July 20, 10:30am (Sare Gordy)
These days we don’t follow trickster gods, or gods known primarily for their precarious tempers, outrageous libidos and propensity to gossip, and largely we don’t imagine that somewhere in heaven there is a head table with 60 or 75 of the most powerful gods who made the cut – Zeus sitting next to Thor who is rubbing elbows with Allah - but it was once this way. Ethical Monotheism was sort of an oddity.
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This morning I want to take you on a whirlwind tour of Christian theology, and the theology of our spiritual forebearers, the Jewish people. And when I say whirlwind, I mean whirlwind. Think: 10 countries in 3 days.
But before I do that, I want to show you this little doohickey. This is a digital voice recorder, and is useful in creating podcasts. This sermon will be podcast – though that won’t be available until our website launches next Sunday.
Now, there are two good reasons for a church like Trinity to do podcasts, and other webby type things that require an intense presence on the Internet. One reason is that the culture around us is changing – how we communicate and are in community with one another is shifting, and new media for building and maintaining community are cropping up and growing steadily amongst the older ways. Now, church as a rule is typically several steps behind such cultural changes, but that doesn’t have to stay that way. So, in no particular order, reason number one is that podcasting – and other internet media – are yet another way for Trinity-ites to keep close their ties to one another in our common and ongoing dialogue with, for, and about God. That’s reason number one.
Reason number two is sometimes easy to forget, because it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind, but rationale number two for any web-based media is the people who are not yet here. Reason number two is the answer to the question, “how can Trinity intelligently, adequately, and truthfully advertise who and what it is as a community to others who are looking?” Looking for… something they can’t describe, or maybe something they can, or something they only recognize when they’ve finally experienced it. A safe place to air their questions about God, a safe place to heal their religiously-inflicted wounds. A place that will sooth and challenge them in turn, but never ask for brains to be checked at the door. So, reason number two for having a podcast and if you will, a web-based ministry, is to provide another portal of entrance for people desperately seeking God, and doing so via Google.
Now I make mention of this little technological doohickey and what we’re starting with the website because of the reading from Isaiah today. Now, the particular bit of Isaiah we’ve heard from Chapter 44, was written at a difficult time for our spiritual ancestors, the Jewish people. We’re talking sometime between 550 and 515 BCE, about 25 centuries ago, give or take. It was a rough time – some of the people were exiled or captives and refugees in foreign lands. Understand that in this time and in this culture, the god that you followed – and what the god said was okay to do and not to do, had quite a heavy hand on things like law, order, and societal norms.
Now, everywhere our spiritual ancestors turned at this point in time, there was major competition from other gods who didn’t so much care about piddling little things like justice and mercy, but who looked pretty good because they were the gods of the conquering forces. But as I said, gods like Marduk and Nebo and all the rest, for all their popularity, for all that they were giving Yahweh a proverbial run for his money, they weren’t religions that upheld the same kind of ethical standards that the Jewish people were held to by their god. Perhaps that, too, was part of the attraction.
You see, Ancient Judaism was interesting not only for it’s own merit, or because they were our spiritual ancestors, but also because their understanding of god, their YHWH is what modern day scholars refer to as ‘Ethical Monotheism’, which these days we take for granted. These days we don’t follow trickster gods, or gods known primarily for their precarious tempers, outrageous libidos and propensity to gossip, and largely we don’t imagine that somewhere in heaven there is a head table with 60 or 75 of the most powerful gods who made the cut – Zeus sitting next to Thor who is rubbing elbows with Allah - but it was once this way. Ethical Monotheism was sort of an oddity. And in the midst of all of this, we have Isaiah, in the 44th chapter, with this intriguing set up of God on Trial, though we only hear a little bit of the court case.
Now, whether this sounds ludicrous to you, or maybe like it’d be a good idea, bear with me. Back in the day the judicial process was not quite so involved as it is now in this country, but it was a popular rhetorical device, and at least in theory, justice was available to anyone who petitioned for it and could make a case for themselves. Even outside of an official judge, it might be normal and common for someone trying to make a persuasive argument to frame it within the structure of a ‘court case’. In such moments, sometimes people called in various gods as their witnesses in making the case for themselves. There are other places in the Hebrew Scriptures where similar arguments are being made, where God is on trial, and God makes God’s case by calling the mountains and rivers as the witnesses, and the ancestors of the people in question as witnesses.
So here begins the whirlwind tour of theology, and we’re starting out 25 centuries ago with God vs. god, or if you will, the case of YHWH v. Marduk & Co. The rhetorical argument is structured this way, because again, at this time for our spiritual ancestors, it was generally understood that YHWH was one among a pantheon of gods that existed. That’s what they believed. And YHWH is better than all the competition because YHWH is faithful in fulfilling the promises made, YHWH never abandons the people, and YHWH’s commands are just – or, if you will, his rules are ethical.
