First UCC Tucson

April 20, 2008
Exodus 3: 1-6

Today, we’re kicking off a new series.  We finished the hospitality series last week wondering what is it we hold sacred?  What is it that makes our hearts burst around here?  What are the things that we will protect and instill in all we meet?  Hopefully, we’ll capture those things in the next four weeks.  Today we begin talking about what it is we are buyin’ into by being a member of this community of faith.   

Who knows our vision statement?  Who can say it out loud?  That’s right, Always Open Open All Ways.  Each week we will begin with our vision statement.  Our vision statement helps us to envision ourselves, individually, as opening ourselves, as being open to all we meet no matter where they are on life’s journey.  Our vision statement helps us to create a discipline around the continuing practice of opening, of checking ourselves for our own boundaries and limits of discerning our spiritual practices and how we might engage them along the way.  It is something you can visualize, yourself being open, it is something we can all visualize, our community being open, it makes sense it would be how our core belief’s begin. 

Core Belief #1.  Do you promise to be always open and open all ways to the Divine.  The word divine is big.  It covers a lot of ground.  There are 18 definitions of what the word Divine means. 

18 results for: Divine

–adjective

–noun

 

–verb (used without object)

The many meanings of the word Divine support the choice of this word.  We are talking about God here.  Being Always Open Open all Ways to God.  But talking about God brings up a lot of problems and in order to get at some of the catches in our own thinking and to become more clear talking about the Divine always helps.  It helps because it allows us to step back a bit.  What do we mean, which one of these definitions are we discussing?  Which aspect of God are we talking about?  To capture the entire mystery of God is impossible with any one word.  However, I think talking about the Divine can send us into many helpful places to begin.  And, this is also something we can’t tackle in one preaching moment.  So, beginning the first Sunday in May, May 4, I’m going to lead a class on God reading Marcus Borg’s The God We Never Knew.  You will be invited to read a section of the book prior to the class and then participate in discussion based on what you’ve read for the next class.  I will have the study guide available next week and you can order the book at any bookstore or on line.   The Divine. 

We have a lot of baggage when it comes to the Divine.  Most of it comes from childhood.  Whether we grew up in the church or not, we grow up with ideas about God.  If we’ve grown up in the church, we might even have more issues with opening ourselves than if we haven’t.  From a young age if we have been immersed in statements like, “Our Father who art in Heaven”  “King above all Kings”  “He is the shepherd, we are the sheep”  “Ruler and Judge”  We think about God as an embodied being.  God is an actual being with limits regarding being embodied.  Just as we have limits to our own fleshly being.  Another problem with embodying God is that it must place God in some other place, away from us, away from being a part of our lives, just some creepy voyeur watching but not participating except the occasional swoop in which causes miraculous outcomes.  We weren’t often church goers while I was growing up, but we did go occasionally.  I remember as a small girl, maybe around the age of 5 or 6 going to Sunday School and hearing the story of the Good Shepherd.  I liked making the cotton ball sheep.  But, I was disturbed by the story.  That big man who was the shepherd, he looked friendly, and he was holding the lamb so nicely.  But I didn’t want to be a sheep.  I remember crying to my Mom, I don’t want to be a sheep.  I thought it was some sort of magic and we were all going to be turned into sheep, literally.  This God was a magic sheep making man.  With the literal mind of the child we teach about God.  And that black and white thinking often gets layered upon as we age.  It’s time for the jackhammers folks.  What does it mean to embrace, engage, relate to the Divine.  How is it that we can root out our black and white images of God and instead begin relating to a bigger mystery with our whole adult selves.  How can we begin asking questions about what we believe and why we believe it through our wisdom, our life experience, through the metaphors of Scripture and the history of previous believers.  We have historically made our Christian God into a superhero.  He is strong, fair and leaps buildings in a single bound.  He sees the bat signal go off and intervenes in a crisis.  However, this Supernatural Theism does nothing but keep God as voyeur.   

There are a few seminary words that I want to introduce today to help us in our discussion of God.  These terms, it’s true are invented by theologians, but it is their business, talking about God, so they do have some good stuff occasionally.  The words for today are imminence, transcendence, and panentheism.   

The problem with a Supernatural Theist is he’s a guy, out there somewhere.  We should be able to see him with the hubble telescope or find him with one of the spaceships.  We should be able to find him, catch him watching us on his giant screen (put a slide here from Jim Carey’s movie Truman Show of the white guy narrating the story).  But we won’t.  Because this is not our God.  Here’s where the new words come in.  Transcendent means the going beyond.  It’s the trans part of God, it goes beyond anything that we know in our universe.  It is the otherness of God.  Immanence on the other hand is the presence of God in everything or nearness to everything.  The universe is part of God but not a total sum of God.  God can be in everything but everything does not equal God, God is more.   

Another term is panentheism.  Panentheism affirms both the otherness, the transcendence of God and the immanence the presence of God here and now.  Panentheism, when you pull it apart pan meaning everything, en meaning in, and theism meaning God…Everything in God however God is not just the universe, God is even beyond the universe, everything is in but only a part.  This moves us beyond our SuperTheist Superhero who swoops in from afar and is some creepy voyeur and allows God to disembody, disenflesh becoming more than we understand.  God can be both here and there.  God can be both now and future.  God can move in my life and still be moving in other lives around the world and universe.   

It matters how you talk about God.  It matters because the rest of your faith, your opinion about yourself, you motivations for being and working in the world, all hang on your image of God.  It creates a system that will function in your life whether it is named or not.  We on the progressive left, we must have the words to understand the system we are creating to know our faith.  We must put words to what it is that we believe.   

We believe in the Divine.  The one who knows us down and out.  The one who calls us into relationship, helping us towards any shred of light.  The one who is within us in our anxiety and desperation helping us experience moments of peace and calm.  As conscious Christians we are called to spend our lifetimes exploring what it means to be in relationship with a being that is both here and there, with this being that knows us by name and challenges us where it makes us uncomfortable.  We are called by the Divine even out of Isaiah by this God who is both near and far:

Thus says the Lord, the one who created you, who formed you: 

      “Do not be afraid, for I have delivered you.  I have called you by name, and you are mine. 

      When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overcome you.

      When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

      You are precious in my sight, and I love you.

      Do not be afraid—for I am with you.”

God is with us, let us dismantle our SupernaturalTheism and create a Panentheistic understanding of God.  God who is with us and beyond us.  Let us pray.

      

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