate, majestic, and mighty God paying mind to, well
… you and me?!
In the final
analysis, I suppose it’s
okay that I’m not an expert on God and that no one else is either. God is
bigger than any human mind can comprehend. That’s the whole idea of
religion, isn’t it, to encounter something, someone, who is much larger
than we are, who lifts our focus beyond ourselves? But
we have a perverted way sometimes of turning our worship back towards
self-worship and self-righteousness, pride in our sure knowledge, narcissism
masquerading as faith. We aren’t even experts on ourselves. But
that’s okay. What matters is that God is an expert on us. What does
matter is that this incomprehensible Source of all being has told us, and shown
us that we are known … and loved … and forgiven. That God is for us … and is with us. In
the final analysis, maybe all we need to know is this:
Jesus loves
me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Amen.
May we pray?
O God, do you hide from us that we might not be overwhelmed? Or is it that you are everywhere but we cannot see you because our understanding is so limited? But we can understand what you have told us. We can see the traces and shadows of your presence. And while there is so much we do not yet understand, we are amazed by your goodness and mercy and love. Lord, we trust you beyond what our eyes can see. Help us to trust you more. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa