“In him we live and move and have our being…???
Many, if not most of the sermons that are preached from this pulpit seek to focus our attention on the call, the challenge, and the promise of the Christian life. In light of the life, the teachings, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is only right and good and proper that we seek to proclaim this challenging, comforting, transforming good news as clearly as we possibly can. We live in a world that needs, desperately, to hear that good news.
Today, however, I would invite us to shift our attention, if even a little bit, to the great mystery that lies behind this good news – that is, the mystery that we refer to by the word “God???.
The word “God??? is, after all, just that – a word. And it is not even a word that is unique to our own tradition of faith. Rather, both our ancestors in almost every time and culture – and our contemporaries both in other religious traditions, and in none at all, use this word to refer to the ineffable, indescribable mystery, sometimes with very little clarity about what they mean by their use of the word.
As we all know, throughout human history, there have been other words, other ideas for God. Some of the ancients referred to this concept as the “unmoved mover??? behind all things; others spoke of this great mystery as a “Creator??? in light of their observations of the natural world, concluding that the wonder, the beauty, the diversity and the order of this world – and of the cosmos – could only have been fashioned by a conscious and creative being; still others linked their idea of the divine to the cycles of the seasons, constructing elaborate rituals to seek to appease the angry storms or to appeal for prosperity. Still other cultures linked this greater power with the cultivation of wisdom, of justice and of the rules and responsibilities that were necessary for the flourishing of life and the maintenance of just and compassionate communities. Laws and rules were established, with an appeal to God or to the gods, with the harsh prediction that failing to observe those laws would result in divine wrath.
In and through all of these dimensions of human existence – and in so many other ways, our ancestors from every part of the earth have sensed, and felt, and experienced, and believed that there is something greater, something more wonderful, something more powerful, something more significant than simply what our eyes can see, our ears can hear, or our hands can touch.
We live in an age, as we all know, when the insights of science, the critical skepticism of the arts, the revelations of psychology, the rise of secularism and a greater exposure to the beliefs of other religions invite us to cast doubts, and to ask probing questions, about the claim of faith in a transcendent power.
And yet, in this same age, the power of faith – for good and for evil – is indisputable. And even those who do not adhere to any particular creedal or religious tradition appeal to the idea of some greater power as a source of strength, of confidence and of stability in times of crisis. As only one example, I find it intriguing that the most effective movements for helping people to find the courage and the stamina to address and overcome terrible addictions and dependencies root their approach in the assertion that there is a higher power – however one chooses to describe or define it – that can offer the necessary strength to overcome challenges that the addict cannot, on their own, prevail over.
God – or at the very least, some of our traditional concepts of God – might be dead, as Nietschze claimed. God—or at the very least, some of our traditional claims about God – might be a delusion, as Dawkins posited. God – or at the very last, some of our traditional beliefs about God – might not be all that great, as Hitchens asserted.
But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of God’s death is an exaggeration.
Which means that we still need to find ways to speak to each other, to people of other faiths, to people of no faith, about this great mystery that we call God. And perhaps it is good for us to seek to find ways to speak about God in new ways, ways that do not carry the weight and baggage that so many of the typical metaphors convey.
There are, after all, a lot of inherited words and titles for God – many of which reflect important dimensions and beliefs about God. There are a vast number of titles, of images and of names that are given to God – even within the Jewish and Christian traditions. We speak of Yahweh or Jehovah, of El-ohim and El Shaddai. We use images like the Ancient of Days, the Alpha and the Omega. We use words that invite us to celebrate the close and intimate relationship that we are invited to have with God – we speak of God as a loving, strong, tender heavenly Father, the Psalmists compared God’s presence to that of a loving mother in whose arms we rest like a weaned child.
So many words for God, so many different facets of this great mystery, so many different dimensions and aspects for us to ponder as we seek to find our way on the journey of faith. And strive though we might to find words that are appropriate and fitting, we also cannot help but realize that all our words are, ultimately, inadequate. As the great author and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “we can speak only in metaphor of the eternal and infinite. If we wish to describe the indescribable, we can do so only by poetry. All endeavours to reach God by words resolve themselves into religious poetry. When we experience the hidden, the unfathomable, we can respond with the devoutness of silence…or with poetry and prayer we can sing of the ineffable.???
And in this striving to find appropriate words for God is neither unique to our culture, nor new to our time.
Our suggested reading, today, from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles invites us to overhear the apostle Paul, in the Areopagus in Athens, seeking and striving to find words to speak about the mystery of God. But he did not begin his address with words that implied that the idea of God was a new idea that he was trying to convince them about. “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.??? He spoke about how he had gone through their city, noted their honest and genuine desire to find a way to depict, or represent, or acknowledge the divine reality, and had even noted the humility that had led them to construct an altar “to an unknown God???. It was this “unknown God??? that Paul wanted to speak to them about, for he had come to believe that this unknown God was the true God – but that it was a being, a power, a reality that could never be contained or adequately depicted in shrines or idols or anything made by human hands.
To the contrary, as Paul himself beautifully stated – while quoting the works of Greek philosophers with whom his listeners would have been familiar – “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.’
In him we live and move and have our being.
I always find that a remarkable image to describe God – as the one, the power, the reality in whom we live and move and have our being.
What actually often comes to mind, for me, when I hear that phrase is the idea of two small fish swimming in a shallow tidal pool on the edge of some great ocean. All that they know is what is around them – the water in which they swim is their home, it is the place where they derive all that they need to grow and flourish, it is the context for everything that they ever have done and all that they ever will do. They likely take it for granted – and yet, the waters in which they are living and moving and having their being are, in fact, part of a much greater body of water, the size and scope of which they could never imagine.
And so they swim around, and debate with each other about whether the ocean actually exists. And, if it does exist, whether or not they can do anything to understand it, or prove its existence, or control it. A few members of their little school of fish doubted the reports that there even was such a thing as an ocean, others were not willing to believe that the ocean existed unless they could see it all, still others were quite convinced that the ocean was a lovely fantasy conjured up by a group of fish who somehow wanted to control the rest of the fish by implying that they had special access and understanding of the ocean, and that the only way for the fish to remain safe was to do exactly what those fish who were “in the know??? suggested for how they should be swimming.
Well, the metaphor can be stretched and exhausted, but the point is clear.
For us, as humans, to speak of the mystery of God is analogous to a group of small fish trying to find words to describe the majesty of all of the oceans.
And yet, the remarkable proclamation of Paul, in this text – and of the church throughout the ages – is that it is both possible, and it is our calling, to seek to find words to speak of, and about, and even with this great and wondrous mystery. Paul’s proclamation was that the ocean of God’s mystery had been glimpsed in the life of Jesus, and that our response to the coming of Jesus was the way to respond to that great mystery.
Such a response was – and is — challenging, because it invites us to take stock of our lives, to take responsibility for our actions, to respond to the power of God with a humble acknowledgement of our flawed humanity and our need for grace – or as Paul stated, “ 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.???
But the most wonderful, the most powerful and the most challenging part of this vision of God, this great mystery in whom we live and move and have our being – is the proclamation that the essential nature of this great and wondrous mystery, who calls us and expects us to take responsibility for our lives and for our actions through an attitude of repentance – is not out to condemn and destroy us. Rather, we dare to proclaim, as Paul did so long ago, that there is nothing that can ever fully separate us from that grace and love. The great power at the heart of all things is not against us, but for us; the wonderful being before whom we bow wants the best for us and for this world. In the heart of God, at the heart of the universe, there is forgiveness, there is goodness, there is justice, there is love.
And that is good news.
