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.