Living Life

John 4:1-15; Revelation 22:1-5

Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” That is my topic this morning: having life. I am talking about God’s life, what we normally call eternal life. I am not just talking about afterlife. Going to heaven when we die is great, but it is important to experience God’s life now. There are different Greek words used for life in the New Testament. There is bios, which refers to biological,  physical life. There is psuche or psyche, which refers to psychological life; this is our mental and emotional lives consisting of the thoughts in our minds and emotions in our hearts. But the word used here is zoe, which means spiritual life, divine life or eternal life. It is the deeper dimension of life. God invites us to have his life. This is not just a theoretical hope of heaven. It is a present spiritual awareness. Jesus called this the Kingdom of God. I tend to call it the Presence of God or Awareness of God. Today I am calling it the Life of God, because that is the word used in our scripture passages this morning.

1. First the Life of God is described as the Water of Life. The Gospel of John includes a wonderful story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well. It starts off by Jesus asking her for a drink from the well. She is surprised at his request for several reasons. First of all she is a woman. Men and women did not converse in public unless they were family.  Second, he is a Jew and she is a Samaritan, and these two ethnic religious groups did not relate to each other in that culture. Third, she was not a woman with a good reputation in the community. That is why she is drawing water at the sixth hour (which is noon – hours of the day were counted from dawn.) This was the heat of the day. Most women went to draw water at the town well in the cool of the day – early morning or late afternoon. Only the outcasts of society came at noon. Anyone in that culture would have known that. Jesus would have known that, and yet he speaks with her.  

He asks her for a drink of water. She replies by asking why he is asking her for water, considering who she is. Jesus replies in effect, “If you knew who I was, you would be asking me for water.” His actual words were these, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10) In this way Jesus introduces the idea of water as a symbol of divine life. He goes on to say, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14)

Jesus is giving a marvelous description of divine life as living water. This was not the only time he used this metaphor. On another occasion in the temple at the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38) In both of these passages he speaks of the life of God as a fountain of water inside of us “springing up into everlasting life. “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” This is very descriptive of the way we experience God. Eternal life is experienced as a spring within.

People look for fulfillment in life outside of themselves. They look for spiritual fulfillment in a worship service or in a religious leader or spiritual teacher. They look for it in a religion, a church, or a spiritual tradition - in a set of practices, rituals, and beliefs. In other words they look for spiritual life in physical, psychological, or social life. And we can find a certain degree of fulfillment in such things, but the abundant life that Jesus is talking about is found within. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within us. Therefore that is where we should look.

In Experiencing God Directly I tell the story of a police officer who saw a drunken man intently searching the ground under a lamppost. He asked him what he is looking for. The drunk replied that he is looking for his car keys. The officer helped him search for a few minutes without success. Then he asked whether the man is certain that he dropped the keys near the lamppost. “No,” was the reply, “I lost the keys somewhere across the street.” “Then why are you looking here?” asks the surprised and irritated officer. “The light is better here.” That is the way we look for meaning and fulfillment.

Most people are looking to get filled by something or someone from the outside because it is easier. They look for fulfillment in relationships, or achievements, or possessions, or activities, or power, or positions. If only they had more money, or won the lottery. If only they had the perfect spouse or the perfect career or the perfect church. (Good luck on that one!) They may even look to food or drugs or alcohol or some other type of physical outward substance. But nothing from the outside can fill us on the inside. To be filled on the inside, it must come from the inside. God fills us from the inside out. Jesus said, “out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Life comes not from the outside in but from the inside out. Living water comes from within us and flows out into the world. The Holy Spirit within fills us. How do we experience this?

By faith. Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Belief is not just acceptance of certain Christian ideas about Jesus; it is a spiritual trust. Faith should be defined as trust. I sit in a chair, and I trust it will hold me – if it is a sturdy chair. I am no lightweight. Therefore if it is one of these delicate chairs, I sit in it very carefully. I don’t put all my weight on it at first, because I don’t trust it. I remember sitting in an old antique wooden chair at a very wealthy and important person’s house. It was at a time in my life when at my heaviest weight. The chair collapsed under me. I was embarrassed, and so were the people. Ever since then I sit very gingerly into such chairs. I normally ask for a sturdier chair. Once I am in a chair and I know it is strong enough to hold me, then I relax into it. That is faith. Faith is relaxing into Christ, knowing that he will hold us. He is strong enough and we can trust him. When we relax our hearts into the heart of God and we relax our spirit into the Holy Spirit, then something happens. Life happens. We relax our life into God’s life, and it is like floating in living water.

