What Are They Saying About Us?
Sermon
RESTORING THE FUTURE
First Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
Why should it be said among the peoples, "Where is their God?"
Where is your God? It may sound like a silly sort of statement, I suppose, but in some ways it is the deepest of theological questions. In childhood - and perhaps even in our adulthood - we may have thought casually about God living physically up in the sky, up in a heaven that is behind the clouds, apart from the earth. Silly as such notions may seem to us when we think about them, they are no sillier than the declarations made by early cosmonauts from the former Soviet Union who declared that since they saw no evidence of God or heaven when they went into space, atheism had been proven to be true.
Perhaps you have seen the recent ad on television which had a beautiful young female angel on a cloud, going to a celestial refrigerator to get a snack, which she then does not get around to sharing with her canine angel friend. Or the automobile dealer who ran a series of ads in which those who came to the gates of heaven having purchased their cars at competing dealerships were dropped suddenly through a trap door in the clouds to a fiery place below. Or the cartoon series on prime time network television called God, the Devil, and Bob. Or Woody Allen's famous line, "If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank." This is all the stuff of innumerable New Yorker cartoons and Peter--at--the--Pearly--Gates jokes. Is that the sort of place where we really believe God hangs out? Probably not, not in our more serious moments of contemplation.
Then where is your God? George Bernard Shaw once said, "Beware the man whose God is in the skies." So, if not among the cushy, heavenly cumulonimbus clouds, where then? What is the evidence that God is near, that God cares, that God keeps track of the doings on this earth? It's not a casual question. It is perhaps one of the most persistent of religious inquiries.
When Jesus hung on the cross, suspended on beams of wood, suspended between thieves, suspended between heaven and earth, the people mocked him, "He saved others," they said, "let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God" (Luke 23:35). "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to" (Matthew 27:43). Jesus himself cried out, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
If that is not asking where God is, then I don't know a question when I hear one. The fact that Jesus could be brought to ask it gives us confidence in our own asking.
The prophets had an answer for such persistent questions. It was not to inquire into God's existence or whether people should believe there is a God, as if our believing or not believing makes any difference in the reality of God's existence. Seeking to confirm that the location of God was among them, they persistently inquired into the lives of God's chosen people, whether they were living in such a way that they would reflect rather than obscure the sense of the presence of God amid his people. The place God means to be is with God's people, but what is the evidence that God is there? The prophet asked, "Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " and this is what he was getting at. If God is truly among us, if the place where God likes to hang his hat is, as Jesus said, near to us, (Luke 21:31), then our lives ought to demonstrate the reality of that.
In short, the Old Testament prophets, like Joel, believed it was necessary to live our faith, to make our living a constant reflection of the glory of God, so that those who see the believing community would not be given cause to wonder, "Where is their God?" The lives of God's people would be the evidence that such a God was right there, right in their midst.
One of the ways that Joel knew the people could express their desire to be living reflections of the God they worshiped was to covenant together to repent of their shortcomings. And a powerful method by which they would express their repentance was through fasting - abstinence from certain foods - and a ceremonial rending of their clothing. But Joel recommended against a liturgical tearing of garments; he counseled them to rend their hearts instead, for only a heart that is cracked open and needy can receive the God who would enter in.
Today, when in some churches there is a ceremony marking worshipers' foreheads on Ash Wednesday with the ashes of the burned palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday, the intention is the same. It is to wear an outward reminder of an inward reality, an outward mark signifying a desire to rend one's heart through the course of the Lenten season so that God can enter in to save us.
Many Christian denominations haven't generally made such a big deal out of Ash Wednesday, though I know of many non--liturgical churches that have just such Ash Wednesday observances. Yet even many "high church" people fail to appear for services on Ash Wednesday. What is it about such an idea that most gives folks pause? Likely it is the public nature of it. We are reticent about being marked with ashes, and leaving them there the rest of the day for all to see. We are more often schooled in a privatized sort of religion, one we keep pretty much to ourselves unless we are in the company of people with whom we feel very safe. We do not generally wear our faith on our sleeves. We are the most likely people in Christendom to think of our faith as an individual matter, best left up to our own sense of God's presence with us. So among many of us there is often little chance of sporting ash--streaked foreheads, and often just as little chance of thinking on the communitarian sort of faith that Joel and all the prophets encouraged among the people.
