THE GOD WE DO NOT KNOW
Isaiah 44:6-20
Acts 17:22-29
Stephen Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin April 27, 2008
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Imagine a picture of God. Imagine the appearance of God. The good trained Presbyterian part of you says, “No! that’s impossible! We can’t see God.” Or you might think that while we can’t see the cosmic reality, we can at least see Jesus, and He is God. And in spite of yourselves, some of you can’t help giggling about an amazingly ancient being with a big white beard, right? Except of course for a few of our choir members and other rabble rousers who have managed to substitute a more feminine portrait, but they know that doesn’t really work either. We can’t see God. We can’t really make an adequate image of God. When the Bible tries to offer a description, it always comes wrapped either in blinding light or thick smoke that obscures most details. That’s on purpose. But we do see Jesus, and because of that we have an outline for our lives. Jesus is plenty mysterious sometimes, too, but at least he offers a human connection. So we use His teaching and example to try to chart a course through life. We try to love neighbors, because Jesus commanded that. We try to be generous. We try to remember to try to honor God in everything we do. Three and a half centuries ago, French physicist and theologian Blaise Pascal proposed that even if we cannot prove God’s existence, we should believe and live as Christians. If God exists, we want to be on God’s team, as it were, and if not, we will still do well by serving others. The challenge is to see how everything connects. Even if we can’t see God, we can still see the world around us.
We can’t prove that God exists. We can’t! You might not expect to hear that from a preacher, so here it is again. It is not possible to prove that God exists. Many have tried, both philosophers and theologians, and with the dubious career of being a philosophy major in college and a professional theologian ever since, I’ve read most of them, from Aristotle’s Prime Mover to Pascal’s God-shaped vacuum and beyond. They don’t work, because they all require a leap of logic at some point. Let's be clear: this does not mean that there is no God. We cannot prove that love exists, or even describe it very well, but it is real. When I ask couples preparing for marriage what they mean by love, they often talk about being best friends, making each other laugh, feeling safe and comfortable, and similar experiences. They can describe it, but they can’t really define it and they certainly can’t prove it. If their love is strong enough to make marriage work, then as their years go on they will feel ecstasy and pain and contentment beyond their young imaginations, and even farther past their ability to describe. Happiness is the same way. We can’t describe it or prove it. We can give examples, as Charlie Brown did: happiness is two kinds of ice cream, five different crayons, catching a firefly and setting him free; it’s anyone and anything at all that’s loved by you. We can’t prove it, but it’s real. That’s the way it is with God. Love and joy both are attributes associated with divine reality. We feel it, we know it, but we can’t prove it.
Instead, we tell about our experience. We testify to what we have experienced, and we try to explain it. When it comes to our biggest experiences, like happiness and love and God, this is a challenge, because we describe what happens to us by comparing it to other similar or contrasting events. Ice cream and fireflies help some people feel happy, but they are not the same as happiness. Laughter is not the same as love. It is part of the experience, but not the same. How, then, will we explain God? We sense that at the boundary of our knowledge, at the theoretical limits of space and time, there must be more. When we search for meaning in life, we stretch beyond our own short sense of years for the meaning within which all things exist. Among the earliest traces of human culture, we find evidence that before people knew how to write, they looked at the stars and mountains and decided that there are unseen realities: spirits and gods. This common human experience proves nothing except that we cannot explain everything our experience includes. Beyond the curve of time, on the other side of black holes, much more than the physical attraction related to love, there is Mystery. There is a Connection that seems to weave between people and events whose intersection we cannot explain otherwise. In so many ways, we sense that there must be a Reality greater than the sum of our physical and intellectual existence. We experience the need for something beyond. We do experience it. We feel it. We tell about what we know.