2. Second, the Life of God is described as the Tree of Life. The idea of the Tree of life comes from Genesis and the story of the Garden of Eden. You may remember that in the Garden of Eden there were two trees. One was the infamous Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is the one that Adam and Eve ate from and caused all the trouble. There was another tree in the middle of the garden of Eden – the Tree of Life. If one ate of the Tree of Life one would live forever. This Tree of Life shows up again in the Book of Revelation. Interestingly it is pictured as growing on the banks of the River of Life in heaven. Revelation 22:1-2 says, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

The divine life of God, which is available to us, is pictured as a River of Life. This is the same fountain of life or spring of life that Jesus spoke about.  But it is also pictured as a Tree of Life which bears fruit. There is nothing like fresh fruit:  fresh blueberries, fresh raspberries, fresh plums and peaches and strawberries. That is why it is so good to have the Farmer’s Market in town to give us fresh fruits and vegetables in season. There is a season for each fruit. We won’t find any fresh strawberries or blueberries around here anymore, except that terrible tasting stuff in the supermarkets. We might as well be eating Styrofoam. Now it is apple season and pumpkins and winter squash. This passage in Revelation says that the tree of life “bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month.” This is describing a year-round continual harvest. Every tree produced fresh fruit every month of the year.

Revelation does not name what kind of fruit, but it is clear that this is speaking about spiritual fruit. The apostle Paul elsewhere lists nine “fruit of the Spirit.” In Galatians 5:22-23 he says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Ephesians 5:9 says, “the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth.”

Many preachers speak about the fruit of the Spirit in terms of Christians bearing fruit in their lives. There is biblical justification for this interpretation. Jesus uses the metaphor of himself as a vine and we are branches that bear fruit. But I like the idea of eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Experiencing the Life of God is eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Humans got into this mess by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and we get out of it by eating of the Tree of Life. Experiencing eternal life is like biting into a sweet delicious ripe peach or a crisp sweet juicy apple. The Bible uses physical metaphors to convey spiritual truths. We feast on the love of God, the joy of God, the peace of God, the goodness of God and all the other fruit that these verses speak about.

This is the banquet table of the Lord. There are many passages in the OT and NT that speak about eating in the Kingdom of God. Jesus told many parables about eating at a table in the Kingdom of Heaven. Revelation speaks about the wedding supper of the Lamb, when the Church is married to Christ perfectly. Psalm 23 says, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” That means, by the way, that enemies have been reconciled. One never ate with enemies or in the presence of enemies in biblical times. One ate only when the enmity had been resolved and the enemies had become allies. It is a picture of peace. That is what the Lord’s Supper is all about. We were enemies of God, but have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son. The 23rd psalm is a picture of peace and reconciliation. That is why Revelation says that “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” This is healing peace. The nations now are in need of that healing.

Experiencing the abundant Life of God means eating from the Tree of Life, which grows on both banks of the River of Life, which flows from the throne of God. It means it comes from God. This is trying to describe the those spiritual qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all the rest that flow into our lives and fill our lives when we live in God. Life becomes a feast of the Holy Spirit.

3. Third, the Life of God is described as the Light of Life. The rest of this portion of Revelation says, “And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:3-5)

My mom never liked that passage. She used to complain to me about it. She thought that if there were no night, then that meant that there would be no sunsets in heaven, and she loved sunsets. Likewise there would be no sunrises. Even though she was not an early riser, she liked a good sunrise also. I tried to tell her that these were symbols and not to be taken literally, but she wouldn’t buy it. This is talking about constant continual communion with God.

In our lives we tend to experience God intermittently.  We sense God more at some times than other times. We have good times and bad times in our spiritual lives. There are times when we feel especially close to God, and there are times when we feel far from God. We could say that we are all spiritually bipolar, swinging between the two poles. Saint John of the Cross writes about the Dark Night of the Soul, when he felt like God was absent. Revelation is describing just the opposite; we might call it the Eternal Sunshine of the Soul.  There is nothing like the warm sunshine on your face on a nice fall day. Better yet is the sunshine of the first real day of Spring after a long winter. Revelation is saying that this is what heaven is like. That is what it means when it says, “They shall see His face.” We can have that warm continual presence of God shining on our faces now. 

