Preached at National City United Methodist Church, October 21, 2007
To begin today I want to present to you two different ways of thinking about God – two different ways of thinking about the relationship between God and humankind. I’m interested to see what you think.
In the first view, God is completely and utterly set apart from humankind. God is completely other. God’s nature is absolutely bounded, “hard,” if you will, like a bowling ball – without the holes, of course. The “stuff” that God was made of could not be shared with anything; all other things in creation had to be made of an essence completely alien from God.
In the second view, God is completely engaged, governing the every smallest bit of creation. God controls every human decision and determines ahead of time the implication of every human act. A common metaphor to describe this understanding of God is that God was the all-knowing “author” of human history, and had as much control over every twist and turn in the tale as was a playwright in control of the outcome of the characters in a play.
This debate is seen in the debates that emerged in the early church over the nature of Jesus:
1) Jesus was completely human; because God is “wholly other,” Jesus had to be a creation, a mere creature. He was the “Son of God” only in name, an honorific title, and was really no more divine than any other human being.
2) Jesus was completely divine, the very equivalent of God, and therefore could not have undergone the trials and travails of human living in any real or meaningful sense.
So which is it? For Christians, the historic answer is “neither.” You knew that intuitively, I know. The first view clashes with our experience as people of faith. Few people arrive at religious faith through rational inquiry. The vast majority are awakened to an awareness of God, an awareness whereby they come to know that God is engaged with their lives in some profound and mysterious way. This is why, across the course of the history of the church, Christians have rejected this first view, this view that God is completely “other.” They could observe God at work in the course of human affairs; they simply could not rid themselves of this faith that God was involved in their lives.
The second view presented a huge problem to people, as well, namely what to do about the experience of evil and human suffering. Just this week I saw this argument played out in the Los Angeles Times. A man who narrowly escaped death in a factory fire attributed his survival to God, saying, “God was watching out for me; that’s the only reason I’m alive.” To which someone, predictably, replied in a letter to the editor: “And what about the other people in the factory? Why wasn’t God “watching out” for them, too?” This simple, logical question is why extreme forms of “predestination” have always remained minority views in the history of the church.
The orthodox Christian view – the winning view in the trajectory of the church’s history – is that God is engaged with creation, engaged with human history, but in such a way that does not do away with human freedom. God gave humankind the gift of free will; and it is out of love for humankind that God refuses to take back that gift, even when it is abused and misused by these sinful creatures, by us. Human history thus becomes “salvation history,” the story of God trying to save humanity from itself. And in this view, as the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig puts it, “God is responsible for only the nice part of human history.”
Two heresies: The first heresy is called “arianism,”after the fourth century Christian priest Arius of Alexandria, whose views were denounced by the early church as a major heresy. The second heresy is called “
And what of Jesus? The early church split this difference, too, and settled on a doctrine which is, on the surface, nonsensical and contradictory. They resolved this debate by understanding that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This doctrine of the incarnation suggested that God was indeed the “maker of heaven and earth, the world and all that is in it,” but that this all-encompassing God “chose to relate to the creation in self-imposed humility.”
In the words of the Nicene Creed:
What does all this mean? Not a matter of wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Ours is a God who chooses to be in relationship with us, and whose relationship with us is a very part of the inner life of God. God does not choose to be rid of us, but God chooses to persevere with us, to work with us, even as we struggle to live up to the fullness of our stature as God’s children. God’s intentions are nothing but good for us. The evil that exists in the creation is not the handiwork of God – to the contrary God is at work in the world resisting the work of evil, but refusing to eradicate it by merely banishing human freedom.
One of the first people I met when I moved to the border town of Calexico, California, was a woman named Elena Canez. When I asked her if she preferred to speak in English or in Spanish, she replied, "Would you prefer iced tea or lemonade?" I thought she had misunderstood and tried to reiterate my question. "No, no," Elena said, "I understood you perfectly. For me it's the same kind of question: iced tea or lemonade, English or Spanish, I like them both. I am 100 percent Mexican and 100 percent American." To some people this would sound like nonsense, but not to Elena Canez.
We are not meant to understand the mystery of God’s creation in Jesus Christ. We are meant to participate in it. We are called to partake of it. In Baptism we are immersed in water … in communion we partake of the body of Christ … and in some way we are transformed ever more closely into the image of the divine.
I’ve always liked the way that Athanasius put it: “God became human so that humans might understand how a human can become divine.” He also said this: “If we follow Jesus closely we can stand on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem.”
I know that it can be very difficult, this life of faith. I know it can seem scary and risky and it can, at times, cause us to express opinions and points of view that may give offense or create distance between ourselves and those we love.
But I am convinced that there is nothing so wonderful, nothing so hopeful as this life of trying to follow Jesus closely, so that we can stand on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem.
After all, we are followers of Jesus Christ and our lives are on the line.
