Where do I find God?

Where do I find God?

         

         As many of us reach a point where being cut of from people and removed from routines and separated from places of comfort, becomes truly heavy. As deaths & sickness from the Corona Virus continue to mount. 

         It is fair to ask of ourselves a simple question:
Where do I find God?

Prayer

Where do I find God?

         In the building itself? Here at Church?
         After all, in normal times don’t we gather in this space to connect with God?
Surely we do!
Sacred space is something you can feel—sacred space is the thin place between heaven and earth,
Where unique holy events have happened and it has become a place for pilgrims,

Or where ongoing ritual has dug, through repetition and time, a well that can be plumbed for generations…
A space where a holy community rubs their messy faith into the ground that then becomes Holy…

         Yet of course, we have heard the words of St. Stephen—God does not abide in buildings… His home isn’t hewn by human hands…

         The building itself, at best, points to God’s Holy doings.

Where do I find God?

         Perhaps it is the people! There is a blessedness to gathering together, the Spirit uses us to unexpected ends, where two or three are gathered, there is God.

         For that matter, look at the witness of this Congregation’s namesake, St. Stephen. He is arguably the first saint, the first Holy One—definitely the first Christian martyr.

         Stephen starts as a Deacon, sent by the Apostles to feed the widows and orphans
—and soon enough the Spirit takes him on to another task, and he starts preaching the Gospel like an Apostle…
This is the ongoing story of the Book of Acts, every time the Church settles on something, the Spirit unsettles us and prods us onward…
In this case this prodding leads Stephen to court, and he has to defend himself before the Temple Authorities.
There he preaches the longest sermon in Acts, telling the whole tale of God in order to point to what God is doing among the earliest Christians
—and more than his sermon, his death and last words, point to Jesus
—his death parallels his Lord’s.
“Receive my Spirit! Forgive them!”
Last words nearly identical to Jesus’ words from the cross…

         Surely God is among and within the Church and individual Christians, but the Church is pointing, as Stephen points, to Jesus. Pointing to Jesus even as God calls us, gathers us, and sends us. Pointing to Jesus.

Where do I find God?

         In Jesus?
Well yes…
         At the start of John’s Gospel it is stated, “No one has ever seen God…but God the only son who abides with the Father has made God known.” 
This statement finally comes to fruition in Jesus’ words to Philip, “How can you say ‘show us the father’ you’ve seen me, and thus you’ve seen him. If you’ve known me you’ve known the Father.”
Jesus is the invisible God made visible.

         Think of it—we’ve built up all kinds of hang-ups about God, everything from bad experiences with authority figures
to awful church experiences
to natural disasters being called, “acts of God”
to our own selfish ambitions and insensitive cultural traditions… 
All of those things imprint upon us images of God
—all of them shape what we seek when we seek the Lord,
shape how we treat other humans and other creatures on account of who and what we see when we say we see God…

         And all these other images melt away before the face of Jesus.

         You want to see the LORD… gaze upon God? …
-Look then at that one who’s only command is Love,
who washes his disciples feet,
who heals and feeds
and who was the life of the party at that wedding at Cana…
-Look at him arrested in the garden,
betrayed and denied,
mocked and crucified.
-Look too, at the one who calls Mary by name,
reveals himself to Thomas,
eats breakfast on the seashore
and links love of him to the feeding and care of the flock.

         Through him, we know the Father… for he has prepared a place for us…

         Or so it says in most translations
—but there is a danger that we take this heavenly promise, make it a building, and end back at the beginning, the start of the sermon… Is God found in a heavenly home, a blissful building?

         No, this Son of God, through whom we can see the Father
—he goes to make Abiding places…
to Abide
—to be as close to another as a heartbeat,
to lay upon the chest,
a baby upon the breast of her mother… 

that is the kind of intimacy with God that Jesus is talking about.

         The disciples are worried, they have just learned that their fellowship is crumbling
—Judas will betray,
Peter will deny,
Jesus’ words are a farewell address…

         This is very real distress! And Jesus responds: 

“I go to prepare a place for you—there is plenty of space for intimate kindness in my father’s household.”

         Or breaking it down a little more:
“There is plenty of room for relationship in God’s family.”

         You are a Child of God!

         This piece of Scripture is a favorite at funerals, and you can see why; what a promise! Christ abides with the Father and we abide with Christ.

Where do I find God?

         In the face of death, “Fear not, you abide with God.”

         In the face of this separation from other people we’re currently experiencing, “Abide.”

         In the face of dislocation from familiar places and routines, “Abide.” 

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