We can live in the light of God’s presence. Moses lived in the light of God’s presence. The OT says that he shone with the light of God when he came down from Mount Sinai after meeting with God, and also when he came out of the Tent of Meeting where he talked to God face to face. It says that the divine light that shone from his face was so bright that people made him put a veil over his face so that they could look at him. Today we would say that the Hebrews would have to put on sunglasses to look at Moses’ face because the light of God shining from him was so bright. Again this is talking spiritually, not physically. Those passages are trying to convey the intimate relationship that Moses had with God, which transformed his life and was evident to everyone who knew him. Moses’ life shone with the light of God. The light of God was within him and shone forth from him. We can have that same intimacy with God. The apostle John tells us to walk in the light as he is in the light. 

These two passages from the hand of the apostle John give us three images to describe the Life of God, which is available to us – the Water of Life, the Tree of Life, and the Light of Life. They all point us to the abundant eternal life of God, which is ours through Jesus Christ.

Experiencing Presence

Exodus 3:1-15; Matthew 17:1-9

I have been speaking on the Presence of God this month. I preached about awakening to the presence of God and understanding the presence of God. Today I am going to talk about experiencing the presence of God. The heart of the religious life is about knowing God, and not just knowing about God. How do we experience God?

1. The first way we experience God is through what theologians call general revelation or natural revelation. Those are fancy terms for saying that we experience God through the world in our daily life. We don’t have to do anything special or go anywhere special to experience God. We don’t have to be praying or meditating or be in a worship service. We don’t have to be doing any rites or rituals. These activities can help focus our minds on God, but they are not necessary to experiencing God. We might be just walking down the road and meet God.

I met a bear this way. I was walking down a road in Wolfeboro, back when my family had a place on the lake there. I turned a sharp corner in the road, and found myself face to face with a black bear. He was not more than ten feet from me.  He looked at me; I looked at him. He turned around and ran into the woods (Thank God); I stood there in shock for a minute and then turned around and walked quickly back to the house. I was not expecting to meet a bear that day, but I did. Moses was not expecting to meet God. One day he went out for a walk, and he unexpectedly met God.

Like nearly all of the characters in the Bible, Moses was not a saintly character when he met God. In fact he was a murderer. Some might call it justifiable homicide. You can decide. Exodus 3:11-12 recounts the episode. “Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” Moses thought he was safe, because no other Egyptians were around to report the murder. Hebrew slaves saw what he did, but he assumed that would be grateful and keep silent. He was wrong. Word got around quickly about what he had done. Moses was afraid that he would be arrested and executed - not only for murder, but for insurrection, because he was a Hebrew and killed an Egyptian to protect a Hebrew slave.

Moses fled the country and went to live in Midian. He lived there as a shepherd for many years. Then one day he was out shepherding his flock in the wilderness when he had an extraordinary experience. He experienced God in a burning bush. This bush was on fire, but it was not an ordinary fire. The bush, but it was not consumed. This was a spiritual experience. He heard God spoke to him in that bush. I am not going to go any further into this story. I am using it as an illustration of how we can experience God in the world. I think that if Moses’ son or wife were with him at that moment, they would not have seen anything out of the ordinary. I think this was spiritual sight. As Hebrews 11:27 says of Moses, “he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”

We can also see “Him who is invisible.” I am not talking about hallucinations or visions or dreams. I have never had any supernatural spiritual experience, and I am skeptical of those who say they have had such experiences. But I experience God in the world.  In fact there is no place I look where I do not see God. You might think I sound crazy. I tend not to talk about this outside of church at the risk of sounding crazy. But I figure that church is a safe place to confess such things. The little boy in the film, The Sixth Sense, confesses to his psychiatrist that he sees dead people. Don’t worry, I do not see ghosts, but I do see God. To be more exact, I am aware of the presence of God.

Furthermore I think that everyone is aware of the presence of God. That is why it is called general revelation; it is generally available to all. I think that many people have become so used to it that they no longer notice it. I know this may sound strange, but I think people take the presence of God for granted. When we are children the world is a magical place. It is alive with mystery. You remember what it was like to be a kid! But over time we become jaded. The secret is to see the world simply and directly again like a child. That is what Jesus means when he says we have to become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God.

Everything in the world is alive with the vibrant presence of God. We all see this on occasion. We see it in views of extraordinary natural beauty or grandeur.  When we see photos taken by the Hubble telescope our jaws drop in wonder at the extravagant beauty of God’s creation in distant galaxies. The same is true when we stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time or see the panorama from a mountaintop. For some reason we get used to such beauty over the years, and the wonder of the presence of God fades. We just need to put our adult minds aside and see the world through a child’s eyes. Then we need to practice that type of seeing. That mystery and beauty and grandeur is always there in everything, if we just notice it.

