God & Being
Lent III March 14, 2004
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9.
If I began this sermon by saying that I planned to talk about the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas and other medieval scholastics, and their influence on 20th century European existentialism, I would most probably look out on a congregation divided between anxious boredom and pleasant reverie, depending upon how easily each of you could tune me out.
If I said, however, I was going to talk about idolatry and sin, I might have more of your attention – but it would be the same sermon.
From Abraham, to Moses, to David, to the prophets, to Jesus, and others in the Judeo-Christian-Moslem monotheistic traditions before and after, the central spiritual realization had to do with the perception of the oneness of God, and the rejection of idolatry as a means of relating with God – both of which insights constitute a redefinition of what is meant by the idea of God.
The second commandment given to Moses later on this same mountain says, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” This constitutes much more than a ban on religious stone carving. It means to say that you cannot “objectify” God in any way. God was not in the stone images of Egypt or Canaan. But neither was God in the power of the thunder and lightening, or the fertility of the earth. God is not a “supreme being”, a being among other beings. God is not “in” the universe at all.
Now, this isn’t just difficult to think about. It is impossible to think about. That’s why we have prayer and sacraments – they point, they don’t define. That’s why the Bible is filled with stories, not doctrines. The stories are metaphoric truths, not objective facts. The stories don’t present us with information, they invite us into relationship. God is like a father; God is like the Word of truth; God is like the breath of spirit. Those concepts don’t define God, and get God all theologically pinned down, any more than last week’s Gospel, that said God’s love and “longing for us is like a mother hen wanting to shield her brood under her wings” means that God is actually a chicken. God is not a “what” or a “who”, God just is.
For Christians, of course, the stories that bring us closest to this sense of God, into real relationship with God, are the stories told about the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But today’s Old Testament lesson comes as close as any to disclosing the Judeo-Christian-Moslem alternative to idolatry. (Thomas Aquinas and others of his time – Jewish, Christian and Muslim – focused on this as well, which is how Thomas Aquinas fits in.)
Moses asks the name of God, and God says, “ I am”. Last week’s closing song, “The God of Abraham praise”, had a line in it: “eternal Father, great I Am, we worship thee” which almost entirely misses the whole point of this interchange with Moses, because the “I Am” here on the mountain isn’t a noun, it is a verb.
God is “being”, not “a being”. Being itself. Or at least it’s in being itself that we meet God, and discern God, and connect with God in such a way that the love of God, the creativity of God, the peace, the joy flows through to us and out into the world. And the Hebrew word for being also means becoming, so there is a double sense of activity, of non-pin-down-ability in God. Being/becoming is what we share with God. Being/becoming is what is made in God’s image.
Just as God is that process or essence or quality by which everything in the universe exists – but God cannot be identified with any particular thing in that universe – so we too in our most true selves, made in the image of God, are the lives we lead in their wholeness and becoming, but not any particular part of those lives – not our bodies, not our thoughts, not our experiences, not our memories, but our sense of personal being that stands behind each of those. Our lives are like fields of illumination in which and through which stuff happens and comes and goes. And our field of illumination is a part of the larger field of God’s illumination. The first words spoken were “let their be light.”
We don’t realize that very often. We don’t experience it very often, because just as idolatry hardens and distorts our vision of God as the source of pure being and becoming, so sin hardens and distorts our experience of the illumination of pure existence. We get distracted, we get sucked into, we get attached to the stuff that’s illuminated. We no longer see the light, or even see the world by the light. Our life becomes, as Plato said, like shadows on a cave wall, or as St. Paul said, like an image seen through a glass darkly, in a mirror dimly.
That’s why the images of slavery and exile….of being strangers in a strange land carry such power in the tradition that flows from this encounter on Mt. Sinai. There’s a sense of being out of touch, out of contact with something at the very foundation of life….and all the defensiveness, and exercise of power, and accumulation of wealth and experience that we engage in to try to recover it only makes it worse.
And that’s when we turn to idolatry. Thinking that we’re being religious, instead of letting go of our self-centeredness, instead of reawakening to our true nature as the image of God, we end up making a God in our image….a God who’s like a human being, only bigger and more powerful, and more able to fulfill our self-centered desires. And when it doesn’t work we just figure we’ve done something wrong, misbehaved in some way, gotten the formula messed up, so we try to “get it right” the next time….again and again and again and again.
Jesus says forget about all that! He says “consider the lilies of the field.” He says no to the Pharisees, no to the Sadducees, no to Herod, no to Pontius Pilate. Jesus says the same thing that J. B. Phillips would say in the 1970’s; “Your God is too small!”
In the life of Jesus, his birth and teaching and death and resurrection (not just the teaching and not just the passion) we see the light of the world. And he calls us to let our light shine as well….to once again experience the illumination of the whole of our lives that connects us to God….To do this for the remembrance of him…..So that we can remember who we really are as well.
We open to the grace of his life by following him in a life of love. Love accomplishes this in three ways. Love connects us with the world in the way it really is. True love doesn’t just project our wishes out to the world, but opens to what the world truly gives us.
We also love because love acknowledges the basic interdependence of all things in life….all people, all events. If who I am is actually the “field” of my life, then that field overlaps and is overlapped by countless other fields… all of you….and those you have known – and those who have known them... and those who came into this space to pray in former times….and on and on. Only by embracing all of that, without the glimmer of a hope of “knowing” it, can I live my full life.
If God is a verb, an action more than a thing, then God moves in a certain frequency. Love can be said to vibrate at that same frequency. That may be what St John means when he says, ‘God is love”
I realize all this is more abstractly philosophical and obscurely poetic than idolatry and sin would seem to need to be. It’s another kind of metaphor… like the stories in the Bible, but less likely to be pinned down and treated like objective information, because it’s probably pretty confusing.
And yet there may some benefit to the abstractness and the obscurity and the confusion…because they make us think: “What could he be talking about?” But we can talk some more, or you can do this kind of thing yourself. Imagine what it might all mean for you.
The stories in the Bible aren’t answers to the questions of our life. Rather they present questions that only our life can answer.
So if you come across a bush that blazing, but not consumed, turn aside and look at the great sight. But remove your sandals from your feet, for the place you’ll be standing will you your holy ground.
Thanks be to God.
