Seeing and Knowing God

Easter 6, Year A
Readings: Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-18 1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21

Do you know God?
Have you ever seen God? How do you know God is real?

Bob and Joyce are driving to Houston. As they come into the city, traffic starts to pick up. Just as they enter a construction zone, Bob spots a car stalled, partly in their lane because of the construction barricade. He looks in the mirror to move over, and there’s a semi in the other lane – there’s not enough space for all three vehicles – and nowhere for Bob and Joyce to go.
They both flinch, expecting impact – and then, somehow, they’re on the other side.
“How did you do that?” Joyce asks, amazed.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “It wasn’t me.”

How do you know God is real? Have you ever seen God?
Lots of you have children and grandchildren. Think back to holding that brand new little baby for the first time – those perfect, delicate ears, beautiful eyelashes and tiny fingernails.
Look at your own hand and the lines on your knuckles, the roadmap of purple veins just under your skin.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24-25)
It feels like this is true – that there must be somebody responsible - It feels like there must be a God, but how do we know God is real if we can’t see God?
Can you see your eyelashes? Why not? Because they’re too close to your eyes.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is too close. Paul tells the people in Athens, “indeed he is not far from each one of us.”
Can you see your heart? Why not? Because it’s inside of you.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is inside of us. Jesus tells his disciples, “You know [the Holy Spirit], because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Sometimes you can feel what you can’t see
You can’t see your eyelashes because they are too close to your eyes. But, you can move the tip of your finger near your eye and feel the tiny hairs brushing against your skin, so you know they are there.
You can’t see your heart, because your heart is inside you - but you can put your thumb in the little space between your collar bones and feel bom-bom as it pumps blood through the arteries in your neck.
I can’t see God, but there are times when I feel that God is with me. I remember once in early spring, taking a walk in the middle of the afternoon, and suddenly, I felt that God was walking with me. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was there. It seemed that if I leaned my head over, it would be resting on his shoulder.
I remember how familiar and simple it felt to be walking together like that with God, and I remember feeling surprised that it was so familiar and so simple – as though we already knew each other very well.
You don’t have to see God to know him. And you already do know God, and he knows you. “Indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

Jesus told his disciples, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth …. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Jesus, the Father and the Spirit are all connected with each other and with us, so when we encounter God, it will probably feel familiar rather than strange and frightening.
In a way, this can make God’s presence hard to recognize. If we are expecting God to be completely different from anything we know, we may be surprised to encounter God in a way that feels close and familiar.
Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, asked him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
And Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”Don’t make it more difficult than it is – you know this already
Sometimes, we can make things more difficult than they are.
Some things are difficult and complicated; that’s true. But some things are simple, and we make them complicated when they don’t need to be.
For example, how do you feel about Algebra?
x + 2 = 5 Solve for x. If you’re like me, just hearing ‘ x’, you feel a mild panic. But relax and think about it – slow down. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. If you start with 2, how do you get to 5?
You have to let yourself recognize the familiar parts and realize that you know them so that you don’t panic or give up. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
For some people, reading and spelling cause the panic.
How do you spell ‘Episcopalian’?
It’s so long and has all those syllables! I can’t do it.
Yes, you can – slow down – listen to the sounds. What are the letters that make those sounds? Just do one at a time. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
Learning to read is similar – for someone learning to read, looking at all those words can be intimidating. They’ll just start guessing. You have to tell them, “Slow down, look at what’s there; don’t guess.“
When it connects – that those letters represent familiar words – it’s like epiphany – like revelation.
Knowing God is similar. It may seem intimidating or even impossible to think about trying to know God.
How can I know God? I’ve never seen God. God is totally ‘other’ – completely beyond human comprehension.
Except that Jesus and Paul both say it’s not like that.
We’re God’s children, Paul explains, so we know God already, because God made us and takes care of us. In him we live and move and have our being, and He is not far from each one of us. We know the Spirit, Jesus says, because he is with us and will be in us.
God is familiar, even if we can’t put words to it or explain it. So don’t worry about what you can’t see, what you don’t know; look at what’s there. We’ve seen God reflected to us in thousands of ways. We’ve seen God reflected through people and events; we’ve seen God reflected through the beauty of the world around us; we’ve seen God reflected in scripture, in the liturgy, and we’ve seen God reflected in our own hearts.
CS Lewis says we each have a ‘God-shaped hole’ in our hearts, so even before we recognize what’s missing in our lives, the shape of the emptiness traces an outline of what God must be like to fill it.
Don’t make knowing God more difficult than it is – you already know God. And He knows you.
--------------------------------------
Given to St. John's, Silsbee
April 27, 2008