2. The second way we experience the presence of God is in Jesus Christ.  That is what makes me a Christian not just a nature mystic. Anyone with half a heart can experience God in nature. Not everyone experiences God in Jesus Christ. Those who have experienced God in Christ tend to call themselves Christians. Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” He goes on to say to Philip, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:6-9)

Everything shines with the glory of God, but God is even clearer in Christ. As the hymn says, “Fair is the sunshine, Fairer still the moonlight, And all the twinkling starry host; Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer Than all the angels heaven can boast.” That is why I am a Christian. Because Jesus shines with the presence of God for me. That is what the three disciples Peter, James, and John saw in our gospel text that is normally referred to as the Transfiguration. The disciples went hiking with Jesus one day up the highest mountain in northern Israel. It is called Mount Hermon. It is the highest peak of the mountain range that serves as the border between Israel and Syria and Lebanon. It is over 9000 feet high and often snowcapped. When the four men got to the summit, they would have seen a marvelous view of all three countries and the Mediterranean. Such a view would have opened their hearts to the presence of God in nature. Then when they turned their eyes to Jesus, their eyes were open to see him as he really is, in all his divine glory as the Son of God.

We do not have the physical Jesus with us. But we have the Spirit of Jesus with us. Jesus promised that where two or three of us are gathered in community in his name, he is here with us spiritually in a powerful way. That is why Christians come to church. It is not because we like sitting on uncomfortable pews for an hour. It is not even primarily for the fellowship or the music or the teaching. It is because we sense the Spirit of Christ here. The Spirit of Christ is the Presence of God. We come to church because here it is a little bit easier to experience the presence of God. Here we sense God in a different way than we sense God’s presence in nature. It is more personal. It is more loving. I feel the presence of God in nature, but I don’t experience the love of God in nature. I experience the awesomeness of God in nature, what Paul calls in his Letter to the Romans, “his eternal power and deity.” (Romans 1:20) But we experience the love of God in Christ Jesus. Love adds a whole other dimension to the presence of God. When I hear people say that they can worship God just as well in the woods or on the lake as in church, I think to myself, “You do not know what you are missing!”

The apostle Paul prays for the Ephesians in chapter 3:17-19. He prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” That is the experience of the presence of God in Christ Jesus. It is eternal and everlasting. This is eternal life. Paul says in Romans 8:38-39 “I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

3. The third way we experience the presence of God is in the Holy Spirit. My three points this morning are Trinitarian – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not just an abstract theological doctrine. It is a description of the Christian’s experience of God. We experience the presence of God in the Holy Spirit. When we speak of the Holy Spirit, we normally mean God within us - God’s Holy Spirit indwelling our human spirit. We experience God in the natural world. We experience God in Jesus Christ. And we experience God in us as Holy Spirit. If you want to experience the presence of God, look within. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) We can always experience the Presence of God becuase we are always carrying around the presence of God within us as Holy Spirit.

The key to experiencing God within us as Holy Spirit is discernment. Often when we look inside ourselves all we experience is ourselves. We experience thoughts running through our minds a mile a minute. Our minds are so filled with thoughts and ideas that we miss God. We can’t see the forest for the trees; we can’t see God for the thoughts. When we look inside ourselves, we also become aware of emotions. Feelings flow through us and fill our hearts and souls. They also mask God. Then there are bodily sensations connected with emotions and as well as our bodily functions and desires. It is a jungle in here – inside of ourselves. But in the eye of the hurricane that is our inner world is the Holy Spirit. It just takes time, practice and intention to discern the quiet presence of God’s Spirit in us, that still small voice. Then we learn to recognize God and return to that abode of God in us, and live in that place and from that place. That inner place is the Holy of holies in which dwells the Holy Spirit of God.

One other place we experience God as Holy Spirit is in other people. The apostle Paul calls the church the body of Christ because God is in all of us together. We experience God as Spirit not only in ourselves, but also in others. The Spirit in us recognizes the Spirit in others. The psalmist says, “deep calls to deep.” There is a saying in some churches: “The Christ in me greets the Christ in you.” Christ in us sees Christ in others. This is especially true of those who profess Christ and love Christ. But the Scripture also says that every person is made in the image of God, regardless of their religion or lack of it. That means that we are able to see God in everyone. Not just in those who believe in God, but in all people. We look at them with spiritual eyes and we see God’s image; we see God reflected in them!

