Not being able to see God face to face makes perfect sense to me. You see, God cannot be quantified--God doesn’t have a face. Or a head, or arms or legs. God isn’t some old man sitting on a throne….unless God as an old man sitting on a throne is a comforting image to you….you see God isn’t anything one thing God is every little thing, everywhere, always and forever. God is light, God is Love, God is energy. All depictions of God as a man are simply the imaginings of artists….we can’t see God face to face because God is not static, God is not mortal, God is not physical.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t see God. If we pay attention, we can absolutely see God. And that, I think was God’s point in this encounter with Moses.
Just as Moses could “see where God has been,” we, too, can see where God has been…. And where God will always be….we just have to notice.
Look at our children as they gather behind the altar with me each Sunday…tell me that isn’t a stunning example of “where God has been and will always be….”
Stop by the Food Pantry any given Wednesday and look at Bruce, David, Bev, Joan, Heather, Amy, Jill, Jeannine, and Gloria serving the clients of the pantry with grace, dignity and joy and tell me that’s not a stunning example of where God has been and will always be.
God is active in and around us, but, and here’s the problem facing the modern church, does the world notice? If you ask the secular world about God, I don’t think you’d hear much about God-sightings.
There’s a new study out, exploring all the reasons that church attendance, continues to drop at a pretty steady, and frankly, alarming rate. One point really impressed me:
"When the unchurched were asked to describe what they believe are the positive and negative contributions of Christianity in America, almost half (49%) could not identify a single favorable impact of the Christian community…
Nearly HALF couldn’t identify how churches favorably impact society?
Yikes.
Folks, what this means is that people aren’t noticing God in this world. It means that even with the outreach work I just outlined, we have more work to do because our job, as Christians, is to help the world notice God. Our job is to increase the God-sightings in this, our corner of the world. You know that old hymn, “They’ll know we are Christians by our Love?” We may want to revisit that. As author and pastor Joe Daniels puts it: Far too many churches today have become drive-in, spiritual social clubs and not the agents of community vitality and life transformation they used to be. As a result, communities are suffering, churches are dying, and far too many people are searching for hope in all the wrong places.
We must show people that God is at work in our world through us.
It isn’t up to God to show God’s self to the world, it’s up to us!
This is the lesson God was trying to teach Moses.
Moses felt like God was being coy and elusive. But God isn’t coy or elusive, we are just too distracted to notice God’s imprint on our world.
God’s not in hiding, the world just isn’t looking.
We have to show the world God.
The 117 pink flags on our front lawn show people God.
The money collected from the noisy offering shows the kids at school 54, God.
The 59,000 meals provided to our neighbors through our food pantry shows God to the world.
All of that is great, but clearly there is more to do.
How else can we show the world the handiwork of our gracious and loving creator?
In today’s Gospel Jesus asks the Pharisees what mark is on the coin they have challenged him with—they rightly respond, Caesars. Jesus’ point is clear, we must bear the mark of God, not the mark of the Caesars of this world—all the things that are “not of God” that consume and distract us.
When we boldly and actively bear the mark of God in all that we do and every place we go, people will notice…they’ll notice that God has been and always will be here.
So…
How can the Church of the Good Shepherd become even more welcoming? How can we become even more helpful to the lost, the lonely the downtrodden and the despairing?
How can we, here at the corner of Jewett Pkwy and Summit Avenue become more than that pretty church on the corner? What can we do to ensure that the footprint of God is ever-present to all who wander past our doors, so ever present that they stop in and stay awhile? How can we, in all that we do, bear the imprint of God, so that all who encounter us realize and rejoice in the fact that through us, they’ve encountered God?
In this season of stewardship we take stock of who we are, who we want to be and how we can get there. As you pray about your financial pledge for 2015 I ask you to also consider how we, as a community of faith can show the world that God is here, now and forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment