Here and There a God

Sixth Sunday after Easter – Year A

May 25, 2014

Acts 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 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. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'

"Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

In just a few weeks the school year will be over, summer will have hopefully arrived, and many of us will be thinking about if, when, and where we may be going for a summer vacation. I think all of us like to get away, whether it's across the country, around the world, or just across town. There's something refreshing about just getting away from our daily everyday surroundings and stresses. Changing our location, our setting, frees us for at least a little bit from all the things that happen every day at home, at work, in our neighborhoods. It's nice to get away from home.

Being away from home, though, eventually makes us think about home. We get homesick. Maybe it's our friends and neighbors, maybe it's our bed. There are things about home that we find comfort in, even if there are other things that are sources of stress in our lives. One of the things I tend to miss when I am away from home is food.

Everywhere we come from, every house and family we call home, has it's own recipes and food practices. Now, for me one of the joys of traveling is that I get to taste some of the different types of food that are specialties of that particular region or country. There's nothing quite like the wild rice soup you get in northern Minnesota, the sauerkraut in Germany, and let's face it, no matter how hard other places may try, there is nothing quite like an Iowa Chop. Now, as much as I enjoy trying out new things, new foods, new flavors, there comes a day when I really want to taste something that is familiar, something that tastes like home.

The tough part is, that if I'm not at home, what I'm likely to find to fill that desire, that hunger, is not really going to measure up. It might get close, but it's still not there. You can live with it because it's close, but if you get the real thing that would be so much better. I think you know what I'm describing. There's nothing that quite measures up to the real deal, the real McCoy. You might be able to live with a substitute if you had to, but you would still be hungering and thirsting for the genuine article.

Augustine was one of the Bishops of the ancient church, and perhaps the thing he is remembered for most was his comment, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Within each of us there is a hunger, a thirst to be in contact, communion, relationship with God, and we will always be restless, always be searching, always be wondering if there is something more until we find our place in God.

The search for meaning in life, the search for an encounter with the holy can be expressed in so many different ways. Just look around. The number of different religions, and spiritual expressions and denominations we see on a regular basis is mind-numbing. If we think that the situation for Paul in Athens was different than for us, we haven't looked around well enough. Almost every where we look we can see signs of the search for meaning around us, people searching for a taste of God, seeking to fill the hunger and thirst that is within them.

Paul came into a community where the search for meaning and an understanding of god found itself expressed in the worship of multiple gods. In the Greek and Roman cultures that were prevalent at the time, there was quite literally a god for every need or purpose. Need a better crop, there's a god for that. Need to win a victory in war, there's a god for that. Want beautiful children, there's a god for that. Want to make sure the party you have planned for tomorrow goes well, there's a god for that, too. All you have to do is determine which god is the one who can deliver on what you are looking for, figure out what that god demands from you, do it, and your desires are fulfilled.

When Paul begins his speech, he doesn't tell the Athenians how wrong they are, he congratulates them for recognizing their hunger for the holy. If there is an altar to a different god on every corner, it's clear to see that people believed in something. That's true here in the United States as well, over the last fifty years the Gallup Poll has consistently reported that about 95 percent of Americans believe in God. The question is: which god? What is the image of God, the understanding of the holy that is carried around by people in their hearts. Who is this one in whom “we live, and move and have our being”?

When it comes to thinking about God, there are two basic ways in which we as Christians have envisioned the one in whom we live and move and have our being. What's fascinating is that both of these understandings of God have existed together with little conflict, and it's possible to trace both of these understandings back to the beginnings of monotheistic faith, faith that was based in the belief there was only one God.

One way of thinking about God envisions a God that is very person-like, but out there somewhere. This is the God that sits on a cloud in heaven and watches us. This is the God that created everything that is, and sits apart from that creation. God is somewhere up there, out there somewhere beyond the confines of the universe, while we are here. God doesn't always stay separate from us, from time to to time God comes and does stuff, intervenes in our lives; makes miracles to happen. In the Bible, we see this God in Jesus, we see this understanding of God in miracles and other spectacular events like the flood, the plagues, the falling of the walls of Jericho. This is the God we still pray will come and be present, will act powerfully in our midst, will listen and respond to our prayers and supplications.

The other way of thinking about God imagines things quite differently. In this understanding, God is not somewhere out there, God is right here. The universe is not something separate from God, but within God. Everything is in God. This is different from the understanding of pantheism, which says everything is God. No, this is pan-en-theism, every thing is in God. God is the power, the all encompassing force, the Spirit in whom everything that is, is. This is the vision that Paul paints when he describes God as the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.

Theologians have used the fancy words of transcendence and immanence to describe these two ways of understanding God. Transcendent for the God out there; immanent for the God who is right here. As both of these understandings have coexisted for millenia, I don't believe it's possible to say one is right and one is wrong, or that one is more correct than the other. That said, I think there is something very attractive to everything being in God, and something potentially problematic in a God that is somewhere out there.

When God is out there, up there, somewhere that means that God must leave there to come here; that God's transcendence must become immanent, and it happens for a reason. God decides to change their home address. And when you choose to do something, you normally do it for a reason. So, when God becomes immanent, when God enters into our here and now, God does so for a reason. So, when God does the miraculous, when healing occurs, when prayers are answered, God chooses to do those things; because God chose to leave the transcendent and become immanent. If that is true, then the opposite is also true. When the miraculous does not happen, when prayers go unanswered, then God is choosing not to become imminent. And that raises all sorts of questions. Why does God choose to come to some people's aid and not others? Is there something about their prayers which is better? Does God love them more?

Of course not. When the miraculous happens, when prayers are seemingly answered, it's not about God moving from one place of existence to another, from there to here, it's about God becoming visible in our midst. Not having come from anywhere else, but felt here now. And we are content to not know the why's. And prayer, prayer is an expression of our belief that God is here and intimately with us. Prayer is conversation with our best friend who sits beside us, walks beside us, embraces us, comforts and celebrates with us. Prayers are whispered into the ear of the one who never leaves our side. Prayers aren't sent up into the heavens, with the hope to be heard; they are a declaration that we know God is here and active now.

Faith then, is not about finding God, but about finding our place in God. It's not about making space in our life, a place in our heart for God to dwell. It's about recognizing that our entire life is within God, that our heart dwells within God. We don't go to God; and God doesn't come to us because God is already here, we are already within the circle of all that God is.

Paul speaks to the people of Athens, he calls them out, he points out to them that all their idols, all their shrines, all their gods are expressions of seeking for that which is beyond them; a god that is somewhere out there, a god that must be cajoled, sacrificed to, worshiped and served in order to enter into our world. Paul declares that God is here, that everything found its beginning in God and continues to exist in God. It's not about trying to find something to fit into the God-shaped hole in our lives, it's about seeing our lives as part of the God-shaped whole. Amen.