We experience God in the world all around us. We experience God in Jesus Christ. We experience God in the Holy Spirit, inside of us and in others. This is how we experience the presence of God.  

Understanding God

Isaiah 55:1-9; Colossians 1:9-18

This is a crazy title. I have set out to do something this morning that is absolutely impossible - understanding God. There is no way that I understand God. There is no way that any human being can understand God. Our OT lesson for today clearly says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, 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.” In other words, our brains are too small to comprehend God. Every idea we have about God is inadequate. The more completely we realize that, the closer we come to God. God is too big to be labeled. There is a book published back in the 1950’s by J.B. Phillips entitled “Your God is Too Small.” That pretty much sums it up. All our concepts of God are too small to contain the true God.

No one can understand God. Yet there are lots of people – lots of preachers and lots of theologians – who give sermons and lectures and write theological tomes  – who think they are actually saying something true  about God. They are convinced that their theology is correct and others are wrong. They think they know who God is, and they will tell you all about him. Jihadist Muslims are convinced that their concept of Allah is God. They fervently believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Everyone else is an infidel and a blasphemer. They will kill others and themselves to prove their point. The Christian religion did same thing a thousand years ago during the Crusades, so we better be careful when we throw stones. But these days Christian arrogance tends to be more theological. But we still think we understand God.

I am not just talking about fundamentalist Christianity. Christians who disagree with fundamentalists are also convinced that they are right and fundamentalists are wrong. At least they think they are more right than the fundamentalists, that they understand who God is better than the fundamentalists. Do you see how insidious this trap is? We all have sinned when it comes to thinking that we can define God. No one understands God.

But we can experience God. By this I mean that we can be aware of the presence of God. That is what I preached on last Sunday, when I talked about awakening to the Presence of God. We can have an experiential awareness of the presence of God, but as soon as we start to describe this awareness in ideas and words, then we fall short, which is the literal meaning of the word “sin.” We could even say that theology is sin because all our theology falls short of the glory of God.

This morning I am going to sin publicly in this pulpit. I am going to talk about God. I do not pretend to understand God, but I experience God. And I have to use words to describe that experience. Words are all I have. So even though I know the words will fall short, I have to make the attempt. That is what preachers do. I am going to present a theology of the Presence of God. It has three parts: Creation, Fall, Redemption. This is not anything new. These categories are classic Christian theology. But perhaps the way I describe them might be a bit different.

CREATION.  God is present in and thorugh creation. The Book of Genesis describes God as creating the universe by speaking it into existence.  The creation myths of other religions at that time in the Ancient Near East described the world being made from the bodies of gods or demigods, or created by a lesser deity or even an evil being. Genesis says that the universe was created by God simply by speaking. God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. And it continues for six days, God speaking everything into existence. The universe is literally God’s Word. Christians talk about Scripture being the Word of God. We talk about prophets speaking forth the Word of God. We even quote the apostle John in saying that Jesus is the Word of God. The physical universe is also the Word of God.

The physical universe was not formed by God out of some pre-existing material. Christianity says the world was made out of nothing. God spoke everything into existence. Words as invisible. You cannot see my words as I preach this message. They are just vibrations in the air. But Genesis says that God’s words became the physical world. Everything that exists – not just the birds and the mountains, but also the pews we are sitting on and the bodies sitting on these pews – are words spoken by God. Take some time to ponder this biblical truth, the next time you are doing your daily devotions. If we take the Genesis account seriously, then it transforms the way we experience the world. If we believe it, and if we look at the world through those eyes of faith, then we experience God in everything.

I am not saying that God is everything and everything is divine. I am not talking about pantheism. I am saying that everything is an expression of God. Everything communicates God. All things that exist are words of God, which he spoke into existence at the beginning. We can hear his voice speaking in all things still, if we have ears to hear. The problem is that we are deaf to Spirit. We see the world as inanimate objects rather than living words of God.

The scripture also says that everything was made through Christ, that is, the Eternal Christ before he became incarnated in the human Jesus. John’s Gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”  (John 1:1-3) Our epistle lesson in Colossians echoes this truth. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:15-17)

Everything in this universe was made by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. He is the eternal Word that is spoken through the natural world. All of creation proclaims the Eternal Christ. Everything around us 24/7 proclaims the glory of God. It is our nature as creatures of God, part of the creation, to proclaim the glory of God. It is who we are, inside and outside and all the way through. All we have to do is open our eyes and our ears and experience the presence of God in creation.

