God

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^NRS  Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ² the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³ Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Today we are going to talk about God. Our concept of who God is has been defined for us many times in many different ways. Let me start out by saying that historically we have a defined God in every early civilization on this planet. Every one of us if we take our ancestry back far enough understood there was a God. It is the definition of that God that has haunted us over the generations. We know that the earliest civilizations all lifted one single being among other beings as the supreme God. Whether we called that God Zeus, Odin, The great white spirit or Yahweh, we all are descendants of cultures that understood there is a God. We know that ancient cultures believed there were many God’s. Our own biblical text reminds us that the world knew many Gods when God decrees that we shall have no other Gods before me says to us that even God recognized that we have many Gods. Our Gods today may not be as well defined as ancient cultures but believe me when I say that money, material possessions, certain athletes and Hollywood types have become our idols, our Gods. So all that to say, what is our definition of God? My point is that it depends on who we want or believe God to be. If we think that God is a God of justice, then our God is that. Everything about God is black or white, good or evil, right or wrong and this God applies justice to every situation. If we believe God to be a benevolent being then the God we worship is a caring God of giving. And so our worship is often the worship of requesting that God give us this or give us that. If we believe that God is the God of creation then we experience God in nature, in the beauty of the sunset, and in the flowers that bloom. If we believe that God is a God of love then we experience God in that love. My own definition of God includes at the very least the last two, a God of creation and a God of love. Quoting Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr who quotes St John of the Cross,  “St. John of the Cross says in many ways throughout his writings that God refuses to be known in the way we know all other objects; God can only be known by loving God. I like to call this "center to center" or "subject to subject" knowing where neither participant is ever objectified. Yet much of religion has tried to know God theologically, by words, theories, doctrines, and dogmas.

So how is your God defined? What if I told you that one of the basic challenges of modern Christianity is this very question. The Hebrew God was a God that existed. In fact when I teach about God I simply say that the definition of God that I like is that God IS. Is what you ask? And my answer is that anything you can use to describe God most likely fits within the definition of IS. If I see a hummingbird I know that God exists within the creation story that created the hummingbird. If I see a beautiful sunset I know that God exists within that sunset and the entire world surrounding it. When I look at nature I view it in the same context as the Native Americans that God is, meaning that God exists within every living thing. That means that within nature nothing has been left out from the touch of God and we experience God when and only when, we allow ourselves to become one with God in the world around us. The earth gives up its essence of God when we plow it under and plant crops and the nutrients in it are given to the plants that allow them to grow. And the plant gives up its essence of God when we harvest it and use it for food or decoration. Trees give up their essence of God when we cut them down and make beautiful tables like our table here in this sacred space. Likewise animals give up their essence of God when we take their lives to become food at our table. In other words, everything we touch, eat, see and breathe has the essence of God within it. Nature itself is the primary Bible story. Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” The world itself is the primary locus of the sacred, and actually provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth

But the best definition of God of God is that God is love. In that love is everything of creation, everything of existence and everything we need to know about God. So the next piece that I want to share with you is what is our relationship with God all about? Well just as our definition of God defines us more than God, our relationship with God says more about who we are than about who God is. Again quoting Richard Rohr, “What does it mean when Jesus says you should love God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole mind (not just your dualistic mind), with your whole strength? What does it mean, as the first commandment instructs us, to love God more than anything else? The only way I know how to love God and to teach you how to love God is to love what God loves. To love God means to love everything . . . no exceptions. Of course, that can only be done with divine love flowing through us. And we can only allow divine love to flow by way of contemplative, non-dualistic consciousness, where we stop eliminating and choosing. This is the transformed mind (Romans 12:2) that allows you to see God in everything, and empowers your behavior to almost naturally change.” To help with this think in terms of living our lives as if God’s love is our life, not a separate thing we think about and try and show to the world through actions that are more attuned with good works, but a life that is totally committed and encompasses God’s love.

I often think how the world would be different if we simply learned to love completely as God loves completely. Even in our sinful nature, even when we turn our backs on God, God never wavers in God’s love to us. Being a disciple then is this understanding of becoming in the image or likeness of God by allowing ourselves to surrender to the essence of God. All of nature except humanity does it without thinking. We like to say that nature happens but the reality is much deeper than that. Nature happens because God is the essence of nature. What if we human beings began to live our lives in the same way? When Jesus called himself the Son of the Father and said He is one with the Father, He is giving clear primacy to relationship. Who you are is who you are in the Father, as he would put it. That is your meaning and your identity. Jesus says to his Father, “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:22-23).”

What I am suggesting to your today is that God IS. Because God is, we are supposed to be simply in the image of God. How do we do that, we share the love of God throughout our being, we love one another with all that we are, we stop living our lives excluding and become inclusive, we stop behaving in ways that exhibit hate and anger and start being love. I know that what I am asking of each of us in hard. We are human beings made not only in the image of God but given free will in the likeness of God and all too often we want to be God. But what we were born to do is to be in the image and likeness of God so that other people can see God in us, just the same as we see God within nature around us. Not that it is a secondary view of who we are but that who we are is in fact the essence of God, breathing, living and sharing love with our world, our neighbors and ourselves.

Jesus wants us to know this and shared as much throughout His teachings. It is only the arrival of institutional church that changed it. As preachers and Priests and leaders of the church we want God to be something we can define, something we teach, something that others have to come to us to learn. Oops there it is. With the arrival of the church came the arrival of human ego and the need to place God secondary. None of this is the teaching of Jesus. True discipleship is defined as loving God with all that we are, holding nothing back and then allowing that love to permeate every fiber of who we are. I know what I am asking today is difficult at times. If it were easy then Jesus would have not needed disciples to become apostles to become a church. But what Jesus intended has evolved into the hypocrisy we call church, where we are defining God as this superior being who is either justice or benevolence or something else. But in fact Jesus wanted us to know that God IS. That we are to be one with God in everything, every aspect of our lives, and every aspect of our actions. That our relationship with God is nothing less than opening ourselves to God and surrending ourselves to that essence.

I want to challenge us this morning to pray and reflect on our relationship with God. Can we surrender our comfortable and grown natures to a new nature? Can we become the church God intended through the disciples where we love God with all our heart, all our mind, all our souls and love our neighbors in that way? Can we? Will we?

Today I invite all those who are visiting our church for the second, third or the one hundredth time to enter into a relationship with us. If you would simply agree to come and be a part of our family officially this morning, I invite you to come forward right now and for our Lay Leaders and Sunday school leaders to come forward with them. I would like to pray with you and to invite you into a short class and then into our family. Would you come? I am going to ask the Musicians to continue playing at the conclusion of the hymn if there are those who have come forward and we are still praying with them. I am also going to invite those of you who may want to recommit your life to the life of love that I am talking about this morning. Come, love one another and be a part of God’s Kingdom.