Trinity

Year C, Trinity Sunday
Gospel Reading: John 16:5-15


Trinity
Today is Trinity Sunday, celebrating and recognizing God in the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s not common in the church calendar to have a day dedicated to an idea or a doctrine, but the idea of the Trinity is central to the way we as Christians understand our relationship to God.
Today’s scripture from the Gospel of John is one of several in the Bible that talks about relationships between Father, Son and Spirit. The word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible, but as the church worked out how to explain what it believed, this word was created to express the mysterious way in which Christians encounter God as Father, Jesus as God’s Son and the Holy Spirit in relationship to both and to us.
Though it seems contradictory, the idea of something being many things and one thing is not totally unimaginable. A family is one thing even though there are separate, distinct members; whether there are two or five or sixty people; it’s still the same family. Likewise, a country – we have on our money ‘E pluribus unum’ – ‘Out of many, one.’ The Church also - though we are many people, and we are very different from each other, still we are one body.
Similarly, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct, but they’re one God. How this works is the subject of defining the doctrine of the Trinity.
The idea of the Trinity, though in one way simple, is hard to explain exactly; it took the church a few hundred years to hash out descriptions of it and even still, there are arguments. One of the results of those many, many, many discussions was the Apostle’s Creed, where we say ‘I believe in God the Father,.. and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord..." and "I believe in the Holy Ghost..."

Analogy of Love
Augustine, a bishop in North Africa, spent a big part of his life trying to understand and explain the Trinity. He wrote a 15-volume book about it, even. One of the ways he came up with for describing it is an analogy – the Analogy of Love. Augustine said that the Trinity is a relationship. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father back, and the Holy Spirit is the love between them.
Augustine felt that, though good, this analogy didn’t completely work, and he tried to refine it with many variations. He concluded that really no image or analogy can exactly describe the Trinity, but he also thought that, even though he could never perfectly describe it, it was worth trying. And I’m glad he went to all that trouble, because I think his analogy is helpful.

Heart Strings
It helps me, anyway. I think of the Father loving the Son, and the Holy Spirit as love – and I imagine the Holy Spirit, the love between them, like an elastic string tying their hearts together.

This image also helps me in thinking about my relationships with other people. My heart is tied to all the people I love, so when someone leaves, or moves away, or dies, those strings stretch out, pulling on my heart. Sometimes it’s quite painful, but I think of the ache as a reminder that my heart is still tied to the person I’m separated from, and so wherever they are, part of me is there also.
I thought about this when my grandmother on my mom’s side died a few years ago. I felt she had taken part of my heart with her but that it was still tied on to me. In a way, though, that made heaven seem closer, because wherever it was, I knew she had to be there, and part of me was there with her.
You may feel this way about people you love. Some of you may feel like this about Anna. I do. She brought so much life and joy to this church through her music and her spirit. I think she has taken part of us with her to heaven, and we feel our hearts pulling us there, wanting to be with her.
In Matthew, we read that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. So tie your heart to real treasures that will pull you toward heaven. I’m sure we did that by tying our hearts to Nan Nan.

I think this is what happened with those who knew Jesus. Because he lived among people as one of them, they got to know him and love him. They followed him, investing their lives in him, and when he died, it was very painful for them. The wind went out of their sails; they didn’t know what to do. When he rose and ascended back to the Father, though, he pulled their hearts with him toward heaven and blew the Holy Spirit as a following wind to push them on. It changed their direction and their drive; they became more sure of their faith in Christ. Where before, Peter waffled and even denied knowing Christ, later he died for him.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is saying ‘goodbye’ to his disciples. They love him and don’t want him to go away, and Jesus knows it’s hard for them. ‘Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’
A little after this passage, Jesus prays to the Father for his disciples, as we read together earlier, and in that prayer, we hear what was supposed to happen later after Jesus went away. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and that I myself may be in them."

Signs
The Gospel of John is a very carefully organized work, and it seems to be in two main sections, which scholars call the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. In the first part, Jesus performs signs or miracles to show and explain to people who he is – God’s Son – and that God loves them. In the second part, his final, most important sign shows the world God’s love in a complete and definitive way, through a total self-giving act.
Many people today are interested in the idea of signs or miracles. I think it’s pretty universal for people to want to hear from God, but we’re not always the best at recognizing how God speaks to us. Today’s reading seems to indicate the Holy Spirit will help open our eyes to what’s true, remind us of what Jesus taught and offer comfort in our struggles. Often, signs of God’s love are all around us but we have to pay attention and look with eyes of faith – faith seeking understanding.
There’s a song by Carolyn Arends that I like which says, ‘I was hoping for a miracle and waiting for a sign/ as if each breath I take is not a gift,/ and I was acting just as if the way you gave your life for mine/ didn’t have my foolish heart convinced. What did I think could cause this hunger – did I ever stop to wonder why every time I open up my eyes...There you are."
In another song, she asks, "Do we dare pay attention, dare even mention, the mystery we find ourselves caught in...And do we dare to remember all that we have forgotten?"
The cross remains for us a sign and reminder of God’s love in Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus told his disciples, "when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself." In the same discourse as today’s passage, Jesus also commanded his disciples to love one another, and this love would be a sign to others.
So the love – the Spirit - that ties Jesus’ heart to the Father ties our hearts together as well in community and communion, creating a web of interconnections – like a huge net. And as Christ is lifted up, the net is pulled up behind him, catching and drawing even more people all together toward God – God who is himself a community of love.

----------------------------------
Given to Vidor Presbyterian
and in memory of Anna Lee
June 5, 2007