FALL. The second part of this theology of the presence of God is the Fall. Genesis also tells the story of what is commonly referred to as the Fall of Man. It is the story of Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the consequences. I am not going to tell the whole story. The story is meant to communicate that something went wrong with the world. In the story of Eden, Adam and Eve lived in the Presence of God. They lived in perfect communion with God. After they ate from the Tree, they no longer lived in the Presence of God. They hid from God, estranged from God, estranged from each other and God’s creation.

The doctrine of the Fall is about the loss of the Presence of God. It is not about apples, sex or nakedness. It is not about talking snakes or magical trees. The story simply says that something has gone wrong, and people no longer live in intimate fellowship with God. The presence of God that we experience in creation now, as wonderful as it is, is only a faint echo of the glory of Eden. It is just a glimpse of Divinity, like when Moses glimpsed the backside of God on Mount Sinai.  In the Book of Exodus God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and placed his hand over him as he walked by. But then Moses peeked out and saw God’s backside. That is what humans normally see now. Humankind is banished from the Garden, living east of Eden, and only glimpses it from a distance.  Most people no longer live in the conscious awareness of the Presence of God.

All religions of the world acknowledge that something went wrong sometime early in human history. They do not call it the Fall, but that is what they describe. Different religions understand what went wrong differently. They tell different stories and have different explanations about how the wrongness came about. Consequently they have different solutions to how to correct the wrongness. But all religions of the world – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Christianity – say that something has been lost and needs to be restored.

Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, say it is all one big misunderstanding. The problem is all in our heads. These religious traditions say that all we have to do is get our thinking straightened out, and we will be alright. Popular forms of American spirituality, which borrow heavily from Eastern spiritual traditions, say that humankind has a case of amnesia. We have forgotten who we really are. As soon as we remember our divine origin, everything will be seen to be all right again. They say it has always been alright; we have just forgotten.

The gospel of Christ says that the situation is more serious than that. Eastern spiritual traditions are correct as far as they go, but they just don’t go far enough. It is not just that we have forgotten who we are. The fact is that we are not who we once were. Something has changed. Eastern spiritualties see there is a problem. They just don’t see the whole problem; they do not understand how serious the problem is and how serious the solution must be.

Christianity says that the problem is not just a matter of perception. It is a matter of substance. Our loss of the awareness of the Presence of God is due to the fact that we really have become separated from God, and that needs to be fixed. The story in Genesis says that that the loss of Eden is real and came about by the deliberate choice of humans. In other words, we have sinned, and sin has real consequences. Our situation is serious.

Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, died October 5, 2011 of a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Most pancreatic cancer is lethal, but this particular form was treatable. But when Jobs was diagnosed with the disease, instead of immediately receiving the surgery that might have saved his life, he decided to try a less invasive approach. He opted for alternative medicine. He treated the cancer with a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and even consulted a psychic. He waited nine months before finally having the surgery, but by then it was too late. In his biography by Walter Isaacson, Jobs says that he regretted postponing the life-saving operation. He died at the age of 56. Steve Jobs had a serious medical condition that needed a serious solution. We have a serious spiritual condition that needs a serious solution.

REDEMPTION. That brings us to the third point, which is redemption. God is the Great Physician. He has the cure for our sin-sickness. He offers that cure to us freely. This is the real Affordable Care Act. It is an Act of Perfect Healing offered to us freely by God. That cure is Christ. The Christian gospel says that Christ’s death and resurrection was the radical surgery needed to cure the human race. Theologians go into great depths in trying to explain how the Cross solved our problem. Personally I do not think it is possible to understand it, any more than it is possible to understand God. It is ultimately a mystery. Furthermore I do not think it is necessary to understand it. When we have cancer, we do not have to understand everything about how cancer cells develop or how the surgery, chemo and radiation can cure us. We trust that medical researchers understand cancer,  that the surgeon knows what he is doing, and we try to get the best medical care we can.

Our spiritual situation is the same. All that is necessary is that Christ knows what he is doing and that we trust him. That is faith. Faith is trust in the Great Physician of our souls. And it works. That is all that matters. Through faith in Christ our fellowship with God is restored. The scripture says that the whole universe has been reconciled to God through the Cross. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19) Once again we can live fully in the presence of God. We can experience that. Our awareness of the Presence of God is not based on a religious philosophy but is grounded on the firm foundation of the grace of God extended to us in Jesus Christ. Through Christ and in Christ we now can live in the presence of God. 

