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!
No comments:
Post a Comment