We call this greatest Reality God. The Being within which all other being is is God. This is essentially what the apostle Paul told his listeners in Athens. In fact, he validated their attempt to cover their bases with their altar “to an unknown god.” A god who can be confined to one name or worshipped in only one way is not much of a god. We might say that a god who can be fully known is really no god at all. So, in the desert, the Voice from the burning bush gave Moses a name that was really no name: “I will be who I will be.” Isaiah makes a similar argument. No one and nothing is like God who is first and last; there is, in fact, no other god. Anyone who tries to paint too exact a picture is doomed to stray away from the truth and worship idols. So in the Scots Confession of 1560, early Presbyterians wrote that God is “eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible; one in substance and yet distinct in three persons . . . by whom we confess and believe all things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, to have been created, to be retained in their being, and to be ruled and guided by his inscrutable providence.” Listen to all the words that actually defy description: not finite, not measurable, not comprehensible, not visible. Furthermore, this God cannot be described in terms of one person, and guides the creation by a will we cannot discern. And yet, Paul said, as far beyond knowing as this one true God is, the same God is also very close to all of us. That’s what we want to know. We want to be able to point somewhere and say, “That’s God. That’s as real as it gets.” The ultimate Reality is God.
Live knowing that God is all around us. Live with the awareness that God is always around us. This is not a guardian angel, life coach, personal pep talk kind of presence. This is instead the great spiritual reality that holds all things connected in ways beyond our understanding. If there really is one true God holding all things within the sphere of the divine being, then we are connected to the Dalai Lama as well as Muqtada al-Sadr. We are connected to soldiers and their families on every side of any conflict, and to hungry people in the growing global food crisis. In more peaceful places, we are woven in with hospital patients, kids in day care, and students prepping for prom and final exams. We are also linked inextricably to the non-human world, to animals, plants, rocks and lakes. When we respond to the reality of all that connectedness, then often—not always, but often—life leans toward good. Just paying attention to the links in the vast cosmos around us alters our decisions, usually in ways that lead to good. This is what prayer does: it moves us consciously into that web of existence that is so much larger than our individual being, or even the collected reality of a large congregation praying together. Living with a constant awareness of God means being alert to the sacredness of all things. Some might argue that when everything is sacred, nothing is, because the definition of sacredness or holiness is “being set apart.” But the point is not that each individual phenomenon is holy; rather, their holiness is in the aspect that links them to everything else. Jesus taught this link when He named the greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor. We do not see God, but we work out our love for God in the way we treat people to whom we are more or less closely connected. This is a full-time activity. Live every minute knowing that God is all around us.
Let’s get on with our connections. Let’s look at where we fit in this vast web of holiness, and do something about it. Paul did this in Athens, at the Areopagus. He did not scold his audience for wrong belief. He learned what they had in common, and used it to build toward a common vision. We, too, can learn to work with our neighbors toward the realization of God’s good purposes for all people. Christians often get confused about the meaning of salvation. There is a tendency to think that the main purpose of being Christian is to reserve a ticket out of this world, heading for heaven. That emphasis is misplaced. Salvation is learning to live in harmony with God’s good creation. Because we believe that God holds all things in a network far greater than our comprehension, we concentrate on the world around us. We celebrate what is here, including the vast variety of people with all their ways of believing. We honor and care for the environment we all share. So, our first action is to resolve to think about our actions. For example, it takes discipline to learn how ethanol and other bio-fuels are creating new or bigger problems, even as they solve some old ones. The diversion of crops to fuel production is one factor in the growing world food crisis. We need to learn about that, and push for action both to find better alternative fuels and to reduce energy use. We need to learn about Middle Eastern and Oriental culture and history, so that as Westerners we can act in helpful ways to defuse conflicts there and build global cooperation. In this church, we already do much to feed local people, but we also want to work for conditions that will end the need for our community suppers and food pantry. When Jesus talked to people, He connected the dots for them between the way of faith and the details of their lives. We want to learn those connections. We want our faith to have legs. Let’s get to work.
Where is God in the Universe? Everywhere and nowhere, very close and also far beyond any edge we can find in time or space. We can hardly picture this, and we certainly can’t prove it. Yet, even so, we can connect to that vast Reality by nurturing the connections right around us. We can watch Jesus, and learn from Him to love God by serving neighbors. We can learn more about all of our neighbors, including our global ones. If you want to know more about God, then look for the holiness in all things.
Let us pray.
Holy One: teach us truly to watch for Your presence in all that we see, touch, think, feel and do. Show us holiness and sacredness in all the connections of our experience. Grant us understanding of others. Help us care for the natural world. In all things, let us find ways to serve neighbors and so to honor You. Amen.