Waking Up

“And Jacob awoke…” (Genesis 28:16)

John 1:43-51; Genesis 28:10-22

There is religion, and then there is God. The two do not necessarily coincide. A person can be very religious and not have a clue when it comes to knowing God. By “knowing God” I mean a conscious awareness of the presence of God. Spiritually speaking, all that matters is being in God’s presence. If religious beliefs, practices, rules, and rituals help people know God, the that is great! But if they get in the way of knowing God, then they should be discarded. The religion of Jesus’ day – the religion of the Pharisees and Sadducees - had gotten in the way of people knowing God. Jesus preached about knowing God; he called it the Kingdom of God. He taught with the authority of firsthand experience, not like the secondhand traditions of the scribes and Pharisees. The religious big wigs didn’t like Jesus’ teaching, but the people loved it. Consequently Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders. Ultimately he was killed by temple and synagogue authorities in cooperation with the Roman state, who did the dirty work of crucifixion. Neither politics nor religion can tolerate people knowing God firsthand, because it undermines their authority.

True spirituality begins by awakening to the presence of God. This fall I am going to be doing some sermons on the Presence of God. This is the heart of Jesus’ message and of Christianity. Today I will begin by talking about waking up to the Presence of God. God is present, and it is essential that we wake up and see this for ourselves. God is present here now and is always present everywhere. God is Spirit; Spirit knows no spatial or temporal boundaries. God is not bound by time and space. There is no place where God is not. Psalm 139:8 says, “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” There is no place or time God is not.

That means that God is not just inside some people and not in other people. God is not just within some good righteous Christian people and not in ordinary people or bad people. If that were true, God would not be omnipresent, and would not be God. God is present everywhere. There is no inside and outside for God. As high as you can go in the heavens and as low as you can go into the subatomic world, God is present. God is omnipresent – always and everywhere present. The spiritual life begins when one wakes up to this presence of God, when one experiences this reality for oneself. The omnipresence of God is more than a theological doctrine; it is one’s experiential reality. The spiritual life begins in earnest when one wakes up.

The patriarch Jacob woke up – both physically and spiritually. Our OT scripture for today is the famous story of Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28. It is the beginning of the spiritual transformation of Jacob. It is not the whole story. Jacob’s transformation is not complete until chapter 32 when he wrestles with God (or wrestles with an angel of God) and his name is changed to Israel. That name change signifies an inner change. That was the culmination of the process of spiritual transformation that began when he had a dream about a ladder stretching between heaven and earth.

Up to this point when Jacob had this dream-vision of a stairway to heaven, Jacob was not the nicest fellow. In fact he was a real scoundrel. Earlier chapters in Genesis record how he tricked his older brother Esau out of his birthright. Then he tricked his father Isaac into giving him the paternal blessing intended for Esau. Jacob schemed and maneuvered and lied and deceived to get the lion’s share of the family fortune for himself. Jacob was not a nice guy.

His behavior got him into trouble. As Chapter 28 opens Jacob is in the wilderness running for his life. His brother Esau wants to kill him, and for good reason. Seeing the danger to her son, Jacob’s mom, Rebecca, thought it would be best if Jacob left town for a while until his brother cooled off. So Jacob went off by himself to stay with his Uncle Laban for a while. Laban lived a few hundred miles away, so it was a long walk. As night fell on his first night away from home, Jacob laid down on the ground, pulled up a rock for a pillow and fell asleep. The scripture says:

Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac …. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” (Genesis 28:12-17)

Jacob woke up to a spiritual reality that he never knew existed. He is the forerunner of all those who have ever become aware of a higher dimension of reality. Christian history is filled with examples of people waking up in this manner. One of my favorite people in church history is Brother Lawrence. He was a seventeenth century monk who lived in a Carmelite monastery in Paris. He left us a wonderful little book of conversations and letters entitled “The Practice of the Presence of God.” I have mentioned this book before, and I am sure I will mention it again, because it is so important for understanding how to live in the Presence of God. The narrator of this little book describes Brother Lawrence’s conversion:

“That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time, the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and Power of GOD, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for GOD, that he could not tell whether it had increased in above forty years that he had lived since.”