So, what would be signs by which the world could see the presence of God in our midst, like the evidence of a great wind which shows not the wind but its effect? It is a long--standing Lenten discipline to reflect on Joel's recommendations for people seeking to be faithful witnesses to the presence of God among us in the ways he mentions:
Return. Turning, or, more to the point, re--turning to the path on which God sets the people is the goal of repentance. When we begin to walk away from God, to live our lives as though God doesn't exist, or that if God does exist, God's interest in our day--to--day existence is far from obvious and therefore, we are free to go our own individual ways, that is when we are called to turn around, to return to the path of faith in God.
Fasting. Fasting is not much valued in our culture or even in our church. But fasting is a way of remembering, a way of setting aside something that is common and familiar to us, so that space in our lives will be created to receive a word from God which we may have been overlooking in our filled--up lives. Fasting is a way of self--emptying to make room for the presence of God which God longs to supply.
Weeping and mourning. Why would anyone seek to do these things? Surely only a fool would recommend them as a religious discipline. Doesn't God want us to be happy? Shouldn't our lives be filled with happiness? But wait. It was Jesus who said, in the Beatitudes from his Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted ... Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:4, 6). Any kind of filling first requires an emptying. Most of us spend a good deal of our time being filled, filled with things to do, concerns, activities, work, relationships, hurrying from this to that appointment. And when our lives are not filled with necessary things, we fill them with additional things - television, sports, hobbies - anything and everything, just so long as they are full.
As an alternative to all this self--fulfillment, Joel recommends hearts broken for real, cracked open, so as to have room to receive the love which God longs to pour in, if only we could make room. All this returning and repenting and rending to which the Lenten season calls us is part of the difficult task for believers to discern God's presence again, and then to make responses in life that are not only personal but social, economic, even political.
All this is for the purpose of creating within ourselves, and for the sake of the world that looks on, a sense of the real presence of God among the people.
Is this not what Jesus represents to us, who have been added to the tree of Jesse by adoption through the Christian church? Isn't the life and death of Jesus among us the evidence to which we point when we think about whether God is present among us? Is it not Jesus who promised to be among us when two or three are gathered in his name?
Joel asked the question, and not rhetorically: "Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " Well, why should it? If we are God's people, truly God's people, then our lives are meant to be the evidence of God's life among us.
God went to the trouble of offering himself to us in Jesus, in the person of the Messiah, in order to be among us. When people know we are a church of Christ, gathered in this place, why should it be said among them as they see us coming and going in our busy church existence, "Where is their God?"
Where is your God? It may sound like a silly sort of statement, I suppose, but in some ways it is the deepest of theological questions. In childhood - and perhaps even in our adulthood - we may have thought casually about God living physically up in the sky, up in a heaven that is behind the clouds, apart from the earth. Silly as such notions may seem to us when we think about them, they are no sillier than the declarations made by early cosmonauts from the former Soviet Union who declared that since they saw no evidence of God or heaven when they went into space, atheism had been proven to be true.
Perhaps you have seen the recent ad on television which had a beautiful young female angel on a cloud, going to a celestial refrigerator to get a snack, which she then does not get around to sharing with her canine angel friend. Or the automobile dealer who ran a series of ads in which those who came to the gates of heaven having purchased their cars at competing dealerships were dropped suddenly through a trap door in the clouds to a fiery place below. Or the cartoon series on prime time network television called God, the Devil, and Bob. Or Woody Allen's famous line, "If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank." This is all the stuff of innumerable New Yorker cartoons and Peter--at--the--Pearly--Gates jokes. Is that the sort of place where we really believe God hangs out? Probably not, not in our more serious moments of contemplation.
Then where is your God? George Bernard Shaw once said, "Beware the man whose God is in the skies." So, if not among the cushy, heavenly cumulonimbus clouds, where then? What is the evidence that God is near, that God cares, that God keeps track of the doings on this earth? It's not a casual question. It is perhaps one of the most persistent of religious inquiries.
When Jesus hung on the cross, suspended on beams of wood, suspended between thieves, suspended between heaven and earth, the people mocked him, "He saved others," they said, "let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God" (Luke 23:35). "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to" (Matthew 27:43). Jesus himself cried out, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
If that is not asking where God is, then I don't know a question when I hear one. The fact that Jesus could be brought to ask it gives us confidence in our own asking.
The prophets had an answer for such persistent questions. It was not to inquire into God's existence or whether people should believe there is a God, as if our believing or not believing makes any difference in the reality of God's existence. Seeking to confirm that the location of God was among them, they persistently inquired into the lives of God's chosen people, whether they were living in such a way that they would reflect rather than obscure the sense of the presence of God amid his people. The place God means to be is with God's people, but what is the evidence that God is there? The prophet asked, "Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " and this is what he was getting at. If God is truly among us, if the place where God likes to hang his hat is, as Jesus said, near to us, (Luke 21:31), then our lives ought to demonstrate the reality of that.
