Sermon: Godisnowhere

Texts: Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

Date: April 27, 2008

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            I stumbled on this neato word trick while I was skipping around cyberspace the other day.  Maybe you’ve seen it before; I hadn’t.  Grab a pencil or pen and write this down on your bulletin or offering envelope: G-o-d-i-s-n-o-w-h-e-r-e. 

            If you break it down into English words, what’s that say?  God is nowhere.  OR, God is now here.    All depends on where you put the spaces between words.  Neato-peeto.

            You might think of deciphering this little phrase as one of those glass-half-empty/glass-half-full psychological tests.  Is God nowhere?  Or is God now here?  It’s not so much a psychological test as it is a soul-o-logical test.  Do you believe God is here, or not?

            In this era, we live among many people who would tip to the “God is nowhwere” side.  Heck, quite a few of us share a bathroom with atheists—they’re not the rare oddity atheists in America might have been 100 years ago.  People who don’t believe in God are all over the place. 

            Some would say that the ascendancy of science is one reason for a growing number of people who see no evidence for God.  When I hear from young people who are doubtful of God’s existence, they usually cite science, believing science and religion are in direct conflict.  Scientific information has filled in some of the “gaps” in human knowledge, undone some of the mysteries where God used to dwell in human imagination.       

We do know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff nowadays.  The human
genome has been mapped. Nanotechnology is constructing miniscule machines that can deliver inter-cellular messages or make molecular level repairs.  Astrophysicists have mapped the curvature of the universe, delved into black holes, listened to the echoes of the Big Bang. Scientific inquiry
and experiment have revealed the “hows” and “whys” and “whats” never
before known.  We think we’re pretty smart. We think we have a handle on how the universe works.
            Even so, even in this hyper-scientific-factual age, there remains a sense of mystery that manifests itself in different ways.  Leonard Sweet holds up an incident at Yankee Stadium a week or two ago as an example. 

Did you know that the builders of the new Yankee Stadium spend five hours and $50,000 digging through two feet of concrete last week? Know why?  They felt compelled to extract a David Ortiz Boston Red Sox jersey that had been secretly buried in the concrete floor of the visiting team’s dug out. A construction worker, an unrepentant Red Sox fan, had slipped the jersey into the concrete in order to permanently “jinx” the new Yankee stadium. The story of the jersey finally came to light because another construction worker who had seen the shirt go into the slab got worried and confessed: “I don’t want to be responsible for sinking the franchise,” he said. The stadium, a 1.3
billion dollar project, was brought to a screeching halt; the glowing new
future for the Yankees was endangered; immediate, expensive action was
taken: why? Because everyone believed in the jinxing power of a piece of
cloth submerged down in a concrete floor in a locker room.  That was one high-powered hex!
       Just goes to show you that no one can completely escape what has been called “magical thinking” (see Matthew Hutson, “Magical Thinking,” Psychology Today, March-April 2008, 90-95. The subtitle is “Even Hard-Core Skeptics Can’t Help But Find Sympathy in the Fabric of the Universe----And Occasionally Try to Pull Its String”). We “knock on wood,” throw spilled salt over our shoulders, can’t resist reading our horoscopes, always take notice of a “Friday the 13th.” 

       Little children have that special “blankie” or stuffed animal that
magically imparts peace and serenity. But big corporations hire
specialists to organize the “feng shui” in their work spaces. Musician
George Michael bought the Steinway piano that John Lennon composed his
best know work on: “Imagine.”  Michael ships this piano off to places that
are in need of some kind of spiritual support: to New Orleans after
Katrina; to Virginia Tech after the shootings. The piano is put on public
display, with its pedigree, open for any and all to sit down and plunk out
a few notes, to seek out a bit of solace in its noteworthy presence.
         Leonard Sweet, having gathered all this evidence, comments that “no matter how much scientific knowledge we acquire about the world we live
in, physical reality is never enough. The human spirit knows there is
always more to be revealed, that there is something more out there if we
could only lift the veil.”
       Paul’s speech to the Athenians gathered at the elite Court of the
Areopagus—the story we heard in Acts--was designed to get his audience thinking about that inner yearning for “something more,” that “groping” for the “unknown God.”   He gauged the spiritual yearning of the people in Athens by the number of their shrines.  But he wasn’t content to congratulate them on their religiosity and leave them be; he wanted to make known the “unknown god” they nodded to in their shrine.  Just so, we may make note of the spiritual curiosity manifested in so many guises in our culture.  But rather than leaving people alone with their vague sense of curiosity or their mild superstitions about buried baseball jerseys and the like, we should like to make known something of what we know of the spiritual realm. 

            Specifically, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we would like to lift the veil which hides the “something more,” the spiritual realm, by pointing to Jesus.  Jesus is the one who made the unknown god known to us.  Not completely “known,” of course; as Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, “God defined is God finished.”  But Jesus has become for us an icon for God, the life and teachings we look through to glimpse the character and activity of God. 

            The first generation of disciples had it a little easier than us when it comes to pointing to Jesus.  In the first chapter of the gospel of John there is a delightful story about Andrew, one of the first disciples, who had heard about Jesus from John the Baptist.  He followed Jesus home after John pointed him out, and spent the day talking with him.  Then he tore himself away, late in the afternoon, and sought out his brother Simon Peter.  He excitedly told Simon that he had found the Messiah, and towed him off to meet Jesus.  Several more friends and relatives were introduced to Jesus in this way as the first circle of disciples formed.  When those disciples pointed to Jesus, they had a physical form to point at.