For Brother Lawrence it was something as simple as seeing a tree in winter and pondering the changes in that tree that opened him up to the spiritual reality of the Presence of God. He saw with his spiritual eyes the truth of the changing nature of this world, and it ushered him into the changeless Reality of God.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had such an experience in 1738. By this time he was already an ordained Anglican clergyman. He knew and accepted in all the doctrines of Christianity. He had a degree from Oxford University. He had even served as a missionary in America in Georgia. But then on May 24, 1738 something happened. That evening he attended a meeting in Aldersgate in London. Someone read from Martin Luther's Preface to the Epistle to Romans. About 8:45 pm "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." Wesley identifies that as the transformative moment in his spiritual life. The head knowledge became a heart reality at that moment.

This type of awakening is the heart of Christianity. It moves us from the realm of beliefs and ideas, emotions and rituals, into the Presence of God. Spiritual awakening has three characteristics.

First, it is an opening to the spiritual dimension of existence. Jacob thought that this physical world was all there was. Then in an instant his eyes were opened, and he realized there was a higher dimension, a spiritual dimension of reality. The veil between the physical world and the spiritual world was opened. Jacob had thought he was alone in the wilderness, and then all of a sudden he awoke from his sleep – physically and spiritually – and exclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it…. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”  He awoke to the reality that God was present with him all along.

There are parallels between spiritual awakening and physical awakening. Each night we sleep, and we dream – whether or not we remember our dreams. During sleep our dreams feel very real. They feel like they are really happening. While we are dreaming we do not know it is a dream. It is reality for us at the moment. Then we wake up and find ourselves in our bed in our bedroom, and we realize it was a dream. It wasn’t real. Spiritual awakening is like this. We are living this physical life and it feels real. Of course in one sense it certainly is real. I am not suggesting that we are living in an illusion – like in some science fiction film - and actually  dreaming now. I am not saying you will wake up in a moment and be in your pajamas. This world is physically real. I am not playing mind games with you.

I am making an analogy. I am saying that there is another world more real than this physical one. Just like this physical world is more real than the dream world we enter into every night, so also is there a spiritual world more real than this physical world.  And we don’t even know it exists until we wake up. But most people never wake up. They live all their lives in this physical world without ever knowing there is a more; there is a real spiritual world. Spiritual awakening is waking up to that spiritual world. Jesus calls it entering the Kingdom of God. He calls it being “born of the Spirit” and “born from above.” He says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The second characteristic of spiritual awakening is GRACE. It is always experienced as a gift. It is not something we can work at and achieve by our religious efforts or moral living. We don’t earn it. When we wake up from sleep every morning we would never think that we earned this waking state by what we did in our dreams. Likewise we do not earn eternal life, which is what I am talking about, sharing the very life of God - by what we do in our physical life. It is a gift. As Christians we describe this as the grace of God. Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8)

The third characteristic of spiritual awakening is Christ. Christ is the Way to wake up to the Presence of God. That is what the apostle Paul is referring to in Ephesians. It is what John Wesley was referring to and Brother Lawrence was referring to. It is even what Jacob experienced, even though he lived two thousand years before Jesus was born. That is the meaning of our gospel lesson.

In our gospel story Philip introduces Jesus to Nathanael. During the conversation, Nathanael wakes up to who Jesus really is. He sees Jesus’ true identity. His eyes are opened and he says to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel.” Jesus’ reply is important. He says to him, “You will see greater things than this.” And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Jesus is referring to the story of Jacob’s ladder. Jesus was saying that he is the stairway between heaven and earth. Christ in his eternal nature as the Son of God is our opening into the presence of God. We experience God in and through Christ.

Later in the gospel of John, Jesus is having a conversation with Philip, who was the one who introduced Nathanael to Jesus in chapter 1. In this conversation Jesus says those famous words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” But those words we not the end of the conversation. Philip replies to Jesus, “Show me!” Jesus says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father…. I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.” In all these words Jesus is saying that he is the portal that opens into heaven. When we see Christ, we know God. 

Jacob discovered that place in the wilderness was the gate of Heaven, the house of God. “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. …. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”  Jesus is saying that Jacob met him – Christ – on that night. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Jesus said that he existed before he was born. Jesus is the eternal One, the immortal Christ who was as present to the Old Testament patriarchs a he was the New Testament apostles. Jesus is saying that he is Jacob’s ladder. He is the gate of heaven; he is the house of God.  God is Christ. Christ is God. If we desire to know God, Christ is the Way to do that. Jesus Christ wakes us up to God. Jacob woke up, and his life was never the same. The same with Philip and Nathanael and John Wesley and Brother Lawrence countless others. May the same be said of our lives.