In short, the Old Testament prophets, like Joel, believed it was necessary to live our faith, to make our living a constant reflection of the glory of God, so that those who see the believing community would not be given cause to wonder, "Where is their God?" The lives of God's people would be the evidence that such a God was right there, right in their midst.
One of the ways that Joel knew the people could express their desire to be living reflections of the God they worshiped was to covenant together to repent of their shortcomings. And a powerful method by which they would express their repentance was through fasting - abstinence from certain foods - and a ceremonial rending of their clothing. But Joel recommended against a liturgical tearing of garments; he counseled them to rend their hearts instead, for only a heart that is cracked open and needy can receive the God who would enter in.
Today, when in some churches there is a ceremony marking worshipers' foreheads on Ash Wednesday with the ashes of the burned palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday, the intention is the same. It is to wear an outward reminder of an inward reality, an outward mark signifying a desire to rend one's heart through the course of the Lenten season so that God can enter in to save us.
Many Christian denominations haven't generally made such a big deal out of Ash Wednesday, though I know of many non--liturgical churches that have just such Ash Wednesday observances. Yet even many "high church" people fail to appear for services on Ash Wednesday. What is it about such an idea that most gives folks pause? Likely it is the public nature of it. We are reticent about being marked with ashes, and leaving them there the rest of the day for all to see. We are more often schooled in a privatized sort of religion, one we keep pretty much to ourselves unless we are in the company of people with whom we feel very safe. We do not generally wear our faith on our sleeves. We are the most likely people in Christendom to think of our faith as an individual matter, best left up to our own sense of God's presence with us. So among many of us there is often little chance of sporting ash--streaked foreheads, and often just as little chance of thinking on the communitarian sort of faith that Joel and all the prophets encouraged among the people.
So, what would be signs by which the world could see the presence of God in our midst, like the evidence of a great wind which shows not the wind but its effect? It is a long--standing Lenten discipline to reflect on Joel's recommendations for people seeking to be faithful witnesses to the presence of God among us in the ways he mentions:
Return. Turning, or, more to the point, re--turning to the path on which God sets the people is the goal of repentance. When we begin to walk away from God, to live our lives as though God doesn't exist, or that if God does exist, God's interest in our day--to--day existence is far from obvious and therefore, we are free to go our own individual ways, that is when we are called to turn around, to return to the path of faith in God.
Fasting. Fasting is not much valued in our culture or even in our church. But fasting is a way of remembering, a way of setting aside something that is common and familiar to us, so that space in our lives will be created to receive a word from God which we may have been overlooking in our filled--up lives. Fasting is a way of self--emptying to make room for the presence of God which God longs to supply.
Weeping and mourning. Why would anyone seek to do these things? Surely only a fool would recommend them as a religious discipline. Doesn't God want us to be happy? Shouldn't our lives be filled with happiness? But wait. It was Jesus who said, in the Beatitudes from his Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted ... Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:4, 6). Any kind of filling first requires an emptying. Most of us spend a good deal of our time being filled, filled with things to do, concerns, activities, work, relationships, hurrying from this to that appointment. And when our lives are not filled with necessary things, we fill them with additional things - television, sports, hobbies - anything and everything, just so long as they are full.
As an alternative to all this self--fulfillment, Joel recommends hearts broken for real, cracked open, so as to have room to receive the love which God longs to pour in, if only we could make room. All this returning and repenting and rending to which the Lenten season calls us is part of the difficult task for believers to discern God's presence again, and then to make responses in life that are not only personal but social, economic, even political.
All this is for the purpose of creating within ourselves, and for the sake of the world that looks on, a sense of the real presence of God among the people.
Is this not what Jesus represents to us, who have been added to the tree of Jesse by adoption through the Christian church? Isn't the life and death of Jesus among us the evidence to which we point when we think about whether God is present among us? Is it not Jesus who promised to be among us when two or three are gathered in his name?
Joel asked the question, and not rhetorically: "Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " Well, why should it? If we are God's people, truly God's people, then our lives are meant to be the evidence of God's life among us.
God went to the trouble of offering himself to us in Jesus, in the person of the Messiah, in order to be among us. When people know we are a church of Christ, gathered in this place, why should it be said among them as they see us coming and going in our busy church existence, "Where is their God?"