But fast forward 17 centuries to the 1200’s in Europe, and we have the Christian movement called Scholasticism. Scholasticism is important to our theological tour, because here we see God on Trial again, but in a completely different way, with a different set of assumptions. No longer is God seen as one among a pantheon of gods that existed and were real. With centuries still to go to the Renaissance and the discovery of the Scientific Method, back in the 1200’s, Ancient Greek philosophy held a revival, and so the questions began to change. European universities were churning out complicated logical proofs about all things theological based on Ancient Greek logic and philosophy. Here the focus is not so much ‘God on Trial’, but ‘God Exists, and we can prove it.’
Fast forward another few centuries. Past the Renaissance, but still ‘pre-Modern’, and the assertion that has been building and is widespread is now ‘God is Exclusive’ – and by that I mean, God is found in one place, in one person, in one way. This pre-Modern view might sound familiar to you, because it is actually still quite popular. But popularity aside, it is clearly not an original theology – there is no one original theology, as we have witnessed here in three brief stops, theology evolves, and should. It is like a train that left it’s originating station long before we stepped aboard, and it continues long after we alight.
The next stop on the theological metro rail is Modernity, and the argument of ‘God is Dead.’ Or at least, ‘god is besides the point.’ This is also still a very popular way of thinking. Perhaps it is most strongly linked with the concrete and astounding advances in humanity’s understanding of the physical world around us. Things that we attributed to complete mystery and utter unknowableness suddenly became clearer and clearer, more known, and even still more known. And as so many things that humanity as a whole once attributed to divinity come within the reach of human beings – things like advances in medicine and science, feats of engineering – well, if that’s all God was good for, why bother? But let’s leave Modernity and its ‘God is besides the point’ theology and move on…
…To the post-Modern theology, which, like all of the others can be found in other religions at other times as well, but for Christianity has only had its major place in the here and now. That theology, that argument can be summed up in the words: God is everywhere. God is everywhere. In everyone. In everything. God Is.
God Is.
Now, if I were to put the theology of Trinity Church in one of these categories, it would definitely get slotted into that last one, the post-Modern ‘God is Everywhere’ theology. It’s a generalization, but go with me. But in the world around us swirls streams and wisps and entire fogged in areas of different understandings of the subject. There is the prevalent pre-modern ‘my way or the highway’ theology in which if you are not in, you are out, if you are not with us, you’re against us, and if you cannot profess your undying devotion to Jesus you are in for an eternity of waterboarding, but with flames.
Even more popular than this is the Modern view that God is besides the point. People subscribing to this view can still lead ethical lives, and have their Sunday mornings free.
And then, swirling around these two is the ‘God is Everywhere’ argument – or perhaps better to say, the ‘God is Everywhere’ experience of life. It’s this experience of life that we all have, but not all of us label it ‘God’. That experience I’m talking about is one that every single person here has had before – the moment that something beautiful took your breath away. The moment you came home, or to work, or to a friend’s house, or your favorite coffee shop or park, the moment you arrived, and sighed, and felt deep in your bones that it was good to be there. Those moments that are pleasant or satisfying where you can be totally present and not entirely certain if two minutes or twenty have passed, without looking at a clock. These – among so many others – little blips and longer durations, are experiences, encounters with the God that is Everywhere, in everyone, in everything. …Or, at least, they are if you’re operating under this post-Modern way of thinking and being.
Which brings me back to my little technological widget.
If God is Everywhere, why bother with church? Why bother with gathering people, with building community together?
Because God is everywhere. Mostly we don’t notice. Mostly we all – you, me, all of us – mostly we go through our day completely unaware that God surrounds us on every side. And every now and then – maybe more often, maybe less – there are little tears in the imaginary fabric that wraps us up like mummies, dulling our senses and keeping us blind. There are little tears, and the sensation, the experience of God floods through.
And maybe we’d never in a million years describe it like this, using the word ‘God’, maybe we’d call it joy, or love, or seriously profound peace. Maybe we’d call it enthusiasm. We can call it whatever we want. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’
But here’s the kicker. God, by whatever name you care you to use, is something we have all had an experience of. Several experiences of. And those experiences – true, real, and profound – can help to shape our lives for the better. Better people, living with a greater degree of integrity, and helping to craft and shape a better world. And it is hard to do that alone. And so, we gather as a community with our common purpose to live lives of integrity right here in our own back yard, to seek the God who still honors promises made, never abandons, and bids us only do what is right, and merciful, and good, and to do these things together, knowing that it is a far more difficult slog to try to do them alone.
And this little technological widget – it’s just one more way to communicate, to build community. It’s just one more way for us to know that we’re not in this alone.