John 14:1-11
1 Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." 8 Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." 9 Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
To begin today I want to present to you two different ways of thinking about God – two different ways of thinking about the relationship between God and humankind. I’m interested to see what you think.
In the first view, God is completely and utterly set apart from humankind. God is completely other. God’s nature is absolutely bounded, “hard,” if you will, like a bowling ball – without the holes, of course. The “stuff” that God was made of could not be shared with anything; all other things in creation had to be made of an essence completely alien from God.
In the second view, God is completely engaged, governing the every smallest bit of creation. God controls every human decision and determines ahead of time the implication of every human act. A common metaphor to describe this understanding of God is that God was the all-knowing “author” of human history, and had as much control over every twist and turn in the tale as was a playwright in control of the outcome of the characters in a play.
This debate is seen in the debates that emerged in the early church over the nature of Jesus:
1) Jesus was completely human; because God is “wholly other,” Jesus had to be a creation, a mere creature. He was the “Son of God” only in name, an honorific title, and was really no more divine than any other human being.
2) Jesus was completely divine, the very equivalent of God, and therefore could not have undergone the trials and travails of human living in any real or meaningful sense.
So which is it? For Christians, the historic answer is “neither.” You knew that intuitively, I know. The first view clashes with our experience as people of faith. Few people arrive at religious faith through rational inquiry. The vast majority are awakened to an awareness of God, an awareness whereby they come to know that God is engaged with their lives in some profound and mysterious way. This is why, across the course of the history of the church, Christians have rejected this first view, this view that God is completely “other.” They could observe God at work in the course of human affairs; they simply could not rid themselves of this faith that God was involved in their lives.
The second view presented a huge problem to people, as well, namely what to do about the experience of evil and human suffering. Just this week I saw this argument played out in the Los Angeles Times. A man who narrowly escaped death in a factory fire attributed his survival to God, saying, “God was watching out for me; that’s the only reason I’m alive.” To which someone, predictably, replied in a letter to the editor: “And what about the other people in the factory? Why wasn’t God “watching out” for them, too?” This simple, logical question is why extreme forms of “predestination” have always remained minority views in the history of the church.
The orthodox Christian view – the winning view in the trajectory of the church’s history – is that God is engaged with creation, engaged with human history, but in such a way that does not do away with human freedom. God gave humankind the gift of free will; and it is out of love for humankind that God refuses to take back that gift, even when it is abused and misused by these sinful creatures, by us. Human history thus becomes “salvation history,” the story of God trying to save humanity from itself. And in this view, as the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig puts it, “God is responsible for only the nice part of human history.”
Two heresies: The first heresy is called “arianism,”after the fourth century Christian priest Arius of Alexandria, whose views were denounced by the early church as a major heresy. The second heresy is called “
And what of Jesus? The early church split this difference, too, and settled on a doctrine which is, on the surface, nonsensical and contradictory. They resolved this debate by understanding that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This doctrine of the incarnation suggested that God was indeed the “maker of heaven and earth, the world and all that is in it,” but that this all-encompassing God “chose to relate to the creation in self-imposed humility.”
In the words of the Nicene Creed:
“We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
What does all this mean? Not a matter of wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Ours is a God who chooses to be in relationship with us, and whose relationship with us is a very part of the inner life of God. God does not choose to be rid of us, but God chooses to persevere with us, to work with us, even as we struggle to live up to the fullness of our stature as God’s children. God’s intentions are nothing but good for us. The evil that exists in the creation is not the handiwork of God – to the contrary God is at work in the world resisting the work of evil, but refusing to eradicate it by merely banishing human freedom.
One of the first people I met when I moved to the border town of Calexico, California, was a woman named Elena Canez. When I asked her if she preferred to speak in English or in Spanish, she replied, "Would you prefer iced tea or lemonade?" I thought she had misunderstood and tried to reiterate my question. "No, no," Elena said, "I understood you perfectly. For me it's the same kind of question: iced tea or lemonade, English or Spanish, I like them both. I am 100 percent Mexican and 100 percent American." To some people this would sound like nonsense, but not to Elena Canez.
We are not meant to understand the mystery of God’s creation in Jesus Christ. We are meant to participate in it. We are called to partake of it. In Baptism we are immersed in water … in communion we partake of the body of Christ … and in some way we are transformed ever more closely into the image of the divine.
I’ve always liked the way that Athanasius put it: “God became human so that humans might understand how a human can become divine.” He also said this: “If we follow Jesus closely we can stand on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem.”
I know that it can be very difficult, this life of faith. I know it can seem scary and risky and it can, at times, cause us to express opinions and points of view that may give offense or create distance between ourselves and those we love.
But I am convinced that there is nothing so wonderful, nothing so hopeful as this life of trying to follow Jesus closely, so that we can stand on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem.
After all, we are followers of Jesus Christ and our lives are on the line.
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