            Our generation of disciples is still motivated to introduce people to Jesus, but we don’t have the luxury of going a hop, skip and a jump down the road to where Jesus of Nazareth lives.  The physical form of that incarnation of Christ is long gone. 

            But that doesn’t mean Christ is absent.  You heard the promise Jesus made echoed in the liturgy today—“I will not leave you alone.”  Where one form of the incarnation of Christ spirit in Jesus of Nazareth ends, another form of Divine Presence begins.  “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says to his anxious disciples.  “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me.” 

            This promise brings to mind a few stories—like Ghost or The Sixth Sense—in which one of the characters is burdened with the ability to see dead people which nobody else can see.  That couldn’t be what Jesus was promising, could it—that those who loved him would be tuned into his presence and somehow able to see him after his death?  I don’t imagine that those first disciples would have relished that prospect anyway, no matter how much they loathed parting from their friend and teacher.  Ghosts are gruesome.

            I couldn’t help thinking of a scene from Disney’s version of Aladdin in which the Genie is spelling out the rules of the three wishes for Aladdin.  The Genie’s master can’t wish for more wishes; the Genie can’t make anyone fall in love, and he can’t bring anybody back from the dead (“It isn’t pretty,” the Genie warns, “don’t ask me to do it!”).  When Jesus promises not to abandon the disciples, he’s not talking about making occasional appearances out of the realm of the dead.  Dead is not what or where the Christ Spirit will be.  After the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, the place from which Christ appears is the land of the living—Christ is not called back from the dead but from the living.  We invoke the living Spirit of Christ from the living to the living through the living.  

            The rather surprising, if not downright scandalous, new development in the annals of God’s spirit made visible in human flesh is that after the era of Jesus of Nazareth the Spirit comes to abide in those who love Jesus.  You know what this means, don’t you—that Christ is now to be made visible in us.  Not exclusively in us (Whew!) but in us nevertheless.  Frederick Buechner once wrote, “We experience God in three ways: as something beyond; something among; something within.”  God is now here: beyond us; among/between us; and within us.  So we become, like Jesus, an icon through which the unknown God may become known. 

            That’s quite a charge.   We may not feel quite adequate to stand in as one of the beings through which the invisible God becomes visible.  We need some help, right?  Some of you are old enough to remember Richard Daly who was mayor of Chicago for 21 years (1955-1976). Mayor Daly was known as a rather forbidding guy to work for. One story goes like this. One of Mayor Daly’s speech writers came in and demanded a raise. Mayor Daly responded as could be expected. He said, “I’m not going to give you a raise. You are getting paid more than enough already. It should be enough for you that you are working for a great American hero like myself.” And that was the end of it...or so the mayor thought.
        Two weeks later Mayor Daly was on his way to give a speech to a convention of veterans. The speech was going to receive nationwide attention. Now, one other thing Mayor Daly was famous for was not reading his speeches until he got up to deliver them. So there he stood before a vast throng of veterans and nationwide press coverage. He began to describe the plight of the veterans. “I’m concerned for you. I have a heart for you. I am deeply convinced that this country needs to take care of its veterans. So, today I am proposing a seventeen point plan that includes the city, state and
federal government, to care for the veterans of this country.”  By this
time everyone, including Mayor Daly, was on the edge of their seat to hear
what the proposal was. He turned the page and saw only these words:
“You’re on your own now, you great American hero.”
          I shared this story because it is the exact opposite of what Jesus promises the disciples.  What he tries to communicate in this last great speech before his crucifixion and death is that we will never just be on our own.  The Holy Spirit is the Advocate, the Helper, the Encourager, the Teacher, the Counselor.  The Spirit will be right with us prompting us to engage in the loving actions that will make the unknown God more fully known.  We don’t need to go into any situation knowing exactly what we will say or what we should do; the Holy Spirit helps us to speak and act.  We don’t have to be adequate, don’t have to be great America heroes; we just have to be willing.
            I am convinced that we don’t even have to feel in touch ourselves with God in order to make God visible or known.  The language Paul uses to describe the human situation—that we are searching, even groping for God—applies to every one of us at some time or another.  We may have moments when we truly feel orphaned, abandoned by God.  I believe that if in that moment we commit ourselves to do the most loving thing possible, God will come into focus once again.  It is as if the dimmer switch on the light within has been pushed down by circumstance or despair to leave barely a glimmer.  Loving action—offering forgiveness, sharing food, listening attentively, biting an angry tongue, gentle hugging, giving assistance-- brings the light up, opening us to the Divine power beyond, among, and within us.  The unknown God may then become known not only to the recipients of the loving action but to those offering love who are momentarily groping in darkness.  If I were to invent a recovery program for people who had lost their faith, I think I would send them to work in soup kitchens, to pound nails in a Habitat for Humanity house, to take flowers to a lonely old person, to tutor a struggling kid.  Remember what Jesus said: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Remember what the central commandment from Jesus is: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

            Love is the commandment, the character, the essence of Christ’s Spirit.  When we love, we make space for God.  Crackling with power, we leap in an instant from “God is nowhere” to “God is now here.”